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The Art of Indecision
« on: 2004-05-11 19:39:47 » |
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BBC Radio 4
The Art of Indecision
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/artofindecision.shtml
Everyone makes thousands of decisions every day. Some even consciously. But most are beyond our awareness. Generally, there’s a hierarchical structure to the human brain, with the lower ranks, at the base of the skull, taking care of the mundane stuff like breathing and walking.
Emotional management centres like the amygdala take care of hunches and instinct, whereas answering the really important questions like “what should I order for lunch?”, are left to the CEO neurones up in the cerebral cortex - the knobbly bit of brain just above your eyebrows.
Whilst most people won’t stand around contemplating the alternatives to, say, running for your life from a charging rhino, others are crippled by indecision over more mundane matters. Affluent western society has flooded us with choices and this has left our brains struggling to make the right decision.
Take a simple trip to a coffee bar. Thanks to the big, modern cafe chains, what was once milk and two sugars is now at least a staggering 1048 possible variations on an espresso.
In these programmes, Ian Peacock, a man possibly more troubled by indecision than Hamlet, meets scientists and psychologists in an attempt to develop some life-changing decision-making skills. “The trouble with our brains”, says decision researcher Peter Ayton from the Society for Judgement and Decision Making, “is that they were designed to survive in the relatively simple environment of the African Savannah, thousands of years ago”.
Back then it was hunter and hunted, (presumably with fewer beverage options). So to cope now we have to become skilled thinkers – we have to rationalise our decisions or risk making bad ones.
At New York University, neurobiologist Paul Glimcher has isolated two molecules that are the most likely culprits in the decision process – acetylcholine and noradrenalin. One increases brain activity, the other decelerates it and when the two fire off together, the dithering commences.
Could controlling these neuro-chemicals be the key to decisiveness? Perhaps the answer is cultural?
A recent study found that Japanese and American businessmen made different decisions based on their cultural and social mores rather than on business models.
Whilst Sports psychologists like Debbie Crews help athletes to balance their brain in order to better control the backhand, the penalty kick or the golf swing.
It’s only when they stop listening to the analytical left brain and allow themselves to go with the flow of the instinctive right brain that they’ll find the place-kicking nirvana reached by players like David Beckham and Alan Shearer.
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