Always make up your mind when making a decision? Try flipping a coin!

When you are vacillating between several decision-making options, it is better to toss a coin, which may help you speed up your choice.

Author | Liang Lijing

Graduation season is coming, you have gone through many tests, and finally got two job offers, but suddenly you made a mistake: although the salary of a position is not satisfactory, the company atmosphere is good and the work content is relaxed; The salary of another position is very attractive, but the work intensity is prohibitive. Which one should I choose?

Pixabay.com

After looking up countless materials and asking friends and relatives, I still don't know what to do. What should I do? Why not flip a coin to help you make a decision?

2065438+In April 2009, Maria Douneva of university of basel and three other researchers published an article about JESP, pointing out that when you are vacillating between several decision-making options, it is better to toss a coin, which may help you to speed up your choice.

Through three online experiments, these researchers show that the random result of coin toss can't affect your final decision, but it can be used as a psychological hint to make you more determined about your truly approved decision, so that you won't waste more time collecting information to help you make up your mind.

George H.W. Bush tossed a coin at the Super Bowl.

First, in the experiment 1, the researcher recruited 170 participants and randomly divided them into the experimental group and the control group. Participants need to evaluate the performance of a store manager from the perspective of a senior manager and decide whether to fire him. First of all, they read a document, make a preliminary decision on whether the store manager will stay or not, and evaluate their confidence in this decision (0%- 100%).

After that, the participants in the experimental group will see the animation of flipping a coin-the flip of the coin means "keep him" and the flip means "fire him". Participants can choose whether to refer to the result of coin toss when making the final decision. The people in the control group saw a rotating hourglass indicating "loading" and learned that they would enter the next link in a moment.

Next, in the preliminary decision, the participants who choose to "fire the manager" directly make the final decision; Participants who choose "Leave Manager" will get 10 more personal information about the manager. Participants can carefully select the materials they want to consult according to the serial number (1- 10), and give their final choice after reading.

Pixabay.com

All participants need to report on the difficulty of their final decision and their confidence in it. In addition, participants who get additional information need to evaluate how helpful these additional information are to decision-making.

The researcher takes the additional information selected by the subjects for the second time as the dependent variable, and the condition of "whether to flip a coin" and the degree of determination of the initial decision as the independent variables for regression analysis. They found that after the initial decision and before the final decision, participants who flip coins only need 1/3 of the participants in the control group to access the second round of information!

The researchers excluded the interference of other factors through two sub-experiments and got similar experimental results. The preliminary results show that if people throw coins after their initial judgment, their demand for follow-up information will be significantly reduced, regardless of whether the result of coin throwing is consistent with their initial judgment, thus speeding up the final decision.

But what's the coin toss for? Do you leave the final decision to the coin, or just use it as an "accelerator" for decision-making?

The process of experiment 2 is similar to experiment 1, except that this time participants have to look at the pictures and description information of two computer bags to decide which backpack is more expensive. Regardless of whether they need more information after the initial judgment, the researchers showed the buyers' comments of two backpacks.

Researchers will eventually reveal the correct answer and ask participants to report whether they are disappointed or satisfied when they see the correct answer. For the process of coin toss, participants also need to answer the following questions: First, does the result of coin toss make them more confident in their initial judgment, or do they begin to doubt their initial judgment? Second, after learning the result, do you want to flip a coin again?

Through the analysis of variance, the researchers further verified the conclusion of the experiment 1. They also found through regression analysis that whether the participants were disappointed or satisfied with the correct answer had nothing to do with their understanding and feelings about coin toss. In other words, participants think that they are responsible for the decision-making results rather than the coins, which shows to some extent that coin toss is not a decisive tool, but an "accelerator" for decision-making.

The result of experiment 2: the degree of information demand of subjects under different conditions

In Experiment 3, the researcher chose a more realistic decision-making scenario-donation.

In this experiment, participants need to choose a suitable medical charity organization and donate 0. 1 euro provided by researchers to it. First, the researcher randomly selected two organizations from six real medical charities that participants had never heard of, and asked them to read relevant materials and decide who to donate money to.

This time, after making a preliminary decision, participants need to clearly report whether and how much additional information they need before making a final decision. Regardless of people's needs, the researchers will show the addresses of two charitable organizations in official website in the next section.

Before making a final decision, participants need to write down 1 to five reasons why they choose to donate to the charity of their choice. After making a decision, participants need to evaluate their independence in making a decision and explain their feelings about the coin toss process.

Aplastic anemia &; Official website of MDS International Foundation

The results show that the participants who flip a coin really need less information in the subsequent decision-making (the average time to browse charity official website is shorter, and the average reason to write down is less). There is no significant difference in the evaluation of decision-making independence between the experimental group and the control group, which further shows that the results of coins will not actually affect people's decision-making content.

They also found that in the three experiments, although the participants were different each time, most people made the same decision twice before and after. This shows that everyone has an answer before flipping a coin. Coin toss, whether positive or negative, is just a psychological hint, which accelerates people's determination and avoids collecting too much invalid information to interfere with their true heart.

Big and small things in life often make you feel difficult to decide? Try to flip a coin to help you quickly understand what your real choice is!

References:

Maria Duneva, Mariella E. Jaffe, Lena Griffin, tossing and turning or tossing and turning? Flip a coin to reduce the demand for information in decision-making, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 83, 20 19, pp. 132- 14 1, ISSN 0022- 103 1. https://doi . org/ 10. 10 16/j . jesp . 20 19.04 . 003。

End—

Editor | Zhao Xueying Mo Tiantian