Humans are strange creatures. We often do things that don’t make sense, sometimes even to ourselves. What makes us more willing to purchase a product for $4.99 than for $5.00? Why do we get items for 50% off that we would never buy at full price? And what makes us so eager to use products celebrities use when we have nothing in common?
Many of our decisions in life are seemingly random or based on whims. But even our most illogical actions are formulaic. As Dan Ariely says in his book Predictably Irrational, “these irrational behaviors of ours are neither random nor senseless. They are systematic, and since we repeat them again and again, predictable” (p. xx).
r economic decisions (Morgan,:
The Truth About Our Gut feeling
We often talk about our “gut feeling” as this visceral, spur-of-the-moment urge to go in a certain direction or make a particular choice—an impulse towards doing what we feel is right. Similarly, we might tell someone to “listen to their heart” as a way of following their passions and desires, using their emotions to do what’s best. Yet, we also tell people just as often to “use their head.”
We think of using logic and using emotion to make decisions as separate ideas when they go hand-in-hand. As behavioral economics and psychology have discovered, it’s next to impossible to decide without using our feelings and biases. Our heads often defer to our hearts to help make quick choices.
Modern research and technology have looked into the brain and found it comprises a messy network of overlapping emotional and rational sections. Whether we like it or not, our rationality has been tainted by our feelings where the two are impossible to extricate. When comparing properties, making pros and cons lists may be the logical way of looking at things, but a feeling of home will usurp them every time. We may crunch the numbers to see if we can afford those new shoes we’ve been eyeing, but if we believe they’ll bring us enough happiness, our minds will be made up no matter what our calculations say.
Even when we think we’re making a logical choice, emotional impulses will seize control of situations and steer us in illogical directions. Our “gut” often hot-wires our decisions and takes them on a joyride to buy things for a rush of dopamine despite our empty wallets or to go on a date with an attractive person we know isn’t good for us.
