Zen Thinking

Here are two reports on studies by Ap Dijksterhuis at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and colleagues.

'Sleeping on it' best for complex decisions (NewScientist.com news service)
Sleep on it, decision-makers told (BBC news)

Actually, the studies did not demonstrate the benefits of sleeping on a decision. Not that a demonstration was needed. Those of us who follow the practice are quite convinced by our own observations. It is widely available as commonsense advice.

What the studies did demonstrate was the benefit of drawing on the non-verbal parts of the brain. I won’t quote the news reports here. They are in the standard pop-psych language of the “conscious mind” and the “unconscious mind.” I am not going to accept language that treats nonverbal modules as “unconscious.” Nor will I accept the popular convention of two minds.

You have one brain. It has many modules. Those modules will not always agree with each other. You may experience that disagreement as internal conflict or, in this case, buyer’s regret. You can reduce the disagreement of the modules by giving the quiet modules a chance to finish their processing and get the results into your awareness. I like to call this Zen thinking.

Concrete description of the research. The researchers gave participants information about things people buy. Some of the things, such as oven gloves of shampoo, presented simple choices. Other things, such as a house or a car, presented complex choices.

Some participants were asked to ponder the information and make a choice. Other participants were told they would be asked for a choice later. In the meantime, they were asked to work on a series of puzzles. (I assume, that both groups spent the same amount of time before making a choice.)

The choices were considered “good” if the person remained happy with the choice as some later time. “Bad” choices were presumably instances of buyer’s remorse. Here is the score”

Ponderers tended to make good decisions on simple choices.

Puzzlers tended to beat the ponderers on complex choices.

The puzzles were intended to occupy the “conscious” processes and so give more opportunity for Zen thinking. Evidently they succeeded. (Other common methods with similar objectives include chanting, meditation, and sleeping)

The “unconscious” processes did a better job than the “conscious” processes on handling complex processes. I hope you appreciate the absurdity of the term “unconscious” in this context. The only thing unconscious here is the inept choice of a term to denote processes that can beat the verbal processes when they get chance.

Can you use this information? Not just talk about it. Use it. Yes. Check with the Startalittles. They will tell you how to get Zen thinking to work for you.