Since we are all working on the Nudge assignment, in this blog, I would like to talk about the possible reason of why people always make decision so irrationally and emotionally.
I would simply say because most of the time we are soooooo lazy. Always looking for a short-cut and minimise the efforts to achieve the same goal. Nowadays, almost every innovative product is telling you that “Our product is much better because you are so lazy and we know you don’t want to do anything, so we help you with that”. They are just saying this in another fancy tone of voice which is “Convenience, Faster, Easier, User-friendly, Efficiency etc. If you think of the reason why we need to put AI (Artificial Intelligence) into these products, you should’ve realised that people are so lazy to park a car (Tesla – Autopilot), people are so lazy to type the questions in google for answers (Google – Google Lens), and people are so lazy to pay at cashier (Amazon – amazon go).
Why Lazy?
We are so lazy because it feels good, we don’t want to put efforts because it’s painful. A very fundamental concept of “Hedonic motivation” (Higgins, 2006; Kahneman & Tversky, 2013). Different theories we have learnt in class such as the Anchoring, Availability, Halo effect, Defaults, Heuristic, Decoy effect, Framing effect etc. they all shared a common characteristic which is stimulating our brain with “Simple” clues, clues could be either from internal (Our memory) or external (Stimulus). Most of the time, these clues give us a simple (or leading) message rather than the complete information we should’ve know in order to make a “Cognitive & Rational” decision. But even if the information are limited, it doesn’t mean we can’t make decision. In fact, our brain is a big fan of using limited information to make decision.
The laziest mechanism
As we all know, the laziest mechanism of our brain is “Perception”. A short-cut of our thinking always lead us to jump to the conclusion without sufficient information whether it is rational or not because we can’t process and evaluate everything at all-time especially in making daily decision, it’s impossible. And because of the Hedonic needs, we don’t want to process that much. Specifically, cognitive ease or the processing fluency is the reason why we are more comfortable to make decision with limited clues (Winkielman et al., 2003). As long as the clues are matched to our knowledge and value (Memory & experience) which “seems” to be positive, is good to you, feeling good, social engaging etc. our brain will told us “Go for it” and stop searching more information to process and evaluate.
Sometimes, we think our decision is so logical and cognitive, but the truth is, we are not computer and this is just a perception that make you feel good. And because of “lazy”, our decision is somehow irrational and emotional.
References
Higgins, E. T. (2006). Value from hedonic experience and engagement. Psychological review, 113(3), 439.
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (2013). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. In HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING: Part I(pp. 99-127).
Winkielman, P., Schwarz, N., Fazendeiro, T., & Reber, R. (2003). The hedonic marking of processing fluency: Implications for evaluative judgment. The psychology of evaluation: Affective processes in cognition and emotion, 189-217.
Consumer Insights 
Well posited article on decision making. Mostly we rely on automatic decision process system since we are lazy. Cognitively demanding task are cumbersome to execute, hence our brain prefers shortcuts to avoid cognitive load. Additionally, the axioms of rationality says people makes rational decision when there is completeness, transitivity and substitution. However, in real life these principles doesn’t fit well. That’s why we rely most of the time on our gut feelings than the rational brain.
Reference: http://ppocir.uwaterloo.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Dilip-Soman-Behavioural-Sciences.pdf
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I read the title and knew this blog would apply to me. It’s a great blog. I am pretty lazy, I do what needs and has to be done but I will find the easiest way to do it.
For example, I’m pretty lazy at cooking and Morrison’s is benefitting from my lack of motivation to cook. They provide easy and quick access to a hole meal – the meal deal. They know how lazy people (especially students) can be so the first thing you see is meal deals when you go into the store. I have been in there and though “well now I’m going to be productive and buy some good ingredients for a nice meal. Before I know it, I’m buying meal deals because I just can’t be bothered to cook.
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It’s a great topic of discussion. The development of technology has led people to avoid working manually, but everything is done to artificial intelligence. The world has become quiet complicated, and developing an accuracy in decision making is taxing. Being lazy has led me to eat outside, hence not having like a healthy food. But rationally, to gain better health i will start cooking my own food.
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I am super lazy. I find the quickest and easiest way to do things that are important but I invest most of my time and energy doing things that are not important in the grand scheme of things. I think the development of tiny computers in our pockets has in some way effected the way we go about doing most of our stuff. Need to know something? No need for a book just Google it. Can’t remember a recipe? No need to find the cookbook, just search for it online. Need food or a gift? No need to go to the shops, just get it online.
Convenience has become routine in our society and most things are just a click of a button (or touch of a screen) away.
Great post but I still think my lazy ways will always win out against my good intentions
https://www.informationweek.com/it-life/smartphones-make-some-of-us-lazy-thinkers/a/d-id/1319665
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