ear Matters David Suzuki, David Suzuki Foundation Attention all politicians: Take my advice—sit on it. At least, that’s what the latest research is saying helps lead to the best decisions. While listening to your instincts or your “gut reaction” ’ has long been cited by people as a reason for making choices, scientists have often dismissed this seemingly irra- tional process as merely “folk wisdom.” Now science is catching up to that age-old wisdom. According to a new report published recently in the journal Science, complex decisions are best handled by the unconscious mind. Researchers at the University of Amsterdam conducted a series of experiments on purchas- ing decisions and found that, while conscious deliberation is good for making simple decisions, for more complicated choices it’s often better to sleep on it, then to simply go with your gut. Conscious thought does not always lead to the best decisions because it has low capacity. We can only con- sciously think of a small number of things at any given time, which can lead us to focus on minor details or only a small subset of relevant information. And because we can uided Dy UNCONSCIOUS Voices only focus on a small number of details at once, we are not very consistent with multiple evaluations of the same choices, since we may choose to focus on different attrib- utes each time. This leads to what has been called “option paralysis” because we keep coming to different conclu- sions. Our unconscious mind, on the other hand, is capable of integrating large amounts of information, although with less precision. For the Amsterdam university experiment, researchers postulated that, because conscious thought is so precise, it would lead to good decisions over simple matters, where only one or two attributes were involved. However, because unconscious thought has such high capacity, it would lead to better decisions over more com- plex matters. They called this hypothesis “deliberation-without-atten- tion” and they tested it using four studies on consumer choices, including some in a laboratory setting and some using real shoppers. One study involved participants read- ing positive and negative information about four hypotheti- cal cars. Some were then asked to think about the cars for four minutes and choose one. Others were distracted with another task for four minutes before making a choice. While those who had time to think about their choice made good decisions when the information was simple (only four attributes listed per vehicle), they more often made poorer choices when the information became more complex (12 attributes listed per vehicle). In another study, shoppers were quizzed about their purchases upon leaving an IKEA store and a department store. They were asked specific questions about the cost of their items, how much they had known about them before coming to the store, and how much time they thought about their purchases before they bought them. Follow-up phone calls, revealed that shoppers who spent more time deliberating about simple purchases (such as kitchen acces- sories) and less time deliberating about more complex pur- chases (such as furniture) were ultimately more satisfied with their choices. In his recent book Bink, former New York Times sci- ence reporter Malcolm Gladwell wrote about similar prop- erties of the unconscious mind. Gladwell talks about “thin slicing,” which refers to its ability to find patterns in certain situations based on very narrow slices of experience. According to Gladwell, what some people call intuition, or that gut feeling, is really grounded in logic and shaped by our knowledge and experience with the world—we just aren’t necessarily able to easily articulate it. Researchers from the Amsterdam study point out that, although they focused on consumer products, “there is no a priori reason to assume that the deliberation-without- attention effect does not generalize to other choices— political, managerial or otherwise.” So to all our new MPs in the House: deliberate, debate, discuss. Then go home and sleep on it before making a decision. Canada will be better off if you do. Into the Snow Heidi Kilsby I could smell it as soon as I walked out the door. The snow was back pack, as chances are slim I’m going to encounter one on the walk to school. There is no driveway to shovel and no wood to stack, so exercise is now something I actually have to go looking barely there, it was more a like vague memory, but the smell of for. snow on the cold air was enough to make homesickness well up Now by this point I’m willing to bet that you’re thinking I’m a Left Overs continued: On one hand, it should be the prerogative of MPs to act more professionally in par- liament, not just to help include women and those who don’t feel like slamming on within me. I actually had to duck into a store for fear I might end up crying in the street. I have lived in a lot of places, but it has been strange living down here on the coast. The Big Smoke—that’s what we call it at home. You can debate the differences between your North Van, your Burnaby, your New West; but as far as ’m concerned, if there isn’t at least an hour of trees and cows in between them, then you’re still in the same damn place. Moving from a small town in the interior of this province, I may as well have come from a different country. I’ve been the proverbial fish out of water. The things that are automatic at home have no place here: eye contact makes people you pass on the sidewalk uncomfortable and leaving the front door unlocked—even when people are home—makes my roommates uneasy. The one that really kills me though is that everyone here keeps their blinds down; I haven’t figured out if they are afraid of seeing out or of other people seeing in. Experiences that I consider intrinsic to being Canadian are suddenly out of place here. I’ve taken the bear bells off of my hick—it’s a point I’m willing to concede. However, once you’ve made your judgment, I want you to think about what it means. It means that my neighbours may know everything about me—from whom I’m sleeping with to what my vices are. But it also means that they would come by and check on me if they hadn’t seen me in a few days. It means that I grew up playing outside in a forest, not a park. It means that I feel safe on days when I’m feeling lazy and decide to hitchhike to work because I’ve got a 90 percent chance of knowing the person who picks me up. It means that instead of fireworks, I got to watch the northern lights dance across the sky. Now, I'll grant you that living in the city does have benefits: there are colleges, concerts, people from every corner of the globe, and—if you’ve ever had to chop your own wood, this is a good one—electric heat. I’ve been enjoying them all; but yester- day morning, I would have traded them all in a heartbeat for a real snowfall. desks, but because it is simply better for government. On the other hand, the best way to entice them to do so is for hotshot women politicians to go for gold—run, win, and show government and citizens what they’re made of. I’m personally skeptical that more women automatically equals better govern- _ment. There are women who are jerks, emotionally unstable, and downright crazy, just like men. However, even if there is absolutely no truth to the women-equals- sanity argument, we owe it to our repre- sentative democracy to see more gitls crowding parliament’s hollowed halls. So come on girls, get in there. Sure you may be taking my spot down the road, but I figure you deserve it.