Word: pros
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...have ever struggled with a difficult decision - new job vs. new boyfriend, sports car vs. minivan, read the book vs. see the movie - you have likely also been offered a heap of decision-making wisdom. Make a list of pros and cons. Go with your gut. Sleep...
...South Wales and the University of Essex in England, and published in the most recent issue of the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. It took four experiments to make the point, but Newell's conclusion is that unconscious deliberation is no more effective than conscious deliberation - using lists of pros vs. cons, for example - for making complex decisions, and that if anything, people who deliberate methodically are better off. "If you have to make decisions, you have to do your homework," says Newell. "There is no magic unconscious...
...Newell's first experiment, 71 students were asked to choose an apartment from a list of four, each with its own specific pros and cons - nasty neighbors but a friendly roommate, a low-crime neighborhood but expensive rent, in-house gym but a small living space. Only one apartment, Flat B, had an equally weighted mix of pros and cons, thus representing the best choice. (On balance, the other apartments' drawbacks outweighed their benefits; that is, even when an apartment description had a longer list of positive attributes, those pros were lightweight and insignificant compared to the shorter list...
...four minutes before making their choice. (The idea was to distract the students' conscious mind, and allow their unconscious to tackle the apartment decision.) The researchers found that in every case, the students were equally likely to choose Flat B, the only unit with an equal balance of pros and cons...
...repairing their rubber. But not being a ping pong - sorry, table tennis - aficionado, I asked Bob Fox, team leader for USA Table Tennis, for some help, and found out how wrong I was. "They don't worry about the rubber falling off the paddle," he explained. Fox said the pros apply glue to the paddles and use its tackiness to their advantage. "The effect is one of increasing the speed and spin when you contact the ball...