10 ways science can help you make better decisions

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Life goes by so fast that we make countless immediate decisions every day, often without fully considering the consequences and final results of these choices. Still, things are usually pretty good. However, when you want to choose a better time, things are not so good development? With the breakthrough of Science in medicine, technology, physics and almost every field of life, wouldn't it be nice if science could help us in the decision-making process? Well, here are some experts who say that scientific research and scientific methods can really help us make better decisions - and they explain how you can use that.

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1. Learning to solve "good enough"

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maximizer is a type of decision maker. Their goal is to make the best decision. They will spend endless time and energy studying each choice, trying to make the best possible choice. However, studies have shown that these people are often less satisfied with their decisions than other types of decision makers: "satisfied people", those who just want to make "good enough" decisions. Satisfiers do have standards: in fact, their standards can be very high. But once they decide which option meets their criteria, they make their decision and move on with satisfaction. Maximizers, on the other hand, continue to study and compare options anxiously, which often leads to inability to choose or ultimately make a choice, and ultimately dissatisfaction. When faced with a decision, don't think too much. Learn to be satisfied with being "good enough" and with the decisions you make.

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2. James Schwabach, a performance psychology consultant at apex performance, said that although many of us live in a state of high tension and tension, the best decision-makers are usually focused and calm. One way Schwabach can help customers achieve their ideal state is biofeedback and mindfulness practice. Biofeedback includes instruments that measure physiological activity and provide feedback to users. The idea is that if you show someone the reality of stress, they can better identify and correct it. Mindfulness is a positive and non critical state of attention to the current moment and current thoughts and feelings. There is increasing evidence that mindfulness can have a positive impact on the way decisions are made, formulated, implemented and evaluated. " "Biofeedback allows me to consciously train my clients to improve their attention and get them into a state of concentration when they need it most," Schwabach said.

read more : for sad people, the best and worst things are attributed to: swissmediavision / iStock III. Another expert on how physical and mental interactions influence decision-making is Julia mossbridge, a cognitive neuroscientist and research director at the mossbridge Institute (LLC). According to mosbridge, unconscious processing is crucial to making the right decisions. " Physiology - including heart rhythm - is linked to both unconscious and conscious processes, "she said. With this in mind, mossbridge has developed app choice compass, which allows users to record their own rhythm when they imagine making two comparison choices. According to her study of hundreds of testers, the app tells users which of these two choices produces the most similar rhythm to the one people imagine when they make a positive choice. " "It makes sense to say literally 'listen to your heart' when making decisions," mosbridge said.

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4. "Think like a scientist, science can help you make better decisions, and one of them is to adopt scientific methods," said Pablo Solomon, an artist, designer and former scientific adviser to the emergency school Assistance Act. "In science, you find a problem or problem, you collect information, you assume a hypothesis, and you basically try to override that hypothesis," he said. Remember this process when you have to make decisions in your life. " "If your hypothesis stands up to scrutiny," Solomon said, "it's probably right." However, he added, remember that very few things are 100% correct - everything has to be reviewed.

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5. Note these exceptions

note those exceptions, said taliba m.foster, M.D., a board certified child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist who works in a private clinic. While studying and examining large amounts of data allows us to track trends, preferences, and norms, there are always a number of people who exceed expectations or expectations, "Forster said. Data about these outliers is usually the most important, "she said. It can explain why some strategies fail, and explain the mistakes in our decision-making process.

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6. Pay attention to decision fatigue

when faced with multiple decisions, pay attention to decision fatigue. "It's a question of too much information and too many choices," said psychiatrist taliba M. Forster. In 2011, science columnist and writer Sharon Bagley published an article in Newsweek about a study of "information overload" by Angelica D. Imoka, director of the center for neurodecision making at Temple University, said. Dimoka measured the brain activity of volunteers who took part in a combination auction, a daunting type of auction that required participants to bid quickly for a large number of items. Forster said the study showed that when overwhelmed by too many factors, a biological process in the brain - a sudden decline in activity in the area responsible for intelligent decision-making - leads us to make very bad decisions. Try to keep it simple and avoid decision fatigue.

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7. Amy Baxter, an associate clinical professor at Georgia medical school, said consulting with others who have already done the study and discussing the issue with knowledgeable partners could be a key part of decision-making. For example, she found that the more injections children between the ages of four and six receive in a day, they fear the possibility of injections after five yearsThe greater, and the less likely, the HPV family is to be acquired in adolescence. As a result, these fearful children experience health consequences as a result of a suspicious decision; that is, a large number of vaccinations are administered within a day. One way to make a decision, such as deciding how to vaccinate your child, is to talk to an expert - in this case, your pediatrician. Use others' Education: discuss with experienced people the consequences and options of any decision.

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8. The next time you face an important decision, maybe you should try not to eat a meal before making a decision. A paper published in PLoS One in 2014 tested whether hunger affects strategic decision-making. Surprisingly, the results showed that when the results were uncertain, hungry people made more favorable choices than satisfied people. The study also showed that "hungry participants were better able to appreciate the rich future returns in the delayed discount task; moreover, although they believed that the return value of food and monetary items had increased, hungry participants were not more likely to take risks to get the items they wanted."

Credit: Peter carrisi / iStock. If you want to make expedient and wise decisions, maybe you should think like a woman. A McMaster University study, published in the International Journal of business governance and ethics, surveyed more than 600 male and female directors and found that women often make more fair and favorable decisions than men - especially in situations of conflict of interest. Research shows that men tend to follow rules, regulations and traditions when making decisions, while women are less constrained by such restrictions. In addition, female directors are not only more curious and aware of more possible solutions than male directors, but also they are more willing to consider the rights and opinions of people around them, and use cooperatives, and the way of cooperation is more frequent and effective than male directors in the study.

Credit: vegetarian world / 20 years old. Psychiatrist taliba m.foster, M.D. "modern" or "new" is not always the same as perfect, "so don't shy away from long-standing research methods." Science reminds us that simple experiments and mistakes - which can actually be traced back to our human origins - can be very easy to make decisions, she said. In an interview in 1998, theoretical physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson gave an example involving bicycles: "before they found real bicycles, thousands of strange models had been built and tried." Work. In theory, you can never design a bicycle. Even now, 100 years after we built it, it's hard to understand why bicycles work - or even to express it as a mathematical problem. But through trial and error, we found out what to do, and this mistake is crucial. "

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What do you think?

What's your opinion on how science can help us make better decisions? Are you going to try any of the suggestions here, or have you already done so? Do you think it will help you? Can you come up with other scientific ways to help us make better decisions? Share your thoughts with the livestrong.com community in the comments section below.

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