A new study from Duke University reveals that while snap judgments can influence immediate decisions, “sleeping on it” helps people make more rational choices. Researchers found that participants who made instant decisions about valuable items overestimated their worth based on first impressions. However, those who waited until the next day made more balanced decisions, evaluating items more fairly, regardless of their sequence.
The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, involved an imaginary garage sale where participants were asked to choose boxes containing unwanted goods with varying values. The results showed that when participants judged the boxes immediately, they tended to remember and judge them by the first few items they came across, leading to overestimation of valuable items.
However, when participants delayed their decisions until the next day, they made more rational choices, equally favoring boxes with clusters of valuable items at the beginning, middle, or end. This suggests that delaying decisions can reduce the impact of first impressions and lead to more thoughtful choices.
The study’s findings suggest that people summarize rewarding experiences in a nonlinear and time-dependent way, unifying prior work on affect, memory, and decision making. The researchers propose that short-term preferences are biased by first impressions, but when we wait and evaluate an experience after a delay, we summarize rewarding events in memory to inform adaptive longer-term preferences.
Overall, the study highlights the importance of delayed decisions in helping people make more rational choices, particularly in situations with longer-term stakes.
Source: https://neurosciencenews.com/sleep-decision-making-27662/