Avoid Important Decision Making When Multitasking
September 27th, 2007One of the worst things you can do when facing an important decision is to try and make the decision while engaged in other tasks. As we increase the number of things we are thinking about at a given time, our ability to consider information relative to the decision declines fairly sharply.
The basic problem is that people can hold only 3 to 7 bits of information in their head at one time. As that limit is approached, we necessarily begin limiting the information we take in. Evolutionarily speaking, it’s not surprising that when faced with limited bandwidth/storage problems our brains filter out the content of the information but leave the underlying factors like tone of voice and body language. These are the clues that tell us whether we are in physical danger.
What’s really interesting is that when we are distracted we respond to positive signals as well.
The Deception Blog has a post about how people judge things when they are distracted or unmotivated. A lack of motivation (either because people are busy or they don’t care) causes people judge what they hear not according to what they are actually hearing, but to the superficial physical clues such as whether the speaker is good looking or sounds confident. But when people are actively engaged, they analyze both what they hear and what they see in an effort to detect deception.
Most of us recognize that making decisions when distracted isn’t a good idea, but I don’t think we are really aware of how impeded our decision making ability becomes.
-zot
Support The Decision Strategist.Popularity: 13%
