Do you tend to take longer than other people to make a decision? Let’s find out.
In a study published in Personality and Individual Differences, researchers asked participants to rate themselves in regard to a number of statements, including:
“My thoughts are often contradictory.”
“I often find there are pros and cons to everything.”
“I often feel both sides of a position pulling on me.”
“I often find my thoughts and feelings are in conflict when I think about a topic.”
The more those statements sound like you, the more likely you are to be high in what psychologists call “trait ambivalence.”
Does possessing a relatively high level of trait ambivalence sound like a bad thing?
In business, seemingly so. Conventional wisdom holds that great leaders, and great entrepreneurs, are decisive. (Steve Jobs was many things, but indecision he apparently was not.)
Yet the researchers found that trait ambivalence has surprising upsides, especially where decision making is concerned.
Quick decisions (and judgments) are often the result of cognitive bias, not reasoned analysis. Take confirmation bias, the tendency to look for and favor data that confirms what you already believe, and avoid or disregard data that goes against what you already believe.
Learn more here.
