How We Make Other People's Decisions

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

It is not always easy to define your own values and act according to them. We are constantly bombarded with messages - from culture, advertising, education, friends - about what is important. We look at the people around us and mindlessly choose all sorts of things that are said to be a universal key to satisfaction, for example, studying at a university, a private home, children. In fact, this is not the case for everyone. But it is much faster and easier to adopt what we see than to look for something of our own.

The actions and choices of others affect us more than we think, thanks to a phenomenon called social contagion. Some social behaviors are similar to the common cold or flu - they can be caught from other people. Your risk of obesity increases relative to the number of obese people you come into contact with. Your chance of divorce - a highly individual decision in your opinion - increases if other couples of your age get divorced.

This works for simple solutions too. Gardet, a professor of marketing at Stanford University, surveyed over a quarter of a million air passengers and found that a passenger makes a purchase 30% more likely to make a purchase on the fly if a neighbor makes it.

These kinds of choices rely on thoughtless decision-making, an approach that does not have a gap between impulse and action, between thinker and thought, and in which the herd instinct is triggered.

Sometimes this behavior is acceptable, at times it is even beneficial - if your friends regularly exercise, then you may get off the couch. But if you make too many decisions on autopilot for a long time, then you will live like most, with values that you did not subscribe to.

To constantly go with the flow means to deprive your work and life of purpose, to make your personal and professional relationships unstable, and to remove the meaning of your existence. All this will lead to the fact that you will not be able to carry out everything that you wanted.

To make decisions that are consistent with your own expected life path, you need to keep in touch with things that are important to you, or use them as signposts. If you never found the time to deal with your values, then even now you are unlikely to focus on them, which leads to the feeling that the person did not take place, and to a waste of time.

Not knowing your own values does not always lead to decisions on autopilot. Another danger: you can make a choice that seems to be purposeful and thoughtful, which will not do you any good, for example, buy an apartment for a family outside the city, well, given that the time for transport to work will increase and this will affect the quality of your time with your family that is of value to you. We spend a lot of energy on such counterproductive decisions, and this energy would be worth using to achieve a goal.

It can be very tedious to make choices and discuss relationships without certain core values of yours. This leads not only to thoughtless daily work in a world where everything is snapped up, but every time you adjust your emotions to what is (in your opinion) expected of you.

The article appeared thanks to the book "Emotional Agility" by Susan David