We live in an age of information. In theory, we can learn just about anything about anyone or any topic at the touch of a button. All this information should allow us to make super-informed, data-driven decisions all the time.
And this disconnect can have implications in daily life: After all, recognizing how much—or little—information people actually use to make decisions could influence how much you share with others. A job candidate should have a sense of how much of their resume prospective employers will actually read so she can prioritize efforts accordingly.
Comparing Predictions and Reality
In our research, my co-author Ed O’Brien and I tested whether people can correctly anticipate how much information they and others use when making varied judgments. We consistently found that people were surprised by how quickly they make judgments and how little information they use doing so.In one study, we asked participants to imagine having pleasant or unpleasant interactions with another person. In comparison, we asked another group of participants to predict how many of those interactions they would need to experience to determine someone’s character. We found that people believed they would need many interactions to make this judgment, when in fact the first group needed few.
In another study, we asked MBA students to write applications for hypothetical management positions, and then asked actual people working in the human resources field to read their materials. Our applicants wrote and shared much more material than the hiring professionals cared to read.
We also asked people who have never been married to predict how long, after meeting their future spouse, it would take them to decide that this person is “the one.” Fully 39 percent of these never-marrieds thought they would need to date this person more than a year before they’d feel ready to spend the rest of their lives with him or her. In contrast, married people reported having made this judgment much more quickly, with only 18 percent stating that it took them more than a year to do so.
Misunderstanding This Human Tendency
There are several reasons why people might have the wrong impression about how quickly they and others make judgments.Recognizing the Rush to Judgment
Quick decisions are not always bad. Sometimes snap judgments are remarkably accurate and they can save time. It would be crippling to comb through all the available information on a topic every time a decision must be made. However, misunderstanding how much information we actually use to make our judgments have important implications beyond making good or bad decisions.Take the problem of self-fulfilling prophecies. Imagine a situation in which a manager forms a tentative opinion of an employee that then cascades into a series of decisions that affect that employee’s entire career trajectory. A manager who sees an underling make a small misstep in an insignificant project may avoid assigning challenging projects in the future, which in turn would hamstring this employee’s career prospects. If managers are unaware of how willing they are to make quick and data-poor initial judgments, they’ll be less likely to nip these self-fulfilling destructive cycles in the bud.