Every decision is emotional

There is no such thing as a purely rational decision.

I’m going to make an argument for this but the reality is that your decision to buy into it is going to be emotional. You either feel it or you don’t.

These days people tend to treat “emotional” as a slur. Anything that isn’t rational doesn’t belong, especially in business. We want our decisions to be well thought out. We collect data, do math, and make charts. I do this for a living.

The thing is, even with all that objectivity and rationalization, these operations sit on an emotional foundation.

Rational decision making is a slow process. It’s not the default mode of operation for people. If all our decisions had to be fully rational, we would live in a constant state of analysis paralysis. Luckily, we have a faster mode of operation.

Emotional decisions are fast and natural. We look at something and decide whether we vibe with it in an instant. If it feels good and aligns with our values, we’re in. If it feels off, we’re out.

Let’s consider something that seems like it could be a purely rational decision.

We’ve saved some money to invest in stocks. How do we make that decision? We can look at a bunch of historical data and projections. We can spread it out over multiple stocks to reduce risk. But we have to decide on a method for this decision. Which one do we trust? How do we decide which one to trust? We probably trust the one that feels right to us. Why are we investing in stocks at all? Why not real estate or banana stands?

Investment in stocks itself is faith that stock investment is trustworthy and safe. These are emotional beliefs and not rational beliefs. Markets crash. In the long term all companies go out of business. Eventually the stock market won’t even exist.

We could likely find some decisions in fields like math or game theory that are purely rational as examples. But these aren’t practical decisions that people make on a daily basis. Caring about math or game theory isn’t rational in itself. So, being in the situation to care about these decisions rests on an emotional foundation.

Ok, let’s say you bought into that argument. So what?

In my work as a digital product engineer I run into this constantly. People want rational tools but ignore the emotional decision-making that people rely on.

Today I was looking at bounce rates on a web page for applying to a job. Bounce rates are the rate at which people hit a web page and immediately leave.

Bouncing isn’t rational. It’s a reaction. The solution will not feel rational.

What do we do?

We definitely need to make the page feel better. We might need to make the job more appealing at a glance. We might need to give the page something eye-catching.

These are going to be emotional appeals and not rational appeals. All the information a person needs to make a “rational” decision is already there. And, again, they aren’t bouncing after fully considering the position. They never even read it.

When I was looking at this page I noticed a few things. For one, it looks like shit. The use of color and space is unappealing. There were obvious bugs. Text was overhanging buttons and there was text formatting issues in the description.

My gut reaction was: I wouldn’t trust applying to this job either. I’d bounce.

On many projects I’ve been involved with design is left as an afterthought. People ignore “minor” bugs and let pages be “a little wonky.” They do this to spend more time on functionality. It’s a rational trade-off.

These little details affect how a user perceives the application. If it has visual bugs it will feel unstable and untrustworthy. If the tone is off people will feel like the app isn’t for them.

All this extends to things beyond web pages. We operate this way all the time. What coffee shop do we go to? What phone do we buy? Where do we live? What do we study?

We evolved emotional decision-making to be able to make rapid decisions. It’s what allows us to operate without crippling indecision. We should stop fighting it and embrace it.

You do not know where your decisions come from. They pop up like hiccups. And when you make a decision. People have a great deal of anxiety about making decisions. So, when we decide. We’re always worrying. Did I think this over long enough? Did I take enough data into consideration? And if you think it through you find you never could take enough data into consideration. The data for a decision in any given situation is infinite. So, what you do is you go through the motions of thinking out what you will do about this. And then when the time comes to act you make a snap judgement. — Alan Watts