Making Wise Decisions

I don’t know about you, but I am almost always on autopilot when driving around Leeds – there are particular places I go, and I almost always use the same route without thinking about it or making a conscious decision. And that sometimes gets me to the wrong destinations, as my children will tell you.

Are you like that? Most of the time we don’t consciously decide about things in life. We’re on autopilot. We get on with things by habit, instinct and reaction. We don’t really decide, we just DO.

Instincts

Lots of the time we work on instinct or gut feel. We make judgements about a person's trustworthiness, competence, aggressiveness, likeability and attractiveness within the first 100 milliseconds of seeing a new face. Like this. Which of these faces do you find yourself instantly drawn to more. Most people prefer the face on the right, which has been doctored to adjust the size and spacing of the eyes, the roundness of the face and so on.

If we are aware of this happening we say we just knew – first impressions do count for a lot. There are popular books such as “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell which encourage us to decide more based on our instincts and gut feel. But is that right?

Instinct is essential in many kinds of judgement, in particular in deciding whom to trust and interact with, and in situations involving complex or split-second choices. But in some situations - especially those that evoke fear, pain or other strong emotional responses - the intuitive system can steer us away from the best decision.

Reactions

When something happens to us we react, often without thinking. It happens in conversations, in relationships, in fights, in queues, when driving in traffic.

We can choose to be reactive to our environment. For example, if the weather is good, we will be happy. If the weather is bad, we will be unhappy. If people treat us well, we will feel well; if they don't, we will feel bad and become defensive. We also can choose to be proactive and not let our situation determine how we will feel.

Consider your ways

Most of the time we don’t consciously decide. We get on with things by habit, instinct and reaction.

“This is what the Lord God Almighty says: Consider your ways.” Haggai 1:5

Consider your ways. Think about how you are living.

Other translations say:
Think carefully about how you are living. (NIRV)
Give careful thought to your ways

The context is specifically about lifestyle choices and decisions about money, food, clothes, drinking and work.

Here it is in the Message:

"Take a good, hard look at your life.
Think it over.
You have spent a lot of money,
but you haven't much to show for it.
You keep filling your plates,
but you never get filled up.
You keep drinking and drinking and drinking,
but you're always thirsty.
You put on layer after layer of clothes,
but you can't get warm.
And the people who work for you,
what are they getting out of it?
Not much—
a leaky, rusted-out bucket, that's what.

Response-ability

Consider your ways. How can we do that? Do we have to consciously think through every item in the shopping basket every time, and insert long pauses in all our conversations in order to think through our responses?

Fortunately not. That would make life incredibly slow and mentally challenging. But there are times when a little more effort needs to go into decision-making.

A unique ability that sets humans apart from animals is our level of self-awareness and the ability to choose how we respond to any stimulus. The ability to choose our response is – our “response-ability”.

Animals do not have this independent will. They respond to a stimulus like a computer responds to its program. They are not aware of their programming and do not have the ability to change it. But we have the ability to choose how we will respond to stimuli. We are able to make decisions to improve our lives through the things we can influence rather than by simply reacting to external forces.

We have a response-ability and a responsibility to use it well.

Consider your ways, says God.

Types of decision

If you think about life even 100 years ago people had very little choice, and the number of decisions they faced was much smaller than we have today. The wealth and culture of our society means that we are presented with choices and opportunities all the time. And we have to make decisions.

• Some of those are big life-changing decisions, some are small apparently trivial decisions,
• some are easy, some are difficult,
• some affect us, some affect others,
• some are about doing, some are about being.

What decisions do you have to make as you go about your life?

Your decisions are likely to include:

• Major life decisions: location, career, life partner, children, education, approach to money
• Apparently trivial decisions such as choice of coffee or transport which make us complicit in some major global issues such as fair trade and climate change.
• Professional decisions requiring both rational analysis and skill and judgement, and sometimes with a distinct moral component.
• Attitude decisions

Attitude decisions

“I believe the single most significant decision I can make on a day-to-day basis is my choice of attitude. It is more important than my past, my education, my bankroll, my successes or failures, fame or pain, what other people think of me or say about me, my circumstances, or my position. Attitude keeps me going or cripples my progress. It alone fuels my fire or assaults my hope. When my attitudes are right, there is no barrier too high, no valley too deep, no dream too extreme, no challenge too great for me.” Charles Swindoll

Wisdom

In this talk I’m going to concentrate on a few of the things the Bible says about wisdom in decision-making . It is only part of the story. David Flowers will be doing a couple more talks in December on other aspects of decision-making. I’ll also take a look at some of the psychology of decision-making – does it agree with the Bible?

So as part of my preparation for this talk I decided to read the whole book of Proverbs in one sitting to try to get a feel for the overall thrust of the wisdom that it offers. It only took about 35 minutes to read 31 chapters, so you might like to try it. To start with it seems very bitty and jumbled up like smarties. But if you look at it long enough a pattern emerges.

Anyhow, the pattern I noticed in chapter after chapter of proverbs was that there was an extended essay on how wonderful wisdom was. That’s the core

And then there were sections of pithy sayings on specific topics. And just like sorting smarties by colour I started to see some themes that seem to crop up again and again all centred on this theme of wisdom.

For example: Trust in the Lord when making decisions. Emotions affect decisions. Get advice. I won’t read them all.

• Trust in the Lord when making decisions
• Emotions (anger, jealousy, pride) affect your decisions (14:16-17)
• Choose your spouse well
• Don’t be lazy, work hard 6:9
• Plan ahead 6:6
• Get advice (12:15, 15:22) especially from parents (1:8)
• Take care of money (13:11), but don’t wear yourself out to get rich (23:14)

And then some themes that look to us like moral rules, but of course they aren’t arbitrary – moral guidelines encapsulate wisdom.

• Avoid evil people and violence
• Avoid sexual immorality 7, 5,
• Talk straight 4:24, ch 15 Words are dynamite
• Avoid drunkenness and overeating ch 23

There is so much to say on this subject. I’ve decided just to take a few themes, and I will have to keep them brief.

There’ll be lots more in the other talks from David next month. Here are the ones I’ve chosen:

• Ask God for wisdom
• Assess systematically
• Be aware of your biases
• Face your fears
• Time decisions well

Ask God for wisdom

So the first one is “Ask God for wisdom”

"A man is foolish to trust only himself. But those who use God’s wisdom are safe." Proverbs 28:26 (LB)

If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. James 1:5

There is a spectrum of opinion among Christians about God’s involvement in decision-making.

I’ll tell you both extremes.

At one end is the “detailed guidance” view which says that God has a detailed plan for your life, and if you are a good Christian you will be able to discern it.

At the other end is the “wisdom only” view which says that God has revealed his moral will, and so long as you are within that you are entirely free to choose, using principles of wisdom to help you decide. “Love God and do as you like” is how Augustine put it.

Theologians like to argue this point and I’ve been reading the books which seem to take one position or the other. The best I can conclude at the minute is that it is a bit of both.

We have a relationship with God as our Father and like any good father he wants us to grow up to maturity and make wise decisions by ourselves – and he gives us a lot of freedom.

He is also the King, and sometimes he wants particular things to happen. And he is in control.

So we need to listen both to wisdom and for God’s voice in the moment.

A story to illustrate this issue is when we realised that we wanted to move house a few years ago. We found a house we liked, put an offer in and after some negotiation eventually got it accepted. The vendor then gave us a short time to sell our house. So we were under time pressure from the vendor:

• we’d realised that the new house would require quite a lot of work
• and my work at the time took me away from home three days a week
• we had two much younger children who took lots of our energy
• around church we had barely any staff so lots of time was consumed in planning and running events.

The dilemma was that we were very keen to move somewhere else, but also not certain what impact all the extra work of a new house would have on us.

We explained all this in a small group meeting – can’t remember if it was a housegroup or leaders meeting, and they prayed for us. After we had prayed, Ruth Parsons (now in Bury St Edmunds) said she had the impression that everything was OK and we had done all the wise things and that the Lord was saying we had freedom to choose what to do.
Isn’t that interesting? It’s as if we were asking God to choose for us and he was saying “No, you choose”. There some things, many things, even big things where God wants us to have freedom and maturity to choose.

On that occasion we chose to withdraw our offer and told the estate agent not to market our house. Some years later another house came on the market and I guess some of you came to the housewarming party so you know what happened that time.

So Ask God for wisdom – you might get detailed guidance but you’ll definitely get wisdom.

Assess systematically

The second topic is “Assess systematically”.

"Every prudent man acts out of knowledge." Proverbs 13:16
"How stupid to decide before knowing the facts" Proverbs 18:13
"Get the facts at any price ..." Proverbs 23:23 (LB)

And Jesus says some decisions (like following him) need careful thought

"Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? Luke 14:28

Lots of encouragement to look at the facts and assess your decisions systematically

Here’s an insight from psychology. A human can hold only a small number of ideas in his mind at one time. We don’t find it easy to consider everything at once. And one way to deal with that is to write things down. Make a list of pros and cons.

I remember doing this when we were moving house because there were so many things to consider.

On the computer of course, we wrote down a list of what we wanted from a house. For example – a place to cook. Then a column for the current house and a column for the one we were considering. Then we used green ink for the pros, red ink for the cons, and black ink for things that were much the same and didn’t affect the decision. So for example, our kitchen was too small (red), and the new house had a bigger kitchen (green). Then when you look at the overview you can see lots of green benefits and a few downsides in red. Assessing a complex decision systematically helped us to make our decision.

It is very interesting the strength of reaction I’ve got to this from people who’ve commented on my talk. Sally said, You can’t show that – I hated doing that – but then said it had helped her to summarise the reasons for moving. My work colleague Martin said that when he moved house his spreadsheet was much more sophisticated, but his partner hated the process also.
You can get much more sophisticated than this, by scoring and weighting, as companies do in formally evaluating competing suppliers. Did you know that the pros and cons method was first described by Benjamin Franklin in 1772.

A different example. Many people do marriage preparation classes. But Richard and Sally took a pre-engagement course privately with a married couple that they respected – to systematically look at lots of angles on the idea of getting engaged and married. That’s an unusual, radical approach and I like it.

So the first two suggestions are
• Ask God for wisdom
• Assess systematically

Be aware of your biases

The next thought is to Be aware of your inbuilt biases and what is influencing you as you consider your decisions.

The prophet Jeremiah points out that
“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” Jeremiah 17:9

Quite often we make decisions, but not for the reasons we think we do. Our behaviour can be quite irrational even when we think we are being totally rational about a decision. Very often people don’t realise what is influencing their decisions. Let me illustrate with a couple of examples.

Here are some statistics of the percentage of drivers in various countries who have agreed for their organs to be donated in the event of a fatal accident. You can see that there is a huge difference between the countries in Group A on the left (like ours at a few %) and those in Group B on the right, which are all above 85%. Why is that. The difference is very strong even between apparently similar countries like Sweden and Denmark, or Germany and Austria, or Nederlands and Belgium.

Here’s the difference.

On the driver registration forms, Group A were asked to tick if they wanted to join the organ donor programme.

And Group B on their equivalent form were asked if they wanted to opt out of the organ donor programme.

When complex questions are presented like this, what happens is

Most people in group A don’t tick the box, and don’t join
Most people in group B don’t tick the box and DO join

We tend to stick with the default. And that’s why the wording of surveys and questionnaires and opt-out clauses actually matters.

So who had the most influence on those decisions? Each of the people who filled in the forms probably felt they did, and in a similar situation you would think you had an entirely free decision. But in fact it’s a bit of a thinking illusion. The wording of the question by the person who wrote it has far more influence than you could possibly imagine.

Here’s another example. We think we make rational decisions and that we will be consistent in them. But look at this:

For a while The Economist had a special offer on their US website. Subscribe to the online version for only $59 or to the print subscription for $125. And if you want them both it also costs you $125.

So some psychologists did an experiment. They asked a number of people which one they would choose. The results were:

• 16% went for the online subscription
• 0% went for print only
• 84% went for both. Very rational you might think.

Obviously nobody wanted the middle option. So they did the experiment again, getting rid of that middle option.
This time:
• 68% wanted the online subscription
• And only 32% went for the print and web option.

You would have thought that the middle option was useless because no one wanted it, but in fact it changed perceptions of the other two options and totally changed the outcomes. The effect is called asymmetric dominance or the decoy effect: when we can see that one thing is better than something else, we tend to think it is better than all the other options.

So psychologists are agreeing with Jeremiah – the heart is deceitful. Very often we are fooled.  In fact psychologists have identified at least 19 biases and things that influence our decisions and make us predictably irrational. You can see pictures of a couple of popular books that explain some of these ideas – ask for them for Christmas. Become aware of your biases and influences.

We discussed some of them at Thinking Aloud last time and we’ll do more on Friday week when we take a look at Derren Brown’s illusions. Everyone is welcome.

So what is going on here?
• We don’t know our preferences very well
• So we are susceptible to biases and influences
• And find it hard to accept that we are so irrational!

And that’s why companies pay money to advertising agencies, to influence you in ways you don’t suspect. In our society we are deliberately manipulated in many ways. The Bible would say that “the god of this age has blinded our minds” (2 Cor 4:4)

So what do we do about that. The Bible says:
2 Cor 10:5 “Take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ”

In our day when manipulation is so deliberate I think we need to train ourselves to become aware of our biases and influences.

• Ask God for wisdom
• Assess systematically
• Be aware of your biases and influences

Face fears

The next point is about facing your fears and dealing with risks. There are many proverbs about fear. Here’s one of them.

“A person's fear sets a trap [for him], but one who trusts the LORD is safe” Proverbs 29:25

We’re not very good at estimating risk. We make decisions based on our fear of what might happen. The influence of this kind of fear on human behaviour was illustrated most graphically in the US after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. Throughout the following 12 months, many Americans chose to drive rather than take domestic flights.
In fact driving the length of a typical domestic flight in the US (estimated at 1157 kilometres) is 65 times riskier than flying.

As a result, the number of people killed in road accidents over that year rose by around 1600, the red area in the graph, six times the number who died in the hijacked aircraft. In trying to avoid a potentially grisly fate, they leapt "out of the frying pan into the fire", says Gerd Gigerenzer of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany, who collected the figures.

Other studies have shown we make bad decisions when it comes to weighing up the risks versus benefits of being screened for cancer or having our kids vaccinated against swine flu, and judging the risks of everything from nuclear power to climate change.

Arguably it is perfectly rational to act on your emotions. Why fly if it makes you totally miserable and you can't allay these unpleasant feelings, says Loewenstein. Furthermore, people react most strongly to new, unfamiliar risks - a reasonable response given that the severity of such risks is necessarily unknown.

So one source of fear is our difficulty in understanding statistics. Most of us don’t know what to think about statistics. On the church forums this week many of you will have seen the discussion about the safety of margarine and butter, for example. It is genuinely difficult to get an accurate perspective on risk. We tend to react out of fear.

Alternatively if you are a teenager you fear nothing other than being unfashionable and are unable to foresee any consequences of your risky behaviour – partly because of the developmental changes happening in the brain.
We are bad at estimating risk.

We fear things imprinted on our memory

Another major factor in our decisions is the way things get imprinted on our memory, which I will need to explain. One reason we overestimate the likelihood of being killed in a plane crash, shark attack or terrorist attack is the extensive and graphic media coverage that makes such events easy to picture.

We similarly underestimate the likelihood of dying from diseases because news of these kinds of deaths is generally presented in terms of statistics (like the previous slide) rather than sensational images.

Memory is playing a strong role, in particular our great capacity to recall graphic imagery. This is what psychologists call the "availability bias": the more easily you can bring to mind or imagine an event, the more likely you think it is to happen. It is driven largely by feeling, so memories of emotional or vivid situations (like 9/11) are the most easily recalled.
And so we hand in our water bottles and take our shoes off at the airport – part of the theatre of security to reduce our fears. But driving in our cars we think relatively little about answering the phone or speeding in a residential area which are actually much more risky situations.

We over-estimate how bad it will feel

When we are considering a decision, we imagine how the outcomes of our choices will make us feel, and what the emotional consequences of our actions will be. We usually plump for the option that we think will make us the happiest overall.

However the emotional consequences of most events are less intense and briefer than most people imagine. It really isn’t as bad as we thought. And actually, the pleasure from that treat doesn’t seem to last long either.

We tend to think that a loss will hurt more than a corresponding gain will please. The prospect of loss gives twice the emotional response as the prospect of gains.

Therefore we take bigger risks to avoid losses. Notably in the stock market, but also in simple things like repairing an old failing car over and over again, because we don’t want to lose the money we have already put into it.

Do not worry. Do not be afraid

So fear influences our decisions. We are bad at estimating risk, we fear things imprinted on our memory and we worry about how bad it will feel.

Here’s a quiz for you. How many times do you think the Bible tells us “Do not worry”. 11 times

And what about “Do not fear” or “Do not be afraid”? Around 83 times

They are interesting commands: Do not fear. Do not worry.

Another time we can talk about this in more depth, but if today you are worried about something, or fear what might happen, particularly regarding a decision, let me encourage you to ask God, or later on ask someone to pray for you and they can ask God for:
• wisdom to see things in a true perspective,
• calm for those unsettled feelings
• and courage to do the right thing.

Time decisions well

• Ask God for wisdom
• Assess systematically
• Be aware of your biases
• Face your fears
• And time your decisions well

Fast and slow decisions

Some people are more decisive than others. Let’s have a quick show of hands. If you find it easy to make decisions quickly put up your hand.

Now, if you reckon you are slow to make decisions, you can think for a while about whether or not to put up your hand ?
So what’s the wise thing to do? As far as I can see the godly wisdom seems to be that if you are impulsive and fast to decide, slow down and consider your ways, but if you are indecisive or slow to decide, speed up.

“How long will you waver between two opinions?” Elijah asks the people on the mountain in 1 Kings 18:21 when they are considering who to follow as the true God.

The more choices we have, the more likely we are to do nothing. It can be paralysis by analysis. So don’t overdo it on the systematic assessment – you may never finish! The longer you delay, the less likely you are to get over the hesitation, and the more the options will close down.

Here’s a couple of quotes I like:

"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over." Or so said Aneurin Bevan who very decisively set up the national health service in the UK.

“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing” Theodore Roosevelt

"It doesn't matter which side of the fence you get off on sometimes. What matters most is getting off. You cannot make progress without making decisions." Jim Rohn

Time the decision well – neither dithering nor rushing

Maximise by satisficing

The strange thing is that people devote the same amount of time to thinking about large purchases as small ones. Some people spend a lot of time and others not so much time.

A maximizer is like a perfectionist, someone who needs to be assured that their every purchase or decision was the best that could be made. The way a maximizer knows for certain is to consider all the alternatives they can imagine. Maximizers want to make the best possible choice – the optimal decision. So even if they find a walking route or meet an eligible man that would seem to meet their requirements, they can’t make a decision until after they’ve examined every option, so they know they’re making the best possible choice.

The alternative to maximizing is to be a satisficer. A satisficer has criteria and standards, but a satisficer is not worried about the possibility that there might be something better. As soon as they find the bank account, the holiday, or the university course or the girl that has the qualities they want, they’re satisfied.

So which are you – and it might be different in different situations.

• What about clothes shopping. Do you walk round the shops several times considering all the alternatives (let’s see your hands) or do you take the first option that meets your criteria?
o Normally I hate clothes shopping and I’m the ultimate satisficer. The first thing that fits will do, as you fashionable people will probably be able to tell. However I found myself one evening online spending probably hours trying to find the best purple shoelaces for my daughter’s trainers. She got the best laces and the best bargain for her but what a lot of time and exhaustion to spend £1.99.
• What about technology. Are you a maximiser or a satisficer?
• What about when you last decided where to live. Did you do an exhaustive search of every possible property, or did you go for the first one that met your criteria?

The observation is that maximisers use lots of time and energy and exhaust themselves making decisions. Then they are anxious about the decisions they made. Was it the best one?
Satisficers decide quickly and are happier with their decisions afterwards.

Schwartz who wrote “The Paradox of Choice” says that if you consider those factors, satisficing is the best way to maximise your satisfaction.

So here’s a practical suggestion. Instead of exhaustively trawling through the websites and catalogues in search of your ideal digital camera or garden barbecue, try asking a friend if they are happy with theirs. If they are, it will probably do for you too.

And here are a couple of Bible verses that echo similar thoughts.

The leech has two daughters: “Give, give” they cry... and they are never satisfied Proverbs 30:15

And one of my favourites. “Godliness with contentment is great gain” 1 Tim 6:6

Out of the heat of emotion

Moods. Maximise by satisficing. The third point about timing decisions is to consider our emotions.
There are lots of proverbs about how our emotions and moods affect our decision-making.
For example, “A quick-tempered man does foolish things” Proverbs 14:17

And recent studies confirm that men, but not women, gamble more when they are angry. Angry people are less generous.

A time of high emotion may not be a good time to make a decision.

Making decisions under stress and full of emotion causes inflexible thinking. The sensations of romantic love lead to all sorts of irrational behaviour. Abnormal decision making is a feature of a range of common neuropsychiatric conditions, including substance abuse, manic depression, dementia and personality disorder.

Here’s some advice from Robert Schuller “Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods. Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass. The spring will come.”

Conclusion

In conclusion then:
We live most of our lives by instinct, habit and reaction. God says “Consider your ways” and wants us to make those into godly and wise habits. You can choose your response to any situation – it’s a response-ability.
So when you are making a decision here are a few pointers (there’ll be more in the next two talks)
• Ask God for wisdom – you might get specific guidance, you’ll definitely get wisdom
• Assess the situation systematically. Get the facts
• Be aware of your biases. The heart is deceitful. Take every thought captive.
• Face your fears. Do not be afraid. Do not worry.
• Time your decisions well. Maximise by satisficing. Decide out of the heat of emotion

And to finish here’s my prayer for you.
May God give you wisdom as you consider your ways. May you have the patience to assess your decisions systematically. May you have insight into your biases and the things that influence you, so you are not deceived. May you have courage to face your fears; and good judgement in timing your decisions well. May God increase your wisdom, and grow in you godliness and contentment.