Gut or head: Intuitive decisions improve people's mood in daily-life

What is it about?

Is Intuition adaptive? What are the consequences of taking decisions intuitively in daily life? Shall we listen to our gut feeling when making choices? We conducted a two-week everyday experiment to investigate the effects of two types of decision-making on people's mood and satisfaction. The results show that gut decisions in particular have a positive effect on mood in everyday life. A total of 256 people took part in the longitudinal study. Their task was to report their mood before and after making everyday decisions. To do this, the participants logged into an online portal before an upcoming decision. The newly developed method, which combined observation in the natural environment with an experimental approach, is particularly noteworthy. We used the online portal to randomly determine whether a decision should be well-considered or made intuitively. After making a decision, the participants reported not only their mood, but also how easy the decision was for them, how satisfied they were with it, how right the decision felt and how much the choice they made harmonised with their usual preferences. At a later stage, it was recorded whether the participants had actually implemented their decisions and how they had felt about them. We had data from a total of 6,779 everyday decisions. The results of the study supported our assumptions. Making a decision alone led to a significant improvement in mood. From this, we first concluded that decisions in everyday life are not only used to achieve goals, but are also used - more or less consciously - to regulate mood. Most importantly, there was a difference between analytical "head decisions" and intuitive "gut decisions". The improvement in mood was greater following intuitive decisions. This effect may in part be explained by the fact that making intuitive decisions is easier than an analytical approach, which was also shown in the data. In addition, gut decisions offered a further advantage. They were implemented significantly more often by the participants than head decisions, possibly because - according to another result of the study - gut decisions are more in line with personal preferences.

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Photo by Edz Norton on Unsplash

Photo by Edz Norton on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The results have important implications for our understanding of the psychological effects of everyday decision-making and the phenomenon of intuition and gut instinct. People make a multitude of decisions in everyday life: What should I wear? What should I eat? Should I make an unpleasant phone call or put it off? These decisions are either intuitive, based on our gut instinct, or well-considered, i.e. head-based. Our research findings support the idea that intuition has benefits in daily life. Even though the effects are statistically rather small, they point to the idea that intuitive decisions make people feel better, and are more likely to be implemented. Furthermore, gut decisions seem to be more in line with one's preferences and people are more satisfied with them (as compared to analytical decisions).

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