Community excerpt webb magazine 2017

THE WEBB SCHOOLS

T W O

C O M M U N I T Y A T H R E E — PA R T C O N V E R S AT I O N

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Webb Magazine • Spring 2017

How many decisions have you made today? What to wear?

Which tasks to prioritize at work?

What to do this evening?

What went in to those decisions?

Did you think about them, make a pro-con list and weigh your options, or go with your instinct?

ACT REACT DECIDE

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IMAGINE A SIMPLE DECISION... what to eat for lunch. Well, maybe not so simple.

You’re juggling many factors: not just what you’re in the mood for—a gut instinct if ever there were one — but also what’s available, how much time you have, how far you’re willing to go, cost, health and nutrition considerations…

not to mention the preferences of anyone with whom you may be sharing lunch. You probably take all these factors into account mentally, in the span of a few seconds, before making a decision or a short list of a few options. You make your decision based largely on past similar decisions—after all, you’ve chosen what to have for lunch thousands of times—and it’s an almost intuitive process. Choosing from the short list can be much more difficult: the options are similarly appealing and now you must consciously weigh the factors; your decision has become less instinctive and more rational. And this is just one of the decisions you make every day.

So how do you go about making all these decisions?

Decision making is a complex process involving multiple regions of the brain. The process involves two distinct systems, says Emily Carrigan ’02, a developmental psychologist in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Winston-Salem State University: a ‘hot’ or experiential system, centered in the brain’s limbic system, for quick decisions based on emotion and feeling; and a ‘cool’ or analytic system, centered in the frontal cortex, utilizing knowledge and cognition to make rational decisions. Most decisions involve both systems to a greater or lesser extent—even supposedly rational decision making involves an emotional component.

How the two systems work together is something “we are just starting to truly understand better,” says psychologist Robert Connolly ’89, founder and owner of Connolly Counseling and Assessment. We tend to value cool, rational decisions over hot, intuitive decisions, but, Connolly says, we shouldn’t discount our gut feelings. Our brains make intuitive decisions based on our past experiences, taking mental shortcuts to quickly arrive at ‘good enough’ solutions.

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‘Going with your gut’ often works well when making qualitative decisions—such as what to have for lunch—but just as often leads people astray when the decision is fundamentally logical or mathematical in nature. Here’s the classic example: together a baseball bat and ball cost $1.10. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? The ‘hot’ intuitive answer, 10 cents, is wrong. Considering the question coolly yields the correct answer.

Learning to make optimal decisions is largely a process of coming to understand which decision-making system, experiential or analytic, to prioritize in a specific situation— a process we practice every day as we make decisions.

Guidance can help, too; especially (and not surprisingly) for teenagers. During adolescence the brain is still maturing, notes Carrigan, creating connections between the regions involved in emotional and rational decision making.

The Webb Schools • WEBB.ORG

The ability to recognize when emotions are influencing the decision-making process, appropriately or inappropriately, is important. Yet, notes The Webb Schools’ Director of Counseling and Health Education Melanie Bauman, adolescents do not have fully developed emotional regulation. They’re also still discovering their own temperament; that is, how they tend to react to situations. Across campus—in classrooms, on athletic fields and in leadership positions—Webb encourages students to develop confidence in their decision-making abilities, and to recognize, understand and take into account their own temperaments, predilections, unconscious biases and tendencies. If students know that about themselves, they can understand their own decision-making processes and make better decisions, Bauman says.

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As well as understanding personal traits, students have opportunities to study logic and argument. If the answer to the baseball bat-and-ball question is not intuitive, the answers to some math and logic problems are actually counterintuitive, says mathematics and computer science teacher Jim Dahler.

The statistics courses he and fellow instructor Andrew Neyer lead focus, not on memorizing statistics procedures, but on understanding the logic and reasoning that underlie statistics.

“We’re trying to teach them how to reason with chance,” Neyer explains. They often use simulations to examine the idea of randomness and apply it practically, Dahler says, adding a moral or emotional component to what would otherwise be purely abstract mathematical problems. This reinforces the importance of the mathematical concepts, and impresses upon students the potential consequences of making a wrong decision.

The importance of moral and emotional considerations in decision making distinguishes Webb’s debate team, too.

“It’s important that when team members argue for a side, they stay true to their own beliefs,” explains head team coach and humanities teacher Jessica Fisher. Even when they’re arguing for a position with which they disagree personally, they must develop arguments with which they do agree.

STUDENTS’ GUT REACTIONS to a topic often provide the foundation on which rational arguments are built, Fisher says. Weighing the evidence, data, pros and cons, and both rational and emotional components of a topic, debate team members must then decide what types of argument to build: economic, moral, social, the short-or long-term effects, or others. In today’s media and informationsaturated environment, being able to evaluate arguments and identify biases is crucial in making decisions in every aspect of our lives, from politics to consumer purchases.

“The people who are best at debate are the people who know the other side’s arguments and how to debunk them,” agrees Josh Verseput ’03, vice president of integrated insights at market research firm Lieberman Research Worldwide. That’s a skill applicable to any rational decision-making process.

Marketers, like psychologists and neuroscientists, are intensely interested in how we make decisions. As Webb’s Bauman notes, every action we take requires a decision.

Marketing researchers focus on decisions resulting in consumer action, but their insights apply to decision making in many areas. “Twenty or 30 years ago everyone had the perspective that the consumer decision journey was linear,” says Verseput. A one-way link connected the three phases of the consumer decision-making process: awareness of a brand or product, the decision to purchase it and, finally, the action of purchasing it. With the widespread adoption of mobile computing and social media, that process has become nonlinear. Exposed to a “spider web of influences”—family, friends, colleagues, celebrities and taste-makers, news, and ads—consumers move back and forth along, and in and out of, the decision-making process. Pulling out our handy smartphones, we can be exposed to these influences instantaneously, simultaneously and continuously, so our decision-making process is compressed in time, as well as more complex, Verseput says. It’s as if the straight line that used to represent the consumer decision-making process has been coiled into a smaller space. And this doesn’t apply just to consumer purchases: it’s true of many decisions we make.

If that seems a bit intimidating, take it from a psychologist and a CEO: relax. “We’re being pulled in different directions,”

Webb Magazine • Spring 2017

15 says Connolly. Day-to-day decision making is more complex than ever because we are relatively safe in our environments, but overwhelmed with the amount of decisions we have to make, he says. “But if decisions come from a worried place they’re usually not the best decisions.”

The up side?

“The decision process can be a thoughtful and healthy process when fulfillment is a part of the conversation,” Connolly says.

Connolly The rational decision-making process should include the question “is this the best decision for my well-being?”

And keep in mind that any decision involves some lack of control: no one has perfect, total information; there’s a measure of unpredictability in any situation and any decision. “People want to be sure they are making the right decisions,” explains Connolly, “but that can be impossible at times. Decision

making is a process that hopefully yields a positive outcome, but it’s not necessarily a guarantee. The key to that process is to integrate both the emotional and rational modes, and understand we only have so much time and space we can make decisions in. Make decisions with confidence knowing you’ve done the best you could with the information you have… and don’t self-criticize when the outcome is not what you want.”

That’s a lesson Sameer Dholakia ’91 has learned through years of practice. Dholakia, the CEO of email communications firm SendGrid, makes decisions for himself, his family and his company every day—like all of us. “For me, what has happened throughout my life is I used to obsess because I wanted to make the perfect decision,” he says, “but you make thousands of decisions and you realize that’s not possible. Just make the best decision you can with the information you have, and realize that no decision is made under perfect circumstances.”

Most decisions, he says, are like two-way doors: if you walk through the door and you don’t like what’s on the other side, you can walk back out again. “Don’t stress about those decisions,” he advises. “You can always make another decision later.” And if you do make a wrong decision, even one you can’t undo? “If you’re wrong enough times you realize that life goes on,” he says. “There are few catastrophic consequences.

You can bounce back from bad decisions.”

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The Webb Schools • WEBB.ORG