Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Snap Decisions
Moving yet deeper into the snap decisions that we make, Gladwell (2005) mentions the story of one of the world’s top tennis coaches. This particular coach, when watching a tennis game, can call out when a player is going to double fault while the player is serving but before the player’s racket hits the ball. As Gladwell states, “He thin slices some part of the service motion and –blink!- he just knows. But here’s the catch: much to Braden’s frustration, he simply cannot figure out how he knows” (p.49). In other words, the tennis coach cannot place exactly the reasoning behind how he knows this information, but for some reason after watching thousands of tennis serves in his life, he just knows. Fascinating! The logic behind snap decisions is interesting, yet it does not appear to be scientific. We all have made snap decisions without knowing the exact reasoning for the decision. The process seems to take place deep in our psyche if not sub-consciously.
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When we make these snap decisions are they typically the right ones like in the example of Braden? Sometimes I'll have "gut reactions", but unfortunately I think most my decisions are way to drawn out.
ReplyDeleteInteresting question. I would be of the opinion that the majority of true ‘gut feelings’ are the better decision when that situation occurs. How many times to hear someone say that they should have gone with their gut reaction as opposed to someone stating that their gut reaction was completely wrong? The later does happen, but when thinking about the majority…
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