Impulse Control: Minimizing biological Bias In Your Decision Making
“Last call!” The bartender shouted with two hands cupped around her mouth like a horn. We were at the aptly named Little Club. The final dozen patrons, including my two buddies, sat along the long wooden bar with me.
“Sean, want a shot? It’s on me,” Steven said, with a wicked grin. I looked at my watch. It was 2:55 AM.
With a groan, I said, “Fine.”
It was always that last shot that did me in — and it certainly did this time. Hours later, the sun filtered through my curtains, its beams contorting me into a grimacing vampire. My eyes squinted and I loathed every decision I made the prior night.
Sadly, we are often accomplices in these crimes against our futures selves. Why do we make these decisions when they’re so obviously a bad move? How can we stop them from happening again?
Following the feels
My friend always gave well-intended advice that consisted of some version of, “If it feels good, just do it!”
“Just eat the donut!” He’d say, not seeing what the big deal was, as I resisted the urge to dive in and obey my new diet.
Following your feelings is sage advice in some contexts, especially with gut feelings and matters of morality. But this impulse is quite dangerous for long term satisfaction.
Think about it from an evolutionary perspective — we have two prime directives:
- Don’t die.
- Pass along your genes.
We’re often able to do these things because of negative emotions. Envy keeps us competitive in dating markets by making us think about our chances with prospects and altering our behavior to improve them. Sexual jealousy helps us ensure we keep our mates and don’t raise another’s offspring without knowing it (which whiffs of the cuckoo birds, who adeptly sneak their eggs into another bird’s nest full of eggs, and resume their single life).
Fear and anger are what invoke fight or flight, with each emotion influencing the other, and specifically, anger suppressing fear to enable “fight” and vice-a-versa for “flight”.
But as should be obvious, these emotions can lead to disastrous decisions that don’t bring long-term happiness. Some of the worst decisions I’ve ever made were in a moment of anger or frantic impulsivity.
Moreover, these emotions often drive short-term decision making. Pleasure now is better than pleasure later. But there’s more to these flawed paths.
Your sense of identity tricks you
There’s this thorny problem called the end-of-history illusion, which is the belief that we have just reached the final version of ourselves in personal growth, and that no significant maturing or change of personality will happen subsequently.
We assume the person we are today is the person we’ll be tomorrow. This is why adults pay good money to get tattoos removed that their teenage self paid good money to get.
Even though you conceptually know a tattoo might be a bad idea — it can be hard to imagine that future self feeling any differently than you do now. That red serpentine dragon coiling around your arm could never be a bad idea. It’s cool looking, and an expression of who you are, and nothing will change that…right?
Per psychologist, Dr. Dan Gilbert, “We often think we just became the person we were meant to be, and will be for the entirety of our lives.”
Yes, we change the most in the first half of our lives, but we still change significantly in that latter half. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen 18 and 19-year-olds on social media talking about life like they’ve finally figured it out, or that they’ve peaked and won’t go any further.
They’ll laugh when they look back on those videos.
A few tips to help
One can feel helpless to follow their worst instincts in life, as the same patterns often repeat themselves over and over. Psychologist, Dr. George A. Kelly described it well in his book, The Psychology of Personal Constructs: Volume Two, “We may define a disorder as any personal construction which is used repeatedly in spite of consistent invalidation.”
But there are ways to intervene on these impulses and poor decisions with a bit of deliberate decision making.
During my MBA program, our negotiations professor, Dr. Judith Callahan, taught us to always be mindful of our emotions when making a consequential decision and create space when need be.
She said, “I never negotiate when I’m angry, excited, tired, upset, anxious, or frustrated.” In short, you should be even keeled in moments of consequence.
If you’re being pressed to give an answer on a business or relationship decision on short notice, and are fatigued, you could just say, “I’m exhausted and want some time to think this over with a clear head.”
This also applies to group think. As a financial analyst, one of the biggest red flags on an investment was when lay people started evangelizing a stock to me. I’d see friends, family, Uber drivers, and people with no real investing expertise, suddenly telling me how I needed to get into the latest cryptocurrency to profit immediately.
Some of the most common mistakes emerge when we allow our instincts to follow this path. It’s proven to be emotionally taxing to go against the herd — as we yearn for group acceptance.
This is precisely when we can borrow the wisdom of the former professor, and reground ourselves to think objectively. Remember: the lower your knowledge on a given subject, the more susceptible to bad advice you are. Be aware of this expertise gap and choose not to make immediate decisions. Be deliberate in validating your source of advice.
Practice the future self test
The signature sign of a poor decision, is your future self having to contend with the ill consequences of it.
We typically feel disconnected from our future self, and don’t comprehend their role in our lives fully. We discount the impact we have on that person.
During one experiment, students were shown images of themselves that had been digitally aged and it improved their decision making substantially. Why? Because we respond to detailed and vivid imagery. People donate more at charity events when hearing elaborate accounts of survivors. Pulmonologists smoke less than any other doctor because they see the horrible impact of smoking daily.
We need to be reminded.
For example, if I had taken the time at that bar to envision myself hungover in bed, loathing my decision to have that final shot that pushed me over the edge into hangover alley — I may not have gone through with it.
If my friends envisioned themselves cursing their Fidelity portfolio after seeing their trendy cryptocurrency tanking, they may not have taken such a profound risk. If they had envisioned themselves 10 years later, looking at a much stabler investment, like the S&P500 Index, and smiling at the gains — they’d have likely taken a better and more prudent path.
In summary, we make bad decisions because pleasure now appears better than pleasure later. Before deciding, get a sense of your mood and make sure you aren’t making an impulsive decision rooted in your base instincts. If need be, delay the decision, take a deep breath, and mull over your options.
Beware of the herd mentality and peer pressure. Take time to envision your future self having to clean up the mess you are leaving them, and you’ll be a bit more likely to turn down the right street in life.
We are biological creatures just as any other and these whims aren’t easy to ignore. Remember that what makes humans great is our ability to transcend those impulses for a greater good. You are fully capable of it. Just take a moment to think things through.
