Don’t overthink it

When we are processing a large quantity of complex information that is too difficult to remember precisely, the ability to make intuitive decisions may be especially important.As the unconscious brain analyzes the data and makes the decision for us, we can benefit from allowing our minds to wander to other, unrelated activities in these situations.

Researchers gave participants lengthy information about a number of apartments in a series of experiments.Some of the participants were encouraged to carefully weigh the various options before making a decision after making their initial impressions.

The remaining participants were asked to try a series of anagrams as a distraction to prevent them from using their analytical processing to choose the apartments.