Most people, particularly those in scientific and professional fields, as well as a majority of the population, would like to believe that we make good decisions in our personal and professional lives based on deliberative, logical thinking. It appears that nothing can be further from the truth.

Alex Haslam, writing in Scientific American, cites the story of basic decision-making. In Gordium, Asia in the 4th century B.C., an oxcart was roped to a pole with a complex knot, and it was said that the first person to untie it would be king of Persia. Unfortunately, the knot proved impossible to untie. Legend has it that when confronted with this problem, rather than trying to untie it, Alexander the Great cut the knot in two with his sword, and then went on to conquer Asia. Ever since then the "Gordian Solution" has referred to the attractiveness of the simple answer to complex problems. Among researchers in the traditional scientific and professional disciplines, this solution has little appeal.

For example, in their conflict model of decision-making, published in their 1977 book, Decision-Making, Irving Janis and Leon Mann argued that complex decision-making is essential to guard against "group-think" and the decisions should involve an analytical and logical, detailed process. However, now there is a growing body of research that shows that there is little evidence to support a complex decision- making process over a simple one, as argued by Malcolm Gladwell, in his book, Blink.

One of the more enduring ideas in psychology, dating back to the time of William James, over 100 years ago, is the notion that human behavior is not the product of a single process, but rather reflects the interaction of different systems in the brain. Sometimes they work together seamlessly, and sometimes they conflict. The unconscious automatic is fast, affective, heuristic and relies on intuitive shortcuts. The other conscious system is slower, deliberate, rule-based, and logical.

These theories have been adapted in the social sciences, but do not provide an accurate description of human behavior. The major problem is controlled, conscious decision-making accounts for only a part of our overall behavioral tendencies, and often face strong competition from the unconscious system. Princeton University psychologist Adam Alter and his colleagues have studied how subtle changes in contextual clues can cause a person to switch from the conscious system to the unconscious and visa versa.

Let's take a look at some other research.

In a study by Hakwan Lau and Richard Passingham published in the Journal of Neuroscience demonstrated that the influences we are not aware of can hold greater sway than those we can consciously reject. We make countless decisions each day without conscious deliberation, a process called "biased competition," in which we decide among many options. The best kinds of biased decisions that are unconscious are habitual choices such as driving a car. Other unconscious influences are generally emotional or motivational, and take place continuously in our unconscious mind. In making complex decisions, legitimate factors sometimes make choices influenced by prejudice, so bias is hard to detect. Recent research by psychologist Eugene Caruso at the University of Chicago shows that people are willing to sacrifice quite a lot to fulfill their unconscious biases.

University of Maryland psychologist Anastaysia Pocheptsova and her colleagues found that individuals who had to regulate their attention--often called executive control--made significantly different choices than people who didn't. The researchers concluded that people who overtax their brains made inferior decisions. This insight suggests that the brain works like a muscle; when depleted it becomes less effective. If you've spent a lot of time focusing on a continuous series of choices, then you become less effective in making the next major decision.

In a recent Science article by researchers Ap Dijksterhuis and his colleagues, they argue that in order to be effective, conscious (deliberate) decision-making requires cognitive resources, and because that places increasing strain on those resources, the quality of our decision-making declines as complexity increases. On the other hand, unconscious decision-making, which does not require analytical-logical processes requires no cognitive resources; therefore, decision-making ability does not decline with frequency.

Research by John-Dylan Haynes and his team at the Center for Neuroscience in Berlin, Germany, demonstrated, using fMRI scans that they could tell what test subjects were going to do in a test experiment as early as 10 seconds before the test subjects were aware they had made up their minds. This study showed that unconscious predictive brain activity comes first and the conscious experience follows. Dean Sibata of the University of Washington reported in his study of brain functioning that when people make decisions that affect their lives, they would use the emotional parts of the brain as the driver, even though the task may not seem emotional.

These findings fly in the face of conventional management "scientific" theories of the past, which have argued for only one kind of thought process to support decision-making--logical, rational, analytical thinking in the conscious mind--totally ignoring our unconscious, emotional mind.

The implications of this research are significant for individuals in the personal lives and for organizations, particularly leadership behavior. It can summarize as follows:

• Unconscious thought processes can predetermine, without an individual's awareness, decision-making bias and actual decision-making;
• The unconscious mind and conscious mind are two systems that interact with each other to make decisions; frequent and/or continuous complex decisions are more efficiently made by the unconscious mind;
• Emotions are the key driver to decision-making, not logical, analytical thought; our logical processes are often only rational justifications for emotional decisions.

Leadership training programs, and managerial practices need to be reexamined in light of these research findings, and approaches developed that more accurately reflect an understanding of the thinking processes that underpin decision-making.

Ray B. Williams is Co-Founder of Success IQ University and President of Ray Williams Associates, companies located in Phoenix and Vancouver, providing leadership training, personal growth and executive coaching services. http://www.successiqu.com; http://www.raywilliamsassociates.com,