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okay so so when we think about many decisions that we make throughout our lives uh often a central component of
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the decision- making process is the emotional conflict that we experience while making the the the choice now when
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we think about emotional conflict there there are a lot of different symptoms for emotional conflicts like increased
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heart rate body language facial expressions and so on now when we think about it these are observables so it's
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very easy for us to spot others it could be strangers at a store family members managers very easy for us to spot that
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someone is experiencing a certain amount of choice conflict the question we ask in this research is a very
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straightforward yet important and understudied question is how does observing someone else going through
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this emotional conflict while making a decision impact our own prefer preferences will we be more or less
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likely to choose a similar option chosen by a conflicted versus a non-conflicted
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person so what we found is that when I observe someone else going through this emotional conflict in Choice I'll be
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more likely to actually choose a similar option the question is why what we find
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is very interesting we find that our immediate instinctive reaction towards someone else's pain and an Agony if you
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will over over a decision is to empathize with this individual we'll start taking this person
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perspective sharing his emotional states which leads to what is called greater connectedness or merging so so in a
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sense I'll start seeing this person in a more self-like manner okay which and
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this process will essentially lead me to choose a similar option okay um what's
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interesting is that we find that this tendency is much stronger for people who have a greater innate tendency to
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empathize with others so so for example in one in one experiment in one study uh
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people observed someone making a certain decision which to which of two Charities
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to donate money to what they didn't know is that this person was actually a paid
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actor one time this person acted as if the decision is extremely conflicted and difficult and in another condition uh it
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wasn't very difficult and what we find is that whenever we observe people observe this conflicted actor they were
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much more likely to donate to the charity chosen by this conflicted person so so I think there are several
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intriguing results uh uh the first one is that this response to to emotional conflict experienced by others is is
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extremely innate it's spontaneous it it will happen even if we observe a complete stranger that we that we do not
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know another interesting uh finding is that we find that this happens also when we know that the choice made by this
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person is completely random so let me give you an example so so imagine I'm playing a certain game and You observe
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me and the game is pretty simple I have two doors behind one door there's a huge
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monetary reward let's say a million dollars okay behind another door there's
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nothing now the game is very simple I need to open one of the doors and whatever is behind this door I get to
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keep I'll be conflicted I mean I have a chance here to win million dollars I
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don't know what to do I'll probably think about it and you'll see this
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conflict now this conflict that you observe uh would not inform you about how thoughtful I am right there is no
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right decision it's a completely random decision yet what we find is even in
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these situations where you know it's completely random you'll be more likely
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to choose the same door that I chose when I uh when I uh was experienced conflict in Choice the Third intriguing
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result is that this effect will happen only if you believe that the conflict that I experience and exhibit is
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warranted to the decision at hand if you see me conflicted about something you think is Trivial the effect would
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completely go away and sometimes even reverse so going back to the doors example let's say that behind one door
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there's million but now behind the the second door there's $900,000 so in both
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cases say no matter what I choose I'm going to make a lot of money now if you
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see me conflicted about this decision you'll actually gravitate away from it so first at the the most higher level
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abstract level we find that pain and conflict bring us brings us closer now we can think about many situations
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managers politicians and and other situations where there are certain group dynamics voting jury duty for example
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where one wishes to form or build a certain consensus around a certain decision he's about to make or already
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made now the common wisdom will be to be decisive right as a manager as a politician I need to show decisiveness
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This research act actually suggest that in some situations sharing the emotional
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conflict that you're experiencing while making a certain decision would actually
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be very helpful to build consensus uh as group members or or the team that I'm
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leading would have a greater tendency to choose uh like I did for example in one
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study we asked group members to cast a vote about a certain decision real decision that involved U monetary uh
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outcomes what we found is that the voting of the group converged to the voting of the first group member if this
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first group member showed conflict while making the choice so we see a very interesting group dynamics where one
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person is very conflicted how other others in the group would converge to the same
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choice so I think that the first of all this research suggests that when we think about social influence how others
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people's behaviors and choices impacts our own This research suggests that our
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preferences are shaped not only by the ultimate choice that others are making but also by the process leading to this
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choice if I see an emotional conflict then I'll I'll converge more so so next
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steps uh in terms of this re research is first of all to look at other decision cues other things that happens during
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the decisional process that might influence the observer's preferences we also started looking at how process cues
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such as conflict would impact not only my preferences but also my own decision process will I be more likely to be
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conflicted when I see others conflicted or less likely and so on and the third part the third uh uh in kind of uh uh
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investigation that that that we're looking at or research is H we're looking at from the other opposite side
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how does it make us feel when someone else sees that we're experiencing conflict in choice
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