A new study says you should think long and hard and fight against your intuition.
Harvard Kennedy School professor Jennifer Lerner teamed up with Christine Ma-Kellams of the University of La Verne to show that — contrary to popular belief — systematic thinkers are better at reading people than their intuitive counterparts, especially in unfamiliar situations. Their research paper was published in the July 18 edition of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
“Cultivating successful personal and professional relationships requires the ability to accurately infer the feelings of others — that is, to be empathically accurate,” the paper’s abstract read. “Some are better at this than others, a difference which may be explained in part by mode of thought.”
To determine which mode was the winner, Lerner and Ma-Kellams ran four studies. The first was an online survey that asked participants to predict whether systematic or intuitive thinking would help them interpret emotions more accurately. Unsurprisingly, most people thought intuition would win. The two researchers then worked with executive-level professionals in studies two to four, randomly assigning each participant to either interview or be interviewed by another participant. At the end of the mock interview, both individuals were asked to assess their own emotions during the session and what they perceived their partner’s emotions to be. Lerner and Ma-Kellams found, by comparing the assessments, that systematic thinkers were ultimately better judges of their partners’ emotional states.
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In the context of real-life interviews, this means that your first impression is not always a good predictor of the kind of person you are facing, no matter if you are the interviewer or the interviewee. The age-old proverb “don’t judge a book by its cover” indeed holds true. But here’s the challenge: We are wired to make quick judgments based on our assumptions, something Ma-Kellams described as an automatic reflex. On the other hand, she said, systematic thinking is effortful, takes more time and requires individuals to go through every aspect of a situation before making a decision.
“The most surprising thing [about the research] is that our assumptions about what makes us better people readers are not aligned with reality,” she told Forbes. “People think we should be intuitive. But in novel situations, when you’re with people you may not know well, intuition doesn’t help you all that much. Thinking slowly and deliberately works better.”
So next time, before you hire somebody, join a company or make any decision about people at all, look past your natural instincts and make sure you have considered all the details.
