How does depression affect decision-making? In a word: negatively. That’s not a big surprise. But why do depressed people have a harder time making decisions? According to the results of a recent study reported in the British Journal of Clinical Psychology, one reason is that people who are depressed have more difficulty accessing their intuition. In my last post, Intuition: Knowing without Knowing How We Know, I said that intuition as the result of the associative thinking of System 1 (our unconscious), which constantly sees patterns and connects dots our conscious brain (System 2) is unaware of.
Intuitive—or associative—thinking is good for making short-term predictions and for everyday decision-making. And it’s everyday decision-making that depressed people report having difficulty with. Instead of accessing or relying on their intuition, they use the rational, logical, and linear thinking of System 2, which is considerably slower.
Over-relying on System 2 thinking often results in “analysis paralysis,” which I’ll be covering in my next post. System 2 attention is limited and easily depleted, so if we have to rely on it for every little decision we make, we will quickly run out of steam. We won’t be able to make any decision, large or small.
Another thing the study revealed is that depressed people are more likely to ruminate. Maybe it’s this tendency to ruminate that disrupts a person’s access to intuition.
In a post on rumination last month, I wrote:
Rumination feels like problem-solving, but it actually prevents us from solving problems because it keeps us focused on negative events and emotions. We continue to dwell on our problems instead of attempting to resolve them. Rumination disrupts our self-regulation. Because we want to feel better, we try to distract ourselves or turn to immediate gratification. Rumination also increases stress levels and has a negative effect on our general health.
Rumination is a low level of thinking in which one thought leads to another but never to a solution or a conclusion. Rumination occupies mental space and System 2 (conscious) attention, which is already in short supply.
So depression may at least partially be a matter of using, or getting stuck in, the wrong kind of thinking. Intuition—otherwise known as jumping to conclusions—isn’t infallible by any means, but in terms of ordinary, everyday decisions, it is generally reliable. And when it’s wrong in those situations, the stakes tend not to be high enough to lead to major negative consequences.
System 2 thinking is slow, effortful, and deliberate. It’s great for solving complex problems and for long-range or strategic planning. It isn’t the best choice for the hundreds of quick decisions we normally need to make every day. It’s easy to understand how someone could become mired in the quicksand of System 2 thinking and feel mentally paralyzed.
Some suggestions on curtailing ruminative thinking can be found here. Hopefully, the link between a tendency to ruminate and the loss of access to intuitive thinking will lead to greater insight into depression and more treatment options for those experiencing it.
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