If the facial expressions are spontaneous, then rely on type 1. But are they spontaneous? Or has the other person manufactured them via type 2? To answer both these question will require you to invoke type 2 because type 1 will lead you astray. In other words, it’s always worth attending to type 2. Even when you go with type 1, keep type 2 in the background ready and waiting.

But perhaps I’m overthinking this. (:

http://imgur.com/6icZ3

A little bit of both modes at work there,I would say

I never said that the Type II decision making would always be suitable to the situation. Merely that it would give the best outcome.

Conscious thought doesn’t always seem to have access to the same amount of intuition and general pattern recognition… and when it does it is usually getting them from the Type I system as biases and emotions anyway. So the logical approach may in certain circumstances give a worse outcome than a flash judgement due to over analysis, lack of analyzable type data or starting with false premises then taking them too far.

I wouldn’t use logic to calculate what a friends facial expression means. Best to leave it to the highly evolved but slightly inaccessible systems we have and the years of facial recognition practice. It’s also exhausting to use System II constantly.

The Moneyball example is a fascinating example of this. Analysis of known factors in a limited system (baseball) aided a team’s record for a time. What it cannot do is comment on factors it doesn’t analyze because they are not known to the analysts. In those cases, intuition can come to the aid of judgment, especially when the intuition is in the hands of an open-minded expert in the field of analysis.

Simply put, judgment is not an either/or system – it requires a range of thinking from intuition to analysis.

To be a contrarian (helps me refine my thoughts), perhaps we could use sports again (may apply to quick social interactions, such as sales). This is a bit cliche, but in sports athletes are sometimes said to “overthink” instead of “react” when they fail to perform a simple act. If a person who catches a ball for a living had to think about how much force each of his fingers were applying to the ball, and perhaps how far to extend his/her arms, legs etc…all of this analysis may actually impair the end result. One can view of of this as a series of small decisions about how to perform the action. Now perhaps the impairment witnessed in “overthinking” is all due to the time constraint (an issue we can set aside since we all agree about this) or perhaps the type II decision making interfered with the motor action (therefore not directly with the decision), but there is an additional possibility: that type II decisions are not as good when dealing with many variables simultaneously with many unknown factors in which pattern recognition may be important. Now I don’t know that this is true, but I’m just not sure. I’m just trying to disagree =)

I never said that the Type II decision making would always be suitable to the situation. Merely that it would give the best outcome. In cases where time is a factor, Type I decision making is not the best but is necessary. In cases where this is someone’s life in the balance – say ER medicine – then it become necessary to refine and practice scenarios from a Type II perspective and gain experience to refine the accuracy of the Type I decision.

I suppose you are technically right in that “outcome” may be too broad a term, since we do tend to include time and efficiency as metrics of an outcome. In that case, let me change my word to “answer” and leave the rest as is.

Type II decision making will always yield the more correct answer, but most times it is impractical, the extra precision in the decision making wouldn’t be different enough to matter, or time is of the essence and Type I decision making is necessary. But I doubt anyone would disagree that if we had a magic button that could slow down time (i.e. completely remove time and efficiency considerations from the equation) in the ER that Type II decision making wouldn’t be preferred for optimal outcomes.

The trouble with the physics analogy is that it is a much more narrow comparison. In the decision making situation, there is a possibility than the preferred approach may depend on situation and nature of the problem. I tend to agree with you that in most instances the system II approach will result in a ‘better’ answer, but I’m not sure that that is a universal assumption that can be made. The topic he brought up was sports, which is a good one because time becomes a major constraint. Perhaps it is simply the time constraint that makes the difference in that case. Also decisions vary widely from choosing a cereal in the morning to interpreting complex social cues, so I’m not sure that one approach would always be better than the other, particularly when data is lacking. I guess I’m not disagreeing with you, but I tend to agree with Steve’s hedge.