Some people can rapidly evaluate a situation and come to a decision right away. We will call them the decisive, the decision makers. They see the world as black or white, heads or tails with nothing in between. They are the people who make quick decisions and speak their mind. They are not afraid to make a wrong choice. Theirs is the only correct point of view. They stop listening after their minds are made up.
At the other extreme are the people who take a long time to evaluate a situation. We will call them the hesitant. They have to be forced to make a decision; otherwise no decision is their decision. They think and evaluate and assign different weights to factors and points of views that will influence their choice, then change the weights and evaluate again. They are afraid to make a wrong choice; and when they finally do, they feel regret and may try to rethink the decision.
Examples of these people might be the hoarders of today’s society. The insides of their houses are piled high with everything they have come across in their history. They cannot make a choice of what to buy so they buy one or more of each. Once the items pass their useful life, they cannot make the choice to discard.
Most of us fall between those two extremes. We feel we can usually make an intelligent and correct decision after evaluating a few key factors. We may want that expensive sports car, but after evaluating the payments, the insurance, the gas mileage and our actual needs, we will probably choose something more practical.
We have what psychologists call ambivalence. We can see the darkness in mostly white choices and the white in mostly dark choices. We can see both sides of an argument and the value of different factors as they are considered together. We look at things on the one hand and also consider them on the other hand.
A synonym for ambivalence is “of two minds.”
The degree of ambivalence affects people’s lives every day at every major and minor decision crossroad from job choices to life partner choices to where we decide to live.
There are times when high ambivalence is desirable (making a tough choice) and times when we must be decisive. Decisive people make decisions quickly and often go with instinct rather than evaluating deciding factors.
Researchers have been investigating ambivalence and how it affects people’s lives by the decisions they make, and they have found that ambivalent thinking is a sign of maturity, enabling people to see the complexities of the world and thereby make better decisions.
They have also been researching why some people tend toward decisiveness and why some people are ambivalent. Although they can’t say for sure, personality traits and family history play a role. People raised with ambivalent parents tend to follow their trend.
People also tend to follow the easy road when possible. If they don’t have to make a decision they won’t. But with a strong need to quickly reach correct decisions, as in the case of a military officer, they can learn to be decisive.
Our western culture where we feel there is only one right answer is in contrast to eastern cultures with their recognition of dualism, where two differing philosophies may both be right.
The decisive many times get stuck in their single point of view and refuse to see anything else, causing conflict with others who may also be decisive with a different point of view. They can focus on only one or a few aspects of a problem without looking at the big picture. They have no “other hand.”
In the workplace, the decisive focus on the few things important to them and perform consistently well if they like what they see and badly if they do not. Ambivalents perform well on some days and badly on other days in response to the good and bad aspects of their job, but will stay at their jobs longer than the decisive.
The same trends follow with relationships. Ambivalents never put negative aspects out of their minds, but stay in relationships anyway.
In the movie “Swing Vote, ” Kevin Costner inadvertently became the single vote needed to choose the next president. His choice would have been no choice, but he became a focus point for the nation. Who did he choose?
I think he chose… but on the other hand…
Command a vital life. Live free.
