Two interesting and very different points of view on the whole idea of being “undecided.” First and most hilariously, this from David Sedaris . . .
Then you’ll see this man or woman— someone, I always think, who looks very happy to be on TV. “Well, Charlie,” they say, “I’ve gone back and forth on the issues and whatnot, but I just can’t seem to make up my mind!” Some insist that there’s very little difference between candidate A and candidate B. Others claim that they’re with A on defense and health care but are leaning toward B when it comes to the economy.
I look at these people and can’t quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention?
To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”
To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.
I mean, really, what’s to be confused about?
Love it.
On the geek front, the NYT reports that “scientists” have now divided decision making into two distinctly different processes, one related to gathering evidence and the other to making the choice. The idea of indecision has less to do with the later, and more to do with the former. In other words, undecideds generally aren’t.
Recent research in neuroscience and psychology, however, suggests that most undecided voters may be smarter than you think. They’re not indifferent or unable to make clear comparisons between the candidates. They may be more willing than others to take their time — or else just unaware that they have essentially already made a choice.
Neuroscientists have begun to tease out the brain systems that make decisions. Even when it takes no more than a second, decision-making is thought to involve two parts, gathering evidence and committing to a choice. In tasks as simple as deciding whether a shifting pattern of dots is moving to the left or to the right, brain activity in the parietal cortex rises as evidence is gathered, eventually reaching a tipping point (though it’s not yet known which brain regions drive the final choice).
Inherent to this process is a trade-off between speed and accuracy. Commit early and you can get on with your life. Take more time and you might make a wiser or more accurate decision. Since a commitment to John McCain or Barack Obama is not required until Nov. 4, for the greatest accuracy, one should gather evidence until that date. So then why aren’t there even more undecided voters? In measurements of decision-related neural activity, after there is enough evidence to reach a person’s decision threshold, his brain can ignore further input even when it might improve accuracy. The brain goes ahead and decides, freeing up mental resources to deal with other problems.
Tags: DecisionMaking, Decision Quality, David Sedaris, Undecided, Indecision
