How research brings balance to business decision-making

In the movie The Karate Kid, Mr. Miyagi goes to great lengths to teach young Daniel LaRusso some important lessons. However, one lesson stands out:

You remember lesson about balance? Lesson not just karate only. Lesson for whole life. Whole life have a balance. Everything be better.

Research brings balance to business decision-making.

Research balances the human emotional subconscious against the rational brain in the evaluation of evidence and ultimately making decisions.

The problem is that people believe that they make decisions rationally. But the reality is that decisions are made emotionally and then justified with logic.

Daniel Kahneman said,

The power of reason is an illusion. The belief will not change when the reasons are defeated. The causality is reversed. People believe the reasons because they believe in the conclusion. You are not allowed to believe only results that seem plausible to you.

Human decision-making is inherently unbalanced.

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt uses the analogy of the elephant and the rider to illustrate this.

The emotional brain is the elephant. The rational brain is the rider.

The rider of the elephant is smart and logical and thinks they are in charge, but when there’s a disagreement between the elephant and the rider, the elephant usually wins.

But this is where things get interesting. When the elephant wins, i.e., goes where it wants to go, the rider justifies the decision as if it were the rider’s choice in the first place.

This doesn’t change when conducting research. Especially when we have pre-baked beliefs, i.e., the product manager or designer who wants to ‘validate’ a concept or idea.

Emotional decision-making isn’t mitigated because it’s a business decision.

When someone has made a decision, the research isn’t a fact-finding expedition. It is an exercise in confirmation bias.

But what is remarkable is that the person doesn’t believe they are succumbing to bias. Rather, they think they’re conducting objective research.

But what they’re really doing is finding ways to reaffirm, reassure, and confirm what they already believe.

It is one of the reasons why “do-it-yourself” research can be perilous. The evidence either becomes secondary.

Or worse, when the evidence contradictors or disconfirms:

Over and over again, studies show that people set out on a cognitive mission to bring back reasons to support their preferred belief or action.

With the awareness that we make decisions emotionally and a desire to counterbalance this rationally, bringing in research as an impartial third party makes sense.

Research provides balance.

When done correctly, a healthy research function protects against confirmation bias in a three-step process:

• Research collects evidence and data impartially
• Research makes sense of this data and evidence
• Research presents a POV grounded in the evidence

Research balances the scale between the emotional brain and the rational brain and helps product managers, UX practitioners, marketers, and business leaders make more informed — and less risky — business decisions by providing a perspective grounded in evidence.

In short, Research counterbalances our emotional brain.

Mr. Miyagi was right.

Everything is better with balance, and this includes decision-making.

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