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How To Make Decisions That Work for Everyone: Insights from Neuroscience

Conflicting demands from clients, colleagues, vendors, and other stakeholders – they require a careful balancing act to keep everyone (including ourselves!) happy. Maybe some of your coaching group wants weekly check-ins, while others insist bi-weekly works better. Or you are organizing a team-building event, and the group suggested three very different themes.

How exactly do we manage the mental calculations of what to give one party while making sure others’ interests are also catered to? This study combined neuroscience and economics to find out where in the brain all this happens, and how we resolve these kinds of dilemmas. 

Read on for actionable insights that can help us make fair decisions that provide maximum benefit to all involved, even when their preferences are not all aligned.

We can learn what others like with surprising accuracy

Researchers created a three-step experiment to understand brain mechanisms for encoding, comparing, and implementing our understanding of others’ preferences in a resource allocation exercise.

In the first stage, participants were made to choose varying quantity combinations of two snack foods they liked (5 raisins and 1 peanut, or 3 raisins and 3 peanuts etc). In the next stage, they observed two other participants (called ‘agents’) going through the same exercise, and simultaneously tried to predict what food quantity combination the agent would pick. 

Researchers found that a specific region of the brain called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) processes both our personal preferences and others’ preferences, but in different ways. It uses distinct neural codes for personal versus others’ preferences. This suggests our brains have specialized ways of understanding what we like versus what others like.

More importantly, they observed that participants correctly predicted 91% of agents’ preferences. Researchers designed the second stage such that one agent had the opposite preferences as the participant, while the other agent had very similar preferences. Yet they successfully learned and predicted both the agent’s choices, even the one who had different tastes from themselves. 

Action Item: This finding highlights the importance of actively observing others’ behavior, be they customers, colleagues, or other stakeholders, to understand their preferences. 

Try to systematically collect and analyze customer feedback and behavior patterns across multiple channels, such as surveys and interviews. Instead of projecting your own preferences onto your market, invest time observing how customers interact with your products/services, what features generate the most engagement, and where they find the most value. This data-driven approach to understanding stakeholder needs leads to better business decisions and resource allocation, and is key to developing long-term, loyal relationships.

Click here for my study breakdown & how you can use this study in your business & life:

More breakdowns below! 👇

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More Actionable Breakdowns

Did you miss one of our previous breakdowns? Here are some you might find helpful.

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Wishing you much productivity!

- Jenae :)