Formula Student
How ignoring your gut will put you in pole position
You make thousands of decisions every day. Some are seemingly insignificant, while others can have a seismic impact on your life. ‘Go with your gut’ is advice that we have all received when tackling a big life decision yet, according to Dr. Minson, that’s exactly what you shouldn’t do!
But can this ground-breaking research be applied in everyday life, to help us all make better decisions? Dr. Minson certainly believes so: “People are generally not methodical enough, but by adding processes and checklists simple mistakes can be avoided. This becomes particularly important when working under time pressure. Reverting to gut instinct or making snap decisions is rarely beneficial for anyone; sticking to the process and working systematically reaps rewards.”
This is something that Bob Bell, Chief Technical Officer at Renault Sport Formula One Team, knows all too well. “We plan our race strategy for each Grand Prix methodically but, of course, sometimes factors outside of the Team’s control impact the race and we need to think on our feet”, he said. “This could be an incident on track or the weather intervening. It is here that we rely on our processes to see us through to still deliver the result on-track.”
”We tend to value our intuition or gut feelings and believe that this instinct leads us to good decisions”, added Dr. Minson. “Sadly, the research tells us that this is not the case. When questioned, most people prefer to trust their gut and have a strong belief that their instinctive decisions are often correct. However, the same people do not want others to be allowed to make gut decisions; they would rather others followed processes when they make their decisions.
“This is a prime example of our inherent overconfidence - you probably trust your own gut every day in your job, but would you want your doctor doing so during your operation? Or would you prefer that they followed the tried and tested procedure?”
Having defined processes in place is of paramount importance in Formula 1. “As simulation and modeling tools have improved, we have refined how we can predict and plan for different scenarios playing out during a race”, said Bob Bell. “Thanks to the historical data we can input, our race simulation models are usefully accurate. Using past data, we can predict our performance and the likelihood of things like an incident leading to a safety car intervention, enabling us to plan our strategy accordingly.”
How will you make your next decision under pressure? Will you trust the data or your gut? Bob Bell and Dr. Minson will be watching closely during the INFINITI Engineering Academy Finals, and maybe they can help you make better decisions too. Please click here to take part in Dr. Minson's first research study.
You can read the full article on decision science on the INFINITI LinkedIn page here.
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