Don't think too hard.

The saying "Don't think too hard" may have just found some scientific backing. The following is from the Health and Science News Round Up: (The actual study can be found here.)

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, Feb. 17 (UPI) -- Complicated decisions might be best left to the unconscious mind because thinking too hard may lead to bad choices, a Dutch study found.

Ap Dijksterhuis, a psychologist at the University of Amsterdam, said conscious thinkers were better able to make the best choice among simple products, whereas unconscious thinkers were better able to make the best choice among complex products, the Guardian reported Friday.

The problem with thinking about things consciously is that you can only focus on a few things at once, so when in the face of a complex decision this can lead to giving certain factors undue importance and thinking about something several times is also likely to produce slightly different evaluations, highlighting inconsistencies, according to the study published in Science.

Dijksterhuis said that when he has to make an important decision he gathers together the relevant facts and gives it all of his attention at first.

Then 'I sit on things and rely on my gut,' he told Science.

[[ Check out the paper discussion for more of the researcher's interpretations of their results ~d ]]

General Discussion
Unconscious thought improved the quality of decisions. When people are faced with complex decisions, a few minutes of distraction during which people could engage in unconscious thought - but not in conscious thought - led to superior decisions, compared to circumstances under which people could not engage in unconscious thought or to circumstances under which people engaged in conscious thought. Moreover, a few minutes of conscious thought generally did not lead to better decisions compared to conditions where people did not consciously think. The relative inferiority of conscious thought was expected to be the consequence of the low processing capacity of consciousness....