The Danger of Reason

“We assume that more rational analysis leads to better choices but, in many instances, that assumption is exactly backwards.” Being too analytic confuses our value judgments, say new research. Frontal Cortex reports on an experiment involving strawberry jam where, once the subjects were asked to explain ‘why’ they preferred one kind over the other, the results became highly erratic and out of line with a more consistent intuitive approach: “These studies explore why human reason can so often lead us to believe blatantly irrational things, or why it’s reliably associated with mistakes like cognitive dissonance or confirmation bias.”