August 20, 2007
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making decisions
Individuals making decisions on their own have a pretty rough go of it. You have to weigh the options, deal with gaps in information, uknowns, uncertainties. You have to take the time to research, consider carefully what their own expectations and desires are. You have to be prepared to accept the consequences of your choices and to
deal with the impact your choice will have on your subsequent choices. It’s a lot of work. It’s hard. And you only have your own knowledge and abilities to rely upon. If you make the wrong decision it is entirely on you.To mitigate some of the difficulties of this process, individuals join up with other individuals to make decisions for the group. The logic behind this is that each individual in the group can contribute their own insight and information, can share the burden of applying their mental energy to research and examination, and each can benefit from the consequences of choosing together. Admittedly you have to deal with the difficulties of having two or more sets of desires and expectations to deal with but that it is a small price to pay for the increased labor and knowledge you have available to apply. Each individual deals with the consequences of his or her choices on his or her own even when they are a part of a group, so that aspect of the equation is a wash.
But are there difficulties that arise when decisions are made as a group that do not exist when individuals make decisions on their own?
Absolutely. And they all boil down to one thing. Ego.
When groups interact, most individuals need to feel as if they are a significant part of the decision making process. Individuals within groups don’t generally need to feel as if they are providing a majority of the effort toward making the decision or even an equal proportion to all other members of the group, but they do generally need to feel as if they are relevant, as if they are contributing their fair share.
When decisions are made and individuals don’t feel as if they had any say in the outcome, as if the decisions were simply made for them, it hurts their pride. It lessens them. It makes them feel as if they have less autonomy as if they are less real. They feel, generally, that it is unjust for them to not have a say. And sometimes they start to feel resentful toward the entities who made the decision and took away their sense of self.
Now the interesting thing is that this is true even when the decision that is being made is in fact trivial, but it impacts the group. Any individual in the group who is rational could make the decision and make the correct choice that benefits the entire group, but if any of the individuals goes ahead and does that it will generally create great strife within the group. Individuals who were left out or not consulted will feel hurt and possibly resentful. Hence many times co-equal members of a group learn to either delegate responsibility in front of the entire group, thus turning group decisions into indivdiual decisions, or to bring up decisions to the entire group even the most mundane. This may well seem like a waste of time, but it is an effective means of keeping the group cohesive and functioning.
I don’t know that there is anyone who doesn’t have a little bit of this tendency to want to make decisions for themselves. Everyone tends to get hurt a little when their agency is taken away by someone else even if that entity is acting in their own best interest. But the extent to which choices made for someone who is a part of a group, damages their pride depends particularly on the individual, just as the extent to which someone is inclined to make choices for others in a group depends on the individual. In my observation, those who are naturally impatient tend to be more inclined to make decisions for others, especially the decisions they deem trivial or obvious. Those who are more naturally stubborn will tend to object more to not being consulted on decisions regardless of their level of triviality. It is of course quite possible to be both stubborn and impatient. And I think most people pretty much are a little of both.
For me in particularly, my stubborness far exceeds my impatience. So there is nothing more likely to drive up my ire make me angry or hold a grudge than to have someone else make a decision that effects me without consulting me, or to presume that I wouldn’t want to have a say or wouldn’t care what choices are made provided they are good choices. I want to be consulted even when it is a trivial thing for which the correct answer is apparent. I’d rather be convinced of the correct choice than to have that choice be made for me. And the worst would be if the choice was never even brought to my atention, made for me without me even knowing it was happening or that there was even a choice to be made. That kind of a thing would upset me and I’d find it hard to let it go even if in the end I came to recognize and agree with all of the reasons for which the choice was made.
On the other hand when interacting with others, I don’t tend to rush to decision either. I don’t try to make choices for other people, unless the choice is extremely, extremely trivial. At least I don’t think I do. Generally, it is often in the back of my mind that if I choose this or that and my choice effects others, then those others should get a say in it, or otherwise they will feel exactly as I feel when choice is taken out of my hands: hurt and angry.
Of course some of this hurt and anger, though natural, is quite irrational. We should of course endeavor to be more forgiving of the tendency in others to choose for us at least whenever we know that they are acting out of our shared interests. If of course the decisions are secretly or subconsciously being made for us for selfish reasons that are not in our best interests then that of course is another matter. In those cases the question of whether we forgive or speak up about it and try to expose the less than altruistic motives that lie beneathe is going to be a matter of circumstances and a personal choice that might sometimes be rather difficult to make. In any case for most trivial matters we should try at least to keep an open mind.
On the other hand we should also be cognizant of our responsibility as part of a group to be responsible for putting our faith in the group for decision making. We should be aware of the harm we may well cause when we take decisions into our own hands and the disruption we may cause. We also have to be self-reflective enough to try and understand when it is that we might be subconsciously furthering an ends of our own desire that may or may not truly be in the best interest of the group. It is very very easy to make the mistake of thinking that you reasoned that such and such a choice would yield the best outcome for the group when in fact your reasoning was only sufficient to prove that the decision would yield the best outcome for yourself. Others in the group may well have interests that are counter to your expectations of those interests. So we have to try at least to remember to bring decisions to the group decision making process to the extent that we are able to do so and where it makes sense to do so. Or at least try to understand the expectations and feelings of other members of the group even over matters that don’t seem to matter that much to us.
So basically what I am saying is making decisions within a group can be every bit as big a pain in the arse as making decisions as individuals, and sometimes even more so. The complications that arise from being responsible to some extent or another for the reactions and expectations and impacts of decisions upon others can make the meta-interaction surrounding a choice quite a complex scenario that can be a challenge to navigate. It’s worth the challenge and difficulty though for one very simple reason. Paricipant groups that work, overall, tend to make better decisions than individuals.
