Dr. Fat Was An Intuitive Creation Introduction As A Decision

Dr Fat Was An Intuitive Creationintroductionas A Decision Making Sc

Dr. Fat was an intuitive creation Introduction As a decision-making scientist I take great pride in being part of the historical tradition of using rationality and the scientific method to make well reasoned decisions. However, I know from reading “Thinking Fast and Slow” and “The Righteous Mind” that most of my decisions are not made by a rational and careful analysis of the options and then logically choosing from them to determine the one with the greatest utility (Haidt, 2012; Kahneman, 2011). Like all humans most decisions I make are made intuitively and only later analyzed by the slower conscious processing for explanations. The story of how I lost approximately 130 pounds and might have gone too far demonstrates the working of both decision making systems.

I have been and continue to be overweight all of my life (NIH, 2017). However, my weight was not something I thought about very deeply until recently. The mindless eating that resulted in me ballooning to 317 lbs. probably had many causes, including epigenetics (Jirtle & Skinner, 2007), cultural norms (e.g., my parents were brought up not to waste food and may have passed that mentality on to me), genetic behaviors that reinforce high calorie food consumption, advertising that drew my attention to higher-cost processed foods, the mere exposure effect which causes me to like these foods (Haidt, 2012), and access to cheap calories. These effects can all be summed up as being driven by Kahneman’s System 1 or Haidt’s intuitive “Elephant.”

These countless decisions to eat high caloric foods without much thought at all demonstrate the power of these systems to influence behavior. Figure 1 shows a visual of this phenomenon. Kahneman would explain this as the “lazy controller.” Whenever my weight was brought to my attention, I would focus on other things because it’s unpleasant to pay attention to what I am eating. In fact, we tend to dislike paying attention to behaviors because System 2 is inherently lazy (Kahneman, 2011).

The intuitive System 1 doesn't like to be overridden, and I resisted paying attention to my eating habits because there were many excuses not to do so. For instance, I believed that BMI is a poor measure of health—although there are better, more valid measures, limitations exist. A significant motivator for me to consider health more seriously was when an actuarial model suggested I should pay a large sum for life insurance. As you will learn later from “Thinking Fast and Slow,” expert opinions and cherry-picked studies claiming I am fine are less reliable than actuarial judgment. The insurance actuaries indicated I was a risk, prompting me to reassess my health.

As someone committed to applying scientific principles, I was determined to improve my situation. Haidt might chuckle and say I told you so. Plato’s concept of rational philosopher-kings does not carry as much explanatory power as Hume’s emphasis on emotional and biological drives (Haidt, 2012). I am not the purely rational decision-maker that economists and scientists have long imagined humans to be guided by reason alone.

The “Elephant”—my intuitive system—had deeply ingrained preferences for all things tasty and accessible, leaving my “driver,” my conscious System 2, to explain my gluttony. My System 2 could justify behaviors by citing research about BMI or effective calorie-burning exercises. Nonetheless, I recognize these explanations are insufficient. What ultimately helped was focusing on eating less (Carroll, 2017). I managed to lose approximately 130 lbs, but the research indicates that maintaining such weight loss requires lifestyle changes that do not rely heavily on effortful System 2 deliberation. This approach involves forming healthful habits that operate automatically, minimizing the reliance on the unreliable System 1 and the effortful System 2. Although I have gained some weight back, I no longer trust my automatic System 1 responses and recognize the unreliability of System 2. Therefore, I am working to develop sustainable, automatic healthy habits.

References

• Carroll, A. (2017). The Bad Food Bible: How and Why to Eat Sinfully. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
• Haidt, J. (2012). The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. Vintage.
• Jirtle, R. L., & Skinner, M. K. (2007). Environmental epigenomics and disease susceptibility. Nature Reviews Genetics, 8(4), 253–262.
• Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Macmillan.
• National Institutes of Health. (2017). Overweight and Obesity Statistics. Retrieved from https://www.nih.gov