何时该相信直觉？（上）

Business

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Bartleby: When to trust your gut

巴托比：何时该相信直觉

Deliberation is not always the best option

深思熟虑并不总是最佳选项

Humans have been honed over millions of years of evolution to respond to certain situations without thinking too hard.

经过数百万年的进化，人类已经被磨练得可以在不费力思考的情况下对某些情况做出反应。

If your ancestors spotted movement in the undergrowth, they would run first and grunt questions later.

我们的祖先发现灌木丛中有动静时，都会先跑起来，然后再咕哝着问问题。

At the same time, the capacity to analyse and to plan is part of what distinguishes people from other animals.

然而，人类与其他动物的一个区别就是，人类有分析和计划的能力。

The question of when to trust your gut and when to test your assumptions—whether to think fast or slow, in the language of Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist—matters in the office as much as it does in the savannah.

什么时候该相信直觉，什么时候该验证假设--用心理学家丹尼尔·卡内曼的话来说，是快思考还是慢思考--这个问题在职场上，和在大草原上一样重要。

Deliberative thinking is the hallmark of a well-managed workplace.

深思熟虑是工作场所管理有方的标志。

Strategic overhauls and budget discussions are built on rounds of meetings, memos, formulas and presentations.

一轮轮会议、备忘录、方案和演示是进行战略改革和预算讨论的基础。

Processes are increasingly designed to stamp out instinctive responses.

为了杜绝本能反应，有越来越多流程被设计出来。

From blind screening of job applicants to using “red-teaming” techniques to pick apart a firm’s plans, rigour trumps reflex.

小到盲选求职者，大到使用“红队策略”来打磨公司的计划，严谨都胜过本能反应。

Yet instinct also has its place.

不过，本能也有用武之地。

Some decisions are more connected to emotional responses and inherently less tractable to analysis.

有些判断就更多用到情绪反应，本质上难以通过分析下决断。

Does a marketing campaign capture the essence of your company, say, or would this person work well with other people in a team?

比如，判断营销活动是否充分体现了公司的本质，或是看一个人能否与团队中的其他人合作良好？

In sticky customer-service situations, intuition is often a better guide to how to behave than a script.

在棘手的客户服务情况下，直觉往往比脚本更能指导如何行事。

Gut instincts can also be improved (call it “probiotic management”).

直觉能力也能够得到提高(可以称之为“益生菌管理”)。

Plenty of research has shown that intuition becomes more unerring with experience.

大量研究表明，随着经验的积累，直觉会变得更加准确。

In one well-known experiment, conducted in 2012, volunteers were asked to assess whether a selection of designer handbags were counterfeit or real.

在2012年的一项著名实验中，志愿者被要求判断一些名牌手袋的真伪。

Some were instructed to operate on instinct and others to deliberate over their decision.

实验要求一些人凭直觉判断，其他人则要深思熟虑后再做决定。

Intuition worked better for those who owned at least three designer handbags; indeed, it outperformed analysis.

对于至少拥有三个名牌手袋的人来说，依照直觉判断的正确率更高；事实上，直觉比分析更准确。

The more expert you become, the better your instincts tend to be.

越专业，直觉往往就越准确。

However, the real reason to embrace fast thinking is that it is, well, fast.

但是，选择快思考的真正原因就是：快。

Instinctive decision-making is often the only way to get through the day.

依照本能做决策往往是熬过一天的唯一方法。

Researchers at Cornell University once estimated that people make over 200 decisions a day about food alone.

康奈尔大学的研究人员曾经估算出，人们每天光是思考吃什么就会做出200多个决定。

The workplace is nothing but a succession of choices, a few big and many small: what to prioritise, when to intervene, whom to avoid in the lifts and, now, where to work each day.

构成职场的只不过是一连串选择，几个重大的加上许多个微小的：优先考虑什么，何时干预，在电梯里避开谁，以及现如今对于工作地点的选择。