Wednesday, February 20, 2013

AOC: Choice Contexts & Informed Intuition

Haley Scholars Spring 2013 Reading Groups 

 By Danielle Hall

In The Art of Choosing, Sheena Iyengar's discussion of automatic and reflective choosing, heuristics, and self control (or our lack thereof) is fascinating. She addresses the idea about the importance of learning to understand how our acts of choosing derive "context" or "emotion" (pp. 111-19).

Iyengar also highlights the use of intuition, sometimes what we call our hunch or gut feeling, but even that must be developed. She brings up Malcolm Gladwell's "10,000 hours" of practice to achieve expertise in an area, but suggests that practice alone is not enough. Here, she states that it also takes both practice and self-critique to have an "informed intuition," which involves sorting through our reflective and heuristic modes of thinking (p. 129).

Towards the end of the chapter, Iyengar points to the pursuit of happiness and automatic choosing as a collective discourse, through observation, conversation, and by seeking advice (pp. 138-39).

What can we--as a university community--do to ensure that we are fostering informed intuition among students? Or, how do we develop a space that encourages more appreciation for the diversity of contexts that inform people's different choices here?

7 comments:

Jacqueline C. said...

This University offers help everywhere and different types. It allows student to have a mind of their own and get involved; this includes several diversities. It could be more innovative among the diversities but that is left upon the students to decide. There are many organizations that the University encourages students to be a part of and meet new people, and not stay in their comfort zone. From experience, I have met many different people from other ethnic backgrounds and it has made me look at learning differently, more positively.

Breon Anderson said...

I believe as a university there is plenty of oppurtinites to people. but its just up to the person to get out and look for the different oppurtinaities.

Wole Abraham said...

I feel that our University could put more effort and money into some of the groups on campus. I do believe they provide many chances for students to be involved but many students do not go out and look for them.

Maya Estell said...

We as a university community can do many things to ensure that we are fostering informed intuition among students. Lots of students around our age make poor decisions and like to base it off of their intuition. We need to focus on teaching our students to make informed decisions based on what they feel in their intuition. Also, as a society we need to understand the diversity of decision-making processes in how people of different cultures make their decisions. There are a lot of things that we can learn from different cultures and let it influence our own decisions.

Raven Cole said...

I believe that university should create more events for students on campus to interact with one another. Freshman rarely get the chance to mingle with upperclassman because we are sectioned off into the dorms. I believe that us younger students could learn more about the campus if we spent time with them. Also the clubs on campus are not as active as the university portrays them to be,

Jenee' B. said...

I think that courses at the university should incorporate more critical thinking into their lessons. This way students can learn to step back and focus more on how to analyze and resolve specific situations, instead of just quickly going with whatever choice is most convenient. The result would hopefully be that people's "informed intuition" would become stronger and they will be better able to make good choices on their own.

Mariah B. said...

I feel as if the university should have different events that inform us about the different important topics like sex and relationships or drugs and alcohol at least once a month. And when I say events I mean something that will get our interest. We don't want to just sit and listen to people saying we need to know something or need to do something a certain way, we want to have fun while doing it. Also, to get more people to attend you could have incentives like prizes or free t-shirts.