INTHEBLACK October 2026 - Magazine - Page 50
WORK SMART
LISTEN
to this story
Under the
(emotional)
influence
The human brain processes around
11 million bits of information per
second — but conscious thought
only accounts for around 50
of them. So, what is driving
the rest of our decisions?
Words Megan Breen
MOST PEOPLE LIKE TO THINK THEIR DECISIONS
are driven by evidence and clear logic. In reality,
they are shaped by a mix of conscious
reasoning, subconscious pattern recognition,
and emotional signals that often emerge before
we can fully explain them.
“There is no evidence that human beings
make decisions in a purely rational way,” says
Dr Travis Kemp, organisational psychologist
and executive coach. Instead, emotion is always
part of the equation, shaping and sometimes
distorting judgement.
“When you look at how we are wired and
the number of cognitive biases we operate
with, it becomes clear that decision-making
is far more complex than pure rational analysis,”
he says. This creates a tension for how people
think about decision-making: while professionals
value logic and data, much of what drives
choice happens outside conscious awareness.
50 INTHEBLACK October 2026
More than 20 years ago, research from
Harvard Business School argued that around
95 per cent of cognition occurs outside
conscious awareness. More recent information
from the Stanford Graduate School of Business
reinforces this idea, suggesting that emotional
signals play an important role in complex
decision-making, and that intuition can be
a useful guide when tested against evidence.
If much of what shapes professional choice
happens outside conscious awareness, and
emotion and intuition are always operating
alongside logic, how does one make
better decisions?
BALANCING INTUITION AND EVIDENCE
One of the key risks in decision-making
is the tendency to seek out information that
supports what we already believe, while
discounting evidence that challenges it.
In practice, this means people can unconsciously
shape data to fit a preferred narrative rather
than using it to genuinely test a decision.
What appears to be rigorous analysis can,
in reality, become post-hoc justification, says
workplace expert and author Dr Michelle Gibbings.
“We like to think that we look at the data,
weigh up the options and then choose the best
path forward,” Gibbings says. “But in practice,
it often works the other way around. We make
a decision first, shaped by emotion, instinct
