A new study reveals that when making complex strategic decisions, a shorter deliberation time correlates with higher decision quality. This finding was made by an international research team, which included researchers from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU). The findings were published in the journal PNAS.
For their research, the scientists analyzed 215,000 moves from 3,600 tournament games played by professional chess players. To determine decision quality objectively, they measured the time players spent on their choices and compared these metrics against benchmarks set by chess computers. The data showed that faster decisions were connected to a higher quality of choice, even after accounting for the computational complexity of the moves and the time pressure involved.
According to the researchers, spending a long time deep in thought may simply reflect that a person perceives a decision as subjectively difficult. If the objectively measurable difficulty remains constant, dwelling too long apparently leads to poorer decisions. Conversely, a shorter deliberation duration could indicate strong intuition. The researchers believe these conclusions may also be applicable to other complex decision-making situations outside the context of chess.