Thinking Longer Leads to Worse Decisions

Summary: A new study published reveals a surprising paradox in human cognition: when making complex strategic decisions, faster choices are, on average, of higher quality. Investigating actual human behavior outside a laboratory setting, researchers analyzed individual move data from professional chess tournaments.

By comparing real-time decision speeds against objective evaluations from top-tier chess engines, the team demonstrated that when the objective difficulty of a problem is held constant, taking more time to think correlates with worse outcomes. The findings suggest that prolonged deliberation reflects a subjectively higher perception of difficulty, whereas rapid execution signals the power of human intuition.