Why thinking longer can make your decisions worse, and when to trust your gut

You have probably watched a decision drag on for weeks. Another analysis is commissioned, another meeting is held and another week is allowed to think it over. The decision that finally comes out is no better than the one on the table at the start, and the time has gone.

Most leaders have lived through that, and most have also made a quick call they later regretted. The research helps to tell the two apart.

Faster can be better

A 2026 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences looked at professional chess tournaments. The researchers measured how long players took over each move and judged each move's quality against a chess computer. They compared the same players across different positions and allowed for how complicated each position was and how much time pressure the players were under.

Faster moves were better moves. The authors' explanation is that the time a player takes reflects how difficult they find the position. When a strong player sees the right move intuitively, they play it quickly. When they hesitate, it is because they are less sure. As the university's announcement put it, a shorter decision-making time "could indicate that the player has a strong intuition".

The study shows a link, not proof that rushing improves decisions, and it has not been tested outside chess. My reading is that it turns hesitation into useful information: when an experienced person takes much longer than usual over a decision, that may be a sign the decision is harder than it looks, not a reason to keep thinking until the answer feels right.

When intuition can be trusted

The clearest guidance comes from an unusual agreement. In 2009 Daniel Kahneman, known for his work on the errors in fast thinking, and Gary Klein, known for studying the intuition of firefighters and nurses, wrote a joint paper on when expert intuition deserves trust.

They concluded that intuition is "sometimes marvelous and sometimes flawed". It can be trusted when the environment is predictable enough to have patterns, and when the person has had real chances to learn those patterns through practice and feedback. They also agreed that how confident someone feels says little about whether they are right.

For a leader, that is a practical test. A sales director with twenty years of pricing deals and seeing the results has earned an intuition about pricing. The same director's gut feeling about a first acquisition, a new market or a candidate from an unfamiliar field has had no such training.

"Distract yourself and let your unconscious decide" does not hold up

One popular idea is that complex decisions are best left to the unconscious: gather the facts, then distract yourself for a few minutes and let the answer emerge. An early study made headlines for this claim.

A 2015 study put it to a stricter test. The researchers combined the published studies and ran a large new experiment with 399 participants. Once the bias towards publishing positive results was accounted for, the effect disappeared, and the new experiment found no advantage either. The authors concluded the idea "lacks empirical support".

Your posture and breathing may shift your appetite for risk

The conditions of a decision can shift it in ways people do not notice. In a recent study, 198 participants, mostly young women, played a risk-taking game at desks set up to nudge their posture without telling them. Those at a raised desk that encouraged an upright, open posture took more risks than those at a low desk that made them hunch, and more than a comparison group at a normal desk. Most said they had no idea their posture had been changed. Earlier claims about deliberate "power posing" have not held up, so this finding needs repeating before anyone relies on it.

Breathing has a similar effect. In another 2026 study, 41 adults made real-money gambles while breathing normally or breathing slowly with a long breath out. When breathing slowly, they accepted risky gambles more often, and this was linked to greater sensitivity to the possible rewards. My own inference is that if you use slow breathing to calm down before a big decision, it may also make the upside look bigger. The gambles in the study favoured winning, so this is not yet evidence of worse decisions.

Two assumptions about risk that the evidence questions

Two common assumptions about who takes risks are weaker than they look. A 2026 analysis of 52 studies with 17,340 participants found practically no link between testosterone and appetite for risk. Only one kind of laboratory gambling task showed a modest link. The authors concluded the evidence challenges the idea that testosterone provides "a general hormonal basis" for risk-taking.

The supposed gender gap in risk-taking may also be partly an artefact of how it is measured. A study of 2,204 children in China, published as a working paper, found that the usual result, that girls take fewer risks, disappeared once the researchers allowed for guessing and inconsistent answers. Boys were more cautious at small stakes and girls at the largest. The study used children and is not yet peer reviewed, but it is a reason to question the assumption that women are naturally more cautious.

What this is costing you

None of these studies looked at your organisation, so applying them is my own step. Some of these patterns may be familiar where you work:

• the decision delayed for another round of analysis that changes nothing;
• the confident call on an unfamiliar question, made with the same certainty as a familiar one;
• the assumption that one colleague is "a risk-taker" and another is "cautious" because of who they are;
• the big decision made straight after an energising presentation, or in a moment of calm, without noticing how that changed the appetite for risk.

The cost is rarely visible on the day. It shows up in decisions that came too late, and in confident decisions made where experience did not apply.

Questions worth asking

A few honest questions show how this applies to you.

• Name one decision you would make in five minutes and one you would never rush. What is the difference?
• When did more time to think last make one of your decisions better?
• Do you judge your own decisions by how confident you feel, or by how often you have been right before?
• Do you assume some people on your team are natural risk-takers, and on what evidence?

What you can do this week

Everything in this section is a suggestion of mine, drawn from the research rather than tested by it. Each one takes minutes and costs nothing.

Suggestion

If you lead a team

• Sort your decisions. List the decisions your team makes often and gets quick feedback on, and the ones it makes rarely. Let experience decide the first group quickly; slow down and invite challenge on the second.
• Set a time limit. For routine decisions, agree how long the decision should take before you start, and keep to it.
• Treat hesitation as information. When an experienced colleague takes much longer than usual, ask what makes this one hard.
• Run a premortem. Before a big decision, ask the team to imagine it is a year later and the decision has failed, and to write down why. It surfaces risks that people hesitate to raise.
• Drop the stereotypes. Do not assume who will take risks from their sex or their manner. Ask what they would decide, and why.

Suggestion

For yourself

• Ask where your intuition was earned. Before trusting your gut, ask whether you have made this kind of decision often and seen the results.
• Separate confidence from accuracy. Ask yourself what would show you were wrong, rather than how sure you feel.
• Notice your state. Before a significant decision about risk, notice whether you have just been energised, calmed or rushed, and consider deciding later.

Suggestion

At home

These are ideas of mine, not tested with children.

• Let them decide small things quickly. Give a child a short time to choose between two options for something small, and let them live with the result.
• Talk about what happened. Afterwards, ask whether the choice worked out and what they would do next time. Feedback is how intuition is built.

Sources

• Sunde, U., Zegners, D., & Strittmatter, A. (2026). Speed and quality of complex strategic decisions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Reported by LMU Munich and Neuroscience News, May 2026.
• Kahneman, D., & Klein, G. (2009). Conditions for intuitive expertise: A failure to disagree. American Psychologist, 64(6), 515 to 526. doi:10.1037/a0016755
• Nieuwenstein, M. R., Wierenga, T., Morey, R. D., Wicherts, J. M., Blom, T. N., Wagenmakers, E.-J., & van Rijn, H. (2015). On making the right choice: A meta-analysis and large-scale replication attempt of the unconscious thought advantage. Judgment and Decision Making, 10(1), 1 to 17.
• Wainio-Theberge, S., & Armony, J. Manipulating posture implicitly through environmental constraints influences mood and risk-taking behaviour. British Journal of Psychology. doi:10.1111/bjop.70083
• Huang, W., Schmidt, M., Rebollo, I., et al. (2026). Slow breathing impacts inter-organ dynamics modulating brain function and risk behavior. Neuron. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2026.04.044
• Sánchez Rodríguez, I., Bailo, L., Panizza, F., Ricciardi, E., & Bossi, F. (2026). No relationship between testosterone and risk aversion: A meta-analytic review. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2026.106575
• Chavez Padilla, C., Feng, S., Heckman, J. J., & Yang, Z. Relating cognitive skills and personality traits to economic preferences: Decision-making under cognitive shocks and guessing. NBER Working Paper.
• Klein, G. (2007). Performing a project premortem. Harvard Business Review.