Lockdown has had an inevitable impact on our mental wellbeing, but research from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya highlights the impact it also had on our decision-making.

The study examined the impact of the various lockdown measures introduced across Europe on people’s cognitive capacity and found diminished capabilities, which led to them taking on more risks and generally making poorer choices.

Taking risks

In more benign circumstances, however, we can often suffer from the opposite, and be excessively risk averse. In The Upside of Uncertainty, INSEAD’s Nathan Furr provides a number of tips for how we can get better at taking risks:

• Write a letter from your future self – for instance, you might consider writing a letter to yourself from an older version of yourself to give advice from a completely different perspective.
• Advise the main character – another method of stepping outside of your immediate situation is to imagine you’re a character in a novel and try to provide your character with advice on what to do.
• Compare like with like – Furr also suggests that when we’re considering risks, we can often fall into the trap of giving the downsides much greater weight than the upside, so it’s important to ensure that both the risks and rewards are given the appropriate weight in our deliberations.
• Consider multiple dimensions of performance – Similarly, we can often consider a decision from only one angle, such as money, when there are likely to be numerous dimensions across which the decision will have an impact. When we explore each of these dimensions we can often view the decision in a very different light.
• Adopt a decision framework – If you’re still struggling, you might consider using a framework, such as the “making smart choices” framework, which consists if eight elements: frame the problem accurately; specify your objectives; create imaginative alternatives; understand the consequences of your choices; recognize and accept trade-offs; clarify the uncertainty of a particular future happening; consider your risk tolerance; think about how decisions link together.

While these approaches won’t diminish the difficulties involved in taking risks entirely, they should hopefully help us to better understand the true nature of the risks we face.