Do You Act Before You Think or Think Before You Act?

hubie writes:

UC Riverside psychologists' experiments explain which choice rules daily life:

Will you read this news release now or decide to read it later? "Precrastination," defined as the tendency to expend extra effort to get things done as soon as possible, could explain what you will do.

We have all probably precrastinated, that is, completed tasks right away, even if that meant putting in more work. An unresolved question about precrastination is: Do we rush to get things done because we want to simply act as quickly as possible and worry about decision making later, or do we want to get decision making over and done with, so we needn't have to worry about it subsequently?

A team of psychologists at the University of California, Riverside, may have an answer: Given a choice, we opt for the latter because we want to have our minds clear.

[...] "Precrastination is widespread," Rosenbaum said. "When you answer emails too quickly, when you submit papers before they have been polished, you are precrastinating. But why do we rush? What's the hurry? If there are scarce resources, it's wise to grab low-hanging fruit, but in other cases, rushing has another less clear basis.

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