Fieldnote 04 · Head, heart & hunches
Four ways to make up your mind.
One person opens twelve tabs. Another makes a list. Someone else has a strong feeling before the discussion even begins. When we ask how people make a big decision, all four answers find an audience.
Meet the numbers
The big-decision question
Four answers. Plenty of company in each.
Choose one answer. That was the task for 8,895 eligible completions that saw this question.
Based on research and facts
28.6%2,548 completionsPros/cons lists
25.4%2,256 completionsGut feeling
25.1%2,233 completionsFollow the heart
20.9%1,858 completionsExact question: "Big decisions:" · Each bar runs from 0 to 100%. Shares are rounded to one decimal place.
A favorite approach is not a lifetime contract.
The big-decision question offers four starting points. Researching facts and weighing pros and cons both emphasize deliberate analysis. Going with a gut feeling and following the heart give a different kind of information the first word. None of these answers tells us whether the decision turned out well.
The chart shows how much room each answer occupies in this sample. A close split is more useful than declaring a winning personality style. It gives you four recognizable ways into the same conversation.
A second question changes the setting to group projects. Some completions pair an analytical approach to big decisions with sensing the mood or following their instincts in a group. These are different settings, so this is not a test of logical consistency.
Look a little closer
A big decision. A group project. Different settings.
Switch groups to see every answer, including the ones outside the headline.
47.6% of completions that prefer research or weighing pros and cons also sense the mood or follow their instincts in group projects. 1,907 of 4,006 completions in this group answered this way.
In group projects, you:
Bars share a 0–100% scale. Dark bars are the answers combined in the finding. Percentages may not add to exactly 100% after rounding.
The comparison matters.
47.6%Prefer research or weighing pros and cons
66.1%Prefer gut feelings or following the heart
Share of each group that sense the mood or follow their instincts in group projects. The second question asks about group projects. It does not repeat the same decision in a new setting, so these percentages cannot show that people abandoned their principles or changed their minds.
Featured group: 1,907 / 4,006. Comparison group: 2,221 / 3,360. Both come from the same 7,366 completions that answered this pair.
What to take from this.
A useful opening question is simply how someone wants to approach this particular decision. Their answer may depend on what is at stake and who they are working with.
A question to take into your next conversationWhich decisions send you looking for evidence, and which ones begin with a feeling you want to investigate?
Our animals are illustrations of the idea. These results compare answer choices across the full eligible sample, not people assigned those animals.
Behind this finding
Two questions. One shared group.
Big decisions:
- Based on research and facts
- Pros/cons lists
In group projects, you:
- Sense the mood and adapt
- Follow your instincts
We start with 10,610 eligible completions out of 10,719 finished quizzes. Each has 20 distinct, recognized answers. For this comparison, 7,366 answered both questions. We select the first answer group, then count how many also chose the second set.
This is a voluntary online quiz, with public and invited results pooled together. A completion is not a verified unique person. The findings describe this sample and stated preferences, not the general population or cause and effect. Read the full method.
For the curious. And the spreadsheet curious.
Take the data with you.
Check a finding, draw your own chart, or follow a different question. These aggregate CSVs cover all 24 questions and all 276 question pairs.
10,610 eligible completions · Data through 25 September 2026 · No individual response records or personal details.
Writing about this?
You can reuse our charts and aggregate data. Please credit Animal Personality Quiz, link to this story, and include the date and denominator. Our findings are exploratory observations from a voluntary quiz.
A ready-to-use source note
Source: Animal Personality Quiz, "Four ways to make up your mind." Data through 25 September 2026. 8,895 completions answered the big-decision question; 7,366 eligible completions answered both questions in the paired analysis. https://animalpersonalityquiz.com/research/how-we-decide
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