In a data driven world . . .

we are always trying to understand more about how people make decisions.  One of the unintended consequences is that you end up with a lot of answers that don't make a lot of sense.  Asking people about why they made a choice can easily lead you astray.  The fact is they often don't know why they did this or that.  But because you are asking, they feel compelled to give you an answer.  An answer that is often false, leaving the questioner less informed then when they began their questioning.  In fact, the very fact that people will have to explain themselves, effects the choices that they make. 

I write this because we seem to be in a quest for more of everything, even knowledge.  And too often we forget to ask ourselves what we are really learning from all this data collection.

Radio Lab (a great show, by the way) covers this well in an episode called Choice.

Here is an interesting blog post about the subject as well.