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Decision making can be a stressful undertaking when there is little to no outside help. When choosing a partner or purchasing items online, most people are led by the "first-impression" response: regardless of whether or not the consumer is familiar with the person or item, we choose based on whether or not it looks good and if outside influences, like advice from a friend or online reviews, validates our decision.

The same goes for booking tickets for flights, hotels or shows. We base our decisions off of consumer reviews, if price is not an isolating factor we must consider. Even in these instances we are more likely to base our decisions on people who are similar to us and provide a satisfactory review.

Therein lays the pitch: logical decision making is not very common.

 A PhD study from BI Norwegian Business School shows that when we let our hearts choose for us, we are more influenced by people who resemble ourselves.

In his PhD study at BI Norwegian Business School, Ali Faraji Rad has conducted seven experiments to see whether we are more easily persuaded by people who are similar to us than by people who are dissimilar to us. He also looked at what circumstance might make the differences greater.

"Participants were more influenced or persuaded by reviewers who were similar to themselves than by reviewers who were dissimilar. This difference was greatest when the choice of hotels was based on emotions and not logic," explains Ali Faraji Rad.

Researchers found that participants asked to use logic when choosing their hotels took longer to decide and showed little emotion in their decision. By contrast, those asked to use reviews and go with their "gut-feelings" were notably happier or more excited about their choices.

This is because we value the opinions of others and  strongly influenced by the opinions of those most like us. The experiments also showed that without having to factor in money or comfortability, aesthetics is strong factor in our decision making process.