The Three Gunas: A Framework for Understanding Your Decision-Making Style

In the midst of modern life's relentless demands, most professionals face a recurring challenge: the need to make consequential decisions with clarity, yet feeling pulled in conflicting directions by stress, ambition, fatigue, and emotion. While contemporary psychology offers valuable frameworks for understanding decision-making, an ancient Indian philosophical model offers something deeper—a lens that does not merely categorize how we think, but explains why we think that way, and what conditions shape our clarity or confusion. This framework is known as the three gunas (गुण)—Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas—a triadic model originating in Samkhya philosophy and elaborated extensively in the Bhagavad Gita. Far from being metaphysical abstractions, the gunas are psychological and cognitive patterns that dynamically influence your decisions, emotions, and behavior every moment of every day. Understanding them is essential for anyone seeking to develop genuine clarity and wisdom in decision-making.[1]

The Origins and Relevance of the Guna Framework

The concept of the three gunas emerges from Samkhya philosophy, one of the oldest schools of Hindu philosophical inquiry, and is woven throughout the Bhagavad Gita, particularly in Chapter 14, where Lord Krishna systematically explains to Arjuna how these forces shape human consciousness and action.[1][2] In Samkhya metaphysics, Prakrti (primordial nature or materiality) is constituted of three fundamental forces or qualities—the gunas—that exist in varying proportions in all things, from atoms to minds to the material world itself.[2][3] These are not moral categories, but rather modes of consciousness and qualities of nature that generate specific psychological and behavioral patterns.[1]

What makes the guna framework remarkably relevant in 2025 is not its ancient origin, but its explanatory power regarding modern cognitive phenomena. Contemporary behavioral psychology, through the work of Daniel Kahneman and others, has identified a dual-process model of thinking—System 1 (fast, intuitive, pattern-based) and System 2 (slow, deliberate, analytical)—yet this modern framework lacks an explanation for why we fall into one or the other, or what conditions bias our reasoning.[4][5] The three gunas, by contrast, provide not only a description but a causal understanding: they explain the mental states and environmental conditions that predispose us toward intuitive or analytical thinking, toward clarity or confusion, toward wise action or impulsive reaction.[1] They also bridge the ancient and modern by offering practical pathways to shift these patterns through daily habit, diet, sleep, and lifestyle—areas where ancient wisdom and contemporary neuroscience intersect.[6]

Sattva: Clarity, Wisdom, and Balanced Decision-Making

Sattva (सत्त्व) literally translates as "being," "essence," or "goodness," and in the context of consciousness, it represents the quality of light, clarity, harmony, and knowledge.[1][2] A sattvic mind is characterized by tranquility, wisdom, compassion, balance, and the capacity for discrimination—the ability to distinguish truth from falsehood, beneficial from harmful, right action from wrong action.[1][3]

Core Characteristics of Sattva

When Sattva predominates in your mental state, you experience:

• Mental clarity and stillness: The mind feels calm, focused, and undisturbed by excessive thoughts or emotional turbulence.
• Discernment (viveka): You can easily perceive the differences between what is truly valuable and what is merely attractive; between what serves your long-term well-being and what offers short-term gratification.
• Emotional equanimity: You remain unshaken by external circumstances—neither elated by success nor devastated by failure.
• Knowledge and wisdom: Understanding comes naturally; you absorb information deeply and integrate it with existing knowledge.
• Ethical clarity: You instinctively recognize what is right and what is wrong, guided by principles rather than by fear, ambition, or social pressure.
• Contentment: You feel satisfied with what you have, without constantly craving more or lamenting what you lack.[1][2]

How Sattva Influences Decision-Making

Sattvic decision-making operates through what neuroscience would recognize as System 2 thinking—deliberate, reflective, and grounded in deeper understanding rather than reactive impulses.[4][5] However, the guna model goes further: sattvic clarity is not merely intellectual; it involves the integration of intellect, emotion, intuition, and ethical awareness into a unified field of perception.

Consider a business leader facing a choice between two profitable strategies—one that maximizes quarterly returns but involves questionable labor practices, and another that is slightly less profitable but aligns with her values and long-term vision. A sattvic mind naturally gravitates toward the latter, not because of external rules, but because her clarity reveals the true cost of the first option: damage to her integrity, company culture, and long-term reputation. She makes the decision from conviction, not compulsion.

Similarly, in personal relationships, sattvic decision-making is characterized by the ability to listen deeply, see the other person's perspective clearly, and respond with compassion rather than reactivity. When a sattvic person makes a mistake, they acknowledge it immediately and course-correct, because their clarity is not clouded by ego defensiveness.

Strengths and Blind Spots of Sattvic Decisions

The strengths are evident: sattvic decisions tend to be well-grounded, ethically sound, long-term oriented, and resistant to cognitive biases that plague faster thinking.[4][5] They are also deeply personal—not imposed by external authority, but arising from genuine understanding.

However, even sattvic decision-making has potential limitations. In rare situations requiring rapid action or calculated risk-taking—such as a startup pivoting quickly in response to market change—excessive sattvic caution can become a liability. A sattvic leader might overthink, seek too much information, or become so focused on ethical considerations that they miss market windows. Additionally, sattvic clarity, by definition, seeks truth and harmony; it is therefore vulnerable to being overwhelmed or discouraged when confronted with systemic corruption or suffering that logic alone cannot resolve.

Rajas: Activity, Passion, and Ambition-Driven Decisions

Rajas (रजस्) translates as "dust," "passion," or "activity," and represents the quality of movement, energy, desire, and action-orientation.[1][2] A rajasic mind is characterized by restlessness, ambition, competitiveness, and the constant drive to acquire, achieve, and experience.[1] Rajas is neither inherently good nor bad—it is the energy that drives innovation, entrepreneurship, and social change—but it is also the force that generates anxiety, aggression, and burnout when unbalanced.[3]

Core Characteristics of Rajas

When Rajas dominates, you experience:

• Restlessness and agitation: Your mind is always active, always seeking the next challenge, always moving toward or away from something. Stillness feels uncomfortable.
• Desire-driven thinking: You are motivated by wanting—wanting success, status, wealth, recognition, pleasure, or experiences. Your thoughts naturally turn toward acquisition and achievement.
• Competitive and comparative mindset: You measure yourself against others, notice where others succeed and you fall short, and feel driven to outpace them.
• High energy and drive: You are productive, dynamic, and willing to work hard. Tasks that bore a sattvic person energize a rajasic person.
• Attachment to outcomes: Your sense of well-being is highly dependent on external results—the promotion you get, the deal you close, the compliment you receive.
• Emotional reactivity: You can shift quickly from enthusiasm to frustration, from confidence to anxiety, depending on circumstances.[1][2][6]

How Rajas Influences Decision-Making

Rajasic decision-making operates through System 1 thinking—fast, intuitive, motivated by desire and aversion, prone to overconfidence and action bias.[4][5] The rajasic person makes decisions quickly, with conviction, and is often able to execute them with remarkable energy. This is why rajasic individuals often excel in sales, fundraising, competitive sports, and roles requiring rapid response.

However, because rajasic decisions are driven by desire and attachment to outcomes, they are highly vulnerable to specific cognitive biases.[5][7] A rajasic entrepreneur, excited about a new market opportunity, may fall into confirmation bias—noticing only the evidence that supports the idea while dismissing red flags. A rajasic manager, desperate to hit quarterly targets, may push the team so hard that quality suffers. A rajasic investor, caught up in the excitement of a bull market, may buy at the peak and sell at the trough—the opposite of wise investing.[7][8]

A real-world example: A startup founder operating in a highly rajasic state might pivot the company's entire business model because of a single large customer request, without conducting proper market research or considering the impact on existing customers. The decision is made quickly, with high conviction, and driven by the desire for growth—but it ignores crucial information that a more sattvic analysis would have revealed.

Strengths and Blind Spots of Rajasic Decisions

The strengths of rajas are substantial: it provides the energy for action, the courage to take risks, and the motivation to persist through obstacles.[2][3] Many of history's greatest achievements—from scientific breakthroughs to social movements—were driven by rajasic energy channeled toward a vision. Rajasic people are often charismatic, engaging, and able to inspire others to move.

The blind spots, however, are equally significant. Rajasic decisions are prone to short-termism (optimizing for the next quarter rather than the next decade), overconfidence, impulsivity, and collateral damage (winning at the expense of relationships, health, or ethical principles).[5][6][7] Rajasic leaders, without sattvic wisdom to balance them, often create organizations that are high-energy but ultimately unstable—excellent at rapid growth but brittle when facing adversity.[1] Furthermore, rajasic thinking becomes increasingly distorted under stress; the busier and more pressured a person becomes, the more they rely on fast, intuitive System 1 thinking, leading to a cascade of poor decisions.[4]

Tamas: Inertia, Ignorance, and Avoidance-Based Decisions

Tamas (तमस्) translates as "darkness" or "obscurity" and represents the quality of inertia, heaviness, ignorance, and collapse.[1][2] A tamasic mind is characterized by confusion, lethargy, lack of discernment, and the tendency toward avoidance, procrastination, and passive acceptance.[1]

Core Characteristics of Tamas

When Tamas dominates, you experience:

• Confusion and mental fog: Your mind feels cloudy, sluggish, and unable to focus. Decisions feel overwhelming because you cannot see clearly.
• Lethargy and lack of motivation: You feel heavy, tired, and unmotivated. The effort required to take action seems disproportionate to any possible benefit.
• Avoidance and procrastination: Rather than confront challenges, you delay, distract, or withdraw. The discomfort of action feels greater than the discomfort of inaction.
• Lack of discernment: You cannot easily distinguish between good and bad options, or between your authentic desires and external pressures. Everything blurs together.
• Despair and hopelessness: You feel trapped in circumstances, unable to imagine change. There is a quality of resignation—"what's the point?"
• Passive acceptance: Rather than shape your environment or circumstances, you are shaped by them. Things happen to you rather than through you.[1][2][6]

How Tamas Influences Decision-Making

Tamasic decision-making is characterized by either non-decision or reactive decision—choosing by default, inertia, or external pressure rather than by genuine consideration.[1][3] A person in a tamasic state often makes decisions that entrench their circumstances further, creating a negative feedback loop.

Consider an employee who knows their job is unfulfilling and that they should seek a new role, but feels too exhausted and demotivated to update their resume or reach out to contacts. The decision—to stay—is made not through active choice, but through avoidance of the effort required to change. Years pass, and they become increasingly bitter, blaming external circumstances for their stagnation.

Or consider a person facing a health crisis—a diagnosis, weight gain, declining energy—who knows what changes are needed but feels too discouraged to begin. They oscillate between resignation ("I'm just like this") and impulsive attempts at change that they cannot sustain. The tamasic pattern is to avoid the situation entirely through distraction or self-medication.[6]

In organizational settings, tamasic employees appear checked-out, producing work that meets minimum standards but lacks care or excellence. In leadership, tamasic tendencies manifest as avoidance of difficult conversations, procrastination on strategic decisions, and a kind of passive-aggressive resignation to "the way things are."

Strengths and Blind Spots of Tamasic Decisions

This may seem counterintuitive, but tamas is not entirely without value. Tamas provides rest, stability, and a natural brake against excessive activity. Without some tamas, a person would burn out entirely—tamas is the body's way of signaling need for recovery. In organizational contexts, tamasic stability can be valuable: routine, consistency, and the ability to maintain structures are necessary for any system to function.

The severe blind spot, however, is that tamasic decision-making often perpetuates suffering and limitation. It is the guna of ignorance (avidya)—not intellectual ignorance, but the failure to see clearly what is actually possible.[1][2][6] A tamasic person makes decisions that keep them smaller, safer, and more stuck. Over time, tamasic patterns become self-reinforcing: inaction leads to stagnation, which leads to discouragement, which leads to further inaction.

Mixed Gunas: The Reality of Most Decisions

It is crucial to understand that virtually no one is purely sattvic, rajasic, or tamasic. Instead, all three gunas operate within every person, in varying proportions that shift based on circumstances, time of day, stress levels, diet, sleep, and countless other factors.[1][2][3] Moreover, the same person may be sattvic in one domain and rajasic or tamasic in another. A person might be sattvic and clear-headed in their professional work, but rajasic and impulsive in their romantic life, and tamasic about their health.

The concept of guna-dissonance—internal conflict arising when competing qualities of Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas pull you in different directions—is particularly relevant to understanding decision paralysis and difficulty.[1][2] Consider Arjuna's dilemma in the Bhagavad Gita: he experiences sattvic compassion (not wanting to harm his relatives), rajasic duty and attachment to honor (wanting to fight and prove himself), and tamasic despair (feeling helpless and hopeless about the outcome).[2][3] These three perspectives genuinely exist within him, creating cognitive paralysis until Krishna's wisdom helps him achieve clarity.

In modern organizational life, guna-dissonance is everywhere. An employee might feel sattvic certainty about a needed ethical stand, rajasic fear about the career consequences of taking it, and tamasic resignation that "nothing will change anyway." A leader might feel sattvic wisdom about the long-term direction of the company, rajasic pressure from investors for short-term returns, and tamasic fatigue from trying to navigate the competing demands.

The Dynamism of the Gunas: How They Shift

One of the most practical insights from guna theory is that these patterns are not fixed traits. They are states—conditioned by lifestyle, circumstances, and choices—and therefore changeable.[2][3][6] Understanding which factors increase or decrease each guna is essential for anyone seeking to shift their decision-making patterns.

Factors That Increase Sattva

• Sleep quality and regularity: 7-8 hours of consistent, good-quality sleep dramatically increases sattvic clarity.[6][9] Sleep deprivation systematically reduces your ability to think clearly.
• Fresh, whole foods: Foods that are naturally nutritious, seasonal, and prepared with care increase sattva.[6][9] This includes fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and clean proteins. The quality of the food, not just calories, matters.
• Regular practice of calm reflection: Meditation, journaling, philosophical reading, and contemplative practices all strengthen sattvic clarity.[6]
• Time in nature: Natural environments, particularly green spaces and bodies of water, naturally soothe and clarify the mind.[6]
• Meaningful relationships: Time with people you love and respect, engaging in substantive conversation, increases sattva.[6]
• Purpose-aligned work: Engaging in work that you find meaningful and that contributes to something larger than yourself strengthens sattvic qualities.[3][6]

Factors That Increase Rajas

• Overstimulation and speed: Excessive coffee, sugar, processed foods, loud environments, constant notifications, and rushing from task to task all increase rajas.[6][9]
• Excessive competition and comparison: Measuring yourself against others, social media, and competitive environments amplify rajasic restlessness.[6]
• Lack of rest and recovery: Working without adequate breaks or vacation accumulates rajas into agitation and burnout.[6][9]
• Stimulating substances: Caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, and other stimulants increase rajas directly.[6][9]
• Sensory excitement: Consuming violent or highly stimulating entertainment, aggressive music, or engaging in high-stimulation activities keeps rajas elevated.[6]

Factors That Increase Tamas

• Poor sleep quality or excessive sleep: Sleeping too much, especially during the day, or sleeping poorly both increase tamas.[6][9]
• Heavy, processed, or stale foods: Foods that are difficult to digest, leftover meals, fried foods, and foods lacking nutritional vitality all increase tamas.[6][9]
• Lack of movement: Prolonged inactivity, sedentary lifestyle, and lack of exercise accumulate tamas.[6][9]
• Alcohol and recreational drugs: These directly increase tamasic heaviness and confusion.[6][9]
• Disorganized routines: Lack of structure, routine, or predictability in your day increases tamasic confusion and inertia.[6][9]
• Negative mental environments: Chronic exposure to violence, chaos, negativity, or hopelessness increases tamas.[6]

The profound implication is that by deliberately adjusting these factors, you can shift your guna balance.[3][6] A person who is operating in a highly rajasic state—overwhelmed, anxious, and making impulsive decisions—can shift toward clarity by improving sleep, reducing caffeine, cutting back on constant stimulation, and building in time for reflection. Someone in a tamasic state can move toward activation by moving the body, cleaning and organizing their environment, eating lighter and fresher foods, and establishing simple daily routines.

Self-Assessment: Identifying Your Dominant Guna

To use the guna framework practically, begin by noticing your habitual patterns. The following reflective questions are designed not to judge, but to illuminate:

Sattvic Self-Reflection

• Do you find it easy to see multiple perspectives in a situation, or do you quickly judge things as right or wrong?
• When facing a difficult decision, do you naturally pause and reflect, or do you feel urgency to act immediately?
• After making an important decision, do you generally feel confident in it, or do you second-guess and worry?
• Do you feel satisfied with what you have, or do you frequently focus on what is missing?
• When someone criticizes you, can you listen to their perspective and learn from it, or do you feel defensive?
• Do you naturally feel connected to other people, or do you often feel separate or competitive with them?

Rajasic Self-Reflection

• Do you frequently feel restless, even when things are going well?
• Do you measure your success by comparing yourself to others?
• Do you tend to make decisions quickly, with conviction, or do you deliberate?
• When you face a setback, do you bounce back quickly, or do you become discouraged?
• Do you find yourself working toward the next goal even before completing the current one?
• Are you easily irritated by slowness or inefficiency in others?

Tamasic Self-Reflection

• Do you frequently procrastinate on important tasks, even when you know they are important?
• Do you often feel confused or unclear about what you actually want?
• Do you struggle to maintain consistent routines, even when you know they would help?
• Do you feel trapped in circumstances or relationships that do not serve you?
• Do you find it hard to motivate yourself to begin projects or changes?
• Do you often feel that your efforts will not make a real difference, so why try?

Notice that these are not judgments—they are observations. Most people will find themselves resonating with aspects of all three gunas. The key is to identify which guna(s) predominate in specific areas of your life and under specific conditions.

Practical Pathways to Greater Clarity

Building Sattvic Decision-Making

The goal is not to eliminate rajas and tamas entirely, but to ensure that sattvic clarity is your baseline, allowing rajas to fuel action and tamas to provide grounding.

Create decision-making conditions: Before making important decisions, ensure adequate sleep, eat a light, nourishing meal, and take time to reflect quietly.[6][9] Do not make major decisions when hungry, exhausted, or overstimulated. This is not weakness; it is wisdom about how your mind actually works.

Develop discernment practices: Engage in regular reflection on past decisions—both successful and unsuccessful. What patterns do you notice? Under what conditions do you make wise choices? When do you tend to err? Journaling about these patterns strengthens sattvic awareness.

Slow down: In a culture that valorizes speed, moving deliberately becomes a radical act. When possible, build in time between stimulus and response. The simple practice of pausing for three conscious breaths before responding to a provocation or opportunity creates space for sattvic wisdom to emerge.

Cultivate meaningful relationships: Surround yourself with people who embody clarity and integrity.[6] Meaningful conversation, in which you are heard and you listen deeply to others, naturally elevates sattvic qualities.

Moderating Excessive Rajas

Rajas itself is not the enemy—it is the driving force of all positive action. The goal is to direct it wisely rather than be driven by it.

Build in recovery: Schedule regular breaks, vacations, and periods of non-productivity.[6][9] Rajas tends to assume that more activity = more results, but this is demonstrably false. Recovery is where learning happens, where insights emerge, and where sustainable energy is restored.

Practice slowing down: Simple practices like slow breathing (especially long exhalations), gentle movement, and time in nature all reduce excess rajas.[6][9] A rajasic person does not need to meditate for an hour; even five minutes of slow breathing creates measurable shifts in physiology and mental state.

Question your urgency: Many of the things that feel urgent are not actually important. Develop the habit of asking yourself: "Is this truly time-sensitive, or am I just feeling pressured?" Often you will find that the apparent urgency is self-generated.

Reduce stimulation: This may seem counterintuitive to a rajasic person who feels bored without external stimulation, but reducing unnecessary stimulation (cutting back on news, social media, excess caffeine) paradoxically leads to better decision-making and more sustainable energy.[6][9]

Addressing Tamasic Inertia

If you notice tamasic patterns in your life, the pathway forward requires both compassion and action.

Start small and specific: Do not expect to overhaul your entire life. Instead, identify one small, concrete change. Rather than "I will get healthier," the action is "I will take a 15-minute walk every morning after breakfast." Rather than "I will be more productive," the action is "I will spend the first 30 minutes of work on my most important project, before checking email."

Create external structure: Tamasic patterns are often self-perpetuating because they lack the structure that provides momentum.[6][9] Create simple routines: wake at a consistent time, eat at consistent times, exercise at a consistent time. This structure does not constrain you; it liberates you from the constant small decisions that drain energy.

Move the body: Physical movement is one of the most powerful antidotes to tamas.[6][9] Even 10 minutes of walking, stretching, or simple exercise significantly shifts tamasic heaviness. Movement generates energy.

Reach out: Tamasic isolation is self-reinforcing.[6] Making one call, sending one message, or sitting with another person can break the pattern. Often the hardest part is beginning; once you connect with someone, energy returns.

Seek support: If tamasic patterns are severe (persistent depression, hopelessness, inability to function), working with a therapist, coach, or trusted mentor provides the external support and accountability needed to shift.[6]

The Convergence of Ancient Wisdom and Modern Psychology

What is remarkable about the guna framework is how clearly it maps onto contemporary psychological science, particularly dual-process theories of cognition and research on decision-making biases.[1][4][5]

The rajasic tendency toward fast, intuitive System 1 thinking correlates directly with the cognitive biases documented in behavioral economics: confirmation bias, overconfidence, availability heuristic, and anchoring.[4][5][7][8] System 1 thinking excels at pattern recognition and rapid response, but is prone to systematic errors, particularly when emotional motivation (desire, fear, ambition) is engaged.

Sattvic decision-making, by contrast, engages the slower, more deliberate System 2 thinking that Kahneman associates with more accurate judgment.[4][5] However, System 2 requires cognitive resources—attention, energy, and time—and these are precisely what the rajasic pace of modern life depletes.

The tamasic state represents a failure mode of both systems: System 1 shuts down (no pattern recognition or intuitive knowing), and System 2 lacks the energy to engage (confusion, inability to concentrate).[4][5] This is the state of learned helplessness documented in psychological research.

The guna framework, then, is not mystical. It is a map of how consciousness works—how your mental state directly determines your decision quality, how lifestyle factors influence that mental state, and how you can deliberately shift patterns through daily practice.[1][2][3][6]

Conclusion: Conscious Choice and the Path of Self-Mastery

The three gunas offer a profound gift: they move you from the illusion that your decisions are purely rational products of logic, to the realization that they are always conditioned by your mental state, which is itself shaped by factors within your control.[1][3]

You are not your habitual patterns. A person who has spent years operating primarily in rajasic or tamasic modes can, through deliberate practice, shift toward greater sattvic clarity. This shift does not happen overnight—it requires patience and consistent small actions—but it is genuinely possible.[3][6]

Every day, in countless moments, you make choices: whether to sleep well or stay up late; whether to eat fresh, nourishing food or processed convenience; whether to move your body or remain still; whether to check your phone or sit with your own thoughts; whether to engage in meaningful conversation or remain isolated; whether to rush through your day or move with intention.

These choices accumulate. Collectively, they determine whether you operate primarily from clarity, ambition, or confusion. They determine the quality of the decisions you make and, ultimately, the quality of the life you create.

The gift of understanding the three gunas is that it transforms decision-making from something that happens to you into something you actively shape. You become the gardener of your own consciousness, deliberately tending the conditions that allow sattvic clarity to flourish.[1]

This is not a path of perfection—even the wisest people experience moments of rajasic reactivity or tamasic heaviness. It is, rather, a path of increasing awareness and skill. Over time, you notice the subtle shifts in your mental state more quickly. You recognize when rajas is pushing you toward hasty action and can gently pause. You notice when tamas is pulling you toward avoidance and can mobilize energy. And you increasingly rest in the clarity that comes when your mind is properly conditioned.

The greatest power you possess is not your intelligence or your effort, but your ability to choose the conditions that shape your consciousness. Master these conditions, and you master the quality of your decisions. And with mastery of your decisions comes genuine freedom—not freedom from circumstance, but freedom in circumstance, the capacity to respond wisely to whatever life presents.

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References

[1] Hridaya Yoga. (2025). "The Three Gunas—Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas." Retrieved from https://hridaya-yoga.com/knowledge/concepts/three-gunas-sattva-rajas-tamas/

[2] The Yoga Institute. (2022). "The Guna Theory of Samkhya: Understanding Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas." Retrieved from https://theyogainstitute.org/theory-of-samkhya

[3] LearnGeeta. (2022). "The Three Gunas and Their Influence on Character and Decision-Making." Retrieved from https://vivechan.learngeeta.com/

[4] The Decision Lab. (2021). "System 1 and System 2 Thinking." Retrieved from https://thedecisionlab.com/reference-guide/philosophy/system-1-and-system-2-thinking

[5] NCBI. (2016). "Systems 1 and 2 Thinking Processes and Cognitive Reflection." Retrieved from https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5344059/

[6] Rushi Ayurveda. (2025). "3 Gunas: The Mental Patterns Ayurveda Says Define You." Retrieved from https://rushiayurveda.com/3-gunas/

[7] Nudging Financial Behaviour. (2025). "Heuristics and Biases in Decision-Making: System 1 and System 2 Thinking Examples." Retrieved from https://www.nudgingfinancialbehaviour.com/heuristics-and-biases-in-decision-making-system-1-and-system-2-thinking-examples/

[8] BC Campus. (2025). "Judgment and Decision-Making: System 1 and System 2 Thinking." Retrieved from https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/kpupsyc1100/chapter/judgment-and-decision-making/

[9] Ayurveda Badems. (2025). "The Three Gunas and Our Consciousness." Retrieved from https://ayurveda-badems.com/gunas-and-consciousness/