In certain situations, we tend to act in irrational patterns, even when it seems to us that we are proceeding from common sense.
20 thinking traps
Cognitive distortions are systematic errors in human thinking, a kind of logical traps.. In certain situations, we tend to act in irrational patterns, even when it seems to us that we are proceeding from common sense.
So, here are the 20 most common thinking pitfalls that rob us of objectivity:
1. Illusion of control
People tend to overestimate their influence on events in which they are interested in the successful outcome. This phenomenon was discovered in 1975 by American psychologist Ellen Langer during experiments with lottery tickets. The participants in the experiment were divided into two groups: people from the first group could choose their own lottery tickets, and the members of the second group were given them without the right to choose. 2 days before the draw, the experimenters offered the participants of both groups to exchange their ticket for another, in a new lottery with a greater chance of winning.
Obviously, the offer was profitable, but those participants who chose the tickets themselves were in no hurry to part with them - as if their personal choice of a ticket could affect the likelihood of winning.
2. Zero Risk Preference
Imagine that you have a choice: reduce a small risk to zero, or significantly reduce a large risk. For example, reduce to zero air crashes or dramatically reduce the number of car accidents. What would you choose?
Based on the statistics, it would be more correct to choose the second option: the death rate from air crashes is much lower than the death rate from car accidents - so in the end this choice will save many more lives. Still, studies show that most people choose the first option: zero risk in some area looks more reassuring, even if your chances of becoming a victim of a plane crash are negligible.
3. Selective perception
Let's say you don't trust GMOs. And if this topic worries you a lot, you probably read news and articles about genetically modified organisms. As you read, you become more and more convinced that you are right: there is danger. But here's the catch - chances are you're paying far more attention to news that supports your point of view than to arguments in defense of GMOs. So, you lose objectivity. This tendency of people to pay attention to the information that is consistent with their expectations, and ignore everything else, is called selective perception.
4. Player error
A player's mistake most often lies in wait for gamblers. Many of them try to find a relationship between the probability of a desired outcome of some random event and its previous outcomes. The simplest example is with a coin toss: if it comes up tails nine times in a row, most people will bet on heads the next time, as if getting heads too often increases the chance of it coming up. But this is not so: in fact, the chances remain the same - 50/50.
5 Survivor Bias
This logical trap was discovered during the Second World War, but you can get caught in it in peacetime. During the war, the US military leadership decided to reduce the number of losses among bombers and issued an order: based on the results of the battles, find out which parts of the aircraft should be protected.
They began to study the returned aircraft and found many holes on the wings and tail - it was decided to strengthen these parts. At first glance, everything looked quite logical - but, fortunately, the observant statistician Abraham Wald came to the aid of the military. And he explained to them that they almost made a fatal mistake. After all, in fact, the holes in the returned aircraft carried information about their strengths, and not about their weaknesses. Aircraft "wounded" in other places - for example, an engine or a fuel tank - simply did not return from the battlefield.
The principle of “wounded-survivors” is worth thinking about even now, when we are going to draw hasty conclusions based on asymmetric information for any two groups.
6. The illusion of transparency
You are in a situation where it is simply necessary to lie. But how difficult it is to do this - it seems to you that they see through you and any involuntary movement will betray your insincerity. Familiar? This is the "illusion of transparency" - the tendency of people to overestimate the ability of others to understand their true motives and experiences.
In 1998, psychologists conducted an experiment with students at Cornell University. Individual students read the questions from the cards and answered them by telling the truth or lying, depending on the instructions on the card. The audience was asked to determine when the speakers were lying, and the speakers were asked to rate their chances of fooling others. Half of the liars assumed that they would be caught - in fact, listeners exposed only a quarter. And this means that the liars greatly overestimated the insight of their listeners.
Why it happens? Most likely, because we ourselves know too much about ourselves. And so we think that our knowledge is obvious to an external observer. However, the illusion of transparency also works in the opposite direction: we also overestimate our ability to recognize the lies of other people.
7. Barnum effect
A common situation: a person reads and stumbles upon a horoscope. He, of course, does not believe in all these pseudosciences, but decides to read the horoscope purely for fun. But a strange thing: the characteristic of the sign that suits him very exactly coincides with his own ideas about himself.
Such things happen even to skeptics: psychologists have called this phenomenon the "Barnum effect" - in honor of the American showman and dexterous manipulator of the 19th century, Finneas Barnum. Most people tend to perceive rather general and vague descriptions as accurate descriptions of their personality. And, of course, the more positive the description, the more matches. This effect is used by astrologers and fortune-tellers.
8. The effect of a self-fulfilling prophecy
Another cognitive distortion that works in the hands of the soothsayers. Its essence is that a prophecy that does not reflect the truth, which sounds convincing, can cause people to involuntarily take steps towards its fulfillment. And in the end, the prophecy, which objectively had not so many chances to come true, suddenly turns out to be true.
The classic version of such a prophecy is described in Alexander Grin's story "Scarlet Sails". The inventor Aigl predicts little Assol that when she grows up, the prince will come for her on a ship with scarlet sails. Assol ardently believes in the prediction and the whole city becomes aware of it. And then Captain Gray, who fell in love with the girl, learns about the prophecy and decides to make Assol's dream come true. And in the end, Aigl turns out to be right, although the happy ending in history was provided by far from fabulous mechanisms.
9. Fundamental attribution error
We tend to explain the behavior of other people by their personal qualities, and our actions by objective circumstances, especially when it comes to some kind of blunders. For example, the other person is probably late because of his lack of punctuality, and his lateness can always be explained by a broken alarm clock or traffic jams. Moreover, we are talking not only about official excuses, but also about the internal vision of the situation - and such an approach to business prevents us from taking responsibility for our actions. So for those who want to work on themselves, it is worth remembering the existence of a fundamental attribution error.
10. Effect of moral trust
A journalist known for his liberal views was caught in homophobia, a priest took a bribe, and a senator advocating family values was photographed in a strip bar. In these seemingly out of the ordinary cases, there is a sad pattern - it is called the "effect of moral trust." If a person develops a strong reputation as a "righteous person", at some point he may have the illusion that he is really sinless. And if he is so good, then a little weakness will not change anything.
11. Cascade of available information
A cognitive distortion to which all the ideologists of the world owe their success: the collective belief in an idea becomes much more convincing if this idea is constantly repeated in public discourse. We often come across it in conversations with grandmothers: many pensioners are confident in the veracity of everything that is often said on television. But the new generation is likely to feel this effect through Facebook.
12. Rhyme effect
We subconsciously tend to consider almost any judgment more reliable if it is written in rhyme - this persuasion technique was used by manipulative psychologists in the Mind Games series. This effect has been confirmed by numerous studies where a group of people were asked to determine the degree of their trust in various rhyming and non-rhyming phrases. Sentences containing rhymes turn out to be noticeably more attractive to the subjects and inspire more confidence in them. For example, the phrase "What sobriety hides, alcohol reveals" was recognized as more convincing than the thesis "Sobriety hides what alcohol reveals." The effect can be provoked by the fact that rhyme facilitates cognitive processes and firmly connects seemingly disparate parts of a sentence in our subconscious.
13. Anchor effect
Many people take the first piece of information they see and draw further conclusions about something based on it alone. As soon as a person "sets the anchor", he makes subsequent judgments, without trying to look a little further than the conventional "parking place".
If the subjects are asked to evaluate the approximate result of a mathematical example 1 × 2 x 3 × 4 x 5 × 6 x 7 × 8 = ? in five seconds, then, due to lack of time, most people will multiply the first few numbers and, seeing that the figure turned out to be not too large, will announce a very modest final result (the average answer is about 512).
But if the sequence of multipliers is reversed: 8x7 x 6x5 x 4x3 x 2x1, then the subject, having performed the first few actions and seeing that the multiplication result is large, will significantly increase his predictions regarding the final answer (average answer - about 2250). The correct multiplication result is 40,320.
14. Heuristic accessibility
If you ask a college student, "Does your school have more students from Colorado or from California?" - then his answer will most likely be based on personal examples that he can remember in a short period of time. The more easily we can remember something, the more we trust this knowledge. If you ask a person a question: “We took a random word: do you think it is more likely to begin with the letter K, or will this letter be the third letter in it?” - then most people will much faster remember words that begin with K, and not words where K is the third letter, and will give their answer based on this. In fact, the standard text contains twice as many words, with K in third place.
15. Stockholm Buyer Syndrome
Often, consciousness retroactively ascribes positive qualities to an object that a person has already chosen and acquired and cannot refuse. For example, if you bought an Apple computer, you are likely to ignore or significantly downplay the shortcomings of that company's computers and, conversely, noticeably increase criticism of Windows-based computers. The buyer will in every possible way justify the purchased expensive product, not noticing its shortcomings, even if they are significant and his choice does not meet his expectations. The same syndrome explains shopping on the basis of the principle “I will be much better at this when I lose weight.”
16. Lure Effect
If the consumer is faced with a choice - to buy a cheaper and less capacious player A or a more expensive and more capacious player B, then someone will prefer a device with a higher capacity, and someone - a lower price. But if player C enters the game, which costs more than A and B, and has more memory than A, but less than B, then by the very fact of its existence it increases the chances of buying player B and makes it a favorite among this trio . This is due to the fact that the buyer sees that a model with more storage can cost less, and this subconsciously influences his choice. The only purpose of such baits is to sway a person in favor of one of two options. And this scheme works not only in marketing.
17. IKEA effect
Giving unreasonably great importance to things in the creation of which the consumer himself takes part. Many items produced by the IKEA furniture store require the buyer to assemble at home, and this is no coincidence: the user appreciates the product much more when he considers it the result of his own labor. Experiments have shown that a person is ready to pay more for a thing that he has assembled himself than for that thing that does not need to be assembled, and considers it to be of better quality and more reliable.
18. "Hot - cold"
A biased assessment of reality that arises from the inability to imagine oneself in a different state and predict one's behavior in a situation associated with this state. For example, when a person is hot, it is difficult for him to understand the charm of coolness, and when he is madly in love, he cannot remember how he lived without an object of passion. Such shortsightedness leads to reckless actions: until we are faced with a really serious temptation, we think that it is not so difficult to resist.
19. Functional fixation
Mental block against the new approach to using the object: paperclips to fasten sheets, hammer to hammer in a nail. This distortion does not allow our consciousness to move away from the original purpose of objects and see their possible additional functions. A classic experiment confirming this phenomenon is the candle experiment. Participants are given a candle, a box of office buttons, and matches, and are asked to stick the candle to the wall so that it does not drip onto the table. Few participants can "rethink" a box of buttons, make a candle holder out of it, and not try to attach a candle to the wall using the buttons themselves.
20. Faith in a just world
There is also a dark side to a completely positive tendency to hope for the best: since it is very difficult for people to come to terms with the fact that the world is unfair and full of accidents, they try to find logic in the most absurd and terrible events. Which, in turn, leads to bias. Therefore, victims of crime are often accused of contributing to such behavior on the part of the perpetrator (a classic example is the “self-blame” approach to rape victims). published
Books on optimal decision making often advise you to trust your intuition or rely on careful analysis of the pros and cons of each option. Why is it so difficult to make the right choice?
There are four enemies of decision in our thinking. You need to know them, understand how they work and how to deal with them.
Four enemies of correct decisions.
- Narrow scope, limitation of the options considered. We need to look for alternative solutions. Expand the field of choice!
- Confirmation bias (selection of information that confirms the correctness of our choice). Collect more data, test your assumptions in real conditions.
- Instant emotions. We need perspective - distance yourself before the decision!
- Arrogance. We are too sure that we are right. Get ready for a possible mistake.
The purpose of the book is to study a four-stage process that will help you make the right choice, change your life for the better, become wiser and more determined. To succeed, you need constant practice, training, until the process becomes second nature. Its value is that it helps us see options that we might have missed and provide previously unnoticed but important information.
Expand the selection field
Avoid narrow borders
The first step is not to trust the yes or no approach. If you put the effort into a broader search, you will find more options than expected.
Try the opportunity cost technique by asking yourself, “What else can you do with the same time and money?”
The extinction test is also effective. Think about what you can do if the alternatives disappear.
Multitracking
Multitracking is the simultaneous consideration of several options (two or three are quite enough). This way you will get a more accurate idea of the problem, you will be able to use the features of all the initial options, combining the good elements and omitting the bad ones. Remember: AND, not OR! This is especially important for business projects.
Comparing several options, a person feels more confident and makes decisions faster, as there is a back-up plan. Options should combine elements of promotion and prevention, the desire to win and caution. This increases the chances of prosperity and emotional health, which is important both at the level of organizations and at the level of personal decisions. When one mood prevails, an alarm should be triggered.
If life suggests "choose one or the other," we must have the nerve to ask: maybe the correct answer is "both"? If we can make both moves, find options that minimize harm and maximize opportunity, then we are more likely to cover the full spectrum of our choices.
Find someone who has already solved your problem
Conduct an analysis of the good ideas of competitors, their best practices. Look inside yourself for bright spots - try to reproduce your own success, your positive experience.
Write down the search results - they may come in handy in the future. Do not forget about analogies, because you can use the world's piggy bank of solutions, and not look for the answer yourself, which is unreasonable and will not work quickly.
Test your assumptions in real conditions
We tend to favor information that confirms our opinion. This distorts the assessment and is harmful.
There are three ways to deal with bias.
- Make it easier for people to disagree with you, argue without becoming an enemy, ignite constructive disagreements in the team.
- Ask questions that reveal contrary information.
- Test yourself by considering opposing points of view.
Zoom in and out
Psychologists distinguish between an “inside” and “outside” view of a situation. The view from the outside is more accurate, it is not the impression of one person, but a wide range of similar situations, a brief overview of real experience.
If you really need quality information and real validation of your ideas, use every shred of experience, engage an outsider's eye, talk to an expert, and your life will become much easier.
But the view from the outside does not take into account the specifics of your situation. And we continue to trust the view from the inside - our impressions and assessments, and this often drives us into a trap.
When evaluating options, close-ups are often the best addition to the big picture. It enhances intuition, brings out nuances, adds information to our decisions.
When we zoom out, we take on an outside perspective and learn from the experiences of others who have already made choices in a similar situation. Both strategies are useful, both improve understanding. We must use both approaches.
A mixture of the big picture and close-up was the strategy of F. Roosevelt, who is considered a master of information gathering. He asked a wide range of questions, noticed and analyzed everything.
teaching
To teach means to test your results in real conditions before taking action. Uching gives more complete information, allowing you to make the right choice. This idea has spread to different areas (design, business, etc.).
Wooching allows you to validate an idea and get started with confidence, as it brings positive changes to the project, and its development gradually improves. It is best suited for situations where we need to quickly collect reliable data.
People often don't want to mess with uching, considering it a waste of time and confident in their ability to predict the future. But a sample of a new employee's work will say more about him than the most favorable impression from the interview.
The biggest enemy of wise decisions is man himself. What to do with it?
Get ahead of the decision
Overcome instant emotions
This is especially important when we are faced with difficult choices. Blinded by particulars, we doubt and suffer, changing our minds daily. Instant emotions are bad advisers. To combat them, there is a 10/10/10 strategy, following which we will consider our decisions in three time frames. How will we treat them in 10 minutes? And after 10 months? And in 10 years?
10/10/10 helps to cope with nervousness and fear of a negative answer. What we feel now is intense and poignant, while the future seems blurry. It gives the present too much power. By inviting you to present your emotions with the same intensity 10 months later, the method helps to put instant emotions into perspective, showing that they are not the only ones that are important in the discussion.
A more subtle form of instant emotion is the principle of simple exposure: people prefer familiar things. We may think that we are making choices based on facts, when in fact we are more trusting in things that are familiar to us.
Another prejudice is aversion to loss: the magnitude of negative emotions in the event of a loss exceeds the magnitude of the positive ones from an equivalent acquisition. When these two forces - the sense of the unfamiliar and the fear of loss - come together, we experience a powerful bias against the loss of the status quo.
So, emotions can lead us to make the wrong choice. To prevent this from happening, you need to distance yourself. Distance adds clarity; when we think of friends, we see a forest; when about ourselves - we get stuck between the trees. Advice to others has one advantage - we advise you not to pay attention to instant emotions and strive to highlight important factors. Perhaps the most useful question for personal decisions is, “What advice would I give to my best friend in this situation?”
All these techniques allow us to better see the overall outline of the situation and make wiser and more courageous choices.
Clarify basic priorities
Before everyone once the question arises: “What do I value more? What is the purpose of my work? Often a painful decision process is a sign of a conflict of "basic priorities". For people, these are goals and aspirations, beliefs and values, for organizations - a system of directions that ensures the health of the company for many years.
The most difficult decision is to make a choice between two basic directions, to figure out your preferences in life. “I work to have money for traveling and hobbies. But if I don’t have enough time to do it, the money won’t bring joy.” This is how we base decisions on our priorities, decisions become more consistent and less painful.
How do we ensure that decisions reflect our core priorities? How to defeat less important tasks that threaten to distract from them? In order to devote more time to priority activities, we must reduce the time we spend on other things.
Ask yourself, what can you give up to make time for the activities you need? Create a list of things to stop doing. It is not easy. You can also set a timer that rings once an hour, and at the time of the call ask yourself: “Am I doing the most necessary now?”. This productive interruption reminds us of our priorities.
Prepare for a Possible Mistake
Extreme Futures
When we think about extreme options, we stretch our feeling to all the possibilities, and this range better reflects reality. We must be ready to face any option between the two extremes that we have outlined. Don't give in to high hopes. It's like a "vaccination" - we don't just think about difficult situations, but we think about how to react when we find ourselves in them.
The most effective methods for coping with problems and finding real opportunities are ante-mortem analysis and pre-parade: “It has been a year since now. Our solution was a complete failure. Why?" or “It has been a year since now. We are heroes. Are we ready for success?
Another method of protection against the unknown is to set a reasonable error limit. After all, we are prone to excessive self-confidence and are not ready for unpleasant surprises. We must look at the future as a spectrum, not as a point, move our searchlights from side to side and map the entire territory. In this way, we can prepare for both bad (through pre-death analysis) and good (through pre-death) situations. It is easier for us to cope with obstacles when we are mentally ready for them.
But even with the best planning, things can not go very well. How do you know when it's time to reconsider a choice you've made? How do you seize the opportunity to cut losses or maximize opportunities? For this we need "mine extensions".
Install "mine streamers"
We go with the flow of life on autopilot, on a wave of past decisions, forgetting that we can change direction. The purpose of stretching is to shake us out of the unconscious routine and make us understand that there is a choice and the time has come to decide. The most familiar form of "stretching" is to set a deadline. Deadlines grab us by the collar: if you are going to do this, you must act right now.
Another strategy, "split" is an effective way to consider whether or not to continue. For example, investors prefer to give out money in rounds, gradually, each time weighing whether the plan is right? "Mine stretching" ensures that we do not waste money or time. In this way, they limit risk, give confidence and create psychological comfort, as they allow you to stay on autopilot until the trigger is triggered - a sense of danger or the possibility of success.
People need to be reminded that the current trajectory of life does not have to be fixed. Stretches provide a priceless sudden realization: I have a choice!
Trust the process
Group decisions are harder to make. How to convince those whose ideas have been rejected that the decision is just?
The most direct and hardest way to make a fair decision is to involve as many people as possible and get a consensus. The discussion is held until a decision is found that satisfies the majority.
Hear what others are saying! Use accurate information to make decisions and give people the opportunity to challenge the data if it's wrong. Avoid bias and personal interests, do not forget about self-criticism, explain why such a decision was made. In this case, compromise and time costs are inevitable. Negotiation is indeed a slower way to reach a decision, but it has a major advantage: it speeds up implementation.
Conclusion
When we make a choice, we cannot know whether it will be successful. Success depends on the quality of the decisions made and on luck. We cannot control luck. But we can control how we make choices. The right process is an ally in every situation.
This book is designed to inspire you to use a better decision process. How to choose a job offer? How to deal with difficult relationships? How to get the best deal? All of these decisions are made through the same process. It inspires the confidence that comes from knowing you've made the best decision possible.
Using the decision process does not mean that your choice will always be easy, but you will be able to calm your mind, stop the cycle of torment. By trusting the process, you can confidently take risks (like insured climbers) and make bolder choices.
Our solutions will never be perfect, but they can be better. Bolder. Wise. The right process can guide us to the right choice. And the right choice at the right time can mean a lot. With the help of such a detailed process, people turn the odds in their favor, make the right decision and do not regret the choice they made.
Chip Heath, Dan Heath
Traps of thinking. How to make decisions you won't regret
Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Decisive
How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work
Published with permission from Chip Heath and Dan Heath c/o Fletcher & Company and Andrew Nurnberg Literary Agency
© Chip Heath and Dan Heath, 2013. All rights reserved.
© Translation into Russian, edition in Russian, design. LLC "Mann, Ivanov and Ferber", 2013
All rights reserved. No part of the electronic version of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet and corporate networks, for private and public use, without the written permission of the copyright owner.
Legal support of the publishing house is provided by the law firm "Vegas-Lex"
© Electronic version of the book prepared by Litres (www.litres.ru)
This book is well complemented by:
Flexible mind
Carol Dweck
The art of explaining
Lee LeFever
Emotional intellect
Daniel Goleman
Dedicated to our wives Susan and Amanda, these are the best decisions we've ever made.
Introduction
Shannon, the head of a small consulting firm, is agonizing over whether or not she should fire CIO Clive. For the past year, Clive has done nothing more than the bare minimum. He is not at all devoid of talents: he is smart, knows how to come up with economical solutions to technical problems, but very rarely takes the initiative. Worse, he has a bad relationship with his colleagues. During meetings, he often criticizes the ideas of others, sometimes quite caustically.
Unfortunately, the loss of Clive will cause short-term problems, because he knows better than anyone how to maintain the company's customer database.
What would you suggest? Dismiss or not?
IF YOU CONCENTRATE in those few seconds while thinking, you will be amazed at how quickly your opinion began to form. Most of us, when we think about Clive's situation, will feel informed enough to begin giving advice. Maybe you would advise Shannon to fire Clive or, on the contrary, give him another chance. But most likely, you would not feel any confusion.
“The wonderful aspect of mental activity is that we rarely feel embarrassed,” said Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist who won the Nobel Prize in Economics for exploring the ways in which human decisions deviate from the strict rationality favored by economists. In the fascinating book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman writes about the ease with which we draw conclusions: “The normal state of our mind means that you have an intuitive opinion about almost everything that comes along the way.
People begin to like or dislike you long before you get enough information about them. Without knowing why, you trust or distrust strangers, or, without doing any analysis, you simply feel that the enterprise will certainly be successful.
Kahneman argues that we are jumping to conclusions because we place too much emphasis on the information available to the eye and do not pay attention to what is hidden from the eye. He puts it this way: "What I see is all that is here." In keeping with Kahneman's visual metaphor, we'll talk about the "spotlight" effect (remember how a spotlight in a theater focuses our attention on what hits a cone of light).
The above situation with Clive is an example of the spotlight effect. Having received information - and it is minimal: he is not proactive, does not communicate well with people, and the boss can kick him out - we immediately began to draw conclusions.
But the spotlight highlights only a small spot. Outside, everything is in shadow. So it is with Clive: we don't think we should ask a few obvious questions. For example, instead of kicking Clive out, why not change his job description to better fit his strengths (he's also good at finding cost-effective solutions)? Maybe Clive could benefit from working with a mentor who could help him set more ambitious goals and reduce his level of prejudice against others?
But what if we dig deeper and suddenly find that Clive's colleagues admire his firm and direct statements (maybe he is an IT version of Dr. House)? And what makes us think that Shannon's impression of Clive is true? What if she's a terrible manager? When we move the spotlight from side to side, the situation gets a different illumination. It is impossible to even hope that we will make an optimal decision about Clive until we start moving the spotlight. However, we do this all the time.
Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Decisive
How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work
Published with permission from Chip Heath and Dan Heath c/o Fletcher & Company and Andrew Nurnberg Literary Agency
Legal support of the publishing house is provided by the law firm "Vegas-Lex"
© Chip Heath and Dan Heath, 2013. All rights reserved.
© Translation into Russian, edition in Russian, design. LLC "Mann, Ivanov and Ferber", 2015
This book is well complemented by:
Carol Dweck
Lee LeFever
Daniel Goleman
Dedicated to our wives Susan and Amanda - the best choice we have ever made
Introduction
Shannon, the head of a small consulting firm, is wondering if she should fire her CIO who hasn't done more than the bare minimum in the past year. And although he can not be called completely untalented - Clive is quite smart, quickly finds profitable non-standard solutions when technical problems arise - he is completely devoid of initiative. Worse, his behavior leaves much to be desired: during discussions, he often and sometimes very caustically criticizes the ideas of colleagues.
However, the loss of an IT director will entail, albeit temporary, but very tangible difficulties, because he knows better than anyone else how to maintain the company's customer base.
What would you recommend to Shannon? Should she keep Clive or fire her?
YOU SHOULD GO BACK to the moments when you've thought about the situation with Clive, and you'll be amazed at how quickly a person forms his own opinion. Most of us immediately feel empowered to give advice. You can recommend that Shannon break up with Clive, or, on the contrary, give him another chance. But in any case, you are unlikely to feel even the slightest confusion.
Psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics for his research on the formation of spontaneous decisions in people that have nothing to do with the strict rational judgments of economists, in his fascinating book Thinking, Fast and Slow, notes: “There is one remarkable feature in the life of your mind: you rarely get confused." Kahneman goes on to talk about the ease with which we draw conclusions: “In a normal state, your mind has intuitive feelings and opinions about almost everything that you encounter. You like or dislike people long before you know enough about them; you trust or distrust strangers for no particular reason; you feel that the case will be successful without going into its analysis.
According to Kahneman, people tend to jump to conclusions because they put too much weight on available information and miss facts that are not on the surface. To analyze this tendency, the scientist uses the following formula: "What you see is what it is." Let's use Kahneman's "visual" analogy and call this trend the "spotlight effect" (sitting in a theater, we tend to focus on what the spotlight is on).
An example of the spotlight effect is the story of Clive. We are easily satisfied with minimal information: he performs his duties only inside and out; does not show initiative; he has a lousy relationship with his co-workers; it seems that the boss is going to fire him - and on the basis of quite accessible facts, we immediately draw our conclusions.
However, the spotlight highlights only a small spot, beyond which much remains in the shadows. So in this situation: we did not even bother to find out things for granted. For example, why immediately get rid of Clive, why not try to change his job responsibilities to better match his strengths (he is still able to find cost-effective solutions)? Perhaps it would be beneficial to work with a mentor. He would help Clive develop bigger goals and reduce the level of complaints against colleagues.
Moreover, if you dig deeper, you would be able to find out that everyone admires his rough, but frank assessments. (It's quite possible that Clive is the IT incarnation of Dr. House.) After all, why did we decide that Shannon's opinion is true and absolutely infallible? What if she's a terrible manager herself? When we point the spotlight in different directions, the situation receives a different illumination. There is no hope that a deliberate decision will be made about Clive unless the spotlight is shifted. And yet we stubbornly continue to judge superficially.
We find it difficult to make decisions precisely for this reason: what is highlighted by the spotlight rarely contains everything necessary for the right choice. Sometimes we just forget to move the beam, but most of the time we don't remember the spotlight at all. We stay so long in a tiny patch of light that we lose sight of the limitless horizons beyond.
IF YOU LEARN the variety of decisions commonly made and the results to which they lead, you will find that in this matter humanity has not reached too much diversity.
For example, the type of activity - people often regret the profession they once chose and change it. A study by the American Bar Association found that 44% of lawyers discourage young people from practicing law. A study of 20,000 top executives found that 40% of them “within 18 months of being appointed either fail and leave of their own accord, or fail and get fired.” More than half of the teachers change the type of activity after four years. According to Philadelphia researchers, teachers are almost twice as likely to quit their jobs as students are to quit their studies.
Business decisions are also often unreasonable. One study of corporate mergers and acquisitions showed that 83% of decisions made by senior executives did not lead to an increase in share price.
When another group of researchers asked 2,207 executives to rate the decisions made in their organizations, 60% reported that bad decisions were made about as often as good ones.
On the personal front, people are no better off. We tend not to save enough for the future to live well after retirement. Moreover, even if we manage to save something, we consistently devalue our stock portfolios, buying high and selling low. Young people do not build relationships with those who suit them. Middle-aged people allow work to invade family life. The elderly wonder why in their youth they enjoyed life so little.
Why is it so difficult to make the right choice? In recent years, many interesting books and articles have been published on the problem of optimal decision making. Prejudices... Recklessness... It turns out that when it comes to making important choices, our brains are not a perfect tool. In addition, since we are programmed to do stupid things, we do not pay due attention to an equally important question: how to do it in such a way as to change this trend?
For some reason, I start reading some books in the original, not suspecting that they have already been translated into Russian. Therefore, I read “The Heart of Changes” (as the book is called in translation) as Switch. I liked it, and I retold passages for blog readers.
Those who wish can find the translation in its entirety and read it if they like my passages (MYTH | Letter-eater | Labyrinth | Litres).
This is the effect of discussing a problem without context. The problem becomes a property of a person when we do not see that the very gluttony was created exclusively by the situation (to eat less, in this case, you just need to give people small buckets, and not change their attitude to food).
The narrowing of the focus of vision encourages labeling people and blaming only themselves for a negative result.
"Knowledge doesn't change anything," Jerry said. “People don't believe words. They should try for themselves."
Under Jerry's guidance, the Vietnamese women developed a program that brought families together in groups of ten. Each group prepared meals together every day. There were also brief rules: the food should contain shrimp, crabs and sweet potato leaves, before cooking you need to wash your hands with soap and water, everyone should participate in the process. These rules were not imposed, the residents themselves agreed with them. Jerry spread healthy practices and taught the villagers to be attentive to food without imposing his presence.
Six months later, studies showed that in the fourteen villages with which Jerry worked, 65% of the children became healthy and even somewhat well-fed. Children born after Jerry's departure also received nutrition developed under him. The changes are permanent.
They called the video game "Remission". The main character is Roxy, a nano-bot in silver armor. It flies through the human body in the blood stream and shoots the tumor with green beams of chemotherapy. As the player completes the next level, they are shown short video clips with parting words from Smitty, the older robot.
Each level of "Remission" could be completed in an hour, for a total of twenty levels in the game. The authors hoped that fully-played teens between levels of entertainment would get the full information from Smitty and take their medication more seriously.
The organizers of the psychological experiment investigated human motivation on the example of cards with stamps.
In one coffee shop, eight stamps had to be collected to receive a free drink. In the second - ten, but the first two were already on the card. Customers at the second coffee shop were much more likely to get a free drink, while customers at the first store dropped the deal. Why? The second had the feeling that the problem had already been solved by 20%.
