decision making

Here’s a very interesting article on the idea of ‘free choice.’

“Free choice” may not be as free as it seems

The article explains that the subjects decision to press a button was made well before they were conscious of the decision.

This isn’t discussed in the article, but there’s another takeaway. If you are a marketer, sales person, or someone else involved in changing minds, it’s hard to rely on a person’s own accounting for their decision making. Because there are so many things occuring at a subconcious level, it’s hard for us to say which specific details were responsible for our decision.

If you’ve ever had a discussion about something controversial – politics, religion, life/death – you’ll often find that there is never really any progress made on either side of the argument. That’s usually because each side has a deeply rooted emotional belief in their viewpoint and they don’t change their mind to arguments of logic and reason. Weirdly enough, the only facts they listen to are the that support their original viewpoint.

Here is an article discussing that issue. If you’ve followed Tversky and Kahneman, you’ll be familiar with some of the ideas.

Link:   How We Support Our False Beliefs

Also, here’s an extended discussion based on the article but using it to discuss topics in medicine. Interesting read.

Link:   “There must be a reason,” or how we support our own false beliefs

A heuristic is a mental shortcut we – all humans – use in our decision making process. We develop heuristics because the costs associated with considering and evaluating EVERY decision would cripple our mental processing. We would constantly overheat our brains trying to make the simplest of decisions.

For example, if you are in a busy building and you are leaving, you don’t stop and carefully calculate which exit is the most efficient route to save you time. You also don’t stop and evaluate the relative safety of the door opening and the frame around the door. You also don’t stop to consider the possibility that you will become lodged in the door never to escape. There are a million other things you don’t evaluate.

What happens in your brain is something like this-

You: I want to leave the building.

Brain: Follow the other people leaving the building.

And, just like that, we’re outside.

A heuristic is not inherently good or bad, it just is. However, social psychologists and behavior specialists are coming to realize that there are some heuristics that can lead us down faulty decision making paths.

And that’s where the fun begins.

Have you ever been in conversation with someone who had no idea what they were talking about? Maybe you were at a party, in a meeting, or just standing in line for a burger. And someone starts talking about a topic and they are 100% wrong. And you know it’s wrong.

(For the record, I’m not talking about differences of opinion here. I’m talking about being wrong on well-established subjects that have verifiable facts, not opinions. )

Here’s the interesting part of their blathering. They don’t realize they are wrong In fact, they truly believe they know what they are talking about. Sounds odd, right? Surely someone can’t go on endlessly without realizing they are wrong. They must have some idea that they are wrong, or at least off by a little. Right?

A Cornell University study set out to prove just that point. And, as it turns out, people who scored lower on tests results about a topic had an interesting idiosyncrasy. In addition to their low scores, they didn’t realize  their own low scores. They over-estimated their ability on the tests.

The study compared 3 groups and ran tests on their expertise in humor, logical reasoning, and grammar. The low scorers and high scorers were asked to gauge their own performance. In all cases, the low scorers in the groups all significantly overestimated their performance. Every time.

Fascinating.

The explanation for this overestimate is hidden within the low scores. Because the lower percentile doesn’t have knowledge in the field, hence the low scores, they also lack the capacity to accurately evaluate their performance. They lack the metacognitive ability to asses themselves.

What does this mean for you? It means next time you hear someone spouting off on a topic and they don’t know what they are talking about, take pause before correcting them. They earnestly believe in what they are saying. You correcting them probably won’t lead anywhere except an argument, since they don’t have the capacity to correctly assess your argument.

Source article:  Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments