What I Read – “Thinking” edited by John Brockman

Tags

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, John Brockman, Jonathan Haidt, Mercier, new science, Paul Bloom, psychology, reasoning, Sperber, thinking, WEIRD

I read that book (being collection of essays about new science of decision-making, problem-solving and prediction) with interest, but what really made me jump was a transcript from Edge Conference titled The New Science of Morality, where Jonathan Haidt, Professor, New York University Stern School of Business, gave his talk. He said the following:

“[…] I want to talk about two giant warning flags – two articles published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), under the wise editorship of Paul Bloom. And I think that these articles are so important that the abstracts from those two articles should be posted in psychology departments all over the country […]. So, the first article is called “The Weirdest People in the World” by Joe Henrich, Steve Heine, and Ara Norenzayan [..] the authors begin by noting that psychology as a discipline is an outlier in being the most American of all the scientific fields. Seventy percent of all citations in major psych journals refer to articles published by Americans. In chemistry, by contrast, the figure is just 37 percent. This is a serious problem, because psychology varies across cultures, and chemistry doesn’t.

So, in the article, they start by reviewing all the studies they can find that contrast people in industrial societies with small-scale societies. And they show that industrialized people are different, even at some fairly low-level perceptual processing, spatial cognition. Industrialized societies think differently.

The next contrast is Western versus non-Western, within large-scale societies. And there, too, they find that Westerners are different from non-Westerners, in particular on some issues that are relevant for moral psychology, such as individualism and the sense of self.

Their third contrast is America versus the rest of the West. And there, too, Americans are the outliers, the most individualistic, the most analytical in their thinking styles.

And the final contrast is, within the United States, they compare highly educated Americans to those who are not. Same pattern.

All four comparisons point in the same direction, and lead them to the same conclusion […] “Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic societies.” The acronym here being WEIRD. “Our findings suggest that members of WEIRD societies are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans. Overall, these empirical patterns suggest that we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions of human nature, on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin and rather unusual slice of humanity”.

Wow. I wanted to say…. So typically American. But that has a lot of implications as it is quite possible that the rest of Western psychologists actually pay attention and draw from that “science” (what also number of citations would suggest). No wonder that Americans, Germans, or whole Western (WEIRD) world have no idea about the morality of Syrians or Afghans… or any other non-Western people. It is quite possible that the same set of theories makes it into politics.

Second article “[…] called “Why Do Humans Reason? Arguments for an Argumentative Theory”, by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber. The article is a review of a puzzle that has bedeviled researchers in cognitive psychology and social cognition for a long time. The puzzle is, why are humans so amazingly bad at reasoning in some contexts, and so amazingly good in others? […] Why is the confirmation bias, in particular – this is the most damaging one of all – so ineradicable? That is, why do people automatically search for evidence to support whatever they start off believing, and why is it impossible to train them to undo that? It’s almost impossible. Nobody’s found a way to teach critical thinking that gets people to automatically reflect on, well, what’s wrong with my position?

And finally, why is reasoning so biased and motivated whenever self-interest or self-preservation are at stake? Wouldn’t it be adaptive to know the truth in social situations, before you then try to manipulate?

The answer, according to Mercier and Sperber, is that reasoning was not designed to pursue the truth. Reasoning was designed by evolution to help us win arguments. […] So, as they put it […] “The evidence reviewed here shows not only that reasoning falls quite short of reliably delivering rational beliefs and rational decisions. It may even be, in variety of cases, detrimental to rationality. Reasoning can lead to poor outcomes, not because humans are bad at it, but because they systematically strive for arguments that justify their beliefs or their actions. This explains the confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, and reason-based choice, among other things.”

Next time you reason with your boos, you know why he does not necessarily makes any sense logically. Or for that matter, your wife. But hey – it maybe that you too are stuck in your false belief and reason yourself into it 🙂

What I Read – “Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking” by Malcolm Gladwell

Tags

Blink, decision making, Malcolm Gladwell, thinking, unconscious thinking

Recently I read somewhere, that I should make notes of what I read and review them from time to time. I decided to give it a try, since I read a lot and I think making such notes will be for me a way of remembering best ideas, quotes, or whatever from my books and magazines. I also decided to share those notes with you, in edited form as some have gotten pretty long. In many cases I copied whole passages without noting the page numbers, which is against good reference practices, but of course I will list title and author of a book (or article) where I got the notes from.

I do that with hope that at least some of you will reach for mentioned magazine or book when you will find my notes interesting. Ach, one more thing: small number of notes do not mean that the book or magazine was not good…

Here is what I noted from the book “Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking” by Malcolm Gladwell:

The part of our brain that leaps to conclusions […] is called the adaptive unconscious, and the study of this kind of decision-making is one of the most important new fields in psychology. The adaptive unconscious is not to be confused with the unconscious described by Sigmund Freud…

This new notion of adaptive unconscious is thought of […] as a kind of giant computer that quickly and quietly processes a lot of the data we need in order to keep functioning as human beings.

…we toggle back and forth between our conscious and unconscious modes of thinking, depending on the situation.

We live in a world that assumes that the quality of a decision is directly related to the time and effort that went into making it.

The first task of “Blink” is to convince you of a simple fact: decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately.

…when should we trust our instincts, and when should we be ware of them? Answering that question is the second task of “Blink”.

The third and most important task of this book is to convince you that our snap judgments and first impressions can be educated and controlled.

“Thin-slicing” refers to the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behaviour based on very narrow slices of experience.

When we leap to a decision or have a hunch, our unconscious is […] sifting through the situation in front of us, throwing out all that is irrelevant while we zero in on what really matters. And the truth is that our unconscious is really good at this, to the point where thin-slicing delivers a better answer than more deliberate and exhaustive ways of thinking.

[…] what we think of as free will is largely an illusion: much of the time, we are simply operating on automatic pilot, and the way we think and act – and how well we think and act on the spur of the moment – are a lot more susceptible to outside influences than we realize.

[…] our unconscious attitudes may be utterly incompatible with our stated conscious values.

If you have a strongly pro-white pattern of associations, for example, there is evidence that that will affect the way you behave in the presence of a black person. It’s not going to affect what you’ll choose to say or feel or do. In all likelihood, you won’t be aware that you’re behaving any differently than you would around a white person. But chances are you’ll lean forward a little less, turn away slightly from him or her, close your body a bit, be a bit less expressive, maintain less eye contact, stand a little farther away, smile a lot less, hesitate and stumble over your words a bit more, laugh at jokes a bit less. Does that matter? Of course it does.

Have you ever wondered why so many mediocre people find their way into positions of authority in companies and organisations? It’s because when it comes to even the most important positions, our selection decisions are a good deal less rational than we think.

[…] just because something is outside of awareness doesn’t mean it’s outside of control.

Our first impressions are generated by our experiences and our environment, which means that we can change our first impressions – we can alter the way we thin-slice – by changing the experiences that comprise those impressions.

[…] when experts make decisions, they don’t logically and systematically compare all available options. That is the way people are taught to make decisions, but in real life it is much too slow.

How good people’s decisions are under the fast-moving, high-stress conditions of rapid cognition is a function of training and rules and rehearsal.

[…] focused on the mechanics and the process that they never looked at the problem holistically. In the act of tearing something apart, you lose its meaning.

[…] truly successful decision-making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking.

If you are forced to consider much more than your unconscious is comfortable with, you get paralyzed. Snap judgements can be made in a snap because they are frugal, and if we want to protect our snap judgements, we have to take steps to protect that frugality.

When we make a split second decision, we are really vulnerable to being guided by our stereotypes and prejudices, even ones we may not necessarily endorse or believe.

Taking our powers of rapid cognition seriously means we have to acknowledge the subtle influences that can alter or undermine or bias the products of our unconscious.

Even though the book promises to teach us how to deal with ingrained, unconscious patterns influencing our decisions, I found it coming too short in that regard. The rest is fine and I knew some of the points made already – sometimes we do or decide things with which we are ourselves baffled. Well, that is our “unconscious mind” deciding. Secondly, delving too much into any process will cause you to lose the reason why you have it in the first place and that is something everyone should remember. For example, if you are processing material to make a decision, you forget to make it – and this should be the outcome of the process.

A Picture is Worth 1000 Words

Tags

1000 words, blogging, photography, picture, thinking

I noticed reading my blog stats that my blog gets many more hits when I post a photo than when I post some text. Either I am a bad blogger, or my messages do not come through (which means that I need to improve my craft), or really picture is worth many words.

There is one other possibility – photography is like a TV with an excuse. It is pleasant to look at without the label of being pulp for your mind. Of course this should be true for all photography, not only mine.

Either way, I am glad that you come to visit. You may come for the pictures and stay for the story, or the other way around. Whatever – I hope what you find here is at least interesting.

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions…

Tags

decision making, decision process, decisions, Harvard Business Review, HBR, process, thinking

If you are a busy executive or a middle level manager, you are, first and foremost, a human being (even if you would rather have all your workers think differently). As a consequence, you are susceptible to human weaknesses or simply to all human limitations, despite all years of training. One of those limitations is ability to stay concentrated, to be analytical, logical and fair throughout the working day. All of those are features you need when making decisions – stuff you will most probably be paid for, as long as those decisions prove to be correct, long and short-term.

As mentioned in current (September) issue of Harvard Business Review on page 72 (article by G. Sargut and R. G. McGrath) “most executives think they can take in more information than research suggest they actually can” (see article here) – a limitation which applies to everyone, not only executives. We all think that we are masters of our own lives, that we can juggle all events around us and stay on top of everything. In truth, we have only very limited time during the day to really think through a few decisions or analyse few events, the more complicated, the fewer. After that, we are tired and we resolve to cognitive short-cuts – without consciously realising that we did so. Thinking about thinking requires energy as well, where supply of that energy is limited.

It is therefore important for any one of us to use that energy correctly. Use it only with the most important issues which really require deeper thought. Sounds easy, but how to do it when you are being bombarded by issues which are important to all except you? Workers coming in with their problems, politics, broken coffee machine, your spouse complaining about you not being there… you get the picture. Your private life, your health issues take a big chunk of your “thinking” energy. The next chunk is taken by surprise events as those occur – crisis management or such. The rest remains for what you have planned or for the rest of unplanned issued that day.

I am not discovering anything unknown here. After all, this is the reason why executives have assistants, why organisations have various levels of management or why there are different responsibility areas, or why there are committees (as in more people can have more energy for thought). Many executives though do not like to use assistants as they cannot force themselves to trust them or they cannot accept the simple fact that there are many ways of taking care of various tasks in addition to “my way”. Many executives choose their managers not because they think differently and bring new angle at looking at things (which requires more thinking when considering them), but because they think the same (which eases the burden). Many also treat committees as political arena to show off their force, not as a chance to analyse issue at hand. Multiply that by the fact that today’s managers and executives are most likely responsible for more decision areas due to layoffs and de-layering.

Those are all dangerous signs – if you have such an executive, I will bet you that he/she is sliding in his correct decision factor (good ones divided by bad ones). He makes less and less of good ones, replacing cognitive process with short cuts. We all use them – we use our experience to help us out in those turbulent times in our daily decisions. We mostly buy the same milk, the same cheese, the same wine – not because we like them so much, but because considering any other choices is tiring, especially after a long day at work. The same short cuts or templates are used by executives, this is also the reason why the ones with more experience used to be correct more often.

And here I have finally arrived at my point – short cuts based on past experiences are not enough in today’s environment. The old templates are not worth a damn right now, especially when it comes to corporate decisions (people relations luckily stay pretty much the same). We need to demand from executives to consider and ponder their decisions more, to get deeper in analysis of the consequences of those decisions. They need to act consciously to accept different points of views or opinions of experts.  They need to do it quicker as well, which also means that their time needs to be freed from other, less important tasks. Using old templates in order to make decisions and being at the same time convinced that we are in control got us to where we are now. Staying with that mode of taking care of business will never get us out.