1. Who’s the Easiest Person to Fool?
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FROM THE DECEMBER 2013 ISSUE OF RESEARCH MAGAZINE • SUBSCRIBE!
NOVEMBER 25, 2013
Who’s the Easiest Person to Fool?
In 1587, the Roman Catholic Church
created the position of Advocatus Diaboli
(the “Devil’s Advocate”) to prepare and
raise all possible arguments against the
canonization of any candidate for
sainthood. Theology aside, it’s a
fantastic idea, even if almost nobody
emulates it.
There is a wide body of research on what has come to be known as motivated
reasoning and its flip side, confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is our tendency to
notice and accept that which fits within our preconceived notions and beliefs, while
motivated reasoning is our complementary tendency to scrutinize ideas more critically
when we disagree with them than when we agree.
We are similarly much more likely to recall supporting rather than opposing evidence.
Upton Sinclair offered perhaps its most popular expression: “It is difficult to get a man
to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”
A related problem is what Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman calls the “planning
fallacy.” It’s a corollary to optimism bias (think Lake Wobegon—where all the children
are above average) and self-serving bias (where the good stuff is my doing and the
bad stuff is always someone else’s fault). The planning fallacy is our tendency to
underestimate the time, costs and risks of future actions and at the same time
overestimate the benefits thereof. It’s why we underestimate bad results. It’s why we
think it won’t take us as long to accomplish something as it does. It’s why projects tend
to cost more than we expect. It’s why the results we achieve aren’t as good as we
expect.
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2. Who’s the Easiest Person to Fool?
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These cognitive biases—among others—are a constant threat to our decision-making.
Fortunately, behavioral economics has done a terrific job at providing an outline as to
what these risks look like. It is one thing to recognize these cognitive difficulties,
of course, and quite another actually to do something about them.
Unfortunately, one major difficulty is the bias blind spot—our general inability to
recognize that we suffer from the same cognitive biases that plague other people. If
we believe something to be true, we quite naturally think it’s objectively true and
assume that those who disagree have some sort of problem. It’s the same kind of
thinking that allows us to smile knowingly when friends tell us about how smart,
talented and attractive their children are while remaining utterly convinced about the
objective truth of the attributes of our own kids.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot we can do to deal with these issues, as even Kahneman
concedes. Perhaps if we could only be more like scientists, who employ a rigorous
method to root out error, our process might improve.
We can start by using what Harvard Medical School’s Atul Gawande calls “the power
of negative thinking,” which is the essence of the scientific method. That means
actively looking for failures and how to overcome them. Yet scientists themselves fall
prey to inherent bias, despite their formal protocols designed to find and eliminate
error. In his famous 1974 Caltech commencement address, the great physicist
Richard Feynman talked about the scientific method as the best means to achieve
progress. Even so, notice his emphasis: “The first principle is that you must not fool
yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”
Scientists routinely acknowledge that they get things wrong, at least in theory, but they
also hold fast to the idea that these errors get corrected over time as other scientists
try to build upon earlier work. However, John Ioannidis of Stanford has shown that
“most published research findings are probably false,” and subsequent reviews
support that claim.
In a commentary in Nature last year, scientists at Amgen disclosed that they had been
unable to replicate the vast majority (47 of 53) of the landmark pre-clinical research
studies they had examined. In a similar study, researchers at Bayer HealthCare
reported that they had reproduced the published results in just a quarter of 67 seminal
studies they examined. Despite rigorous protocols and a culture designed to root out
error aggressively, scientists get things wrong—really important things—a lot more
often than we’d like to think.
A Grim Story
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3. Who’s the Easiest Person to Fool?
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The cautionary tale of Ignaz Semmelweis illustrates the problem. Semmelweis was a
19th century Hungarian obstetrician who discovered that the often-fatal puerperal
fever, then common among new mothers in hospitals, could essentially be eliminated
if doctors simply washed their hands before assisting with childbirth. He thereupon
initiated a strict regimen at his hospital whereby all who would assist in a birthing must
first wash their hands with a chlorinated solution. As a consequence, death rates there
plummeted.
Semmelweis expected a revolution in hospital hygiene as a consequence of his
findings. But it didn’t come, because of a phenomenon now called the “Semmelweis
Reflex.”
His hypothesis, that there was only one cause of the disease and that it could be
prevented simply through cleanliness, ran counter to the prevailing medical ideology of
the time, which insisted that diseases had multiple causes. Despite the practical
demonstration of its effectiveness, his approach was largely ignored, rejected or even
ridiculed. Ideology trumped facts. Things got so bad that Semmelweis was ultimately
dismissed from his hospital post and harassed by the medical community in Vienna,
forcing him to move to Budapest.
In Budapest, Semmelweis grew increasingly outspoken and hostile towards
physicians who refused to acknowledge his discovery and implement his protocols.
Vitriolic exchanges ensued, in medical literature and in letters, and Semmelweis was
eventually lured to an asylum where his opponents had arranged for his incarceration.
He was beaten severely and put in a straitjacket. He died within two weeks. This story
hardly fits within the scientific ideal. As a consequence, the “Semmelweis Reflex” is
our tendency to reject evidence when it contradicts our favored norms and beliefs. It is
exceedingly hard for us to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
Per Kahneman, organizations are more likely to succeed at overcoming bias than
individuals. That’s partly on account of resources, and partly because self-criticism is
so difficult. The best check on bad decision-making we have is when someone (or,
when possible, an empowered team) we respect sets out to show us where and how
we are wrong. Within organizations that means trying to foster what Kahneman calls
“adversarial collaboration” and making sure that everyone can be challenged without
fear of reprisal and that everyone (and especially anyone in charge) is accountable.
But it doesn’t happen very often. Kahneman routinely asks groups how committed
they are to better decision-making and if they are even willing to spend 1% of their
budgets on doing so. Sadly, he hasn’t had any takers yet.
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