[acb-hsp] Three Self-Delusions

[peter altschul]

Three Self-Delusions That Influence Your Decisions And 
Productivity
  BY Kevin Purdy Aug 21, 2011
  Why do you put things off, buy over-priced items, and stick 
with decisions that aren't paying off? Your strangely wired 
brain, silly.  The author of stally Are Not So Smartst shows us a 
few common mental defects, fallacies, and traps to watch out for.
  David McRaney spends a lot of time thinking about all the ways 
thinking doesn't work.  He catalogues delusions, fallacies of 
thinking, and the psychological short-circuits that cause 
procrastination, groupthink, and poor decisions.  But McRaney 
swears his index of common mental shortcomings actually inspires 
him--and could inspire you to know thy working self.
  stally Are Not So Smart McRaney's blog and forthcoming book is 
intentionally labeled as a "Celebration of Self-Delusion." Sure, 
topics like the bystander effect showing how bigger crowds 
encourage less help for people in trouble, and the backfire 
effect where people learn to reject science when it questions 
their beliefs, are likely to get under anyone's skin after some 
reflection.  But McRaney says that understanding our mental 
malfuctions should inspire us.
  "(It's) an appeal to be more humble and recognize we can't 
always overcome these things, so we should factor them into our 
lives, our business practices, our politics," McRaney wrote in an 
email exchange.  "If we know we are all equally susceptible to 
certain fallacies, biases, heuristics, prejudices, 
manipulations--we can use that knowledge to appeal to our better 
angels."
  Here are a few of the self-delusions McRaney writes about that 
are most apt to throw you off during those 40 hours you're paid 
to think straight and make decisions.
  ininThe Sunk Cost Fallacyinin
  You'd like to believe that you can evaluate the future worth of 
a project, an investment, or just a laptop with the stoic gaze of 
a Wall Street lifer.  But you tend to favor those things you've 
already "invested" in, because otherwise--horror of 
horrors--you'd have made a mistake in your past.
  That's the sunk cost fallacy Another short version: The pain of 
losing something is twice as strong as the joy in gaining the 
same exact thing.  McRaney wrote that this single understanding 
has made the biggest change in his life.  "There are a lot of 
applications, like ejecting from a career path, a degree, or a 
relationship instead of staying the course, just because you've 
already invested a lot of time and effort into it.  It's a silly 
thing we all do, and I used to fall prey to that one every day."
  You Are Not So SmartininThe Anchoring Effectinin
  When you've chosen from a set of options, be they shirts, work 
bids, or employees, you like to tell yourself that you found the 
sweet spot between price and value.  In reality, the first option 
you saw--the white oxford number, the lowball offer, the woman 
with the non-profit experience--has a significant impact on what 
you end up choosing.
  McRaney illustrates the anchoring effect with an experiment in 
which researchers described an item, like a bottle of wine or a 
cordless trackball pointer, and then had volunteers write down 
the last two digits of their Social Security number--just as a 
joke, ha, ha, now let's actually bid.  In the end, people with 
higher Social Security digits paid up to 346 percent more than 
those with lower numbers.
  ininProcrastinNinin
  What more is there to learn about the nearly universal vice of 
putting things off? Plenty.  McRaney states that writing on the 
topic of procrastination was "telling my life story."
  In exploring the science behind that ever-growing pile of 
dishes in the sink, you learn about present bias, our conscious 
inability to notice that our tastes change over time.  He 
presents a glimpse at the struggle for delayed gratification 
through the "marshmallow test And another term you probably 
understand as well as anybody else, but maybe didn't have a name 
for: hyperbolic discounting In other words, you learn that being 
stronger in the face of your every mental instinct requires that 
you be "adept at thinking about thinking," as McRaney writes:
  You must realize there is the you who sits there now reading 
this, and there is a you sometime in the future who will be 
influenced by a different set of ideas and desires, a you in a 
different setting where an alternate palette of brain functions 
will be available for painting reality.
  "This is why food plans like Nutrisystem work for many people.  
Now-you commits to spending a lot of money on a giant box of food 
which future-you will have to deal with.  People who get this 
concept use programs like Freedom which disables Internet access 
on a computer for up to eight hours, a tool allowing now-you to 
make it impossible for future-you to sabotage your work.
  Copyright Ággc) 2011 Mansueto Ventures LLC.  All rights 
reserved.