People’s status and positions are often tied to certain decisions and/or supportive of the status quo. As such, they are strongly motivated to avoid or muddy any exercise that might threaten that order. This resistance must be eliminated as well. Fortunately, there’s a framing to get us there.
Confirmation bias is dangerous as it causes us to ignore or reject valid information that would serve us if we paid attention. But we don’t, in the interest of defending our past positions.
It’s called Loss Aversion, and it describes the general tendency for people to be twice as motivated to avoid losses as to secure gains. Put another way, losses hit us twice as powerfully as wins.
Sunk Cost Fallacy and Organizational Decision-Making The captain goes down with the ship, and we go down with our investments.
The halo effect is what happens when people take a single piece of positive information and create a full profile based on that. When we see the pic of the billionaire giving away a big check, we’ll often conclude, “There is a good person.”
No matter how much we prepare, plan, or strategize, there will always be unforeseen factors that we have to process in the moment, using our judgment. And that’s where things get a little hairy, because in certain cases our judgment is wired not to work.
So, as we assess the wisdom of, “Always trust your instinct,” we’re incentivized to remember examples of our intuitions proving correct (regardless of whether we heeded it). But the countless examples of our intuitions’ getting it wrong are a lot harder to remember.
This fundamental understanding provides a crucial insight into the human experience. Our instincts are always safe, but not always correct. Sometimes we have no choice; instincts are our only option.
That is why assessments of probability are inseparable from decision-making; that is how we do it. So, whenever we find that something is dramatically altering our assessments of probability, it is very much in our interests to understand and account for it.
The problem, of course, is that planning takes a lot more work. And even putting in the work offers no guarantees, merely improved chances of success. There’s a reason it’s a classic: “The best way to make God laugh is to make a plan.”
Theoretically, these will make you chuckle. And these will make you think. In that order. Theoretically.
When your actual and figurative meanings compete, you’re in The Irony Bowl