Suppose you apply for your dream job. You buff your résumé to a shine. In the job interview, you highlight your achievements and abilities and gloss over weak points and setbacks. When they ask if you could boost sales by 30 percent while cutting costs by 30 percent, you reply in a calm voice: “Consider it done.” Even though you are trembling inside and racking your brain about how the hell you are going to pull that off, you do and say whatever is necessary to get the job. You concentrate on wowing the interviewers; the details will follow. You know that if you give even semi-realistic answers, you’ll put yourself out of the race.
Imagine you are a journalist and have a great idea for a book. The issue is on everyone’s lips. You find a publisher who is willing to pay a nice advance. However, he needs to know your timeline. He removes his glasses and looks at you: “When can I expect the manuscript? Can you have it ready in six months?” You gulp. You’ve never written a book in under three years. Your answer: “Consider it done.” Of course you don’t want to lie, but you know that you won’t get the advance if you tell the truth. Once the contract is signed and the money is nestling in your bank account, you can always keep the publisher at bay for a while. You’re a writer; you’re great at making up stories!
You Have No Idea What You Are Overlooking: Illusion of Attention
After heavy rains in the south of England, a river in a small village overflowed its banks. The police closed the ford, the shallow part of the river where vehicles cross, and diverted traffic. The crossing stayed closed for two weeks, but each day at least one car drove past the warning sign and into the rushing water. The drivers were so focused on their car’s navigation systems that they didn’t notice what was right in front of them.
The above observation is from cognitive psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris. At Harvard in the 1990s, they filmed two teams of students passing basketballs back and forth. One team wore black T-shirts, the other, white. The short clip, “The Monkey Business Illusion,” is available on YouTube. (Take a look before reading on.) In the video, viewers are asked to count how many times the players in white T-shirts pass the ball. Both teams move in circles, weaving in and out, passing back and forth. Suddenly, in the middle of the video, something bizarre happens: A student dressed as a gorilla walks into the center of the room, pounds his chest, and promptly disappears again. At the end, you are asked if you noticed anything unusual. Half the viewers shake their heads in astonishment. Gorilla? What gorilla?
Why You Prefer Novels to Statistics: Personification
For eighteen years, the American media was prohibited from showing photographs of fallen soldiers’ coffins. In February 2009, Defense Secretary Robert Gates lifted this ban and images flooded onto the Internet. Officially, family members have to give their approval before anything is published, but such a rule is unenforceable. Why was the ban created in the first place? To conceal the true costs of war. We can easily find out the number of casualties, but statistics leave us cold. People, on the other hand, especially dead people, spark an emotional reaction.
Why is this? For eons, groups have been essential to our survival. Thus, over the past hundred thousand years, we have developed an impressive sense of how others think and feel. Science calls this the “theory of mind.” Here’s an experiment to illustrate it: You are given $100 and must share it with a stranger. You can decide how it is divided up. If the other person is happy with your suggestion, the money will be divided that way. If he or she turns down your offer, you must return the $100 and no one gets anything. How do you split the sum?
Three scenarios—which would irk you the most? (a) Your friends’ salaries increase. Yours stays the same. (b) Their salaries stay the same. Yours does, too. (c) Their average salaries are cut. Yours is, too. If you answered A, don’t worry, that’s perfectly normal: You’re just another victim of the green-eyed monster.
Here is a Russian tale: A farmer finds a magic lamp. He rubs it, and out of thin air a genie appears who promises to grant him one wish. The farmer thinks about this for a little while. Finally, he says: “My neighbor has a cow and I have none. I hope that his drops dead.”
As absurd as it sounds, you can probably identify with the farmer. Admit it: A similar thought must have occurred to you at some point in your life. Imagine your colleague scores a big bonus and you get a gift certificate. You feel envy. This creates a chain of irrational behavior: You refuse to help him any longer, sabotage his plans, perhaps even puncture the tires of his Porsche. And you secretly rejoice when he breaks his leg skiing.
Why New Year’s Resolutions Don’t Work: Procrastination
A friend, a writer, someone who knows how to capture emotion in sentences—let’s call him an artist—writes modest books of about a hundred pages every seven years. His output is the equivalent of two lines of print per day. When asked about his miserable productivity, he says: “Researching is just so much more enjoyable than writing.” So he sits at his desk, surfing the Web for hours on end or immersed in the most abstruse books—all in the hope of hitting upon a magnificent, forgotten story. Once he has found suitable inspiration, he convinces himself that there is no point starting until he is in the “right mood.” Unfortunately, the right mood is a rare occurrence.
Another friend has tired to quit smoking every day for the past ten years. Each cigarette is his last. And me (Rolf Dobelli)? My tax returns have been laying on my desk for six months, waiting to be completed. I haven’t yet given up hope that they will fill themselves in.
A windy fall day in the early 1980s. The wet leaves swirled about the sidewalk. Pushing my bike up the hill to school, I (Rolf Dobelli) noticed a strange leaf at my feet. It was big and rust-brown, and only when I bent down did I realize it was a 500-Swiss franc bill! That was the equivalent of about $250 back then, an absolute fortune for a high school student. The money spent little time in my pocket: I soon bought myself a top-of-the-range bike with disc brakes and Shimano gears, one of the best models around. The funny thing was my old bike worked fine.
Admittedly, I wasn’t completely broke back then: I had managed to save up a few hundred francs through mowing grass in the neighborhood. However, it never crossed my mind to spend this hard-earned money on something so unnecessary. The most I treated myself to was a trip to the movies every now and then. It was only upon reflection that I realized how irrational my behavior had been. Money is money, after all. But we don’t see it that way. Depending on how we get it, we treat it differently. Money is not naked; it is wrapped in an emotional shroud.
How Eye-Catching Details Render Us Blind: Salience Effect
Imagine the issue of marijuana has been dominating the media for the past few months. Television programs portray potheads, clandestine growers, and dealers. The tabloid press prints photos of twelve-year-old girls smoking joints. Broadsheets roll out the medical arguments and illuminate the societal, even philosophical aspects of the substance. Marijuana is on everyone’s lips. Let’s assume for a moment that smoking does not affect driving in any way. Just as anyone can wind up in an accident, a driver with a joint is also involved in a crash every now and then—purely coincidentally.
Kurt is a local journalist. One evening, he happens to drive past the scene of an accident. A car is wrapped around a tree trunk. Since Kurt has a very good relationship with the local police, he learns that they found marijuana in the backseat of the car. He hurries back to the newsroom and writes this headline: “Marijuana Kills Yet Another Motorist.”
Two stories: Paul owns shares in company A. During the year, he considered selling them and buying shares in company B. In the end, he didn’t. Today he knows that if he had done so, he would have been up $1,200. Second story: George had shares in company B. During the year, he sold them and bought shares in company A. Today he also knows that if he had stuck with B, he would have netted an extra $1,200. Who feels more regret?
Regret is the feeling of having made the wrong decision. You wish someone would give you a second chance. When asked who would feel worse, 8 percent of respondents said Paul, whereas 92 percent chose George. Why? Considered objectively, the situations are identical. Both Paul and George were unlucky, picked the wrong stock, and were out of pocket for the exact same amount. The only difference: Paul already possessed the shares in A, whereas George went out and bought them. Paul was passive, George active. Paul embodies the majority—most people leave their money lying where it is for years—and George represents the exception. It seems that whoever does not follow the crowd experiences more regret.
