If You Have Nothing to Say, Say Nothing: Twaddle Tendency
When asked why a fifth of Americans were unable to locate their country on a world map, Miss Teen South Carolina, a high school graduate, gave this answer in front of rolling cameras: “I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don’t have maps, and I believe that our education like such as South Africa and the Iraq everywhere like such as and I believe that they should our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., should help South Africa, and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future.” The video went viral.
Catastrophic, you agree, but you don’t waste too much time listening to beauty queens. Okay, how about the following sentence? “There is certainly no necessity that this increasingly reflexive transmission of cultural traditions be associated with subject-centered reason and future-oriented historical consciousness. To the extent that we become aware of the intersubjective constitution of freedom, the possessive-individualist illusion of autonomy as self-ownership disintegrates.” Ring any bells? Top German philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas in Between Facts and Norms.
How Bonuses Destroy Motivation: Motivation Crowding
A few months ago, a friend from Connecticut decided to move to New York City. This man had a fabulous collection of antiques, such as exquisite old books and handblown Murano glasses from generations ago. I (Rolf Dobelli) knew how attached he was to them, and how anxious he would be handing them over to a moving company, so the last time I visited, I offered to carry the most fragile items with me when I returned to the city. Two weeks later I got a thank-you letter. Enclosed was a $50 bill.
For years, Switzerland has been considering where to store its radioactive waste. The authorities considered a few different locations for the underground repository, including the village of Wolfenschiessen in the center of the country. Economist Bruno Frey and his fellow researchers at the University of Zurich traveled there and recorded people’s opinions at a community meeting. Surprisingly, 50.8 percent were in favor of the proposal. Their positive response can be attributed to several factors: national pride, common decency, social obligation, the prospect of new jobs, and so on. The team carried out the survey a second time, but this time they mentioned a hypothetical reward of $5,000 for each townsperson, paid for by Swiss taxpayers, if they were to accept the proposal. What happened? Results plummeted: Only 24.6 percent were willing to endorse the proposal.
Why There Is No Such Thing as an Average War: The Problem with Averages
Suppose you’re on a bus with forty-nine other people. At the next stop, the heaviest person in American gets on. Question: By how much has the average weight of the passengers increased? Four percent? Five? Something like that? Suppose the bus stops again, and on gets Bill Gates. This time we are not concerned about weight. Question: By how much has the average wealth risen? Four percent? Five? Far from it!
Let’s calculate the second example quickly. Suppose each of fifty randomly selected individuals has assets of $54,000. This is the statistical middle value, the median. Then Bill Gates is added to the mix, with his fortune of around $59 billion. The average wealth has just shot up to $1.15 billion, an increase of more than two million percent. A single outlier has radically altered the picture, rendering the term “average” completely meaningless.
Following the collapse of the Carolingian Empire in the ninth century, Europe, especially France, descended into anarchy. Counts, commanders, knights, and other local rulers were perpetually embroiled in battles. The ruthless warriors looted farms, raped women, trampled fields, kidnapped pastors, and set convents alight. Both the Church and the unarmed farmers were powerless against the nobles’ savage warmongering.
In the tenth century, a French bishop had an idea. He asked the princes and knights to assemble in a field. Meanwhile, priests, bishops, and abbots gathered all the relics that they could muster from the area and displayed them there. It was a striking sight: bones, blood-soaked rags, bricks, and tiles—anything that had ever come in contact with a saint. The bishop, at that time a person of respect, then called upon the nobles, in the presence of the relics, to renounce unbridled violence and attacks against the unarmed. In order to add weight to his demand, he waved the bloody clothes and holy bones in front of them. The nobles must have had enormous reverence for such symbols: The bishop’s unique appeal to their conscience spread throughout Europe, promoting the “Peace and Truce of God.” “One should never underestimate the fear of saints in the Middle Ages and of saints’ relics,” says American historian Philip Daileader.
For weeks, you’ve been working to the point of exhaustion on this presentation. The PowerPoint slides are polished. Each figure in Excel is indisputable. The pitch is a paradigm of crystal-clear logic. Everything depends on your presentation. If you get the green light from the CEO, you’re on your way to a corner office. If the presentation flops, you’re on your way to the unemployment office. The CEO’s assistant proposes the following times for the presentation: 8:00 a.m., 11:30 a.m., or 6:00 p.m. Which slot do you choose?
The psychologist Roy Baumeister and collaborator Jean Twenge once covered a table with hundreds of inexpensive items—from tennis balls and candles to T-shirts, chewing gum, and Coke cans. He divided his students into two groups. The first group he labeled “deciders,” the second, “non-deciders.” He told the first group: “I’m going to show you sets containing two random items and each time you have to decide which you prefer. At the end of the experiment I’ll give you one item you can take home.” They were led to believe that their choices would influence with item they get to keep. To the second group, he said: “Write down what you think about each item, and I’ll pick one and give it to you at the end.” Immediately thereafter, he asked each student to put their hand in ice cold water and hold it there as long as possible. In psychology, this is a classic method to measure willpower or self-discipline; if you have little or none, you yank your hand back out of the water very quickly. The result: The deciders pulled their hands out of the icy water much sooner than the non-deciders. did. The intensive decision making had drained their willpower—an effect confirmed in many other experiments.
Traffic jam on the highway between Los Angeles and San Francisco: surface repairs. I (Rolf Dobelli) spent thirty minutes slowly battling my way through until the chaos was a distant scene in my rearview mirror. Or so I thought. Half an hour later, I was again bumper to bumper: more maintenance work. Strangely enough, my level of frustration was much lower this time. Why? Reassuringly cheerful signs along the road announced: “We’re renovating the highway for you!”
The jam reminded me of an experiment conducted by the Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer in the 1970s. For this, she went into a library and waited at a photocopier until a line had formed. Then she approached the first in line and said: “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?” Her success rate was 60 percent. She repeated the experiment, this time giving a reason: “Excuse me. I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I’m in a rush?” In almost all cases (94 percent), she was allowed to go ahead. This is understandable: If people are in a hurry, you often let them cut in to the front of the line. She tried yet another approach, this time saying: “Excuse me. I have five pages. May I go before you because I have to make some copies?” The result was amazing: Even though the pretext was (a-hem) paper-thin—after all, everyone was standing in line to make copies—she was allowed to pass to the front of the line in almost all cases (93 percent).
Live Each Day as If It Were Your Last—but Only on Sundays: Hyperbolic Discounting
You know the saying: “Live each day as if it were your last.” It features at least three times in every lifestyle magazine and has a slot in every self-help manual’s standard repertoire, too. For such a clever line, it makes you none the wise. Just imagine what would happen if you followed it to the letter: You would no longer brush your teeth, wash your hair, clean the apartment, turn up for work, pay the bills…. In no time, you would be broke, sick, and perhaps even behind bars. And yet its meaning is inherently noble: It expresses a deep longing, a desire for immediacy. We place huge value on immediacy—much more than is justifiable. “Enjoy each day to the fullest and don’t worry about tomorrow” is simply not a smart way to live.
A fox crept up to a vine. He gazed longingly at the fat, purple, overripe grapes. He placed his front paws against the trunk of the vine, stretched his neck, and tried to get at the fruit, but it was too high. Irritated, he tried his luck again. He launched himself upward, but his jaw snapped only at fresh air. A third time he leapt with all his might—so powerfully that he landed back down on the ground with a thud. Still not a single leaf had stirred. The fox turned up his nose: “These aren’t even ripe yet. Why would I want sour grapes?” Holding his head high, he strode back into the forest.
The Greek poet Aesop created this fable to illustrate one of the most common errors in reasoning. An inconsistency arose when the fox set out to do something and failed to accomplish it. He can resolve this conflict in one of three ways: (a) by somehow getting at the grapes, (b) by admitting that his skills are insufficient, or (c) by reinterpreting what happened retrospectively. The last option is an example of cognitive dissonance, or, rather, its resolution.
