Five Invisible Traps Boris Could Avoid in His Decision Making

Bad decisions can often be traced back to the way the decisions were made–the alternatives were not clearly defined; the right information was not... more?

Making decisions is the most important job for any national leader. It’s also the toughest and the riskiest. Bad decisions can damage political parties and a career, sometimes irreparably, when we should be prioritising the physical and mental health of?the population. So where do bad decisions come from? In many cases, they can be traced back to the way the decisions were made—the alternatives were not clearly defined, the right information was not collected, the costs and benefits were not accurately weighed. But sometimes the fault lies not in the decision-making process but rather in the mind of the decision maker. The way the human brain works can sabotage our decisions, or put it another way influence our decisions without us even knowing it??

Known as heuristics, they serve us well in most situations. In judging distance, for example, our minds frequently rely on a heuristic that equates clarity with proximity. The clearer an object appears, the closer we judge it to be. The fuzzier it appears, the farther away we assume it must be. This simple mental shortcut helps us to make the continuous stream of distance judgments required to navigate the world.?

A cognitive bias is a systematic error in thinking that occurs when people are processing and interpreting information in the world around them and affects the decisions and judgments that they make.?

Heuristics are mental shortcuts that ease an individual’s cognitive load when making decisions. We make on average 35,000 decisions a day! We refer to them as rules of thumb, educated guesses, intuition and stereotyping?

The ICE behavioural insights team lean on this research and science daily, and we have identified a whole series of such flaws in the way we think in making decisions. Some, like the heuristic for clarity, are sensory misperceptions. Others take the form of biases. Others appear simply as irrational anomalies in our thinking. What makes all these traps so dangerous is their invisibility. Because they are hardwired into our thinking process, we fail to recognise them—even as we fall right into them.?

For the PM, whose success hinges on the key decisions he makes or approves, the psychological traps are especially dangerous. They can undermine everything from the NHS to Economic resilience and things like bias such as short-term thinking, ‘discounting’ and ‘sunk cost’ all play a part in what are often poor and dangerous decisions. While no one can rid their mind of these ingrained flaws, anyone can follow the lead of airline pilots who have learnt to understand the traps and compensate for them. We believe this is essential for modern leaders. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r0avhWk-xk Matthew Syed on Black Box Thinking?

In this article, we examine several well-documented psychological traps that we fear are particularly affecting the decision making of our Government and Prime Minister. In addition to reviewing the causes and manifestations of these traps, we offer some specific ways they can guard against them. It’s important to remember, though, that the best defence is always awareness of the heuristics and biases at play.??

The Anchoring Trap?

How would you answer these two questions??

Is the population of Turkey greater than 35 million??

What’s your best estimate of Turkey’s population??

If you’re like most people, the figure of 35 million cited in the first question (a figure we chose arbitrarily) influenced your answer to the second question. Over the years, we’ve posed those questions to many groups of people. In half the cases, we used 35 million in the first question; in the other half, we used 100 million. Without fail, the answers to the second question increase by many millions when the larger figure is used in the first question. This simple test illustrates the common and often pernicious mental phenomenon known as anchoring. When considering a decision, the mind gives disproportionate weight to the first information it receives. Initial impressions, estimates, or data anchor subsequent thoughts and judgments.?

Anchors take many guises. They can be as simple and seemingly innocuous as a comment offered by someone we trust or as a statistic. Right now, in fact, for 20 months we have been anchoring to advice and stats, so how can the right people let go of anchoring to information that may be misleading them???

In the business world and Government, one of the most common types of anchors is a past event or trend. Say attempting to project the growth on Omicron by looking at the growth of Delta. The old numbers become anchors, which the forecaster then adjusts based on other factors. This approach, while it may lead to a reasonably accurate estimate, tends to give too much weight to past events and not enough weight to other factors.??

Four ways to reduce the effect of anchoring?

The effect of anchors in decision making has been documented in thousands of experiments. No one can avoid their influence; they’re just too widespread. But people who are aware of the dangers of anchors can reduce their impact by using the following techniques:?

• Always view a problem from different perspectives. Try using alternative starting points and approaches rather than sticking with the first line of thought that occurs to you.?
• Think about the problem on your own before consulting others to avoid becoming anchored by their ideas.?
• Be open-minded. Seek information and opinions from a variety of people to widen your frame of reference and to push your mind in fresh directions.?
• Be careful to avoid anchoring your advisers, consultants, and others from whom you solicit information and counsel. Tell them as little as possible about your own ideas, estimates, and tentative decisions. If you reveal too much, your own preconceptions may simply come back to you.?

The Status-Quo Trap?

We all like to believe that we make decisions rationally and objectively, yet we often have a strong bias towards decisions and behaviours that perpetuate the status quo. But the fact is, we all carry biases, and those biases influence the choices we make. On a broad scale, we can see this tendency with the new variant. The initial tendency to hold to the booster campaign, (whilst important) just doing this and not looking down, being late to make additional design decisions (I fear we are already too late, again) is for us a clear example of the Status Quo trap.??

Decision makers display a strong bias toward alternatives that perpetuate the status quo.?

The source of the status-quo trap lies deep within our psyches, in our desire to protect our egos from damage. Breaking from the status quo means acting, and when we act, we take responsibility, thus opening ourselves to criticism and to regret. Not surprisingly, we naturally look for reasons to do nothing. Sticking with the status quo represents, in most cases, the safer course because it puts us at less psychological risk.?

In Government, where sins of commission (doing something) tend to be punished much more severely than sins of omission (doing nothing), the status quo holds a particularly strong attraction. “Let’s not rock the boat right now,” the typical reasoning goes. “Let’s wait until the situation stabilises.” But as time passes, the existing structure becomes more entrenched, and altering it becomes harder, not easier. Having failed to seize the occasion when change would have been expected, Government finds itself stuck with the status quo or a least in catch up just like in wave one and two.?

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Six ways to avoid the status-quo trap?

Once you become aware of the status-quo trap, you can use these techniques to lessen its pull:?

• Always remind yourself of your objectives and examine how they would be served by the status quo. Remember, the status isn’t always a bad thing but on the other hand you may find that elements of the current situation act as barriers to your goals.?
• Never think of the status quo as your only alternative. Identify other options and use them as counterbalances, carefully evaluating all the pluses and minuses.?
• Ask yourself whether you would choose the status-quo alternative if, in fact, it wasn’t the status quo.?
• Avoid exaggerating the effort or cost involved in switching from the status quo.?
• Remember that the desirability of the status quo will change over time. When comparing alternatives, always evaluate them in terms of the future as well as the present.?
• If you have several alternatives that are superior to the status quo, don’t default to the status quo just because you’re having a hard time picking the best alternative. Force yourself to choose.?

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https://icecreates.com/iceflow/the-curious-case-of-cognitive-biases/ ??

The Sunk-Cost Trap?

Another of our deep-seated biases is to make choices in a way that justifies past choices, even when the past choices no longer seem valid. Most of us have fallen into this trap. We may have poured enormous effort into improving the performance of the economy, a key event like Brexit and we then do all we can to protect that decision. Our past decisions become what economists term sunk costs—old investments of time or money that are now irrecoverable. We know, rationally, that sunk costs are irrelevant to the present decision, but nevertheless they prey on our minds, leading us to make inappropriate decisions.?

Why can’t people free themselves from past decisions? Frequently, it’s because they are unwilling, consciously, or not, to admit to a mistake. Acknowledging a poor decision in one’s life may be purely a private matter, involving only one’s self-esteem, but in Government, a bad decision is often a very public matter, inviting critical comments from everywhere. It seems psychologically safer to hold to the initial decision, even though that choice only compounds the error.?

Four tips to avoid the sunk-cost trap?

For all decisions with a history, you will need to make a conscious effort to set aside any sunk costs—whether psychological or economic—that will muddy your thinking about the choice at hand. Try these techniques:?

• Seek out and listen carefully to the views of people who were uninvolved with the earlier decisions and who are hence unlikely to be committed to them.?
• Examine why admitting to an earlier mistake distress you. If the problem lies in your own wounded self-esteem, deal with it head-on. Remind yourself that even smart choices can have bad consequences, through no fault of the original decision maker, and that even the best and most experienced managers are not immune to errors in judgment. Remember the wise words of Warren Buffett: “When you find yourself in a hole, the best thing you can do is stop digging.”?
• Be on the lookout for the influence of sunk-cost biases in the decisions and recommendations made by your subordinates. Reassign responsibilities when necessary.?
• Don’t cultivate a failure-fearing culture that leads people to perpetuate their mistakes. In rewarding people, look at the quality of their decision making (considering what was known at the time their decisions were made), not just the quality of the outcomes.?

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The Confirming-Evidence Trap?

Imagine that you’re the Prime Minister considering whether to call for a lock down. For a while you’ve been concerned that your country won’t be able to sustain the impact of this lockdown and that the country’s cash reserves are on their knees. You fear that the value of the economy will be so weakened in coming months, making our country less able to compete and unemployment go up. But before you put the brakes on and launch a lock down, you decide to call up an acquaintance, the national leader of a similar county that recently avoided a lock down, to check her reasoning. She presents a strong case that other Countries are about to weaken significantly because of a lock down. What do you do? ?

You’d better not let that conversation be the clincher, because you’ve probably just fallen victim to what is known as the confirmation confirming-evidence bias. This bias leads us to seek out information that supports our existing instinct or point of view while avoiding information that contradicts it. What, after all, did you expect your acquaintance to give, other than a strong argument in favour of her own decision? The confirming-evidence bias not only affects where we go to collect evidence but also how we interpret the evidence we do receive, leading us to give too much weight to supporting information and too little to conflicting information.?

There are two fundamental psychological forces at work here. The first is our tendency to subconsciously decide what we want to do before we figure out why we want to do it. The second is our inclination to be more engaged by things we like than by things we dislike—a tendency well documented even in babies. Naturally, then, we are drawn to information that supports our subconscious leanings.?

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We tend to subconsciously decide what to do before figuring out why we want to do it.?

Four tips to avoid the confirming-evidence trap?

It’s not that you shouldn’t make the choice you’re subconsciously drawn to. It’s just that you want to be sure it’s the smart choice. You need to put it to the test. Here’s how:?

• Always check to see whether you are examining all the evidence with equal rigor. Avoid the tendency to accept confirming evidence without question.?
• Get someone you respect to play devil’s advocate, to argue against the decision you’re contemplating. Better yet, build the counterarguments yourself. What’s the strongest reason to do something else? The second strongest reason? The third? Consider the position with an open mind.?
• Be honest with yourself about your motives. Are you really gathering information to help you make a smart choice, or are you just looking for evidence confirming what you think you’d like to do??
• In seeking the advice of others, don’t ask leading questions that invite confirming evidence. And if you find that an adviser always seems to support your point of view, find a new adviser. Don’t surround yourself with yes-men.?

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The recallability trap

A dramatic or traumatic event in your own life can also distort your thinking.?We are led to believe that Boris was seriously ill with Covid and in fact he owes his life to the NHS and in fact Boris made a public pledge to everything he can to protect the NHS, from the outside today it seems like he is setting other priorities ahead of the NHS. It is agreed and clear that anything that distorts your ability to recall events in a balanced way will distort your probability assessments. In one experiment, lists of well-known men and women were read to different groups of people. Unbeknownst to the subjects, each list had an equal number of men and women, but on some lists the men were more famous than the women while on others the women were more famous. Afterward, the participants were asked to estimate the percentages of men and women on each list. Those who had heard the list with the more famous men thought there were more men on the list, while those who had heard the one with the more famous women thought there were more women.?

Three ways to avoid the recallability trap ?

The best way to avoid the estimating and forecasting traps is to take a very disciplined approach to making forecasts and judging probabilities. For each of the three traps, some additional precautions can be taken:?

• To reduce the effects of overconfidence in making estimates, always start by considering the extremes, the low and high ends of the possible range of values. This will help you avoid being anchored by an initial estimate. Then challenge your estimates of the extremes. Try to imagine circumstances where the actual figure would fall below your low or above your high and adjust your range accordingly. Challenge the estimates of your subordinates and advisers in a similar fashion. They’re also susceptible to overconfidence.?
• To avoid the prudence trap, always state your estimates honestly and explain to anyone who will be using them that they have not been adjusted. Emphasize the need for honest input to anyone who will be supplying you with estimates. Test estimates over a reasonable range to assess their impact. Take a second look at the more sensitive estimates.?
• To minimize the distortion caused by variations in recallability, carefully examine all your assumptions to ensure they’re not unduly influenced by your memory. Get actual statistics whenever possible. Try not to be guided by impressions.?

The traps we’ve highlighted can all work in isolation. But, even more dangerous, they can work in concert, amplifying one another. A dramatic first impression might anchor our thinking, and then we might selectively seek out confirming evidence to justify our initial inclination. We make a hasty decision, and that decision establishes a new status quo. As our sunk costs mount, we become trapped, unable to find a propitious time to seek out a new and possibly better course. The psychological miscues cascade, making it harder and harder to choose wisely.?

As we said at the outset, the best protection against all psychological traps—in isolation or in combination—is awareness and discipline of approach. Forewarned is forearmed. Even if you can’t eradicate the distortions ingrained into the way your mind works, you can build tests and disciplines into your decision-making process that can uncover errors in thinking before they become errors in judgment. And taking action to understand and avoid psychological traps can have the added benefit of increasing your confidence in the choices you make.??

Our Country is amazing, our society has rallied and rallied, and we will win this fight, our call is to use all we can together to. We need strong, clear, and decisive leadership that understands people centred decision making and has the values, behaviours and ultimately the Ethos we need to fight the Covid battle and bring us through to a health victory, physically, mentally,?emotionally and economically.??

Boris think and decision make with your brain in mind!?