Being Prudent - A Human Problem: Two Ways to Help Yourself

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing. - Socrates 

Uplifting new research strongly indicates that human beings, both as individuals and as groups, show profound wisdom in decision-making. We are largely free of bias and cognitive errors.

Moreover, researchers point out that we humans repeatedly show objectivity and use solid data to ascertain facts. We readily and easily find the flaws in our own reasoning. Our emotions work together with our intelligence to help us respond ethically and flexibly even under stress.

Do I need to say it? Surely, you’ve guessed the punchline. APRIL FOOL. Mark Twain said, “April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.

In case we forget our foolishness (on those not April 1st days), researchers are coming to the rescue. Many books in the last 20 years, like David Robson’s The Intelligence Trap, have been showing us examples of how we humans repeatedly fall into thinking traps.

For example, look at this short snippet of a court proceeding:

Lawyer: Now, Mrs. Johnson, how was your first marriage terminated?

Witness: By death.

Lawyer: And by whose death was it terminated?

Scratching your head? Read it again. Then try this one.       

How many animals of each species did Moses take on the ark?

The answer is not 2. The answer is 0.  It was Noah, not Moses who built the ark. Yes, I fell for that one (my brilliant husband confessed that he did too when he read this article.)

Why do we make these sort of errors?  The technical term for our affliction is “cognitive miserliness.” We find ways to conserve our effort. We take shortcuts. In can be funny.

It was a humorous, April 1st, 1957 video clip from BBC that got me musing. It’s called The Spaghetti-tree Hoax. You can watch it on YouTube. 

You will see a Swiss family in early Spring harvesting, drying, cooking, and serving their own delectable, home-grown spaghetti. Many viewers were irate to find out this segment was joke. They were calling in to find out where they could buy their own spaghetti trees!

Yes, it can be funny. We humans can be funny. It's also a big problem beyond just looking silly. Our thinking short-cuts include things like stereotyping, jumping to conclusions, looking only at data which support our beliefs. Then we top off our lazy thinking with a heavy dose of arrogance.

To add to our cognitive miserliness and arrogance issues, we are notoriously bad at dealing with our emotions. When we are angry, sad, frightened, we become disconnected from our full brain apparatus. We think in contorted ways and often do dumb things.

What are the implications?  What can we do?

First, we can accept that we are ALL quite capable of being foolish, of making mistakes. Being more prudent involves dialing down our arrogance.

Second, we can use some tools to protect ourselves from bad consequences. Here are two simple, highly successful practices.

·         Use self-distancing. Self-distancing is a way to get a wider, more objective, less emotional perspective on whatever problem we are trying to understand. In your mind step back from your situation and imagine yourself as a third person observing and factually describing the problem. Consider how it might be approached and solved. It’s a type of self-distancing technique to ask yourself what advice you would give to another in your situation. It’s also a type of self-distancing to pretend you are someone else looking for flaws in your thinking.

·         Manage emotions. We make better decisions if we are in a relaxed, alert state. We can refrain from interacting and making decisions when we are not emotionally stable. If you are emotionally out-of-whack stop – don’t type that email. Get yourself together first.

Try things like taking a breath, going for a walk or run, taking a nap, listening to music, petting the dog, talking to a wise friend, and especially labelling your emotions (experts have found that if we name our emotions – e.g.,  anger, sadness, jealousy, we can more quickly and effectively increase our emotional awareness, decrease biases, and improve cognitive processing).

April is the perfect time to accept our foolishness. To celebrate your budding awareness you may want to track down that BBC clip of the spaghetti-tree hoax. If you, like me, want to guard against bad consequences of foolishness, you can experiment with those two simple techniques - self-distancing and managing emotions.

If you are motivated to become more educated, to go deeper into understanding thinking pitfalls, and to get more tools - read, in addition to The Intelligence Trap, books like Blunder: Why Smart People Make Bad Decisions by Zachary Shore; Black Box Thinking, Matthew Syed; Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, How We Decide, Johah Lehrer, Biased, Henry Priest, Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely, and Influence, Robert Cialdini.

Lots of Ellen Langer's work around mindfulness also addresses this. For example, people let others cut in front of them at the copy machine if the person simply said, "Can I cut in front, I need to get a copy of this?" According to her research, we can also we can fool ourselves into being older by simply reading words associated with aging like decrepit, old, senile, elderly. After reading, we walk more slowly and process information more slowly.)

My friend, Gene Sharratt, recently emailed some of the foolery that goes on in his family on April 1st. "Tomorrow is a day to be cautious," he said. True. And we, humans - being who we are, might want to be more prudent on other days as well.

How might we take April 1st to accept our foolishness, guard against not so good consequences, and journey together to The Good Life?