2 x 2 = 5

Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, by Ori and Rom Brafman

Much like Predictably Irrational, which I recently read, Sway is concerned with the ways we consistently act irrationally. The Brafmans use a mix of real life illustrations and sociological research to illustrate their points, coming from the fields of business and psychology. They offer enlightening and frightening insights into human behavior, why we do the stupid things we do, and ideas for being a little less stupid.

Because I read this right on the heels of Predictably Irrational, I can't really review this book without mentioning that one. There is enough overlap (the Brafmans even cite some of Ariely's research work) that I couldn't help but think of the other book to make comparisons, and the knowledge I'd gleaned from the other book made this one at times seem too common sense. This one is also slighter. But having read the other one didn't make this one less valuable because it takes a slightly different approach to things.

An example. I've shared feedback at work that I don't care for the practice of rewarding those who take the time to complete trainings and surveys with the chance to win gift cards in a drawing. It makes me feel like I'm being bribed our bought, that I'm motivated to do such things because it's the right thing to do and adding prizes somehow soils the purity of my participation. Both books explore this dynamic. Both include the example of asking a friend to help you move. Most of the time, friends are happy help do so as friends. But if you offered to pay them $10, they'd feel insulted and much less likely to help. They might accept $100 or what they consider a fair wage for their labor, but they'd rather do it for free than an insulting amount.

Ariely describes this dynamic in terms of social vs. market norms: So we live in two worlds: one characterized by social exchanges and the other characterized by market exchanges. And we apply different norms to these two kinds of relationships. Moreover, introducing market norms into social exchanges, as we have seen, violates the social norms and hurts the relationships. . . . when a social norm collides with a market norm, the social norm goes away for a long time.

The Brafmans approach the dynamic through brain science, looking at the physical response to the different exchanges: It's as if we have two "engines" running in our brains that can't operate simultaneously. We can approach a task either altruistically or from a self-interested perspective. The two different engines run on different fuels . . . It turns out that when the pleasure center and altruism centers go head to head, the pleasure center seems to have the ability to hijack the altruism center.

Almost identical statements to describe the same thing, but coming at it with very different approaches. And now I have multiple ways of understanding why I don't like being motivated to do things I'm personally invested in by drawings and gift cards at work.

Perhaps because I recently completed a leadership program and have been thinking about the topic, I also feel Sway has more to say about the idea of leadership and highly recommend it for leaders and managers. I’ve long been a proponent of the power of expectations, but each time I come across new illustrations and data I’m still blown away. Consider one (of many) from this book, describing the results of a commander training program in the Israeli military. The trainers were told the trainees had been pretested and had either “high,” “regular,” or “unknown” potential. This was a fabrication and the labels were randomly assigned. Still, when the trainees were tested at the end of the program, the average score for the “high” group was 79.89, the “unknown” 72.43, and the “regular” 65.18. The only variable was the expectations of the trainers, yet those expectations determined reality.

Another realm discussed is the idea of fairness. The researchers concluded that auto manufacturers and business managers alike “place too great an importance on margins and outcomes” when what was clearly more important to the customer was the perceived fairness of the process. They recommended that all managers—regardless of industry—put greater “effort, energy, investment, and patience” into nurturing the relationship. As the car dealer study suggests, how we are treated—the fairness of the procedure—has as much to do with our satisfaction as the ultimate outcome. And: But it turns out that regardless of the crime they committed or the punishment they received, respondents placed nearly as much weight on the process as they did on the outcome. . . . In other words, although the outcome might be exactly the same, when we don’t get to voice our concerns, we perceive the overall fairness of the experience quite differently. I know there have been many decisions I didn’t like that I’ve been able to accept once I felt like my disagreement had been heard and acknowledged.

One more. As someone with a tendency to play devil’s advocate and really consider ideas before getting excited about them, this one resonated with me. The idea that in group dynamics there are four roles: initiator, blocker, supporter, and observer, and that blocker is a necessary and important role to balance the initiator and blind group think. Whatever the situation, be it the cockpit or the conference room, a dissenting voice can seem, well, annoying. And yet, as frustrating as it can be to encounter blockers, their opinions are absolutely essential to keeping groups balanced. It’s natural to want to dismiss a blocker’s naysaying, but as we’ve seen, a dissenting voice—even an incompetent one—can often act as the dam that holds back a flood of irrational behavior.

Readers' Digest Irrationality

Each of the chapters in this book describes a force (emotions, relativity, social norms, etc.) that influences our behavior. And while these influences exert a lot of power over our behavior, our natural tendency is to vastly underestimate or completely ignore this power. These influences have an effect on us not because we lack knowledge, lack practice, or are weak-minded. On the contrary, they repeatedly affect experts as well as novices in systematic and predictable ways. The resulting mistakes are simply how we go about our lives, how we “do business.” They are a part of us.

I’m an INTJ. According to The Compleat Idiot's Guide to the INTJ: We don’t do feelings. We use critical thinking, reason, and logic. We have a tough time with people who make decisions based on emotions, and we can often come across as blunt and cold because we ignore the feelings of others. But on the plus side, we take criticism well since we have no feelings to hurt. Other INTJ description are less blunt, but it’s pretty much an accurate description of my type and I represent the type pretty well. For instance, I took the GRE when it still had the Analytical Ability section and scored 800; I also keep my emotions buried so deep I usually have trouble figuring out what I’m feeling even when I want to.

Knowing all of this, you might conclude I aspire to be a purely logical Vulcan like Spock, but in fact the opposite is true. I decided a long time ago that humans are mostly emotional, instinctive, conditioned, and reactionary, and logic has only a minor impact on things. I don’t say this misanthropically, because I include myself in this description. It’s just the way we are and I do my best to embrace it and work with it.

So does Dan Ariely in the book Predictably Irrational. There’s really not much here that hasn’t been figured out by salespeople and observers of human nature throughout history, it’s just that Ariely articulates it and uses scientific methods to validate it. He’s a behavioral economist, so he comes at this from the angle of economic decision making. He doesn’t just make the point that we are stupidly irrational, but that we are predictably so—we are irrational in the same ways over and over again, so then we actually can use logic and reasoning in creating structures, contexts, and limits in response to these irrational behaviors.

Each chapter considers an aspect of the issue. Ariely uses real-world anecdotes and circumstances to illustrate his main point (and how that point contradicts traditional rational economic assumptions), shares numerous experiments he and his colleagues have conducted to prove the point, and considers implications and strategies for dealing with that reality. The chapter subtitles are pretty descriptive, but I’ll elaborate, share good quotes, or ponder a bit for most of them.

The Truth about Relativity: Why Everything Is Relative—Even When It Shouldn’t Be
We never decide in a vacuum of clear logic, but always in comparison. So how the context is shaped and the options for comparison will determine what we decide. I originally discovered the book through this video of Ariely presenting this idea.

The Fallacy of Supply and Demand: Why the Price of Pearls—and Everything Else—Is Up in the Air
Much like goslings are imprinted by their first encounter with another creature, our expectations about base prices for everything are determined by our first encounters with them. The same item/experience can be completely undesirable or nearly unattainable depending on how it’s presented.

As our experiments demonstrate, what consumers are willing to pay can easily be manipulated, and this means that consumers don’t in fact have a good handle on their own preferences and the prices they are willing to pay for different goods and experiences. . . .

So where does this leave us? If we can’t rely on the market forces of supply and demand to set optimal market prices, and we can’t count on free-market mechanisms to help us maximize our utility, then we may need to look elsewhere. This is especially the case with society’s essentials, such as health care, medicine, water, electricity, education, and other critical resources. If you accept the premise that market forces and free markets will not always regulate the market for the best, then you may find yourself among those who believe that the government (we hope a reasonable and thoughtful government) must play a larger role in regulating some market activities, even if this limits free enterprise. Yes, a free market based on supply, demand, and no friction would be the ideal if we were truly rational. Yet when we are not rational but irrational, policies should take this important factor into account.

The Cost of Zero Cost: Why We Often Pay Too Much When We Pay Nothing
People would rather pay $.15 for a high quality chocolate than $.01 for a poor quality one, but will almost always take a free poor quality one over a $.14 high quality one. Same price difference, just insert the word “free” to get an entirely different decision. I’ve often joked that we should market the library with signs that say something like, “Huge Sale! Two FREE checkouts with each regular one!” Turns out it’s not a joke.

The Cost of Social Norms: Why We Are Happy to Do Things, but Not When We Are Paid to Do Them
I introduced this chapter here. He also considers the implications of business and employer practices. Money, as it turns out, is very often the most expensive way to motivate people. Social norms are not only cheaper, but often more effective as well.

The Influence of Arousal: Why Hot Is Much Hotter Than We Realize
It’s Jekyll and Hyde. Not only do we consistently decide and behave decidedly differently when under the grips of powerful emotions, we also, regardless of repeated experience, fail to predict we will do so. We become someone else but don’t even realize it.

The Problem of Procrastination and Self-Control: Why We Can’t Make Ourselves Do What We Want To Do
This chapter basically makes the case for laws and regulations, forced preventative health care and savings and such. We always put things off. If we have self-imposed deadlines we put them off less. If we have externally imposed deadlines we put them off least.

The High Price of Ownership: Why We Overvalue What We Have
Ownership includes emotional and sentimental value that no one else feels. Things like eBay auctions work because of “virtual ownership.”

Ownership is not limited to material things. It can also apply to points of view. Once we take ownership of an idea—whether it’s about politics or sports—what do we do? We love it perhaps more than we should. We prize it more than it is worth. And most frequently, we have trouble letting go of it because we can’t stand the idea of its loss. What are we left with? An ideology—rigid and unyielding.

Keeping Doors Open: Why Options Distract Us from Our Main Objective
Over-busy lives . . .

The Effect of Expectations: Why the Mind Gets What It Expects
We see the world through “me” colored lenses. Self-fulfilling prophecy. The prism analogy above. You shape your experience of the world based on what you expect it to be. There is a kernel of truth to all those sappy “choose your attitude” mantras. Subconscious stereotypes are constantly affecting us. Neutral mediators are important. And, strangely enough, beer tastes better with a few drops of balsamic vinegar (2 drops per ounce in their experiments).

The Power of Price: Why a 50-Cent Aspirin Can Do What a Penny Aspirin Can’t
See the expectations chapter above and apply it to placebos. The effects are not just psychological, though; it truly does make a difference in the body’s physical reactions.

When people think about a placebo such as the royal touch, they usually dismiss it as “just psychology.” But there is nothing “just” about the power of a placebo, and in reality it represents the amazing way our mind controls our body. How the mind achieves these amazing outcomes is not always very clear. Some of the effect, to be sure, has to do with reducing the level of stress, changing hormonal secretions, changing the immune system, etc. The more we understand the connection between brain and body, the more things that once seemed clear-cut become ambiguous. Nowhere is this as apparent as with the placebo.

The Context of Our Character, Part I: Why We Are Dishonest, and What We Can Do about It
I introduced this chapter here. Everyone lies, cheats, and steals in little ways. But we’re less likely to do so when reminded of the existence of things like the Ten Commandments or the MIT honor system. When we are removed from any benchmarks of ethical thought, we tend to stray into dishonesty. But if we are reminded of morality at the moment we are tempted, then we are much more likely to be honest. It has nothing to do with the likelihood of being caught, either; all that seems to matter is the reminder that it’s wrong.

The Context of Our Character, Part II: Why Dealing with Cash Makes Us More Honest
When we look at the world around us, much of the dishonesty we see involves cheating that is one step removed from cash. Companies cheat with their accounting practices; executives cheat by using backdated stock options; lobbyists cheat by underwriting parties for politicians; drug companies cheat by sending doctors and their wives off on posh vacations. To be sure, these people don’t cheat with cold cash (except occasionally). And that’s my point: cheating is a lot easier when it’s a step removed from money.

Do you think that the architects of Enron’s collapse—Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, and Andrew Fastow—would have stolen money from the purses of old women? Certainly, they took millions of dollars in pension monies from a lot of old women. But do you think they would have hit a woman with a blackjack and pulled the cash from her fingers? You may disagree, but my inclination is to say no.

One example: He went into the MIT dorms and put things in student fridges: 6-packs of Coke and plates with 6 one-dollar bills. After 72 hours all the Cokes were gone and none of the money had been touched.

In the larger context, we need to wake up to the connection between nonmonetary currency and our tendency to cheat. We need to recognize that once cash is a step away, we will cheat by a factor bigger than we could ever imagine. We need to wake up to this—individually and as a nation, and do it soon. . . . the days of cash are coming to a close.

Beer and Free Lunches: What Is Behavioral Economics, and Where Are the Free Lunches
Wouldn’t economics make a lot more sense if it were based on how people actually behave, instead of how they should behave? As I said in the Introduction, that simple idea is the basis of behavioral economics . . .

Although irrationality is commonplace, it does not necessarily mean that we are helpless. Once we understand when and where we may make erroneous decisions, we can try to be more vigilant, force ourselves to think differently about these decisions, or use technology to overcome our inherent shortcomings. This is also where business and policy makers could revise their thinking and consider how to design their policies and products so as to provide free lunches.

So Tired of Being Called "Negative"

Because it's not everyone who calls me negative, only a certain type who I find empty-headed and Pollyanna in their positivity, who believe the answer to everything is a simple optimistic attitude that all will be good if we are just excited enough about it.  I've said over and over that I ask questions, play devil's advocate, and consider things from all angles because I want to make things work, and part of making things work is knowing what the issues are going to be so we are ready to address them.

It seems I'm not crazy for feeling this way, but supported by years of scientific study.  This article describes exactly that process, that in order to achieve goals it is essential to first understand the obstacles and plan for how to overcome them.  Follow the link for the process; I'm sharing first a bit I want to emphasize then a bit more for context from the introductory and concluding thoughts.

Relentless pie-in-the-sky optimism detached from reality . . . desiccates motivation and implies that having a less sunny view of events is a sign of defective thinking and a deformed attitude. “It’s a load on people who doubt and question things, and who see things in a more differentiated way.”

Why Understanding Obstacles is Essential to Achieving Goals

While inspiring words might provide a moment of motivation, it turns out they can have an adverse effect on achieving those goals. According to the latest research, the positive attitudes meant to provide inspiration may be the ones that get in the way of accomplishing those dreams.

For 20 years, psychology professor Gabriele Oettingen of New York University and the University of Hamburg has been examining positive thinking and her conclusion is clear. All that positive thinking can trick the dreamer into believing she’s already done the work to get to the desired goal, squelching the motivation to actually go after it. “Positive thinking alone is not enough,” Oettingen says. Indeed, fantasizing about success without an anchor in reality can actually diminish the likelihood of a better outcome. . . .

Oettingen is careful to point out that hope is a vital and necessary part of achievement, but that relentless pie-in-the-sky optimism detached from reality just hurts children. It desiccates motivation and implies that having a less sunny view of events is a sign of defective thinking and a deformed attitude. “It’s a load on people who doubt and question things, and who see things in a more differentiated way,” she says. “Positive dreams are not enough to actually achieve them.”

This is far from the first evidence of this sort I've come across.  Having someone take the contrarian role is often essential for a successful enterprise.  People like me serve a very important purpose, and beating us down with feedback that we are negative simply serves to create hostile dynamics instead of appreciative ones, because we are here to help, in our own, "realistic" ways.

For another example, consider my review of Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work, by Chip & Dan Heath (particularly notice some of the points of the WRAP process, such as "Reality-Test Your Assumptions"):

"I know one thing: that I know nothing."
- Socrates

For the past few years I've had a fascinating and fun journey working my way through a good collection of titles about how thinking works; more specifically, about how thinking doesn't work the way we think it works. That we are constantly lying to, misleading, and deluding ourselves. That our knowledge, perceptions, beliefs, memories, and actions aren't nearly as rational and reasonable as we like to think. That many of our decisions, both the little, daily ones and the big, life-changing ones aren't as sound and carefully reasoned as we believe. Titles on my shelves I'd include in this category:

- Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions, by Dan Ariely
- Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman
- You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself, by David McRaney
- Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, by Daniel Pink
- True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society, by Farhad Manjoo
- Practical Wisdom: The Right Way To Do the Right Thing, by Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe
- Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, by Joshua Foer
- The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement, by David Brooks
- Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler
- Thinking, Fast and Slow , by Daniel Kahneman*

While there have been times the reading has left me feeling cynical and dispirited--that there is no point trying to communicate or connect with others since their assumptions and biases will confound my efforts anyway--for the most part it has been a helpful, healthy process of improving my self-awareness and interpersonal/emotional intelligence. They've made me a better listener, less sure of my own strident opinions in discussions and more likely to assume a generous "AND" stance instead of a combative "EITHER-OR" one.

Something they all have in common, for the most part, is that they spend the bulk of their time sharing the findings of recent research and studies in order to dispel our common-sense assumptions, and only after that leave a bit of space for talking about what to do with the new information. Decisive, on the other hand, starts with the new perspectives, explains them a little, then spends the bulk of its time sharing ways we can make better decisions in light of that information. It's less theoretical and idea-based, much more practical and applied.

And here's where I regret "reading" this book as an audio, because now that I've finished it I want to go back and revisit many parts to study them and consolidate my learning. Unfortunately, there is a long waiting list for our copies of the print book, so I won't be doing that in time to include specific thoughts in this review. In brief, the authors describe a process to follow when making decisions that will help counteract many of the tendencies that steer us wrong. It's not necessarily a step-by-step formula since each decision is unique and every context requires something different, but it provides guidance and a series of checks and balances to make sure we are properly considering the issue from a variety of helpful facets.

They abbreviate the process WRAP, which breaks down--with subcategories--as:

Widen Your Options
- Avoid a narrow frame
- Multitrack
- Find someone who's solved your problems
Reality-Test Your Assumptions
- Consider the opposite
- Zoom out, zoom in
- Ooch
Attain Distance Before Deciding
- Overcome short-term emotion
- Honor your core priorities
Prepare to Be Wrong
- Bookend the Future
- Set a Tripwire

Each point requires the explanations from the book to understand the authors' perspective (especially "ooch"; definition 2 here is vaguely in line with their meaning)--particularly since so much of it is about overcoming commonly accepted truths and operational habits that we unconsciously accept as acceptable--but I think it will be a very helpful process to get in the habit of following, with guidance from the material once it's in my hands.

If I have one complaint about the book, it's that the Heaths spend a little too much time describing the fine details of the real-world examples they use to illustrate all of their points and not enough dwelling in the world of ideas that I love so much. I would have been happier had they tipped the balance of information to case studies and exemplification in the other direction. But, then, this is a book for practitioners.

-----

*Okay, I haven't finished the last one yet; I had both it and Decisive checked out and was considering which to make my next listen, and fairly randomly went with Decisive. I immediately regretted it when, in the introduction, the Heaths mentioned Thinking, Fast and Slow and Predictably Irrational as the two most important titles to read for background information on the studies and theories they worked from in writing this book. I'm now a few discs into it.

Intellectual Humility

"Undergrads are useless."

A physics Ph.D. said that in a conversation I was part of a couple of weeks ago.  He said he too was useless as an undergrad, that uselessness is just a fact of being in that particular place in one's life, and the only way to stop being useless is to mature with time and the act of graduating.

He didn't say this explicitly, but I'm sure in the background of the statement was the idea that undergrads just haven't attained enough knowledge and self-awareness to realize how little they actually know, to become curious seekers of learning with the proper humility and modesty.  I've heard it said about both advanced degrees and martial arts black belts, that, even though both are considered marks of mastery and expertise, really all they indicate is that their bearers have finally reached a level that allows them to fully become students and finally begin their learning.  You have to learn quite a lot before you realize that you know almost nothing and are willing to accept just how limited and incomplete your knowledge will always be.

In Another Convergence, I wrote, "One of the areas David Brooks explores repeatedly in The Social Animal is non-linear associations and intuitive connections."  Here's a good representative quote:

This is a different sort of knowledge.  It comes from integrating and synthesizing diverse dynamics.  It is produced over time, by an intelligence that is associational--observing closely, imagining loosely, comparing like to unlike and like to like to find harmonies and rhythms in the unfolding of events.

And, as I was typing it just now, as part of my reflection on what this post is and where it's going, I made another association.  This time I noticed the word "synthesizing" and recalled something I've thought previously.  In Speaking of Supervillians, I wrote that if I could be a superhero my power would be based in my ability to synthesize:

c. Your superhero alter-ego is . . .

The Synthesist
(Bringing together disparate: 1) ideas, to solve problems and mysteries; 2) materials, to address physical issues (MacGyverish); and 3) people, to overcome conflict.) 

I was taking a broader view than Brooks does--mostly because I needed to extend the idea into superhero territory and tangible action--but what he describes is certainly a part of what I was trying to get at, one I try to regularly express in my ramblings here.  The paragraph that immediately follows the one I quoted above goes on to say, in reference to associational and rational thinking:

The modest person uses both methods, and more besides.  The modest person learns not to trust one paradigm.  Most of what he knows accumulates through a long and arduous process of wandering.

I love that image of being a knowledge and wisdom wanderer, and he expands the metaphor after introducing it.  A wanderer, to me, is an open-minded seeker, which is someone I've always tried to be.  Intellectual curiosity combined with an awareness of just how much there is to know and how limited and finite our ability to know--much less actually grasp--all of it really is.  The goal really shouldn't be to master knowledge, which is impossible, but to wander through it and glean as much from it as we can.

Brooks considers all of this in a section with the heading, "Epistemological Modesty."

Epistemological modesty is an attitude toward life.  This attitude is built on the awareness that we don't know ourselves.  Most of what we think and believe is unavailable to conscious review.  We are our own deepest mystery.

Not knowing ourselves, we also have trouble fully understanding others. . . . 

Epistemological modesty is a disposition for action.  The people with this disposition believe that wisdom begins with an awareness of our own ignorance.  We can design habits, arrangements, and procedures that partially compensate for the limits on our knowledge.

That reminds me very strongly of what Dan Ariely says in Predictably Irrational, which I considered extensively in Readers Digest Irrationality and have referenced many times since.  He approaches the idea of rational thinking from the realm of economics, and largely debunks it; he shows how our economic decisions are clearly not rational, but based in emotions and assumptions and other illogical dynamics.  But, he says, we're irrational in predictable ways, so if we can understand those patterns we can at least do something like "design habits, arrangements, and procedures that partially compensate" for the silly things we'll do when faced with economic decisions in the future.

It also reminds me of the title of a blog I discovered recently (which has become I book I hope to read), that I referenced in Do I Think Any True Thoughts? and Perception: The Interplay of Habit and Attitude.  I think the blog's title says it all and should certainly, in my opinion, lead to an attitude of modesty and humility: You Are Not So Smart: A Celebration of Self Delusion.

And, of course, it's the attitude I try to express in interactions with others, in the controlling metaphor at the top of this blog, in posts like Do I Think Any True Thoughts?, and in my basic stance toward life.  Even as I passionately plead for positions that make sense to me, I know I'm doing so as a seeker with just a bit of the knowledge, not as an omniscient expert with the single, definite say on the matter.  I know my emotions and subconscious factors control my perceptions and reactions at least as much as my conscious rationality and studied knowledge.  I know I'm finite and limited and irrational, and so I try to keep from taking myself too seriously or inflating my sense of self-importance.

And I think it sure would be nice--the world might even be a better place--if more people took the same approach.

Free Market Values

Or, Laissez-Faire Morality

From Merriam-Webster: Demoralize - 1 : to corrupt the morals of.

As in: "The offer of money undermined the moral force of people's obligations as citizens."

In Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink writes how studies indicate that, beyond a certain level, paying people more money produces poorer performance instead of better; if you want people's quality and productivity to get worse, then you should increase their pay.

That seems counter-intuitive, but it appears to be the truth.  How exactly does that work?  I'm nearly finished listening to Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing by Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe.  They argue that rules and incentives are not enough to motivate people to have the skill and will to perform well, that we instead need "practical wisdom" to guide us, and they show how rules and incentives can undermine practical wisdom.

This, as you may guess, is not a new area of thought for me.  In What Do You Want to Learn Today? I wrote about how I believe extrinsic motivational factors often undermine intrinsic ones in the context of library users:

I don’t like the way this trivializes the learning experience, as I said, and makes it all about extrinsic motivation and external gratification—it implies people will only enjoy learning if they get constant rewards and recognition.  Doing these things might make the experience more fun for those who aren’t motivated to use the library on their own, but implicit in the model is the idea that learning is a laborious, demotivating process that people can’t enjoy without incentives.

I radically disagree, both philosophically and based upon my personal experiences.  If you have interest in a topic, the act of learning is its own reward.  The process of discovering new information, personalizing it, and putting it to use is fun in and of itself—without bribes and badges—and adding those things undermines the inherent intrinsic motivation of the process.  There are probably some good ideas on the surface of the presentation, some practices we can modify and put to good use, but the philosophical underpinnings of the presentation are counterproductive, from my point of view.

I also thought about library use when reading Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, particularly when reading a section about the motivation of parents in a study of an Israeli day care.  Too many parents were late to pick up their children, so the day care tried imposing fines for lateness.  That actually made the problem worse, and it remained so even after they decided to take the fines away and return to the previous system.  Why?  They had taken something that was operating in the realm of social norms and moved it into the realm of market norms.  The market norms weren't as motivating and undermined the social norms; and once the situation was defined in market norms they stuck, making the return to social norms nearly impossible.  Read about it more fully in Thinking About Library Fines.

I requoted a part of that in another post, 2 x 2 = 5, where I expanded on the idea as it was complemented by another book, Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, by Ori and Rom Brafman.  I wrote:

I've shared feedback at work that I don't care for the practice of rewarding those who take the time to complete trainings and surveys with the chance to win gift cards in a drawing. It makes me feel like I'm being bribed our bought, that I'm motivated to do such things because it's the right thing to do and adding prizes somehow soils the purity of my participation. Both books explore this dynamic. Both include the example of asking a friend to help you move. Most of the time, friends are happy help do so as friends. But if you offered to pay them $10, they'd feel insulted and much less likely to help. They might accept $100 or what they consider a fair wage for their labor, but they'd rather do it for free than an insulting amount.

Ariely describes this dynamic in terms of social vs. market norms: So we live in two worlds: one characterized by social exchanges and the other characterized by market exchanges. And we apply different norms to these two kinds of relationships. Moreover, introducing market norms into social exchanges, as we have seen, violates the social norms and hurts the relationships. . . . when a social norm collides with a market norm, the social norm goes away for a long time.

The Brafmans approach the dynamic through brain science, looking at the physical response to the different exchanges: It's as if we have two "engines" running in our brains that can't operate simultaneously. We can approach a task either altruistically or from a self-interested perspective. The two different engines run on different fuels . . . It turns out that when the pleasure center and altruism centers go head to head, the pleasure center seems to have the ability to hijack the altruism center.

Schwartz and Sharpe cover similar territory in Practical Wisdom under the heading "Motivational Competition" in the chapter titled "The War on Will," writing how using market, self-interest incentives demoralizes people.  They also write about the Israeli day care as a prime example, then follow with this:

Another example of the demoralizing effects of incentives comes from a study of the willingness of Swiss citizens to have nuclear waste dumps in their communities.  In the early 1990s, Switzerland was getting ready to have a national referendum about where it would site nuclear waste dumps.  Citizens had strong views on the issue and were well informed.  Bruno Frey and Felix Oberholzer-Gee, two social scientists, went door-to-door, asking people whether they would be willing to have a waste dump in their community.  An astonishing 50 percent of respondents said yes--this despite the fact that people generally thought sucha  dump was potentially dangerous and would lower the value of their property.  The dumps had to go somewhere, and like it or not, people had obligations as citizens.

Frey and Oberholzer-Gee then asked their respondents whether, if they were given an annual payment equivalent to six weeks' worth of an average Swiss salary, they would be willing to have the dumps in their communities.  They already had one reason to say yes--their obligations as citizens.  They were now given a second reason--financial incentives.  Yet in response to this question, only 25 percent of respondents agreed.  Adding the financial incentive cut acceptance in half.

These studies of Israeli parents and Swiss citizens are surprising.  It seems self-evident that if people have one good reason to do something, and you give them a second, they'll be more likely to do it.  You're more likely to order a dish that tastes good and is good for you than one that just tastes good.  You're more likely to buy a car that's reliable and fuel efficient than one that's just reliable.  Yet when the parents at the day care center were given a second reason to be on time--the fines--it undermined their first reason, that it was the right thing to do.  And the Swiss, when given two reasons to accept a nuclear waste site, were less likely to say yes than when given only one.  Frey and Oberholzer-Gee explained this result by arguing that reasons don't always add; sometimes, they compete.  When the Swiss respondents were not offered incentives, they had to decide whether their responsibilities as citizens outweighed their distaste for having nuclear wastes dumped in their backyards.  Some thought yes, and others, no.  But that was the only question they had to answer.

The situation was more complex when citizens were offered cash incentives.  Now, they had to answer another question before they even got to the issue of accepting the nuclear wastes.  "Should I approach this dilemma as a Swiss citizen or as a self-interested individual?  Citizens have responsibilities, but they're offering me money.  Maybe the cash is an implicit instruction to me to answer the question based on the calculation of self-interest."  Taking the lead of the questioners, citizens then framed the waste-siting issue as just about self-interest.  With their self-interest hats squarely on their heads, citizens concluded that six weeks' pay wasn't enough.  Indeed, they concluded that no amount of money was enough.  The offer of money undermined the moral force of people's obligations as citizens.  Morality is for suckers, the offer of money seemed to be saying, even if only implicitly.

A substantial body of research done with children and adults confirms these findings. . . .

So the more we define ourselves as purely self-interested individuals with only market concerns, the less moral our decisions and transactions will be.  The more purely capitalistic our free market structures and institutions are, the less concern we'll all have for others and any sense of the common good.

Now, Schwartz and Sharpe are quick to point out that monetary exchanges are still necessary and in some transactions there aren't any moral or other incentives for the financial ones to crowd out, just like Pink acknowledges that some types of work are best suited for carrot and stick motivational methods and if the financial rewards for work are too low then no other factors matter.  There are times when market motivations are best.  So, just as purely capitalistic systems won't lead to caring, cohesive societies, neither will purely non-capitalistic ones.  As I quoted David McRaney from his book You Are Not So Smart in Objectivity: A Concept That Only Exists As Truthiness
 of "The Public Goods Game":

THE MISCONCEPTION: We could create a system with no regulations where everyone would contribute to the good of society, everyone would benefit, and everyone would be happy.

THE TRUTH: Without some form of regulation, slackers and cheaters will crash economic systems because people don't want to feel like suckers.

Human nature won't allow us to rely on either pure altruism or pure self-interest as motivations, and the best model seems to be a hybrid that finds the right balance of both.  In our current political battles, the liberal democrats argue for systems and structures that institutionalize altruism and care for others as government responsibilities in order to take the market values out of the equation.  Conservative republicans argue for more personal responsibility driven by self-interest so that we don't have dead weight that everyone else has to carry.  In McRaney's terms, the liberals are concerned with the cheaters and the conservatives with the slackers.  Both are right, it's just a matter of negotiating the right balance of both concerns for the greatest combination of personal success and common well-being.

I, of course, along with my sources quoted above, feel the balance needs to be tipped further away from free market, self-interested values before we'll have enough common well-being as a society.  It can't all be about money.

If you want a little more without having to track down and read any of these books, this video is a really nice condensed presentation of the core ideas in Pink's Drive:

Thinking About Library Fines

I’m currently reading Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. I’m sure I’ll write a more comprehensive review once I’ve finished since I’m finding it very insightful and enlightening, but for now I just want to share the chapter I just finished: “The Cost of Social Norms: Why We Are Happy to Do Things, but Not When We Are Paid to Do Them.” If you know it, think of the fence painting incident in Tom Sawyer when Tom gets all his friends to paint his fence for him by convincing them they’re missing out on fun. Earlier in the chapter Ariely shares numerous experiments he’s conducted to test the point. One quick example: People were motivated to work fairly hard on a meaningless task when either asked to do so as a favor or paid a fair amount, but did poor work when paid poorly. Further, when offered a “Snickers bar” as a gift of appreciation they still felt it was a favor and worked hard; when offered a “50-cent Snickers bar” as a gift of appreciation they felt it was a market exchange, and a poor one, and did shoddy work. Just the subtle mention of monetary value affected everything. Now, on to the section that has me thinking about library fines:

So we live in two worlds: one characterized by social exchanges and the other characterized by market exchanges. And we apply different norms to these two kinds of relationships. Moreover, introducing market norms into social exchanges, as we have seen, violates the social norms and hurts the relationships. Once this type of mistake has been committed, recovering a social relationship is difficult. Once you’ve offered to pay for the delightful Thanksgiving dinner, your mother-in-law will remember the incident for years to come. And if you’ve ever offered a potential romantic partner the chance to cut to the chase, split the cost of the courting process, and simply go to bed, the odds are that you will have wrecked the romance forever.

My good friends . . . provided a very clever test of the long-term effects of a switch from social to market norms.

A few years ago, they studied a day care center in Israel to determine whether imposing a fine on parents who arrived late to pick up their children was a useful deterrent. Uri and Aldo concluded that the fine didn’t work well, and in fact it had long-term negative effects. Why? Before the fine was introduced, the teachers and parents had a social contract, with social norms about being late. Thus, if parents were late—as they occasionally were—they felt guilty about it—and their guilt compelled them to be more prompt in picking up their kids in the future. (In Israel, guilt seems to be an effective way to get compliance.) But once the fine was imposed, the day care center had inadvertently replaced the social norms with market norms. Now that the parents were paying for their tardiness, they interpreted the situation in terms of market norms. In other words, since they were being fined, they could decide for themselves whether to be late or not, and they frequently chose to be late. Needless to say, this was not what the day care center intended.

But the real story only started here. The most interesting part occurred a few weeks later, when the day care center removed the fine. Now the center was back to the social norm. Would the parents also return to the social norm? Would their guilt return as well? Not at all. Once the fine was removed, the behavior of the parents didn’t change. They continued to pick up their kids late. In fact, when the fine was removed, there was a slight increase in the number of tardy pickups (after all, both the social norms and the fine had been removed).

This experiment illustrates an unfortunate fact: when a social norm collides with a market norm, the social norm goes away for a long time. In other words, social relationships are not easy to reestablish. Once the bloom is off the rose—once a social norm is trumped by a market norm—it will rarely return.

Thinking I'm Special

One of the sections of Predictably Irrational was about a set of experiments they conducted in restaurants to see how people ordered. What they found is that people will often not order what they are really craving once someone else at the table has already ordered that dish because they don't want to be the same. It's more important to to seem unique and not a follower than to eat what we really enjoy. I know I certainly do this.

I also find myself avoiding books and popular culture after they get to a certain level of hype and popularity. I don't want to just read the same thing everyone else is raving about; I want to be more distinctive and refined in my tastes than that. As an added incentive to avoid these types of books, once they're in demand enough I lose my professional reason to read them since they no longer need me to recommend them. However, when I finally do get around to them, usually well after the fact, more often than not I find the hype is well-deserved and I've been cheating myself of a great reading experience.

(It's quite possible this will end up as the lead-in to my review of one of two audiobooks I just checked out, but we'll have to see if I actually get to them and find them deserving.)

Catching Up: The News in Charts

Or, Thoughts on Subjectivity

I've posted before about books like Predictably Irrational and Sway, and one of the major themes running through my posts is the relativity of reality and how large a role our finite perspectives play in determining our experience of life. Here's a bit more.

Chart 1: This shows how likely, based on one study, prisoners are to get parole based on time of day. The dotted lines? Breaks. So those who are supposed to be the most objective paragons of fair and rationale judgment are drastically swayed by fatigue and hunger on a daily basis.



Chart 2: According to at least one survey, everyone thinks they're middle class or close to it. So, if the poor don't really know they're poor, they're never going to mount much of a fight for more egalitarian public policies. And if the well-off don't know they're well off, they're going to strongly resist more egalitarian public policies. The result can be startling increases in income inequality without anyone really knowing it's happening or caring very much about it.



Chart 3: This is almost old news at this point, but agreement or disagreement with its reality is still highly relevant to current political positions. According to this data, the budget would be on its way to balanced but for three things set in motion well before the current presidential administration: tax cuts for the wealthy, the economic downturn, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.



Chart 4: Finally, a partisan perspective on the upcoming presidential election. There is hope of the Republican party returning to some semblance of rational reality if either they pick a reasonable candidate who wins or an extremist who loses. They will go crazy extremist if they pick a moderate who loses. And if they go with an extremist who wins, well, we'll probably get a whole bunch of new laws making it illegal to accept charity and for Muslims to commit murder.

Adding up the Little Things

Another section of quote from Predictably Irrational, from the chapter, "The Context of Our Character, Part I: Why We Are Dishonest, and What We Can Do about It":

In 2004, the total cost of all robberies in the United States was $525 million, and the average loss from a single robbery was about $1,300. These amounts are not very high, when we consider how much police, judicial, and corrections muscle is put into the capture and confinement of robbers--let alone the amount of newspaper and television coverage these kinds of crimes elicit. I'm not suggesting that we go easy on career criminals, of course. They are thieves, and we must protect ourselves from their acts.

But consider this: every year, employees' theft and fraud at the workplace are estimated at about $600 billion. That figure is dramatically higher than the combined financial cost of robbery, burglary, larceny-theft, and automobile theft (totaling about $16 billion in 2004); it is much more than what all the career criminals in the United States could steal in their lifetimes; and it's also almost twice the market capitalization of General Electric. But there's much more. Each year, according to reports by the insurance industry, individuals add a bogus $24 billion to their claims of property losses. The IRS, meanwhile estimates a loss of $350 billion per year, representing the gap between what the feds think people should pay in taxes and what they do pay. The retails industry has its own headache: it loses $16 billion a year to customers who buy clothes, wear them with the tags tucked in, and return these secondhand clothes for a full refund.

Add to this sundry everyday examples of dishonesty--the congressman accepting golfing junkets from his favorite lobbyist; the physician making kickback deals with the laboratories that he uses; the corporate executive who backdates his stock options to boost his financial pay--and you have a huge amount of unsavory economic activity, dramatically larger than that of the standard household crooks.

Revisiting an Ever Present Theme (and More Synthesizing)

Reading the editorial section of the paper today finally pushed my exasperation over the edge with all sides of the political spectrum overusing the claim to represent the "will of the people." Not that me going over the edge means a whole lot. I updated my Facebook status to read: Thinks the phrases “will of the people” and “will of God” should be excised from debates, because both the people and God are too big and complex to be captured so absolutely, confidently, or simply. If you've forgotten what it says, reread the metaphor in the heading at the top of the page.

I've been holding onto a link for a few days, waiting for inspiration for how to share it. Waiting for the right context. Because it's all about context. It's all about expectations. Everything is relative. It's a post from the Sociological Images blog titled Context: What Makes Music Great? It shares a two-and-a-half minute video of a concert violinist--someone people would pay big money for the privilege of seeing in a concert hall--playing in a Metro station for free and getting almost entirely ignored. So is his music a valuable and rare thing worth paying for or just more background noise to tune out? Depends on the context.

Now for the synthesizing if you feel reading all this is worth your time since it's free in the Metro--select past thoughts that connect and reinforce:

Readers' Digest Irrationality - Thoughts about Dan Ariely's book Predictably Irrational. Sample: Much like goslings are imprinted by their first encounter with another creature, our expectations about base prices for everything are determined by our first encounters with them. The same item/experience can be completely undesirable or nearly unattainable depending on how it’s presented.

2 x 2 = 5 - Thoughts about Ori and Ram Brafman's similar book Sway. Sample: I’ve long been a proponent of the power of expectations, but each time I come across new illustrations and data I’m still blown away. Consider one (of many) from this book, describing the results of a commander training program in the Israeli military. The trainers were told the trainees had been pretested and had either “high,” “regular,” or “unknown” potential. This was a fabrication and the labels were randomly assigned. Still, when the trainees were tested at the end of the program, the average score for the “high” group was 79.89, the “unknown” 72.43, and the “regular” 65.18. The only variable was the expectations of the trainers, yet those expectations determined reality.

Fiction Is As Essential As Nonfiction - A meditation on the idea of "story," using a variety of quotes from disparate sources. Samples: This isn't about what is . . . it's about what people think is. It's all imaginary anyway. That's why it's important. People only fight over imaginary things. | If they think it's the truth, then they believe it, and if they believe it long enough, then it becomes the truth. | In short, some of the same neural structure in the brain that is used when we live out a narrative is also used when we see someone else living out that narrative, in real life or on TV, or if we imagine it as when we are reading a novel. This is what makes literature and art meaningful. It is also what makes crossovers between reality, TV, and the Internet work. It is why Second Life can flourish on the Internet, with thousands of people finding real meaning in their second life that is not in their first. . . .

Dueling Novels - Interwoven reviews of two young adult books that both include as themes a consideration of the way stories inform identity and perspective. Sample: Having seen what a good swimmer Gwyna is, Myrddin decides to adapt one of his schemes around her. Within a day or two, after the dust has settled from the raid and Arthur seeks to gain the allegiance of the area, Myrddin is leading Gwyna away from the group with a special task. He hides her behind a waterfall at the back of a pool of water with a glamorous sword and some instructions: when Arthur makes a spectacle of wading into the pool to ask for the blessing of the Lady of the Lake, she is to take off her clothes, swim under the waterfall, and thrust the sword into the air for him to take, then return to the cave unseen.

Helping the Rich Helps Me, Right?

So we constantly hear in political debates, whether from conservatives or libertarians or others, that pure capitalism without regulations or checks is the best way to increase wealth. But it increases wealth for who, exactly? The community, you and me, all of us together, or just the greedy hoarders at the top of the food chain? An article from Yahoo today:

Are Rich People Unethical?

. . . A new study published in the Proceedings of that National Academy of Sciences found that wealthier people were more apt to behave unethically than those who had less money.

Scientists at the University of California at Berkeley analyzed a person's rank in society (measured by wealth, occupational prestige and education) and found that those who were richer were more likely to cheat, lie and break the law than those who were poorer.

"We found that it is much more prevalent for people in the higher ranks of society to see greed and self-interest . . . as good pursuits," said Paul Piff, lead author of the study . . .

I've said it over and over: People are both giving, compassionate, and charitable and selfish, greedy, and self-centered. We need laws and regulations to make sure the one aspect doesn't overrun the other, to keep greed and selfishness from running rampant. In my mind, this article just reinforces the need for such, along with proper enforcement to stop the unethical from getting away with breaking the rules. And that, as you have probably already deduced, does not mean less government.

I think I've also mentioned before that I come from a Mennonite background, to which the Amish are related. Right before sitting down to write this post, I read (and shared on Facebook) an article about Mennonite and Amish distance runners in Pennsylvania. This quote from the that article might give you a bit of context for where I'm coming from: "Humility is important," says another Amish runner, a member of the victorious Ragnar Relay team. "When you start to elevate the individual above the community, that's a bad thing." I can't overstate the importance of that idea as an influencing factor in my identity and politics.

I've considered related ideas previously here, for instance:

Which Do You Fear More: Lazy-Selfishness or Greedy-Selfishness?
. . . Like most people, I have a mixed view of human nature. I know people are capable of great compassion and goodness and I trust that they will help those in need, but I believe there is a selfish limit to what they will give. They want their help to be personal, those they help to be known and trusted. They need there to be a face to their charity so they can believe in the good it will do. So the anonymous, unknown strangers without a network are those least likely to get help when they need it. The Old Testament refers to this category as the “widows and orphans.” The New Testament uses language like “the least of these.” I think people will always take care of their own, but there will also always be people who have no one. There has to be some kind of system in place to take care of those people, some way to insure that we don’t just share with those we know, but that we share systematically even with those we don’t know. Otherwise no one will help them. I fear that the greedy-selfish, who could easily afford to help them without much personal sacrifice, won’t. . . .

And here:

It's Only Water in a Stranger's Tears: Or, We Do Not Take Care of One Another
. . . So people are essentially going to do the greedy thing if left unchecked, and the more power you have the more harm you can do. So far, so good. I'm absolutely on board with that. Where we veer 180 degrees is the role of government in all of this. They seem to think that governments have all the power and are thus the greatest potential for evil. I believe a democratic government of and by the people is the greatest potential for limiting individual power and evil. Left to our own natures with no social constraints or rules, we'll compete for power and some individuals will come out ahead. I like to shorthand them as "big money," "Wall Street," "corporations," or "the rich." They will greedily take from the rest of us for their own benefits as much as they possibly can unless someone has the power to stop them. The only one with enough power to do so is all of us as a collective in the form of our representative government. I know reality shows government can be as corrupt as any other power, but I still feel on principal it is the right approach to take for battling our innate selfishness. It is the approach that is based on sharing instead of individuality. It is us all coming together to look out for each other and to make sure no one has the power to oppress us. . . .

Or writing about Dan Ariely's book Predictably Irrational, here:

Readers' Digest Irrationality

. . . The Context of Our Character, Part I: Why We Are Dishonest, and What We Can Do about It
I introduced this chapter here. Everyone lies, cheats, and steals in little ways. But we’re less likely to do so when reminded of the existence of things like the Ten Commandments or the MIT honor system. When we are removed from any benchmarks of ethical thought, we tend to stray into dishonesty. But if we are reminded of morality at the moment we are tempted, then we are much more likely to be honest. It has nothing to do with the likelihood of being caught, either; all that seems to matter is the reminder that it’s wrong.

The Context of Our Character, Part II: Why Dealing with Cash Makes Us More Honest
When we look at the world around us, much of the dishonesty we see involves cheating that is one step removed from cash. Companies cheat with their accounting practices; executives cheat by using backdated stock options; lobbyists cheat by underwriting parties for politicians; drug companies cheat by sending doctors and their wives off on posh vacations. To be sure, these people don’t cheat with cold cash (except occasionally). And that’s my point: cheating is a lot easier when it’s a step removed from money.

Do you think that the architects of Enron’s collapse—Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, and Andrew Fastow—would have stolen money from the purses of old women? Certainly, they took millions of dollars in pension monies from a lot of old women. But do you think they would have hit a woman with a blackjack and pulled the cash from her fingers? You may disagree, but my inclination is to say no.

One example: He went into the MIT dorms and put things in student fridges: 6-packs of Coke and plates with 6 one-dollar bills. After 72 hours all the Cokes were gone and none of the money had been touched.

In the larger context, we need to wake up to the connection between nonmonetary currency and our tendency to cheat. We need to recognize that once cash is a step away, we will cheat by a factor bigger than we could ever imagine. We need to wake up to this—individually and as a nation, and do it soon. . . . the days of cash are coming to a close. . . .

Thinking About Thinking: A Tip for Success

I've run across a couple of articles this week, one about childhood play and one about adult procrastination, that seem to go together:

Old-Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills

For most of human history what children did when they played was roam in packs large or small, more or less unsupervised, and engage in freewheeling imaginative play. They were pirates and princesses, aristocrats and action heroes. Basically, says Chudacoff, they spent most of their time doing what looked like nothing much at all. . . .

Clearly the way that children spend their time has changed. Here's the issue: A growing number of psychologists believe that these changes in what children do has also changed kids' cognitive and emotional development.

It turns out that all that time spent playing make-believe actually helped children develop a critical cognitive skill called executive function. Executive function has a number of different elements, but a central one is the ability to self-regulate. Kids with good self-regulation are able to control their emotions and behavior, resist impulses, and exert self-control and discipline.

We know that children's capacity for self-regulation has diminished. . . .

Self-regulation is incredibly important. Poor executive function is associated with high dropout rates, drug use and crime. In fact, good executive function is a better predictor of success in school than a child's IQ. Children who are able to manage their feelings and pay attention are better able to learn. As executive function researcher Laura Berk explains, "Self-regulation predicts effective development in virtually every domain." . . .

One reason make-believe is such a powerful tool for building self-discipline is because during make-believe, children engage in what's called private speech: They talk to themselves about what they are going to do and how they are going to do it. . . .

And it's not just children who use private speech to control themselves. If we look at adult use of private speech, Berk says, "we're often using it to surmount obstacles, to master cognitive and social skills, and to manage our emotions."

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Why Our Monkey Brains Are Prone to Procrastination (No, It's Not Just Laziness or Lack Of Willpower): Present bias is why you’ve made the same resolution for the tenth year in a row, but this time you mean it.

Procrastination is fueled by weakness in the face of impulse and a failure to think about thinking. . . .

Thinking about thinking, this is the key. In the struggle between should versus want, some people have figured out something crucial – want never goes away.

Procrastination is all about choosing want over should because you don’t have a plan for those times when you can expect to be tempted.

You are really bad at predicting your future mental states. In addition, you are terrible at choosing between now or later. Later is murky place where anything could go wrong. . . .

Evolutionarily it makes sense to always go for the sure bet now; your ancestors didn’t have to think about retirement or heart disease. Your brain evolved in a world where you probably wouldn’t live to meet your grandchildren. The stupid monkey part of your brain wants to gobble up candy bars and go deeply into debt. Old you, if there even is one, can deal with those things. . . .

You must be adept at thinking about thinking to defeat yourself at procrastination. You must realize there is the you who sits there now reading this, and there is a you sometime in the future who will be influenced by a different set of ideas and desires, a you in a different setting where an alternate palette of brain functions will be available for painting reality. . . .

The trick is to accept the now you will not be the person facing those choices, it will be the future you – a person who can’t be trusted. Future-you will give in, and then you’ll go back to being now-you and feel weak and ashamed. Now-you must trick future-you into doing what is right for both parties.

This is why food plans like Nutrisystem work for many people. Now-you commits to spending a lot of money on a giant box of food which future-you will have to deal with. People who get this concept use programs like Freedom, which disables Internet access on a computer for up to eight hours, a tool allowing now-you to make it impossible for future-you to sabotage your work.

Capable psychonauts who think about thinking, about states of mind, about set and setting, can get things done not because they have more will power, more drive, but because they know productivity is a game of cat and mouse versus a childish primal human predilection for pleasure and novelty which can never be excised from the soul. Your effort is better spent outsmarting yourself than making empty promises through plugging dates into a calendar or setting deadlines for push ups.

-----

The second article draws upon some of the same studies as a couple of books I've previously blogged, with similar conclusions. From Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, I quoted:

In this and many similar studies, Mischel followed the children into adulthood. He discovered the ability to delay gratification had a more profound effect than many had originally predicted. Notwithstanding the fact that the researchers had watched the kids for only a few minutes, what they learned from the experiment was enormously telling. Children who had been able to wait for that second marshmallow matured into adults who were seen as more socially competent, self-assertive, dependable, and capable of dealing with frustrations; and the scored an average of 210 points higher on their SATs than people who gulped down the one marshmallow. The predictive power was truly remarkable.

Companion studies conducted over the next decade with people of varying ages (including adults) confirmed that individuals who exercise self-control achieve better outcomes than people who don't. For example, if high schoolers are good at self-control, they experience fewer eating and drinking problems. University students with more self-control earn better grades, and married and working people have more fulfilling relationships and better careers. And as you might suspect, people who demonstrate low levels of self-control show higher levels of aggression, delinquency, health problems, and so forth.

And I concluded the quote with: The rest of the chapter explains that the self-control to delay gratification is not an inborn trait, but something that can be learned, and offers strategies for doing so.

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And while I didn't blog much about it, I remember reading Dan Ariely's chapter in Predictably Irrational about procrastination, which the article even quotes a bit. Here's what I wrote:

The Problem of Procrastination and Self-Control: Why We Can’t Make Ourselves Do What We Want To Do
This chapter basically makes the case for laws and regulations, forced preventative health care and savings and such. We always put things off. If we have self-imposed deadlines we put them off less. If we have externally imposed deadlines we put them off least.

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And the bit in the article about the evolutionary explanation for instant gratification reminds me of some of the things from The Well-Dressed Ape, like this from chapter 6:

First, let's look at my natural defenses against starving. There's a good reason that I yearn for fettuccine Alfredo and chocolate. Every cell in my body is in a near-constant state of hollering for high-calorie food. My body wants to be bigger than it is today. Therefore my cells lobby for more sugar, more fat, more food. . . .

Why fat and sugar? Why don't I crave salad? My body is lagging behind the times. For the first few million years of hominid existence, salad was everywhere. You had to kick it out of the way just to get around. By contrast, energy-rich foods were either too seasonal or too fleet-footed for convenience. . . .

When my senses register the proximity of a Chunky bar, my strongest urge is to snatch it up and get it down the hatch before, A: it gets moldy; B: it's eaten by bears, C: I'm eaten by bears. . . .

One reason cravings are so strong, and that it's so joyful to yield to them, is that they tap into the same brain chemistry that will get a human hooked on cocaine or alcohol. When the sugar from a Chunky bar hits my bloodstream, opioids of my own making flood my brain with chemical happiness. I've eaten enough Chunky bars by now to get my brain addicted to these opioids. I need no heroin, only another Chunky.

Sacred Is Nothing Special

Sacred is nothing special. It's just life, revealing its true nature. Life's true nature is wholeness, Indra's net embracing every living thing, able to contain all unique expressions. In a sacred moment, I experience that wholeness. I know I belong here. I don't think about it, I simply feel it. Without any work on my part, my heart opens and my sense of "me" expands. I'm no longer locked inside a small self. I don't feel alone or isolated. I feel here. I feel welcomed.

That's from Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future by Margaret J. Wheatley. It's not a new book (2002), but I only became aware of it recently when someone shared it with me. I'm glad I did. Here's what I wrote for my review:

My only complaint about this book is that there's not more of it. I love everything about it except its short length. I could read more of these thoughts and themes all day. If we want things (anything) to be better, we need to talk to each other more--with honesty, openness, kindness, and listening. This book provides a philosophy, guide, and prompts for doing so.

Here's a big more from Wheatley (ellipses not included to create better flow):

I've noticed that many of us harbor negative beliefs about each other. Or we believe that there's nothing we can do to make a difference. Or that things are so crazy that we have to look out only for ourselves. With these beliefs, we cannot turn to one another. We won't engage together for the work that needs to be done.

I believe we can change the world if we start listening to one another again. Simple, honest, human conversation. Not meditation, negotiation, problem-solving, debate, or public meetings. Simple, truthful conversation where we each have a chance to speak, we each feel heard, and we each listen well. 

We each experience life differently. It's impossible for any two people to ever see things exactly the same.

To be curious about how someone else interprets things, we have to be willing to admit that we're not capable of figuring things out alone.

When we listen with less judgment, we always develop better relationships with each other. It's not differences that divide us. It's our judgments about each other that do. Curiosity and good listening bring us back together.

We can't be creative if we refuse to be confused. Change always starts with confusion.

As the world grows more strange and puzzling and difficult, I don't believe most of us want to keep struggling through it alone. I can't know what to do from my own narrow perspective. I know I need a better understanding of what's going on. I want to sit down with you and talk about all the frightening and hopeful things I observe, and listen to what frightens you and gives you hope. I need new ideas and solutions for the problems I care about. I know I need to talk to you to discover those. I need to learn to value your perspective, and I want you to value mine. I expect to be disturbed by what I hear from you. I know we don't have to agree with each other in order to think well together. There is no need for us to be joined at the head. We are joined by our human hearts.

Simple, truthful conversation where we each have a chance to speak, we each feel heard, and we each listen well. 

We each experience life differently. It's impossible for any two people to ever see things exactly the same.

To be curious about how someone else interprets things, we have to be willing to admit that we're not capable of figuring things out alone.

It's not differences that divide us. It's our judgments about each other that do. Curiosity and good listening bring us back together.

It's excellent. I have more to share below.

(And I'll note, in contrast to my normal practice, that when quoting this book I've left out ellipsis to represent the absence of a few words, sentences, or paragraphs for better reading flow, since I did it so often.)

A strongly related idea:

The instinct to judge other people's behavior as stupid, irrational, or crazy is very common, and it's also a sign that there's something you're missing. This is a point that top negotiators all emphasize: don't write off the other side as crazy. When their behavior confuses you, lean in to that confusion. Treat it as a clue. You'll often find that it leads you to the information you need to resolve the negotiation. . . . 

Leaning in to confusion is about inverting the way you're used to seeing the world. Instead of dismissing observations that contradict your theories, get curious about them. Instead of writing people off as irrational when they don't behave the way you think they should, ask yourself why their behavior might be rational. Instead of trying to fit confusing observations into your preexisting theories, treat them as clues to a new theory.

Scouts view anomalies as puzzle pieces to collect as you go through the world. You probably won't know what to do with them at first. But if you hang on to them, you may find that they add up to a richer picture of the world than you had before.

That's from an excellent companion book, a newish one: The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't by Julia Galef. Turning to One Another proposes making the world better by being open to each other; The Scout Mindset proposes making ourselves better by being open to each other. Both motivations lead to the same conclusion.

Here's my review for The Scout Mindset:

Many people aspire to be "open-minded." Most of us probably think we are. Because our evolutionary and instinctive programming fights that goal, though, we all have room to improve. This is a book for doing so, for working on becoming more open-minded.

Galef defines open-mindedness as having a "scout mindset."

Scout Mindset: the motivation to see things as they are, not as you wish they were.

Scout mindset is what allows you to recognize when you are wrong, to seek out your blind spots, to test your assumptions and change course. It's what prompts you to honestly ask yourself questions like "Was I at fault in that argument?" or "Is this risk worth it?" or "How would I react if someone from the other political party did the same thing?"

In this book, she clearly and effectively describes what it is to have a scout mindset, considers its opposite and the obstacles that prevent it, and provides a variety of tools for more effectively achieving one. Many books detail our human flaws to clear thinking; this one spells out what to do about them. It's highly valuable.

I'll have more from this in a bit.

I want to share something from comic/graphic artist Jessica Hagy, who writes Indexed. This is from the Indexed Facebook page:

Sonder: to realize that everybody on Earth is living a life as complicated, intense, and vibrantly unique as your own. It’s that feeling you get when you realize that you’re not IN traffic—you ARE traffic.

Visually, that word is is an iceberg: with what we see about other people above the waterline, while what’s really happening is submerged below.

Like so:

I believe that Sonder was first defined by The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows:

n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

Sonder.

Back to today's featured books:

I alone can't ask to be seen fully for who I am and my unique value. If I want you to acknowledge my gifts, I have to be curious about yours. I have a responsibility to look for and honor yours. We create enough space for our own self-expression only by inviting everybody else's uniqueness.

 ~ Turning to One Another

Our judgment isn't limited by knowledge nearly as much as it's limited by attitude.

 ~ The Scout Mindset

It's reciprocal and mutual. If I want others to see and appreciate me, I must always work to see and appreciate them.

Here's an abridged version of the guidance Wheatley provides in Turning to One Another for how to be in conversation with each other:

For conversation to take us into this deeper realm, I believe we have to practice several new behaviors. Here are the principles I've learned to emphasize before we begin a formal conversation process:

We acknowledge one another as equals.

Conversation is an opportunity to meet together as peers, not as roles. What makes us equal is that we're human beings. A second thing that makes us equal is that we need each other. Whatever we know, it is not sufficient. We can't see enough of the whole. We can't figure it out alone. Somebody sees something that the rest of us might need.

We try to stay curious about each other.

When we begin a conversation with this humility, it helps us be interested in who's there. It's easier for us to tell our story, to share our dreams and fears, when we feel others are genuinely curious about us. Curiosity helps us discard our mask and let down our guard. It creates a spaciousness that is rare in other interactions.

I try to maintain curiosity by reminding myself that everyone here has something to teach me. When they're saying things I disagree with, or have never thought about, or that I consider foolish or wrong, I silently remind myself that they have something to teach me. Somehow this little reminder helps me be more attentive and less judgmental. It helps me stay open to people, rather than shut them out.

We recognize that we need each other's help to become better listeners.

I think that the greatest barrier to good conversation is that we've lost the capacity to listen. We're too busy, too certain, too stressed. We don't have time to listen. We just keep rushing past each other. This is true almost everywhere these days. One gift of conversation is that it helps us become good listeners again.

We slow down so we have time to think and reflect.

Listening is one of the skills required for good conversation. Slowing down is a second. Most of us work in places where we don't have time to sit together and think. We rush in and out of meetings where we make hurried, not thoughtful, decisions. Conversation creates the conditions for us to rediscover the joy of thinking together.

We remember that conversation is the natural way humans think together.

In conversation we are remembering perhaps as much as we are learning. Human beings know how to talk to each other--we've been doing this ever since we developed language. Language gives us the means to know each other better. That's why we invented it.

We've cultivated a lot of bad behaviors when we're together--speaking too fast, interrupting others, monopolizing the time, giving speeches or pronouncements. Many of us have been rewarded for these behaviors. We've become more powerful through their use. But none of these lead to wise thinking or healthy relationships. They only drive us away from each other.

We expect it to be messy at times.

Because conversation is the natural way that humans think together, it is, like all life, messy. Life doesn't move in straight lines and neither does a good conversation. When a conversation begins, people always say things that don't connect. What's important at the start is that everyone's voice gets heard, that everyone feels invited into the conversation. Everyone will speak from their unique perspective. Thus, they won't say the same things, at all. It can feel as if you're watching a ping pong ball bouncing off a wall as the conversation veers from one topic to another. If you're hosting the conversation, you may feel responsible to draw connections between these diverse contributions (even when you don't see them).

It's important to let go of that impulse and just sit with the messiness. Each person's contribution adds a different element or spice to the whole. If we connect these too early, we lose the variety we need. If we look for superficial commonalties, we never discover the collective wisdom found only in the depths. We have to be willing to listen, curious about the diversity of experiences and ideas. We don't have to make sense of it right away.

We have to be willing to listen, curious about the diversity of experiences and ideas. We don't have to make sense of it right away.

We will always experience some aspect of reality, of the Truth, but only from our perspectives as they are colored by who and where we are. Others will know a different color and none will see the whole, complete light.

Almost ten years ago, I reviewed the book Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work. My review begins:

For the past few years I've had a fascinating and fun journey working my way through a good collection of titles about how thinking works; more specifically, about how thinking doesn't work the way we think it works. That we are constantly lying to, misleading, and deluding ourselves. That our knowledge, perceptions, beliefs, memories, and actions aren't nearly as rational and reasonable as we like to think. That many of our decisions, both the little, daily ones and the big, life-changing ones aren't as sound and carefully reasoned as we believe. Titles on my shelves I'd include in this category: Predictably Irrational, Sway, You Are Not So Smart, Drive, True Enough, Practical Wisdom, Moonwalking with Einstein, The Social Animal, Connected, Thinking, Fast and Slow.

That review is one of my most "liked" on Goodreads that I've contributed and one of the top, most "liked" reviews for that title.

I mention this because Galef also references a number of these titles in The Scout Mindset. (Hello, confirmation bias.) Her goal with her book, though, is not simply pointing out how our thinking is flawed, but what to do about it. Here are a few more sections from her book that I noted:

Your reasoning changes as your motivations change. That the principles you're inclined to invoke or the objections that spring to your mind depend on your motives: the motive to defend your image or your in-group's status; the motive to advocate for a self-serving policy; fear of change or rejection.

Catching your brain in the act of motivated reasoning--noticing when an experiment's previously invisible flaws jump out at you, or noticing that your preferences change as you switch around supposedly irrelevant details of a scenario--breaks down the illusion that your initial judgment is the objective truth. It convinces you, viscerally, that your reasoning is contingent; that your initial judgments are a starting point for exploration, not an end point.

-----

Most of the time, being wrong doesn't mean you did something wrong. It's not something you need to apologize for, and the appropriate attitude to have about it is neither defensive nor humbly self-flagellating, but matter-of-fact.

Even the language scouts use to describe being wrong reflects this attitude. Instead of "admitting a mistake," scouts will sometimes talk about "updating." . . . 

You don't necessarily need to speak this way. But if you at least start to think in terms of "updating" instead of "admitting you were wrong," you may find that it takes a lot of friction out of the process. An update is routine. Low-key. It's the opposite of an overwrought confession of sin. An update makes something better or more current without implying that its previous form was a failure.

-----

Holding your identity lightly means thinking of it in a matter-of-fact way, rather than as a central source of pride and meaning in your life. It's a description, not a flag to be waved proudly. . . . 

That might sound like a minor distinction, but it feels very different from the inside. . . . 

Someone who holds her political identity lightly is happy when her party wins an election. But she's happy because she expects her party to do a better job leading the country, not because the other side suffered a humiliating defeat. She's not tempted to taunt the losers, the way some Democrats gloated over "right-wing temper tantrums" after Obama's 2012 win or the way some Republicans relished "liberal tears" after Donald Trump's 2016 win.

Holding an identity lightly means treating that identity as contingent, saying to yourself, "I'm a liberal, for as long as it continues to seem to me that liberalism is just." Or "I'm a feminist, but I would abandon the movement if for some reason I came to believe it was causing net harm." It means maintaining a sense of your own beliefs and values, independent of the tribe's beliefs and values, and acknowledging--at least in the privacy of your own head--the places where those two things diverge.

Since reasoning is contingent, identity should be contingent as well. You should always be willing to update your beliefs.

I want to go back to the quote I started with from Turning to One Another. Here it is again, with a bit more explanation.

Sacred is nothing special. It's just life, revealing its true nature. Life's true nature is wholeness, Indra's net embracing every living thing, able to contain all unique expressions. In a sacred moment, I experience that wholeness. I know I belong here. I don't think about it, I simply feel it. Without any work on my part, my heart opens and my sense of "me" expands. I'm no longer locked inside a small self. I don't feel alone or isolated. I feel here. I feel welcomed.

As I write this, through my window I've noticed a mother bird flying back and forth, worms dangling from her beak. She's working diligently to provide for her babies. Watching her, I remember my own mothering, and suddenly, I feel connected to all other beings who, as mothers, try to keep life going. A brief moment of noticing one hard-working bird, and I feel different, more connected. The bird, me, mothers everywhere, we're all doing our part to bring more life into the world. She does her own work, I do mine, and in this moment of recognition, my heart opens to the truth that we all share in this together. Instead of feeling tired by such responsibility, I feel blessed.

We can't experience sacred in isolation. It is always an experience of connecting. It doesn't have to be another person. (Remember, I just connected with a bird.) It can be a connection with an idea, a feeling, an object, a tradition. The connection moves us outside ourselves into something greater. Because we move out beyond ourselves, the experience of sacred is often described as spacious, open, liberating. We learn we are larger than we thought.

Experiencing sacredness is feeling open and connected, a part of something more. Boundless and enlarged. Sensing there is more out there than you and your perceptions, and that you belong to it. The more we let ourselves open up to others, to their experiences and perceptions, the more awareness we'll have of the sacred.

Here's an article from my recent feed that relates. It reports on a effective way that communities are connecting with disturbed individuals through listening and understanding instead of judgment and punishment.

The Alternative to Police That Is Proven to Reduce Violence

“Especially this day and age with all the violence by law enforcement toward men of color, you’re worried that if you call 911, it might be the police who show up,” says Hillary Ronen, a district supervisor who represents Bernal Heights. “If we had somebody we could call instead of 911, that would be better,” adds Gwendolyn Westbrook, who leads Mother Brown’s kitchen for unhoused people in the Bayview neighborhood, which has the city’s highest proportion of Black residents. As Tim Black told the nonprofit Vera Institute of Justice in 2020, “There’s a lot of privilege that comes along with having a healthy enough relationship with police that you can contact them.” . . . 

The city’s new Street Crisis Response Team, which responds to unarmed adults in crisis from mental illness, substance use, or homelessness, tries to reduce interactions between the public and the police, to prevent officers from reacting violently to people in these situations.  

Nationwide, cops fatally shoot hundreds of people experiencing mental health emergencies every year. The city’s crisis responders, by contrast, don’t carry weapons. And they don’t have law enforcement backgrounds: Each three-person team includes a Fire Department paramedic, a behavioral health specialist, and a peer support counselor to help connect people with social services. In their vans, they store supplies like blankets, socks, snacks, Narcan, tampons, and toothbrushes. They respond to calls within 16 minutes on average, sometimes spending hours with a single person. Since November 2020, the team has fielded thousands of incidents—and, according to the Department of Public Health, which manages the project, not one has led to a death or an arrest, and fewer than 1 percent have led to violence.

San Francisco isn’t the only place betting that a health-focused crisis response team is the key to reducing unnecessary violence on its streets: Dozens of cities around the country, including Los Angeles, New York, and Denver, have set up similar teams over the last couple of years. Many draw inspiration from a long-running program in Eugene, Oregon, called Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets (CAHOOTS). Since its start in 1989, CAHOOTS has saved Eugene millions of dollars, according to the clinic that created the program, by freeing up police to focus on more dangerous crimes and by keeping mentally ill people out of jail.

The ideas from the two books might feel fluffy in the abstract, but they can be applied in very real, gritty ways. Communities are made safer and stronger through openness, empathy, and conversation.

I want to share one more thing from Turning to One Another. Wheatley includes this poem (among others) as food for thought and inspiration.

A Prayer For Children

by Ina J. Hughes (an American school teacher) and adapted by James Steyer.

We pray for children

who sneak popsicles before supper,

who erase holes in math workbooks,

who throw tantrums in the grocery store and pick at their food,

who like ghost stories,

who can never find their shoes.

And we pray for those

who stare at photographers from behind barbed wire,

who can’t bound down the street in a new pair of sneakers,

who are born in places we wouldn’t be caught dead in,

who never go to the circus,

who live in an X-rated world.

We pray for children

who sleep with the dog and bury the goldfish,

who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions,

who get visits from the tooth fairy,

who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money.

And we pray for those

who never get dessert,

who have no safe blanket to drag behind them.

who watch their parents watch them die

who can’t find any bread to steal,

who don’t have rooms to clean up,

whose pictures aren’t on anybody’s dresser,

whose monsters are real.

We pray for children

who spend all their allowance before Tuesday,

who shove dirty clothes under the bed, and never rinse out the tub,

who don’t like to be kissed in front of the car-pool,

who squire in church or temple and scream in the phone,

whose tears we sometimes laugh at and

whose smiles can make us cry.

And we pray for those

whose nightmares come in the daytime,

who will eat anything,

who have never seen a dentist,

who aren’t spoiled by anyone,

who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep,

who live and move, but have no being.

We pray for children who want to be carried

and for those who must,

for those we never give up on and

for those who don’t get a second chance,

for those we smother….

and who for those who will grab the hand of anybody kind

enough to offer it.

It reminds me very much of this recent picture book, which captures the essence of Turning to One Another as perfectly as anything might.

I Wish You Knew

by Jackie Azua Kramer

Our school

wraps around

a hundred-year-old

oak tree.

Through shady branches,

we watch summer leaves

change in the autumn wind

and drop

into crunchy

piles.

My favorite place is the school garden.

Between leafy cabbages and tomatoes,

my father helped our class

plant rows

of sunflower seeds.

One day, he told me

that because he wasn't born here

like me,

he must return to

his native country.

He wrapped his arms around me.

"Te quiero mucho, Estrella . . . my little star.

I'll be back one day

to see the sunflowers

bloom."

I love to skp between

the tall stalks of yellow-rayed petals

and think of his smile.

I wish you knew that when I forget my homework

or sit alone at lunch

or cry over little things,

it's because

I miss him.

I wish you knew

that since my father

left,

my mother works

a lot.

An my little brother

has bad

dreams.

I wish everyone knw how much I miss him.

Our school

wraps around

a hundred-year-old

oak tree.

As a teacher, my favorite place is our busy

and curious classroom.

I love to watch my students play

in our noisy playground,

with its soft patch of sand.

I wish they knew

that when they forget their homework

or sit alone at lunch

or cry over little things,

they

are not

alone.

Our school

wraps around

a hundred-year-old

oak tree.

My classmates and my new favorite place

is our class's sharing circle,

called I Wish You Knew.

We write down things that have happened

and feelings we wish others knew

on a piece of paper.

They're secret,

but they don't have to be

if you're ready to share.

I wish you knew I'm here to help.

I wish you knew that I'm hungry a lot.

I wish you knew that my

mom's away in the military.

I wish you knew I lived in a shelter.

I wish you knew

I miss my father.

But now in our sharing circle . . . 

 . . . I love to share cool ball tricks he taught me

or dances he learned as a boy

or songs we sang together.

I wish you knew

that we'll be together soon.

Till then,

my friends and teacher

help me plant sunflower seeds,

and we wait

for them

to bloom.

How can we make more opportunities to share with each other those things "I wish you knew?" How can we help each other find more sacred?