On Brain Tricks

10 Ways Your Brain Is Smacking You Around
Sometimes it seems like your brain just isn't on your side.    
11/12/12 by David DiSalvo in Psychology Today
 
Extract:    
 
“We'd be nowhere without the marvel of evolution in our skulls, but sometimes our brains act in ways not in our best interests, and that's when we have to remember that not every message coming from the control center is accurate or beneficial. Here are 10 examples:

1. Telling you that you have more impulse control than you really do.
2. Producing more automatic thoughts than you can possibly manage.
3. Pulling you into rumination about your worst fears.
4. Directing you toward distractions to take the pressure off.
5. Making you think you’re a mind-reader and a fortune-teller.
6. Sending mixed messages about which rewards to pursue.
7. Looking for patterns, here, there and everywhere.
8. Pushing you into extending trust whether or not it’s reciprocated.
9. Making things seem urgent that really aren’t.
10. Tripping your guilt wire every time something goes wrong.”


The 12 cognitive biases that prevent you from being rational  
By George Dvorsk, On iO9

Extract:                                               

“The human brain is capable of 1016 processes per second, which makes it far more powerful than any computer currently in existence. But that doesn't mean our brains don't have major limitations. The lowly calculator can do math thousands of times better than we can, and our memories are often less than useless — plus, we're subject to cognitive biases, those annoying glitches in our thinking that cause us to make questionable decisions and reach erroneous conclusions. Here are a dozen of the most common and pernicious cognitive biases that you need to know about.

1. Confirmation Bias
We love to agree with people who agree with us.

2. Ingroup Bias
It causes us to overestimate the abilities and value of our immediate group at the expense of people we don't really know.

3. Gambler's Fallacy
We tend to put a tremendous amount of weight on previous events, believing that they'll somehow influence future outcomes.

4. Post-Purchase Rationalization
Also known as Buyer's Stockholm Syndrome, it's a way of subconsciously justifying our purchases — especially expensive ones. Social psychologists say it stems from the principle of commitment, our psychological desire to stay consistent and avoid a state of cognitive dissonance.

5. Neglecting Probability
It’s our inability to grasp a proper sense of peril and risk — which often leads us to overstate the risks of relatively harmless activities, while forcing us to overrate more dangerous ones.

6. Observational Selection Bias
This is that effect of suddenly noticing things we didn't notice that much before — but we wrongly assume that the frequency has increased.

7. Status-Quo Bias
We humans tend to be apprehensive of change, which often leads us to make choices that guarantee that things remain the same, or change as little as possible.

8. Negativity Bias
People tend to pay more attention to bad news. (...) Evolutionarily, heeding bad news may be more adaptive than ignoring good news.

9. Bandwagon Effect
Though we're often unconscious of it, we love to go with the flow of the crowd.
Much of this bias has to do with our built-in desire to fit in and conform, as famously demonstrated by the Asch Conformity Experiments.

10. Projection Bias
We tend to believe that people not only think like us, but that they also agree with us. It's a bias where we overestimate how typical and normal we are, and assume that a consensus exists on matters when there may be none. 
 
11. The Current Moment Bias
We humans have a really hard time imagining ourselves in the future and altering our behaviors and expectations accordingly. Most of us would rather experience pleasure in the current moment, while leaving the pain for later.

12. Anchoring Effect
Also known as the relativity trap, this is the tendency we have to compare and contrast only a limited set of items. The classic example is an item at the store that's on sale; we tend to see (and value) the difference in price, but not the overall price itself."

On Optimism

The Science of Our Optimism Bias and the Life-Cycle of Happiness
Based on Tali Sharot’s book in "The Science of Optimism: Why We’re Hard-Wired for Hope", on Brain Pickings.

“To make progress, we need to be able to imagine alternative realities, and not just any old reality but a better one.”

Extracts:

“Sharot cites, this “optimism bias” might be better termed “narcissism bias” — a phenomenon known as the “superiority illusion”:

‘In a survey by two Ohio researchers, 25 percent of respondents said they were in the top 1 percent for getting along well with others. A separate study of college students found that 93 percent of respondents in the U.S. believed they were above average in driving ability. Most people would even be willing to bet money on it if you asked them to. This high level of car-handling expertise, however, is statistically impossible — we cannot all be better than everyone else.’

On pessimism:

‘The problem with pessimistic expectations, such as those of the clinically depressed, is that they have the power to alter the future; negative expectations shape outcomes in a negative way. Not everyone agrees with this assertion. Some people believe the secret to happiness is low expectations. If we don’t expect greatness or find love or maintain health or achieve success, we will never be disappointed. If we are never disappointed when things don’t work out and are pleasantly surprised when things go well, we will be happy. It’s a good theory — but it’s wrong. Research shows that whatever the outcome, whether we succeed or we fail, people with high expectations tend to feel better. At the end of the day, how we feel when we get dumped or win an award depends mostly on how we interpret the event.’"

On Context

Situations Matter: Understanding How Context Transforms Your World
07/01/13, by Sam McNerney, on Big Think.

Extract:

“McNerney: Situations Matter: Understanding How Context Transforms Your World” (a book by Sam Sommers) is a reaction to the idea that personalities are immutable, that the individual changes the situation but not the other way around. We’re more influenced by those around us than we’d like to believe. Even our private sense of identity is highly context-dependent. (...)

Sommers: Yes, the real moral of the book is that personality is overrated. Why do we put so much stock in the idea of immutable character? The world is a frighteningly unpredictable place–it's reassuring to at least be able to hang our hats on the idea that the people around us are reliably predictable entities."

On Self-Justification

Why do people defend unjust, inept, and corrupt systems?

21/12/11, on Farnam Street.

Extracts:

"The paper illuminates four situations that foster system justification: system threat, system dependence, system inescapability, and low personal control.

When we’re threatened we defend ourselves—and our systems. Before 9/11, for instance, President George W. Bush was sinking in the polls. But as soon as the planes hit the World Trade Center, the president’s approval ratings soared. So did support for Congress and the police. During Hurricane Katrina, America witnessed FEMA’s spectacular failure to rescue the hurricane’s victims. Yet many people blamed those victims for their fate rather than admitting the agency flunked and supporting ideas for fixing it. In times of crisis, say the authors, we want to believe the system works.

We also defend systems we rely on. (...)

When we feel we can’t escape a system, we adapt. That includes feeling okay about things we might otherwise consider undesirable. The authors note one study in which participants were told that men’s salaries in their country are 20% higher than women’s. Rather than implicate an unfair system, those who felt they couldn’t emigrate chalked up the wage gap to innate differences between the sexes. “You’d think that when people are stuck with a system, they’d want to change it more,” says Kay. But in fact, the more stuck they are, the more likely are they to explain away its shortcomings. Finally, a related phenomenon: The less control people feel over their own lives, the more they endorse systems and leaders that offer a sense of order."

On the Importance of Being Alert

The Illusion of Truth

Repetition is used everywhere—advertising, politics and the media—but
does it really persuade us? Psychology studies reveal all...
On the Psyblog

Extracts:
“We see ads for the same products over and over again. Politicians
repeat the same messages endlessly (even when it has nothing to do
with the question they've been asked). Journalists repeat the same
opinions day after day. Can all this repetition really be persuasive?
It seems too simplistic that just repeating a persuasive message
should increase its effect, but that's exactly what psychological
research finds (again and again). (…)

This is what psychologists call the illusion of truth effect and it
arises at least partly because familiarity breeds liking. As we are
exposed to a message again and again, it becomes more familiar.
Because of the way our minds work, what is familiar is also true.
Familiar things require less effort to process and that feeling of
ease unconsciously signals truth (this is called cognitive fluency).

As every politician knows, there's not much difference between actual
truth and the illusion of truth. Since illusions are often easier to
produce, why bother with the truth?

The exact opposite is also true. If something is hard to think about
then people tend to believe it less. Naturally this is very bad news
for people trying to persuade others of complicated ideas in what is a
very complicated world. (…)

Repetition is effective almost across the board when people are paying
little attention, but when they are concentrating and the argument is
weak, the effect disappears. (…)

When the argument is strong, though, it doesn't matter whether or not
the audience is concentrating hard, repetition will increase
persuasion. Unfortunately I find it's often people with the best
arguments who don't repeat them enough.”

Darwin for Policymakers

Why we are, as we are

As the 150th anniversary of the publication of “On The Origin of Species” approaches, the moment has come to ask how Darwin’s insights can be used profitably by policymakers

The Economist, 18/12/08

Extract:

“WEALTH, according to H.L. Mencken, an American satirist of the last century, “is any income that is at least $100 more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband.” Adjusted for inflation since 1949, that is not a bad definition. But why do those who are already well-off feel the need to out-earn other people? And why, contrariwise, is it so hard to abolish poverty?

America, Mencken's homeland, executes around 40 people a year for murder. Yet it still has a high murder rate. Why do people murder each other when they are almost always caught and may, in America at least, be killed themselves as a result?

Why, after 80 years of votes for women, and 40 years of the feminist revolution, do men still earn larger incomes? And why do so many people hate others merely for having different coloured skin?

Traditionally, the answers to such questions, and many others about modern life, have been sought in philosophy, sociology, even religion. But the answers that have come back are generally unsatisfying. They describe, rather than explain. They do not get to the nitty-gritty of what it truly is to be human. Policy based on them does not work. This is because they ignore the forces that made people what they are: the forces of evolution.”

On Social Inequality and Psychopaths

The 1% are the very best destroyers of wealth the world has ever seen

By George Monbiot, The Guardian, 7/11/11

Extracts:

“If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make forthemselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren't responsible. Many of those who are rich today got there because they were able to capture certain jobs. This capture owes less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth, as such jobs are taken disproportionately by people born in certain places and into certain classes.

The findings of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel economics prize, are devastating to the beliefs that financial high-fliers entertain about themselves. He discovered that their apparent success is a cognitive illusion. For example, he studied the results achieved by 25 wealth advisers across eight years. He found that the consistency of their performance was zero. "The results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill." Those who received the biggest bonuses had simply got lucky.

(…)

In a study published by the journal Psychology, Crime andLaw, Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon tested 39 senior managers and chief executives from leading British businesses. They compared the results to the same tests on patients at Broadmoor special hospital, where people who have been convicted of serious crimes are incarcerated. On certain indicators of psychopathy, the bosses' scores either matched or exceeded those of the patients. In fact, on these criteria, they beat even the subset of patients who had been diagnosed with psychopathic personality disorders.

The psychopathic traits on which the bosses scored so highly, Board and Fritzon point out, closely resemble the characteristics that companies look for. Those who have these traits often possess great skill in flattering and manipulating powerful people. Egocentricity, a strong sense of entitlement, a readiness to exploit others and a lack of empathy and conscience are also unlikely to damage their prospects in many corporations. (…) This is not to suggest that all executives are psychopaths. It is to suggest that the economy has been rewarding the wrong skills.

(…)

Between 1947 and 1979, productivity in the US rose by 119%, while the income of the bottom fifth of the population rose by 122%. But from 1979 to 2009, productivity rose by 80%, while the income of the bottom fifth fell by 4%. In roughly the same period, the income of the top 1% rose by 270%. In the UK, the money earned by the poorest tenth fell by 12% between 1999 and 2009, while the money made by the richest 10th rose by 37%. The Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality, climbed in this country from 26 in 1979 to 40 in 2009.”