How Do We Really Make Decisions?

Part 2

In an earlier post I looked at how we really make decisions, not in the abstract but how people can be influenced in their decision-making by a variety of techniques, some constructive, some nefarious. 

As we all know there's a whole bunch of people out there trying to sway our thinking in their direction, whether it's a friend looking for a favor, a relative looking for a loan, politicians trying to get our vote, business associates pushing a new marketing strategy, religious groups seeking to get us to adopt their world view, or companies trying to sell us something.

The challenge in making a sound decision is to sort out the truth from distortions and distractions– whether deliberate or unintended – and to neutralize emotional appeals that can get in the way of what is logically in our own best interest, individually and collectively. More often than not, at least in my experience, the answer to most questions becomes self evident if you have good information and can take emotion out of a decision.

So let's take a closer look at each of these. First we need to figure out what is solid, reliable information, and second, to recognize when our emotions, or biases, or preconceptions are getting in the way of seeing a situation clearly.

When it comes to so many aspects of life, whether its politics or selecting a deodorant, you can just about count on being presented distorted or selective information. These days, especially in the era of the Internet, politicians and companies rarely out and out lie. They just quote data that appears to support their position on an issue or the product they are selling and ignore conflicting data.

When it comes to products, you can usually find reviews and comparisons on the Internet or in publications like Consumer Reports. Even here though you have to be careful. You don't really know who's behind some of those glowing on-line reviews. Are the reviewers really just ordinary people like you and me or are they company employees or relatives of employees? There's no way to be sure.

Generally I look first at the 3 and 4 star ratings before those with 5 stars because these are the ones where reviewers have taken the time to point out the deficiencies of a product as well as its strengths. Unless there a lot of them I ignore the one and two star ratings because they usually turn out to be rants of some sort about the instructions being poorly written or delivery was late, or they felt someone at the company was rude to them on the phone.

In the case of the consumer publications you have to read the criteria used to arrive at a rating. Sometimes the rating of a product may be pulled way down by factors you don't really care about. For example, if you are five foot eight then leg room in a new car is a lot less important than if you are six foot eight. If you live in Duluth, Minnesota, how well the heater works is a lot more important than the air conditioner. If you live in Phoenix the reverse is true.

So don't take ratings at face value. Always ask – and this is true every time somebody uses numbers to support their cause – where did that number come from and how was it arrived at?

Arizona State University psychology professor Robert Cialdini in his best selling book 'Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion” details half a dozen techniques commonly used by salesman of all kinds. A sense of reciprocity is something we all feel when someone gives us something. We naturally want to return the favor. So beware of salesmen bearing 'gifts' in the form of 'free samples'.

Occasionally you'll be approached by someone with a gift or a product who expects little if anything special in return, like the girl scouts going door to door selling cookies. Even if you don't like chocolate cookies you can still buy some to help the scouts and give them to your grandchildren the next time they visit. So turning away all gifts or refusing all acts of kindness isn't necessary. You just have to consider the context.

Cialdini writes about other techniques like the car salesman who wants to be your friend and advocate with his boss, the sales manager - a variation on the 'good cop-bad cop' routine. Then there's the use of scarcity of get you motivated. We've all heard the pitch “Only five left! Get yours before they all gone!” Or the 'Going out of business sale' banner that's been hanging on the front of the store for months.

There are still other techniques but I want to move on to psychologists call 'emotional intelligence' but which sounds an awful like what most people would call intuition. I call it 'subliminal intelligence'. This type of intelligence is in contrast to our rational, analytical mind which we like to think governs our decision making process.

Scientists, whether social or physical, get very uneasy whenever something that smacks of the paranormal comes up and that includes 'intuition' or “I just had this feeling.” We do know that emotions and reason are controlled by different parts of the brain so if scientists prefer the term emotional intelligence that's okay with me. I just think there may be something else going on in the brain that is not at all paranormal but may function to guide our decision-making if we can learn to recognize it.

Here is a truly remarkable example of what I am talking about.

It is February 1991 and the First Gulf War. The US and its allies have just invaded Kuwait which months before had been occupied by the Iraqi army. An American naval armada of aircraft carriers and the battleship Missouri are supporting the invasion with airstrikes and coastal bombardment. One of the ships guarding the fleet is the British Royal Navy's guided missile destroyer HMS Gloucester.

Lt. Commander Michael Riley is monitoring the radar screens on board the Gloucester when suddenly he is filled with a feeling of foreboding when he spots a radar blip originating from the Kuwaiti coast. There are two possibilities. Either the blip is an American A6 ground attack fighter returning to its carrier, or it's a deadly Iraqi Silkworm missile aimed at the fleet. The blips on a radar screen are virtually identical except that Commander Riley knows that the A6s fly at an altitude of 3,000 feet while the enemy missiles fly at one thousand feet. On this morning, however, the equipment on board cannot give him an altitude reading.

Riley is faced with a profound dilemma. If he fires a Sea Dart sea-to-air missile to destroy the approaching target and the blip turns out to be an A6 he will have destroyed the plane and killed the two crew members on board. If on the other hand the blip is a Silkworm and he fails to fire, the enemy missile could sink a carrier or battleship, killing hundreds, even thousands of sailors.

Either way if you make a mistake your career in the navy is finished. You could even face a court-martial.

The blip is closing at 550 miles per hour. It could be either an A6 or a Silkworm. If it's the missile it will strike the battleship Missouri in a matter of seconds. Riley has run out of time. He must make a decision. He fires two Sea Darts. The blip disappears from the radar screen.

Commander Riley remembers the next four hours as the longest of his life. He went back to review the radar tapes but even with the benefit of time and analysis he is unable to discern any clear evidence of whether the blip was a plane or a missile.

A team of investigators is dispatched to the scene to recover any wreckage floating in the sea. Finally the word comes back. It was indeed an enemy missile, knocked out of the sky only a few hundred yards from the Missouri.

Commander Riley had gambled and won. He was a hero.

Real life drama rarely gets any more intense than this but what really sets this incident apart is what a civilian researcher discovered in reviewing the radar tapes several years later. Gary Klein was a cognitive psychologist and consultant to the Marine Corps. He was intrigued by Commander Riley's feeling of foreboding when he first saw the radar blip that fateful morning.

Like others before him Klein looked at the radar tapes again and again. And then it struck him. The radar system picked up blips only after the plane or missile had left the coast and was over water. The planes flew at a higher altitude and were detected after only a single radar sweep. But a missile flew at a much lower altitude and the surface of the water created clutter on the radar screen so it took three radar scans before it was detected.

Commander Riley conscious, rational brain did not recognize the difference but his subliminal consciousness did, and that is what triggered his fear. Subconsciously Riley knew the blip had to be a missile and fortunately he acted on that subliminal cue.

I think most of us experience subliminal cues from time to time. More often than not, at least in my experience, they turn out to be correct. But not always. Listening to your subliminal consciousness is a tricky business. Some people believe you can train yourself to use it effectively but that's a subject for another day.

We started out talking about the importance of decision-making in many areas of of life. Now let's go back to look specifically at sorting out all the competing claims and counter claims made by the politicians.

The truth is that many times we either don't have the time or the inclination to dig into complex issues like what Congressman Smith's alternative to Obamacare would really going to cost or how many people it would really cover. So we rely on whether we like Congressman Smith or not. Does he espouse the ideas I believe it – whether its “small government and family values” or “government programs that help the little guy and protect us from vulture capitalism”? Is Congressman Smith the kind of guy I could sit down and have a beer with?

The problem with that decision strategy is that Congressman Smith might make a good drinking buddy but his healthcare bill may be full of smoke and mirrors. It could have been heavily influenced by some wealthy campaign donor, either liberal or conservative, or by some Washington think tank, again either liberal or conservative, or by some lobbying group, identity undisclosed.

It's not always apparent on the surface although one giveaway is the language used to describe it. If you keep hearing phrases like 'free enterprise' you can be pretty sure it's tilted to one side of the issue. If the words are 'social justice' and 'shared burden' then most likely it's from the other side. But don't simply dismiss a plan because it has the 'wrong' descriptive phases associated with it or let others do your thinking for you. Just because your favorite talk show host says its just another example of 'liberalism run amok' or 'conservative fear mongering' doesn't mean you have to believe everything he or she says.

My personal favorite when it comes to objective, in depth media coverage of politics is C-SPAN's Book TV on the weekend and C-SPAN's coverage of panel discussions put on by various think tanks around the country. C-SPAN – in my opinion - is by far the best source for genuinely fair and balanced coverage of important public issues. The down side is that unfortunately the discussion is usually so in-depth that most people don't have the time or the patience to sit through it.

I know that Fox News calls itself the 'fair and balanced' network and having worked in the national media I would agree that there are times when it does seem to present more sides of an issue than most of the mainstream media. But, in my opinion at least, Fox is not perfect either. Maybe someday we will have a national media outlet that really does probe and analyze issues in a truly balanced way but for now I can only suggest that if you want to understand what's going on in the world, and not just what makes you feel good, you have to get your news from a variety of sources, regardless of whether they claim to 'lean forward' or be 'fair and balanced'.

Winston Churchill once famously said that if at age 20 you are not a liberal you have no heart. If by age 40 you are not a conservative you have no brain. To which I would add that if by age 60 you are still trying to see the world exclusively in liberal and conservative terms, you haven't learned much in life.

And that's the truth.

© 2013 by Allen B. Hundley