Kurt Johnson

In an earlier post I recommended How We Know What Isn’t So – the best summary I can think of is to call it analogous to a study of optical illusions; instead of cataloging visual tricks the book details tons of ways the human mind warps objective data into incorrect conclusions. Below I’ve captured some of the tidbits I enjoyed – there are dozens or hundreds of these concept+vignettes in the book, definitely enough to recommend reading the whole thing.

On how managers perceive motivation by reprimand vs. motivation by encouragement:.

Rewards are most likely to be given following another person’s extraordinarily good performance. However, regression guarantees that on average such extraordinary performances will be followed by deterioration. The reward will thus appear ineffective or counterproductive. In contrast, because bad performances tend to be followed by improvement, any punishment meted out after a disappointing performance will appear to have been beneficial…Regression effects teach us specious lessons about the relative effectiveness of reward and punishment.

In other words, managers/teachers can be forgiven for thinking that criticism is more effective than praise for mean-regressing performance metrics.

On the tendency to seek confirmatory information:

When trying to assess whether a belief is valid, people tend to seek out information that would potentially confirm the belief over information that might disconfirm it…To illustrate this tendency, consider an experiment in which participants were given a set of four cards, each of which has a letter or number on the side facing up – A, B, 2, and 3. The participants were told that each card had a letter on one side and a number on the other [opposite side] and they were asked to determine, by judiciously turning over the proper cards, whether “all cards with a vowel on one side have an even number on the other.”

Stop for a few seconds and answer this problem yourself before reading the solution.

The common response was to turn over the “A” and “2″ cards. These cards were presumably chosen because of their potential to provide evidence consistent with the hypothesis. However, turning over the “2″ card was uninformative because it could only confirm the hypothesis (a vowel on the other side would confirm it and a consonant would be irrelevant to it). The “3″ card was rarely turned over, on the other hand, even though it was potentially at least as informative as any other because of its potential to invalidate the hypothesis in one quick step.

This experiment is particularly informative because it makes it abundantly clear that the tendency to seek out information consistent with a hypothesis need not stem from any desire for the hypothesis to be true. The people in this experiment surely did not care whether [the hypothesis was true].

Although I don’t remember an easy quote to sum it up, I connected this idea to ways that I can conduct interviews and discovery; there’s often a bias towards asking questions that should be answered positively, neglecting good opportunities to ask questions where an affirmative answer sends up red flags.

On the association between black clothing and perceived aggressiveness:

This negative association leads to several interesting results in the domain of professional sports…We showed groups of trained referees one of two videotapes of the same aggressive play in a football scrimmage, one with the aggressive team wearing white and one with it wearing black. The referees who saw the black-uniformed version rated the play as much more aggressive and more deserving of a penalty than those who saw the white-uniformed version. The referees “saw” what this common negative association led them to expect to see. As a result of this bias it is not surprising to learn that teams that wear black uniforms in these two sports have been penalized significantly more than average during the last two decades*

*M.G. Frank & T. Gilovich (1988) The dark side of self and social perception: Black uniforms and aggression in professional sports. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

On how we pre-emptively make excuses for performance (ineffectively, he adds):

By drawing attention to those elements that inhibit performance, the self-handicapper tries to induce the other person to discount a potential failure. Under such trying circumstances, it is implied, anyone would have failed. And things are even better if we succeed: logically, the other person should augment his or her impressions of our ability. Anyone capable of overcoming such obstacles must be gifted indeed.

There are really two classes of self-handicapping strategies, real and feigned. “Real” self-handicapping involves placing visible obstacles to success in one’s own path. The obstacles make one less likely to succeed but they provide a ready excuse for failure. The student who neglects to study before an exam or the aspiring actor who drinks before an audition are good examples.

“Feigned” self-handicapping, on the other hand, is…simply making excuses for possible bad performance, either before or after the fact. Although it is certainly employed in all walks of life, this strategy is probably most common in areas such as sports and (undergraduate) academics in which outcomes are often unambiguous and performance can be precisely quantified….Indeed there is a term, “sneaky bookers”, which refers to students who study only in the strictest privacy so that they can pretend to devote minimal effort to their courses.

For a more sobering take on what might motivate some sneaky bookers, see this paper:

Our empirical analysis of ‘acting white’ uncovers a rich set of new facts. In contrast to the previous literature (Cook and Ludwig 1997), Figure 1A demonstrates that there are large racial differences in the relationship between popularity and academic achievement. Among whites, higher grades yield higher popularity. For Blacks, higher achievement is associated with modestly higher popularity until a grade point average of 3.5, when the slope turns negative. A black student with a 4.0 has, on average, 1.5 fewer same-race friends than a white student with a 4.0. Among Hispanics, there is little change in popularity from a grade point average of 1 through 2.5. After 2.5, the gradient turns sharply negative. A Hispanic student with a 4.0 grade point average is the least popular of all Hispanic students, and has 3 fewer friends than a typical white student with a 4.0 grade point average.

Crater Lake National Park, overlooking Wizard Island.

Taken two summers ago at around 10pm, probably a 20 second exposure on film with a Minolta 24/2.8. The shot occurred during one of the two worst mosquito attacks I’ve ever endured – I set up the tripod in the car, jumped out and hit the shutter, then danced around swatting my face for 20 seconds until I could retreat to the car.