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The Science of Irrational Decisions
The Rat Race Trap blog has a look at one aspect of the irrational decision-making process humans employ, based on the book Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. "Professor Ariely describes some experiments which demonstrated something he calls 'arbitrary coherence.' Basically it means that once you contemplate a decision or actually make a decision, it will heavily influence your subsequent decisions. That's the coherence part. Your brain will try to keep your decisions consistent with previous decisions you have made. I've read about that many times before, but what was surprising in this book was the the 'arbitrary' part. ... [In an experiment] the fact that the students contemplated a decision at a completely arbitrary price, the last two digits of their social security number, very heavily influenced what they were willing to pay for the product. The students denied that the anchor influenced them, but the data shows something totally different. Correlations ranged from 0.33 to 0.52. Those are extremely significant."
Yes. You arbitrarily decided to read Slashdot one day. In order to maintain internal consistency, your brain had to make it seem like this is a good idea, and continually offers up excuses for reading Slashdot.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
In case you were actually curious which I'm sure you are...
Humans are naturally curious, and we have a love for information. These are great things, clearly evolving to strive for greater knowledge and understanding is a good thing. And a certain level of curiousity is also good. So there are mechanisms in our brain that reward us for gaining knowledge... generally you feel good learning something.
That said, the implementation is terrible. We get rewarded (chemically) for ANY information we learn. There is no natural mechanism that filters out useless information. So at our base we feel equally rewarded learning about britney spears' baby as we do about our political system. This results in you feeling good learning the tidbits of information though they may not be very pertinent to your life. If you are good at trivial pursuit you are likely more of an addict and so on.
To bring it full circle... you made a logical decision to do x, this sets a rule in your mind that x is true. Once you made x decision, you had no further reason to question that, and you would base many more decisions on that "logical rule". When x is challanged, it would require you to re-think all past decisions that were based on x, which might include who you married, why you took this job, your religious beliefs and other important life decisions.
Is it any wonder our minds are wired to assume we were right and keep on moving in the same directions? The brain is trying to keep you alive; anything you have done up to this point won't kill you, so why would the brain try to change that? That's why few people really have a life changing moment unless forced upon them by war, death, or other bad things. When the going is good, you will keep going.
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
TFS never claimed it was a strong correlation. It's a highly SIGNIFICANT correlation (meaning that the probability that the result occurred by chance and not systematically is very low, less than 5%).
Now, whether or not .33 is a STRONG correlation is another matter. By most definitions, it is not, although .52 would be a moderate correlation. However, the correlation does suggest that about 10-30% (r-squared) or more of the variation in subjects' decisions was accounted for by their social security numbers (accounted for != caused by, but we can make inferences based on the experimental design). Over a lifetime, 10% variation due to random irrelevant factors (like SS number) is serious, and 30% is HUGE. In that sense, it is a meaningful result, even if the correlation is not a "strong" one in terms of proportion.
Everything is easy when you don't understand the problem.
I disagree. I find watching E-Daily, or Entertainment Tonight, or any other celebrity show physically nauseating. It's literally an assault on my brain.
That's because such trivia is designed for children who never really grew up. Y'know, the ones who have adult bodies. That's why they think someone else's personal life is so much more fascinating than their own, merely because that person can sing or dance or act. They don't seem to notice that the truly famous entertainers are some of the most out-of-touch people who are least worthy of this kind of adoration. The doctor who finally cures cancer will be an anonymous, unknown figure by comparison.
They're impressed with the entertainer's ability to entertain and that's their only real criteria; any critical thinking or other evaluation shuts down at that point. Their appetite for the superficial and insignificant is absolutely endless, even though those same mental faculties could be put towards educating themselves, establishing deep and meaningful connections with people like their neighbors, and finding real purpose and meaning in their own lives. They see nothing wrong with this or the waste that it represents.
It's an assault on your brain because the underlying message is "it's okay to devote so much time and energy to something completely devoid of any real meaning." There's also the implication that it's okay to form grossly asymmetric relationships instead of mutual relationships, that there is anything healthy or nurturing about this, like when a person learns all about the personal and romantic life of an actor when that actor doesn't even know that he or she exists. The message is that you should eagerly do such things merely because it's encouraged by the industry that was built around it. If you have any understanding whatsoever, how could you do anything but reject this notion?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Science basically involved checking whether what "everyone knows" is actually correct, and then trying to find out why.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Wow. I knew the "hurr durr, what good is this study, it's only repeating common sense, what a waste of time/resources" response was coming as soon as I read the summary title, but I didn't expect it would be the first post. Especially since this story is specifically ABOUT the way that people are prone to believe "obvious" things in spite of actual evidence.
Please, get this through your heads: "common sense" (another name for biases gained from anecdotes and cultural groupthink) is often misleading, unreliable, over-broad, or outright wrong. At one time it was "common sense" that heavy objects fall faster than light objects. It was "common sense" that large, heavy objects can't float in water. It was "common sense" that the world is flat and women and blacks are intellectually inferior to white men and that the planets and moons are perfect spheres orbiting in perfect circles.
Science is about testing claims through empirical experiment--sometimes the results match up with "common sense", sometimes they don't. Sure, this story an example of a place where experiment confirmed something that is fairly obvious on its face--but the data goes a long way towards better understanding the WHYS and HOWS of this "obvious" phenomenon. Data is never a bad thing.
So, what you're saying is, you're jealous of the ability of an entertainer to entertain, and because you once arbitrarily used the defense that what you do is more worthwhile than what they do in order to get a false sense of superiority, your brain keeps doing it to stay internally consistent?
You remind me of those people who call others "racist" because they disagree with Barack Obama on matters of public policy. Just like them, I am sure that you do it knowing that no one can rationally argue against something so absurd. For one thing, it would require them to prove a negative. That's why you never feel that before making such statements, you have a burden of proof to establish a) that jealousy of entertainers is the only possible reason to suggest that maybe there is something wrong with obsessing over strangers, or b) that the reasoning I openly explained is fatally flawed and that you know how it may be corrected.
Your failure to address or even to recognize that such a burden of proof goes along with your claim, combined with your insistence on making this into a personal matter instead of giving your counter-argument, can be taken as evidence that you are reacting emotionally, perhaps because I offended you. There was nothing malicious in what I said, so your offense is your own and it begins and ends with you. Therefore, you get to deal with it and will receive no relief from me.
I'll give you a free tip for the future: try these tactics on people who are unable to see right through them. You'll be much more "successful" if you really want to call it that.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Yes, I clarified this point in a response to another reply.
I split from the conservative movement a long time ago due to issues like this. Truthfully, I've not made my mind up about abortion, because I can't objectively nail down when a child should be considered a human life.
It bothers me that so many people hold positions on issues of great importance based on how they "feel", rather than seeking to find the truth.
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