How to Have a Good Day: Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life pdfdrive com

SIGNS THAT YOUR AUTOMATIC SYSTEM IS IN CHARGE
A good first step toward making smarter choices is to become adept at
recognizing when your automatic system may be taking charge. In my
experience, if you catch yourself saying or thinking anything like the following
phrases, then the chances are that your automatic system is trumping your

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deliberate system:
“It’s obviously right (or obviously wrong).”
“I recently heard XYZ…therefore…”
“Everyone agrees.”
“I understand it—so I like it!”
“Let’s just stick with what we know.”
“There’s only one real option.”
These are all versions of your automatic system confidently yelling, “I don’t
care that the world is complicated—I’m making things simple for you!” But
each phrase represents a slightly different type of common mental shortcut. (Of
course there are many more beyond this; these are just some of the ones I hear
most in the workplace.) So let me say a little more about each one, to improve
your chances of spotting them before they trip you up.
“It’s Obviously Right/Wrong”
One way that your automatic system saves mental energy is to seek out evidence
that confirms what you already believe, while ignoring any evidence that
contradicts it. That saves your deliberate system a lot of work. It means you
don’t have to rethink your assumptions and expectations, and it reduces the
uncertainty and ambiguity that’s taxing for our brains. Our automatic system is
even willing to reinterpret reality, if the evidence can’t be made to line up
perfectly with our preexisting views. In 
Chapter 1
, I explained how this
confirmation bias
can result in us seeing gray bananas as yellow. And the same
applies to decision making. We’re capable of unconsciously twisting the facts
until they fit what we’re expecting to see.
So if we’re anticipating that something will be a bad idea, we’ll tend to notice
all its weaknesses and none of its strengths—and we might even invent some
criticisms that aren’t really fair. It goes the other way, too, when we get
ourselves attached to an idea we love and find ourselves blind to its downsides.

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The result? A black-and-white view of the world. Things that seem “obviously
right” or “obviously wrong.”
A recent study by psychologists at Yale did a good job of highlighting the grip
that confirmation bias can exert on our brains. Researchers asked a group of
volunteers about their political views, and then had them analyze some data on
gun control. Those who had identified themselves as conservatives made
significantly more numerical mistakes when asked to analyze data that seemed
to indicate that gun control worked. And the liberals became equally innumerate
when they were faced with figures suggesting gun control did 
not
work.
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 It’s just
that little bit harder for our brains to think clearly about evidence that goes
against our views—and the brain’s automatic system doesn’t like hard work.
This isn’t a question of intelligence, by the way. We’re all susceptible.
Investment expert Warren Buffett has spoken admiringly of Charles Darwin’s
determination to overcome confirmation bias, saying: “Now, there was a smart
man, who did just about the hardest thing in the world to do. Charles Darwin
used to say that whenever he ran into something that contradicted a conclusion
he cherished, he was obliged to write the new finding down within thirty
minutes. Otherwise his mind would work to reject the discordant information,
much as the body rejects transplants. Man’s natural inclination is to cling to his
beliefs, particularly if they are reinforced by recent experience.”
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