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

HARNESS YOUR SOCIAL BRAIN
As I said in 
Part III
, human beings are deeply social, and even the most
curmudgeonly of us devote a surprising amount of cognitive energy to assessing
other people’s motives and perceptions. Chattering away in an internal
monologue, our brains are constantly saying things like: “Is that person wearing
the neon hat a construction worker, or is that some new fashion? Why is he
wearing it in the elevator? What kind of person is he?” And we’re not just
noticing people’s clothing—we’re observing their demeanor, judging the
context, deciding what we think of them, and predicting what they’ll think of us.
All before we’ve even opened our mouth to say “I like your hat.”
So our brain’s capacity for social calculation is very well developed, to the
point that we actually recall and process information better if it’s socially
encoded—that is, if the facts are set in the context of the way people behave and
feel.
2
That’s why we tend to remember gossip easily, with its juicy human
interest, while we have to make an effort to remember telephone numbers or
long lists of instructions. Correspondingly, we can often give ourselves (and
others) a better chance of understanding thorny topics if we find a way to weave
a human story around or through them.
I noticed this whenever I found myself explaining a complicated training
exercise to clients or colleagues. Whenever I gave the instructions in abstract
terms—for example, asking people to get into groups of three, so that two people
could each ask different types of questions of the third person for fifteen minutes
before rotating the roles—the sequence was entirely clear in my own head. But it
often wasn’t clear to anyone else, and their eyes would glaze over. That is, until I
said exactly the same thing using real names and motivations. “Imagine you, me,
and Princess Diana get into a group and sit down together,” I’d begin, and all
would be suddenly clear.
There’s even evidence to suggest that we do better on pure logic tests when
they’re given a social context. Researchers have used a puzzle known as the
“Wason selection task” to demonstrate this.
3
In the puzzle, you’re shown four
cards and told that you need to check whether the following rule is being
observed: if a card has a D on one side, then it has to have a 3 on the other side.
Which card(s) do you definitely have to turn over in order to check the rule
holds?

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Got it? The answer isn’t D alone. And it’s not D and 3, because the rule
doesn’t say that a 3 has to have a D on the reverse. The answer is D and 7: if you
turned over the 7 and it had a D on it, you’d show the rule had been broken. If
that’s not obvious to you, don’t worry—at least 75 percent of people get it
wrong.
Now try this: You’re a bartender. You have to make sure that anyone drinking
beer in your bar is over twenty-one, or you could lose your license. Each of the
cards below represents information about four of your patrons. One side of the
card shows what they’re drinking, and the other side of the card shows their
(real) age. Which card or cards do you need to turn over to see if the twenty-one-
and-over rule is being violated?
The answer? You need to turn over the cards for “beer” and “16.” In other
words, if you saw someone drinking beer, you’d check their age; if you saw
someone who looked underage, you’d check what they were drinking. It’s the
same structure as the previous test, but roughly 75 percent of people get this
version right (and you probably did, too).
4
That’s three times as many correct
answers, just by adding some social context.

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You can apply this insight in your own work when you’re wrestling with a
tricky analytical or conceptual challenge, by recasting it in social terms. Here are
some things to try: