Most of the people you know and work with persevere in making dumb decisions that they know are clearly wrong. The worst thing is, you’re a person that someone knows and you’re just as guilty of doing stupid stuff in their eyes. The good news is that there is almost always a good reason why people do dumb stuff, so below are the first few in what may prove to be a long list of reasons why we all act like idiots without even knowing it.
‘If everybody else thinks so, then I guess we should…’
This is a basic human trait commonly known as conformity. People make decisions based on what they think and not what everyone else thinks, right? Give me a break. Pressures such as the general group consensus are only too often enough to get people to do things that they know are wrong (fixing attendance sheets, giving inaccurately high exam grades, etc.).
Does this sound familiar?
Your school emphasises the importance of students passing exams to be able to take a course at a higher level. This was an important factor in you deciding to join this school. Unfavourable economic conditions suggest that those students who fail their exams won’t be willing to shell out money to take the course again. Other teachers agree to give a large number of students a ‘helping hand’ to make sure they return for the next course. What do you do?
Actual research says:
A famous experiment by Solomon Asch, in which one participant and several experimenters (in disguise) were asked to announce their judgment about the length of several lines (which line was longer then the other, etc.) supports the notion of peer pressure and conformity. The experimenters were instructed to give incorrect answers to easy questions. Astonishingly, about one third of respondents gave wrong answers because of the pressure of their peers. Conformity is an incredibly strong factor in decision making, so don’t assume someone is bad for making choices based on peer pressure.
‘Mine, mine, mine… you can’t have it’
This is known as the endowment effect: it is surprisingly hard for people to throw away, give away or sell things that are past their prime. One theory for this is that people tend to place a higher value on objects they own relative to objects they do not.
Does this sound familiar?
Have you ever tried to take back a copy of a course book a teacher has been using that’s annotated with lesson plans, notes and answers, even though it’s now been replaced by a new edition? How about getting supplementary materials from someone who last semester used the book you’re now using. Did you wonder why they were so unwilling to share, even when you were willing to reciprocate the favour in some way?
Actual research says:
An experiment conducted in an office by Kahneman, Knetsch and Thaler looked at how difficult it was for people to part with the coffee mugs they used every day. It found that randomly chosen mug owners had to be paid around $7 for it, while randomly assigned ‘buyers’ were only willing to pay around $3. So it’s likely that your colleague values things they already have more than they would if they didn’t already own them.
Don’t judge people too harshly for doing this, they simply place a lot more value on the things they have than you do.
‘Listen, we’ve come this far… so let’s just keep going’
Those in the know refer to this as the sunk cost bias. While we know that the past is past and we can’t get back money or time that we have already spent, many people irrationally take costs, time, money, or other resources which have already been consumed and can’t be recovered into account in their decision making.
Does this sound familiar?
Your school persists on using a Headway-type series despite it being grossly inappropriate for the ESP courses you’re teaching. Better options are available, but a lot of time and effort has been put into developing grammar and vocabulary exercises, course programs, etc., not to mention the agreement with the supplier to use the book in exchange for a bulk buy discount. Word of mouth feedback from students suggests that people aren’t satisfied with the courses and aren’t recommending them, but surely too much has been invested to switch now.
Actual research says:
Barry Schwartz discusses this issue in ‘The Paradox of Choice’, examples of such behaviour include taking into account how much you spent to get your car fixed last time, how long you have been dating someone, how much you invested in a stock, or how many troops have been lost in Iraq so far, when trying to decide if you should persist.
If the American government can’t get past this, give the admin at your school a break for adopting this posture
‘Me, me, me!’
Not to be confused wit ‘mine, mine, mine…’ egocentric bias refers to the fact that putting yourself in another person’s shoes is harder than it sounds for most people.
Does this sound familiar?
Certain teachers seem to regularly claim more responsibility for themselves for the results of a successful class than an outside observer would credit them with. Besides simply claiming credit for positive outcomes, which might simply be self-serving, it’s interesting that the same teachers also cite themselves as overly responsible for negative outcomes as well.
Actual research says:
In a study conducted by Sukhwinder Shergill and colleagues at University College London, pairs of volunteers were connected to a device that allowed each of them to exert pressure on the other volunteer’s fingers. The researcher began by exerting a fixed amount of pressure on the first volunteer’s finger. The first volunteer was then asked to exert the same amount of pressure on the second volunteer’s finger. The second volunteer was then asked to exert the same amount of pressure on the first volunteer’s finger, and so on. Although volunteers tried to respond with equal force, they typically responded with about 40% more force than they had just experienced. Each time a volunteer was touched, they touched back harder, which led the other volunteer to touch back even harder. Is this why parties in a conflict invariably think they are both right?
So, here are the first four examples of stupid behaviour that can be explained in a perfectly reasonable way, if you take the time to think what’s causing the behaviour. Knowing the causes of such behaviour may not enable you to get past such actions, but it will give you a better insight into why it occurs.
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