Monitor on Psychology - February 2012 - (Page 26)

Questionnaire Malcolm Gladwell when he wrote the book “Blink.” We form an impression of people within less than a second of meeting them, in some cases. We decide whether they’re friendly, hostile or dominant, and whether we’re going to like them. And clearly, we form that impression with inadequate information, just based on their facial features or movements. This is WYSIATI — we don’t wait for more information, we form impressions on the basis of what is available to us. to be very different. Education influences System 2, and enables System 2 to pick up cues that “this is a situation where I’m likely to make those mistakes.” So on rare occasions, I catch myself in the act of making a mistake, but normally I just go on and make it. When the stakes are very high, I might stop myself. For example, when someone asks me for an opinion and I’m in a professional role, and I know that they are going to act on my opinion or take it very seriously, then I slow down. But I make have an opportunity to set machinery in place to think better. I’m not terribly optimistic about that either; I’m not generally known for optimism. But one could imagine an organization deciding to improve its decision-making, and we have some ideas about what it might do to do that. Could you give an example? An example I mentioned in the book is psychologist Gary Klein’s “premortem” method. To use the method, an organization would gather its team before making a final decision on an important matter. Then, all the team members are asked to imagine that the decision led to disastrous failure, and to write up why it was a disaster. The method allows people to overcome “groupthink” by giving them permission to search for potential problems they might be overlooking. And we published some other ideas in the Harvard Business Review this year. We presented a whole checklist of questions that could be asked, and recommendations. you’ve more recently moved into the study of happiness, and you’ve found that life satisfaction and day-to-day happiness are different things, with different causes. Children, for example, seem to contribute to life satisfaction, but not day-to-day happiness. And in a study last year, you found that any income over $75,000 doesn’t increase people’s day-to-day “experienced happiness,” but that more money can increase life satisfaction. Can you talk about this line of research? System 1 is a marvel, with some flaws. System 2 is slow and clunky but capable of performing complicated actions that System 1 cannot carry out. Gladwell emphasized that there was some accuracy to those, but they are very far from perfectly accurate. They’re better than nothing … but what is striking is that you form them immediately in the absence of adequate information. Can a person train him or herself to say, “Wait, what other information is out there that i’m missing?” Well, the main point that I make is that confidence is a feeling, it is not a judgment. And that feeling comes automatically; it itself is a product of System 1. My own intuition and my System 1 have really not been educated 26 very rash judgments all the time. I will make a long-term political prediction, then a little voice will remind me, “but you’ve written that long-term political predictions are nonsensical.” But you know, I’ll just go on making it, because it seems true and real at the time I’m making it. And that’s the WYSIATI part of it. I can’t see why it wouldn’t be true. you’ve mentioned that it might be easier for organizations to overcome these cognitive errors than individuals. Could you talk a little about why that is? Well, it’s very difficult for people to overcome their biases. Organizations by their very nature think slowly, and they M o n i t o r o n p s y c h o l o g y • F e b ru a ry 2 0 1 2 http://www.hbr.org/2011/06/the-big-idea-before-you-make-that-big-decision/ar/1

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Monitor on Psychology - February 2012

Monitor on Psychology - February 2012
Letters
President’s column
Contents
From the CEO
APA files two briefs in support of same-sex couples
New registry seeks to understand addiction recovery through ‘crowdsourcing’
APA launches a database of tests and measures
Watch for new member benefit: “APA Access”
Apply now for APA’s Advanced Training Institutes
PsycTHERAPY, APA’s new database, brings therapy demos to life
In Brief
APA scientists help guide tobacco regulation
A-mazing research
‘A machine for jumping to conclusions’
Judicial Notebook
Random Sample
Righting the imbalance
The beginnings of mental illness
Science Directions
Improving disorder classification, worldwide
Protesting proposed changes to the DSM
Interventions for at-risk students
Harnessing the wisdom of the ages
Anti-bullying efforts ramp up
Hostile hallways
R U friends 4 real?
Support for teachers
Speaking of Education
Record keeping for practitioners
Going green
At the intersection of law and psychology
Division Spotlight
Grants help solve society’s problems
Personalities

Monitor on Psychology - February 2012