Human Factors

Science is never 100%

2012-01-16T13:22:00.000-05:00

The new twist in Mass Lt Gov Murray's car crash is very relevant to forensic investigations of all kinds, especially in human factors.

For those of you unfamiliar with the story, here is a basic recap. He was driving down the highway late at night and crashed into a tree. He claimed that he was going about the speed limit and the car slipped on some black ice. He had no problem releasing the black box recorder (like the ones in planes) that was in his government owned car. When the data was analyzed, they found he had accelerated to 100 mph just before hitting the tree. They concluded that he must have fallen asleep at the wheel.

From a human factors point of view, this makes sense. If you are nodding off and don't realize it, then suddenly wake up as the car hits the grass, it would seem like you had slipped on ice. It is also possible that slumping forward would cause your weight to push harder on the pedal and accelerate. So his story made sense. There were no alcohol or drugs in his system and the forensic science fit the story.

The Lt Gov was convinced and admitted the possibility that he could have fallen asleep, although he didn't remember it. The media was convinced too. Case closed.

Then today, they reported a new analysis on the black box data suggesting he really did slip on ice. He was going 75 (not the speed limit) just prior to the acceleration. He acknowledges that is possible. So now the case is not closed but confused.

All science makes conclusions based on less than 100% certainty. The standard can be 95% for many things, or 99.999% if its life threatening or mission critical. But nothing is ever 100%. So it is not surprising that this new conclusion could arise from a more detailed analysis of the data.

But people outside of science are led to believe (by the media and our high school science books) that science is always 100% sure of everything. The media was sure he had fallen asleep at the wheel. The driver was convinced by the black box analysis, even though he didn't remember falling asleep. The public bought it too. 100%.

In one sense, it is good that the public thinks in absolutes. When scientists generally accept a theory at the appropriate level of confidence, it is better to design public policy as if it was 100%. When the public thinks there is uncertainty in the science, even .01%, they can engage our remarkable ability at willful blindness to clutch onto a more comforting conclusion (my religion hasn't been lying all these years, there is no such thing as evolution). It is actually better that the media usually report science as if it were 100%. Imagine if we weren't totally convinced about gravity. Or if we still believed in the chance the earth was flat.

But when a theory turns out to be wrong, all of science immediately becomes suspect in the public's mind. Wait - you have been lying to us all these years? Anti-depressants don't work any better than a placebo? Mammograms are not beneficial to 40-something women with no family history of breast cancer? So I guess I don't have to give up my Hummer because global warming could be false too. Maybe smoking doesn't increase the risk of lung cancer.

political views are hard to change

2012-01-05T13:02:00.000-05:00

As usual, I read journal articles in groups. Here is a similar paper (ungated) from Dartmouth that looked at why our political views resist evidence to the contrary. Once we get an idea in our head, we don’t like to change our minds. This research, and the work he reviews, finds that this is even stronger with opinions that are strongly held, important to our self-image, or important to our world view.

His study looks at issues including the Iraq surge, Obama’s job plan, and global warming. If you were against the war, you were less likely to give any positive credit to the surge (and if you were for the war, you gave less credit to evidence of other explanations). If you didn’t like Obama, you wouldn’t give positive credit to his plan for creating jobs (and if you liked Obama, you wouldn't give credit to alternative explanations). If you don’t want there to be global warming, you don’t give credit to evidence for it (and if you believe in it, you don't give credit to contradicting evidence). He cites previous work that found similar effects with abortion, the death penalty, and others.

There are many reasons for this. We are more likely to focus on evidence that supports our opinion (conservatives watch Fox, liberals watch MSNBC). We also counterargue against information we don’t agree with (how many times have you yelled against a talking head on TV?), but gladly accept information that we do agree with.

This study looked at two possible interventions to even out the score. One thing they tried was to deal with the challenge to our self-image if we turn out to be wrong. He had participants engage in some task them made them focus on their own good qualities. In that state, they were less biased against a totally unrelated political view.

The second intervention was intended to prevent counterarguing. They looked at graphic, visual ways of presenting evidence with a basic meaning that jumps out at you from the design. But it doesn’t give you any specific facts, so you can’t argue against them. In this condition, people were more receptive and believing of information that contradicts their political opinions, even the important ones.

So next time you are in a political argument, start out by giving your opponent a self-affirmation. “Look, you are one of smartest people I know so I am sure you will understand these new scientific findings.”

Then, don’t hedge what you say by doing a “on one hand . . . and on the other hand . . . “ The person will just listen to the hand they agree with. Stick with just the best, hardest, least questionable evidence that you have.

Unrealistic optimism

2012-01-05T12:42:00.000-05:00

There was a fascinating paper in a recent issue of Nature Neuroscience that investigates why unrealistic optimism is so pervasive. We all think our teams can win, we are above average drivers, this lottery ticket will be the one. The same is true with important judgments like whether we will pass the test, get the job, or have enough money to retire. Over the past decades, many possible reasons for this optimism have been suggested:

Perhaps because we like good news, we pay more attention to it.
Perhaps because we like good news, we think about it more and therefore process it more deeply.
Perhaps good things happen more often, so we are more familiar with them.
Perhaps good news is more exciting, so it increases brain activity during memory storage.

As you probably can guess from the name of the journal, these researchers hooked their participants up to fMRI machines to scan their brains and find out what causes the optimism. They statistically controlled for all of the other possible solutions so they could be sure. And here is what they found.

Positive information is processed in several parts of the brain, primarily the frontal cortex and the left inferior prefrontal gyrus. Negative information only activates the left inferior prefrontal gyrus. So what happens is that when you see positive information, your mental model gets stronger based on the activation of several brain areas, but when you see an equal amount of negative evidence, your model changes based on just one area so it changes less. It’s like that old Lil Rascals episode with Alfalfa and Darla where Alfalfa is dividing up the candy. One for you, one for me. Two for you, One-two for me. Three for you, One-two-three for me . . .

This is dangerous because optimism decreases the chance that we will take steps to protect ourselves. We don’t always wear our seatbelt, we don’t always save enough for a rainy day, we don’t go to the doctor because “it’s probably nothing.” Optimistic people have less stress and live longer. But only as long as we don’t kill ourselves first. So it is important to understand what to do about this.

When you get information that supports your pre-existing ideas, take it with a grain of salt. And if you get contradictory information, try to take it more seriously. This is the opposite of what comes naturally, but could make your life much better.

Pragmatic subjectivism

2011-12-30T10:49:00.000-05:00

Interesting On Point last night (rebroadcast from last month plus a few text essays from James). The subject was the philosophy of William James, and his religious philosophy in particular. I have read a lot of his more psychological writings, but not his philosophic work. I was multi-tasking during the show, so I didn’t really hear a lot of it, but I really liked the basic gist that I got from the discussion.

He kind of mixes his ontology and epistemology. There is no such thing as a noun or adjective truth/true. It is a verb. Truth is a process not a thing, and it involves two components – subjective experience and pragmatism.

Subjective experience means that anything can be true for me if I experience it to be true. The example they used is that if I see a goddess in a tree, then that goddess exists for me. If you don’t see her, then she doesn’t exist for you. This isn’t my own epistemology, but I like it because it has a strong libertarian quality to it. I have no reason to feel insecure about my beliefs based on whether others agree with me or not. So why pressure anyone to believe it also? In fact, if no one else believes in my goddess, then I get her all to myself. It is kind of the opposite of the atheist arguments of Christopher Hitchens. He rejects religion because it can’t be proven and it is improbable on its face. But the opposite is true of the radical subjective experience. It is both proven and obvious that our beliefs can have a huge impact on our lives.

But he also adds on the requirement of pragmatism. He was a utilitarian. The belief is only true if it has a positive result on society. So if something you think you believe has a net negative impact, then you must have misunderstood it and it’s time to go back to the drawing board. This way, you can't just believe that theft is good and all of a sudden it is. Otherwise, psychopaths would rule the world.

And then the last thing they discussed is his belief in an objective reality. What James said was that it was only when everyone believed something to be true did it become objectively true. And because truth was a process, it truly did “become” true. It wasn’t true before that.

A caller made a really interesting point that because he was more of a psychologist than a philosopher (or at least his philosophy emanated from his psychology) he wasn’t describing any ontology, but rather he was saying that this is how our minds work. So if our brains are wired so that a majority of people believe something, then it doesn’t really matter if it is objectively true, you are not going to convince the world of something they don’t want to believe. I wish this weren’t the case, but my own cognitive behavioral research tells me that it has a large ring of truth to it. That is why we have so much obesity, climate change denial, conspiracy theories, flat earth societies, predictions of the apocalypse, etc. Our brains are pretty much wired to believe what we prefer to believe. James puts some interesting philosophical meat behind this finding.

Defining a "customer" in the social media age.

2011-12-28T10:20:00.000-05:00

Anyone in the sales or human resources industries probably knows a lot about how proprietary their contact lists are. If you leave the company, the company owns your rolodex (electronically speaking of course). Those names could be worth more than the company’s entire product inventory, especially if you are a B2B large volume dealer. Or an executive search firm. Most contracts prohibit you from taking the client files with you, or even contacting them for a certain period.

So here is a new twist. Noah Kravitz was a hired to tweet for Phonedog. He even had the company name in his username (@Phonedog_Noah). He left the company, changed his username (to remove Phonedog) and kept the 20,000 followers. Phonedog sued to get the account (and followers) back.

So this is a great example of the difference between the letter and spirit of the law. Noah’s contract didn’t say anything about Twitter followers, just customer lists. The law can decide that where the contract says “customer list”, that includes Twitter followers implicitly. Twitter followers are a "kind" of customer in the social media age. Or it can decide that Twitter followers weren’t included because they are not the same as customers. Or that twitter followers were not the “original intent” of the contract, to quote one of Justice Scalia’s favorite concepts.

But the contract was signed before Twitter even existed. You could argue that they should have updated the contract, but with technology changing as fast as it is, that would be unworkable. Every two months they would have to add new social media. Or they could define it so generically that it would be unenforceable in court as too vague. In light of this argument, it seems the court has to go with the company. And yet . . . I could make an argument the other way too.

But I will let you do that in the comments, just to get a discussion going.

HBR forecasts and saving the world through Human Factors.

2011-12-26T13:13:00.000-05:00

At this time of year, everyone and their cousin puts out their Top Predictions for Next Year. Most of them are hardly worth a second glance. Or maybe one of them is worth reading, but the others put you to sleep.

This article from Harvard Business Review only lists six. Just that should tell you that they aren’t going to waste your time. But some of them are really insightful. Here are the three I like best:

Slacktivism. We are all getting lazier and lazier, but we also care about more and more global and local causes. So how do we reconcile our desire to do the least amount of work possible but also help the most causes? It’s easy. Just hit the share button. See an article on world hunger? Just share it with all your friends on FB, contacts on LI, tweet it, etc. etc. If you have a social media dashboard, you can do this all in one click. And then you can feel really good about yourself for doing your part to solve world hunger and only spend a few seconds doing it.

What can we do about this trend to make it stronger and more effective? That's what human factors is all about, right? Well, we can make the sharing easier and more powerful and make it actually work towards solving the problem not just talking about it. I have a million ideas for this, but I will let you think about it for a while first and go on to the next one . . . .

Self-quantification. We hear all the time about identity theft and privacy concerns. And yet the iGeneration puts more and more of their personal information online. Last year, they used their GPS phones to check in from every restaurant, museum, airport, or event they attended. A few niche markets emerged as well to record food eaten, TV shows watched, miles ran, and more. As these grow in ease of use and popularity, we will know everything about everyone. This can be used for good – by using population data to predict trends in public health, drug interactions, and other issues of national concern. But it can also be used for microtargeting in insidious ways that are not obvious to the targeted consumer. I am sure you have heard of neuromarketing, but it can get orders of magnitude more detailed than that when your whole life is available for full review. What you ate, where you went, who you talked to, what brands you mentioned in conversation, and so on.

What can we do here? Well, we can create some privacy platforms that facilitate the positive and prevent the negative. Again, I will let you ruminate on this for a while before answering it myself.

Gerontabletification. The world is getting older. This is not new. But how can we leverage 2011’s new technologies to address it? How about using tablets like the iPad. We can distribute all kinds of apps that help older people remain productive members of society, or at least minimize the burdens when we lose our health. Medical apps to make sure older people stick to their medication regimen. Mental games to keep away Alzheimer’s. eReaders to present books and news in large print. Easy multi-media communication with the grandkids. All of these would be better presented through a tablet. I am sure you can think of (and develop) your own ideas. And become a millionaire while also saving the world from crushing health care costs.

The next three are good too. I will leave you to read those on your own.

The Future of the Internet

2011-12-23T10:43:00.000-05:00

I am reading Jonathan Zittrain’s 2008 book on “The Future of the Internet” in preparation for my Spring web innovation class. He doesn’t talk about futuristic technology or specific products and services like most predictors do. The book doesn’t have flying cars or 3-D printing of fully functional automobiles at home, or any of that. He spends the entire 250 pages discussing what he sees as the key issue of the future.
When the Internet was young, there was no business case for doing anything bad, so most users were trustworthy and trusted. Even the hackers mostly did their work just to get street cred, not to actually hurt anything. They would break into the CIA server just to be able to boast about the accomplishment. No one was stealing credit card numbers and identities.

Then the Internet spread to the masses. This led to three very significant changes. First, there were many more users (volume). Second, the advent of e-commerce meant that sensitive information was now there for the taking (value). Third, the typical user was pretty clueless about how the system actually worked, so they didn’t know how to secure their networks and PCs (efficiency). Any business that has a high volume, high value product and can produce it efficiently has a great business. So even if philosophically we would like have an open Internet, net neutrality, long tail, open source . . . . . this just might not be sustainable.

He sees two ends of a spectrum that the Internet will evolve into. On one end is the tethered information appliance. In this case, everybody makes a small piece of the puzzle (like the toaster, blender, oven, microwave, silverware, plates, etc in your kitchen). They are mostly cross-compatible (most food containers are microwavable nowadays), and consumers don’t have the ability to hack anything because none of them are particularly complex. There is not much to hack with. In this model, our word processor, browser, camera, etc etc etc would all be very minimally functional, you would buy the ones you want, and plug them all together. They would not truly “integrate” like they can now.

On the other end of the spectrum is the old IBM model where they leased you the hardware, software, training, maintenance plan, and even customized programming for your entire system. So everything was fully integrated and fully compatible, but you weren’t connected to the outside. It was all locked down, so no hacking was possible and even if you could break through you couldn’t spread it to others.
The problem with both ends of the spectrum is that we destroy the innovative culture of the Internet. Mashups and mods, and 5th party apps on top of 4th party APIs on 3rd party software on 2nd party hardware on a 1st party network disappears. No more Angry Birds.

So he proposes something down the middle. A hybrid of the two that combines technological, regulatory, process, and communication innovations. It’s not perfect, but given where we are going now it is much better than the alternatives. It balances some amount of security and safety with a moderate freedom to hack, mashup, and innovate.

All three of these futures are still in the future and none of us has a crystal ball to know what is possible or what will happen. Maybe we will hit a technological singularity and all of this will be moot. Or maybe the bad guys will win before we have a chance to get to one of these futures. But if we want the future to reflect a balance of freedom and security, we can’t leave it to the governments of the world or to do the Microsoft/Apple/Google’s. Nobody’s best interest is quite aligned with the general public. Look at what happened when we let the banks redesign the mortgage industry. One thing we know is that incentives matter.

So I started thinking about who would make up the best team to figure out and design the future? It seems to me that what Zittrain describes requires a combination of many of our disciplines. A team of brilliant innovators working through the technological, political, cultural, regulatory, psychological, and other issues to create a vision for the future would be a great read (maybe a White Paper, or short book) and could be the roadmap that the future really follows.

Anyone interested? Let me know.

Participatory goal setting for carbon footprints?

2011-12-12T12:22:00.000-05:00

I have always been a big advocate of participatory goal setting. This is when the employee and the boss get together at least once a year to have a deep discussion about what that person’s performance objectives are in terms of personal productivity, teamwork, innovation, self-improvement and so forth. This conversation is used to set more specific goals for the employee for the year. Specific, relevant, milestones can be set throughout the year to monitor progress towards the goals. This way, neither the employer nor the employee get a big surprise at year end.

This tends to work best with employees who have unique job responsibilities (CEO, football quarterback). When one is a member of a team with similar responsibilities, it is hard to customize different performance goals for different people. Based on their hopes for the future, one person can push for more advanced skills training while another could push for more current production bonuses. But it does add a political complication if one feels underappreciated and underrewarded.

So I was very interested to hear a summary of the Durban Conference on Climate Change last night. I have not read the full documents, but this is how the news summarized the agreement. Over the next year, every country needs to set a specific goal for its 2020 carbon footprint. These goals can be different for every country because they all have different needs, environments, economies, cultures, and so on. So just like custom performance goals work for employees, they are expected to work for countries on their environmental interventions. One might focus on stopping deforestation or wetland protection. Another might switch to renewable fuels. But whatever goals they set for themselves will be legally enforceable (I’m not sure how this part works).

But what incentive is there for any country to set tough goals for itself? Employees usually get a salary bonus, promotion, or at least an improved resume. What does a country get? From what I can see, the conference attendees are hoping that public pressure from each country’s internal population as well as peer pressure from other countries will push them to set appropriate goals. It is an interesting application of a traditional management technique.

Do we have to be sad?

2011-12-05T11:13:00.000-05:00

Some new research challenges a myth that has been around since Freud. When someone important to us passes away, or some other major traumatic event happens, we are expected to have a rush a sadness, distress, and grief. If we don’t, then everyone around us warns that it is going to come out eventually, so we should just “let it out.” Or even seek therapy to help deal with these buried emotions.

Well, it turns out that some people are just more emotionally resilient than others. It doesn’t mean we didn’t care about the person who passed away, it just means that our emotional constitution doesn’t bend as much in the face of adversity. You don’t need therapy, you don’t need medication, you don’t need to “let it out.” You just need these people to leave you alone.

If you need a reference to prove this to the people always getting on your case, there is an article in the November/December 2011 issue of Scientific American Mind that cites research by Camille Wortman of Stony Brook University, Kathrin Boerner of Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and George Bonanno of Columbia University. Plenty of ammunition. It's behind a firewall, so you will have to Google it.

How do we imagine things?

2011-12-05T11:09:00.000-05:00

One of the most important higher order skills we can develop is the use of imagination. We do this with mirror neurons. These are connected to all the major parts of the brain so they can do almost anything that we can really do, but just imagining it. If we want to imagine what we think will happen in the future, we create a simulation in our mirror neurons and run the model forward to see what happens. This can happen with regard to our environment, or we can imagine ourselves physically doing something and seeing what happens. Without really doing it.

If we want to understand what other people are thinking or doing, we create a simulation in our mirror neurons of what we think they are thinking and doing, and run the model forward to see what conclusions they might draw. This is good for negotiating, arguing, and understanding people in social situations. When we lie, we create the alternative reality in our mirror neurons and save it so we don’t forget it and get caught in the lie. All of these are really important when dealing with other people.

So a new research paradigm looks at people who read fiction. It turns out that even though we usually read alone, it is very helpful in the development of social skills. Because it does all of the above. It forces us to imagine an alternative world, a completely different person with different objectives, values, and knowledge. We don’t just run a model forward, but we have hundreds of pages and an entire story to go through. And since we don’t usually read the whole book in one sitting, we have to store it for later several times. Reading fiction makes you better at understanding other peoples’ points of view, more open to new situations, and actually better able to change yourself if you want to. It helps you develop your mirror neurons.

One surprising (at least to me) finding was that people who read fiction are better able to read and interpret expressions and emotions on real faces. I guess when we read about someone experiencing an emotion, we imagine their expression in our mirror neurons so we get lots of practice.

Great stuff!!!

Milgrams other finding

2011-12-05T11:03:00.000-05:00

Stanley Milgram’s research back in 1961 was very controversial. His main findings, and the unethical way he conducted his study, were so controversial that some of his less salient findings were missed.

For those of you who are not familiar, he is the one who asked volunteers to act as “teachers” in a study of motivation. The job of the teacher was to ask the “student” some memory questions. And each time they got an answer wrong, they got an electric shock. The shocks increased each time from a minor zap, through extreme pain, through a potentially fatal dose. The experimenters told the volunteers it was to see if the shocks helped learning, but the real study was to see how far the volunteers went. The “students” were really actors who were hired to give specific responses for each level of shock, ranging from a simple “ouch” to shrieking in excruciating pain, through begging for the experiment to stop. The controversial finding was that most volunteers went all the way to “fatal shock.” Sometimes they asked if they should go on, but they almost always did. Milgram did a variety of studies with all different situations to see how this compliance varied. The full set of studies is fascinating. His 1974 book “Obedience to Authority” summarizes them all.

But there is a variation that has not received much attention that I think is specifically relevant to managers, supervisors, IEs, and also parents and teachers. This finding is the difference between value-based and command-based instructions from the experimenter to the volunteer “teachers” when they asked if they should keep going.

In the value condition, the experimenter said “Your help is very valuable to this research, you must continue.” The idea was to concentrate on the benefits of the research. In the command case, the experimenter said “You have no other choice, you must continue.” This was more of an authoritative style. Milgram hypothesized that the command style would be stronger because it gives the volunteer no choice.

But it turned out to be just the opposite. The volunteers were more likely to administer these excruciatingly painful and potentially fatal shocks when they thought they were doing something valuable then when they thought they were under the experimenter’s control. Apparently, we don’t like it when our choices are taken away from us. But we do like doing valuable things.

Think about the way your shop floor supervisors instruct workers. Do they use the authoritative style? “Do it that way because that’s the way it is supposed to be done. Follow your training and the written procedures. Those are the rules.” Or do they promote the value? “Based on the entire value chain, this is the way we need to do it to make sure that we satisfy our customers while still making a profit.” “If you change the way you do your job, it may make you faster but it could mess up something elsewhere on the line.”

Or how do you as parents instruct your children? "Do it this way because I told you to!!!" Or "This is the way that works the best, you will learn the most," etc.

If volunteers are more willing to give fatal shocks to complete strangers while not even getting paid under the value-based instruction, imagine how much more productive your employees would be and responsible your kids will be!!!

How kids learn

2011-12-05T10:57:00.000-05:00

In Mind and Brain (yeah I read geeky magazines) there was a great article on preschools and how we teach kids younger than 7. Seven is a key age because 0-7 is the most malleable time in the brain’s development. What and how we teach kids below that age is much more important than what we do after. This is the period where they develop critical thinking skills, interest in creative thought, and enjoyment of exploration and uncertainty. This is where they figure out that they can learn informally from the people around them by paying attention and being social. The under-seven year olds brain is actually not designed to learn through focused, goal-directed, in-the-seat, learning.

But instead of leveraging the wonderful abilities that our children can develop at this age, we are intimidating our preschool teachers by instituting standardized tests that focus on isolated facts and skills that force them to teach to the test. Teachers are evaluated based on their students' standardized test scores. One mother in New York sued her daughter's pre-school because it was not teaching to the test (the entrance exam of the private preschool she wanted her daughter to attend). Are you serious???

But it gets worse. It turns out that when we teach to the test, children learn that the correct way of learning is to imitate the teacher. They don’t develop their capacity for creative and innovative learning. During this malleable stage of life, it is important that they practice and develop these skills. If they don’t, it is much harder to develop them, even at only 8 years old. Use it or lose it.

And then it gets EVEN WORSE than that. It turns out that this creative exploration is also what provides the basis for the child’s future mental health. In one study, 6% of children in a play-based preschool went on to develop emotional problems, compared to 50% in the heavily academic preschool. The focused, in-the seat, kind of learning causes stress that physiologically damages the child’s developing brain. It can cause anxiety, depression, and even cardiovascular problems. The feeling that they have no personal control causes the release of toxic neurotransmitters that can damage the hippocampus, which is important for learning and memory.

Children ages 0-7 should never see a flashcard, a multiple choice question, or a fill-in-the-blank (OK, I am exaggerating a little here). But the focus of preschool should definitely be on exploring, innovating, playing, creating, being social, trying new things, failing often and not being penalized for it, being comfortable with uncertainty, and using their imaginations.

Is this possible in today’s gridlocked politics and fear of global competition? Are we stuck teaching to the test and losing our edge in innovation (the one competitive advantage the US still has left)? You think the economy is bad now, just wait.

Interest take on climate change

2011-12-05T10:53:00.000-05:00

I just heard an interview with a scientist who is a carbon emission-caused climate change skeptic. But rather than just refuse to believe it on principle (see my previous post on motivated denial), he decided to investigate some alternative hypotheses.

One thought he had was that the world is getting warmer not because of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere but because we are doing more hot stuff. People are moving to cities, paving streets, cutting down shade trees, building factories, cranking up the heat during the winter, mowing our lawns during the summer etc. Maybe we are just being hot. So what he did was look at local measures of temperature change over the past decades instead of global changes. He investigated the temperature rises in cities versus suburbs versus rural areas. He looked at industrial cities versus less industrial cities. He looked at areas that had factories, but not high population density. Or places that had high population density but no factories.

What he concluded is that it is true that humans are causing global climate change, but most of it can be explained by these variables rather than greenhouse gas emissions. So he is still worried about climate change. He still thinks that the world needs to change its behavior or we are all screwed. But because he finds different causes, he recommends different changes. Some of them are the same or similar, but some are different. He agrees with the idea of painting roofs white, but not switching to Priuses if they run just as hot as regular Toyotas.

Who is right? I don’t know – I heard him on an interview rather than reading his peer reviewed research. And it is not my area of expertise. And he is just one person compared to thousands studying greenhouse gases. And his research is funded by the Koch Foundation, which makes me suspicious that he started out with an agenda. But, it is definitely important enough to merit consideration and further research.

Everything is deniable if you want it bad enough

2011-12-05T10:49:00.000-05:00

I often read and blog about emerging research that investigates why people make less than optimal and less than rational decisions. As I usually make sure to say, it isn’t that we are irrational, it is that we evolved over millennia and for most of that time it made sense to value speed and staying alive over making optimal rational perfect decisions. Even now, I would usually rather be fast and alive than perfect and either dead or spending all day making each decision.

But sometimes, this can give us short term benefits at the expense of the long term existence of our species. For example, there is a general tendency not to believe in scientific findings that question our understanding of how the world works. Galileo, Copernicus, Columbus, Darwin, and many others have experienced this directly. If we have thought for thousands of years that earth is the center of the universe because G-d said so, it is hard to change our entire mindset – first to believe that earth revolves around the sun, then our solar system revolves around the galaxy, and the galaxy shoots through space because of a big explosion at the beginning of time.

It is even worse when the scientific research forces us to change a behavior that we enjoy. I like eating bread, so I am less likely to believe Dr. Atkins. You like bacon, so you are more likely to believe him. It has nothing to do with the quality of the evidence or our scientific intelligence or knowledge. I don’t want to give up my SUV, take the time to recycle, or take shorter, colder showers. So I don’t want to believe in human-induced climate change, polluting the ecosystem, or future water shortages. If I don’t believe it, then I don’t have to give any of these things up. This is called motivated reasoning and we usually don't even know we are doing it.

Why does this matter? Well, we have to find better ways of explaining scientific findings to the public if we want to generate enough energy to make a difference in this world. Instead of preaching to everyone to go buy a Prius (or turn the thermostat down and put on a sweater), we need to explain it differently. Every time a new scientific finding that the public needs to know about is discovered, serious thought needs to be put into how to release that information. How to make it fit the mindset they already have and make the behavioral change seem small or even beneficial.

Scientists need to work closer with experts in public communication. Perhaps scientists' raw data can go into the peer reviewed journals that the public never reads, but we need to make sure that by the time the media gets a hold of it, we have already decided how to frame it so that the public reacts in a way that is good for society. I am not suggesting that we do anything dishonest or even misleading. But let’s not be naïve either.

More on Free Will

2011-12-04T16:38:00.000-05:00

If you have been reading my blog regularly, you know I have been thinking a lot about free will. So this weekend I picked up two movies for which free will is part of the background message. It wasn’t really important to understand the plot or the action or the characters. But both of them had free will messages.

Minority Report was the first one I saw. Twice during the movie, the person who the precogs had “seen” commit murder in the future were made aware of this future. They had the choice to change what they did. They had the “free will” to use that knowledge to do something different. Both of them did something different, although not by much (I don’t want to spoil the movie with details. It’s not relevant to the post).

Then I saw Slaughterhouse Five. I heard that the Vonnegut book was fantastic so I was really looking forward to the movie. The free will part of the movie is that time is just an illusion. Everything that has ever happened, is happening now, and will ever happen, are really all happening at the same time. So whatever you will do, you have also already done and are doing now. In that view, the concept of free will doesn't make sense. This is a cool premise, but the movie sucked. I hope the book was better.

How we really think. Not what you might expect.

2011-12-04T16:06:00.000-05:00

Have you heard of the Trolley Problem paradox? It is the best illustration of how human thinking is not rational like a computer. That doesn’t mean it’s irrationally silly; it is actually a lot more complicated. There are many pieces that evolved to do totally different things working in conjunction but not working together. That’s what evolution does, compared to an engineering lab.

The reason the Trolley Problem is such a great illustration is that it is really simple to understand. And it is very reliable – it has been tested over and over again with all different kinds of people and dozens of variations. And there have been fMRI scan studies that clearly show what brain areas are driving each part of the decision.

Here is the basic problem. A trolley is coming uncontrolled down the track. If you don’t do anything, it will run into and kill 5 people instantly. Or you can pull a track switch and move the trolley to a track that only has one person on it. You will be saving the 5 people, but you will be signing the death sentence of the other one. What do you do?

Then here is another problem. Same basic premise – a trolley coming uncontrolled down the track, about to run into 5 people and kill them instantly. There is another track that with nobody on it. But you are on top of a bridge and the switch to shift the trolley is on the ground below. You are not heavy enough to jump off the bridge and land on the switch to shift it. So your only choice is either do nothing and let the five people one the track die, or to push a heavy guy standing next to you off the bridge, killing him, but saving the 5 people on the track. What do you do?

There are no right or wrong answers. If you are a utilitarian (always choose the option that does the most good for the most people), then you would pull the switch and you would push the heavy guy to his death off the bridge.

If you don’t believe that you (or anyone) have the right to decide who should live and who should die, no matter how many people are involved, then you should not pull the switch and you should not push the heavy guy off the bridge.

But what makes this a paradox is that most people pull the switch, but don’t push the heavy guy off the bridge (you probably made the same choices). We seem to have one ethical value in one case and the other ethical value in the other case. And when asked, we have a lot of trouble explaining the discrepancy. This inconsistency broke all the models of early psychologists and early philosophers. There were hypotheses, but nothing could ever be proven to a statistical probability. It wasn’t until the invention of fMRI that we were able to learn what was happening. And it is really fascinating !!!

So here is what we have learned. In the first case, when you are pulling a switch, the cortex does most of the heavy lifting. This is the rational part of the brain that thinks utilitarian. The most good is to pull the switch.

But in the second case, the “ick” factor (composed of visceral feelings of guilt, sadness, and disgust) of personally contacting the person who is killed causes the amygdala and gyrus to override the cortex and make the opposite decision. The amygdala and gyrus are evolutionarily older parts of the brain, so they win in any disagreement. Not for logical reasons, for emotional reasons.

But people who have injuries in their amygdala/gyrus always make the utilitarian choice (push the heavy guy off the bridge). They tend to be sociopaths because they don’t care about the person who is hurt as a result. At least not emotionally.

And if we fatigue the cortex by making a person do a lot of thinking and reasoning, then they are more likely to make the less “icky” choice (they won’t even pull the switch). When rational thinking is tired, emotional thinking is happy to jump into the gap.

There are also personality differences. People with more trait anger (not just temporarily angry, but more angry in general) make more utilitarian judgments (push the guy off the bridge). On the other hand, trait empathy and trait disgust increase the “ick” feeling and make people less utilitarian.

Being temporarily happy (or really any positive emotion) decreases your ick feeling (guilt, sadness, and disgust) so you are more likely to be utilitarian.

These results have been reproduced in a wide variety of decisions, not just trolleys. The scenarios have gone with administering the death penalty, throwing a hand grenade, hitting someone by bowling a ball down the lane, and more. Researchers have looked at old people, young people, ethical experts, ethical ignoramuses, males, females, different cultures, religions, etc. There are many individual differences that change the exact percentages, but the main effect is generally the same. More of each group pull the switch than don’t and more people don’t push the heavy guy off the bridge than do. Except extreme groups like sociopaths.

Eyewitnesses

2011-12-03T13:49:00.000-05:00

This originally started as an investigation into the various ways that error can be introduced into eyewitness (as opposed to expert witness) testimony. With over two decades of human factors experience under my belt, I am well aware of how memory works, the challenges it faces, and how counterintuitive much of it is. But for this study, I wanted to limit the scope of my review to studies specifically about eyewitnesses. For Daubert hearings (where the judge decides on the scientific validity and relevance of the expert for the case), it is always helpful to be able to cite specific, focused research because judges don’t always grasp the generalizability of cognitive research.

Even with the cynicism that my experience has forced upon me, I was shocked by just how much evidence there is that eyewitness testimony is perhaps the least reliable kind of evidence available to the court (since hearsay and total bullshit are usually left out). I plan to write this up in more detail and complete with references for the Annual HFES Conference in the fall. But I wanted to get something more informal out now while the emotion is still fresh and I can give you all a laugh.

Let’s start with the context in which the event is witnessed. First of all, the witness is rarely looking directly at the location where the incident occured. Until their attention is refocused, if it is at all, then it is the notoriously inaccurate peripheral vision that starts the memory out. And even then, the contents of the witnesses’ existing vision, thoughts, beliefs, daydreams, stereotypes, and past memories are stronger contributors to what gets encoded. If the witness has been in similar situations before, these are all blended together into the memory of this event. This causes the witnesses’ memory to condense, smooth out, fill in gaps, omit inconsistent details, and reorder the sequence to fit their personal experience and expectations.

After the witness does notice that something interesting is going on and refocuses, their attention is captured by the most salient and central attributes rather than what is important to be an effective witness. We know this as the “weapon effect.” They remember the gun in incredible detail but couldn’t tell you how tall the perp was, the color of his hair, or about the big stain on his pant leg. This is hilariously captured in the famous Invisible Gorilla test by Daniel Simons.

If it is a stressful event for the witness, the fight or flight instinct starts the release of hormones that degrades memory (who cares what the tiger looks like, just get the hell out of there). Attention narrows to just the most salient attributes and anything more subtle is missed.

Then what happens after the event introduces even more inconsistency into the witnesses’ memory. We all have a tendency to exaggerate the event when we first tell the story, especially if this first telling is to ourselves, friends, or especially the media. By the time the on-scene investigator starts his or her interview it is way too late. And unless the investigator is both well trained and well intentioned, it is easy to implant whatever memories will get the case solved as fast and easy as possible. Consider the difference between these questions:

· What happened . . . . . ?

· Was there a weapon?

· Was there a gun?

· What color was the gun?

In this last case, witnesses who never saw a gun all of sudden remember one clearly. And then later on, when they are recounting the story, the gun becomes a permanent part of their story. By the time trial rolls around, the witness is absolutely sure there was a gun. The prosecuting attorney can make it even easier by asking the same question, “What color was the gun?” Just the natural desire for internal consistency would cause even the most well meaning witness to give the same answer as they did the first time.

What makes this even worse is that juries believe eyewitnesses more than they believe most other kinds of evidence. As Groucho Marx famously said, "Who are you going to believe, me or your lyin' eyes?"

Society-wide decision making

2011-12-02T14:44:00.000-05:00

In my policy demogogue blog, I just wrote about a new company called Blueseed that is using the seasteading model to alleviate the Silicon Valley dearth of qualified tech workers. Please read it because it is an interesting way to game the system. But I wanted to arouse a discussion of the HF implications. Read a couple of the posts on Econlog for a good review of the pros and cons.

The basic idea of seasteading is that you can create your own society by putting your floating city in international waters and creating a system of laws according to your own values. The logistics might be tough, but imagine all the different legal systems we could try out to see how they work. Different kinds of democracies, republics, dictatorships, religion-based governments, pure communism.

Why is this relevant to HF? Imagine the experimental environments you could create to study decision making, organizational culture, macroergonomics, etc. I would love to design a series of seasteaded cities with different decision making procedures, run them for a couple of years, and see how the society evolves.

Thoughts??

The effects of self-esteem on willingness to apologize

2011-11-30T15:24:00.000-05:00

I was kind of interested in reading about this study because I had never really thought about it much before. Andrew Howell at Grant MacEwan University (Canada) studied people's willingness to apologize (in general) and then compared them to a whole battery of personality assessments.

The obvious connections were that people with more compassion and more agreeableness apologize more. But what were more surprising were the effects of self-esteem. People with really low self-esteem are hesitant to apologize, even if they feel bad about what they did, because they direct the shame internally. They feel bad, but may also feel sorry for themselves, and therefore not apologize to others.

Those with really high self-esteem (i.e. egocentrics, narcissists, etc) were also less likely to apologize. Perhaps they felt entitled to do whatever they did and therefore didn't need to apologize for it.

So how can we use this information? First, think about how you feel when you do something that most people generally apologize for. If you apologize more than others, then your self-esteem is right in the sweet spot and you should feel good. But if you apologize less, think about which end of the tail you fall on. You may need to work on your self-esteem, or you may need to come off your pedestal.

Consistency v flexibility in rule enforcement

2011-11-15T11:19:00.000-05:00

Kristen Laurin from the University of Waterloo has just published some research findings that I think have some important implications for Human Factors, especially in shop floor management (any behavior related to safety, productivity, quality etc.). Even though her work was actually focused on emigration, it is amazing how it relates to our work. Hey, no thanks necessary. Linking disparate areas of research is what I am here for.

What she found is that when rules are absolute (no chance for either changing them or getting away with violating them) we tend to accept them as a fact. By being attached to our "fact" schema, our subconscious rationalizes some justifications for why we wanted to comply anyway, to maintain our feelings of internal consistency. We don’t like to feel 100% forced into things, so our subconscious plays tricks on us. It tells us that it must be a good rule. That the leaders must be smarter than we thought.

On the other hand, when there is leeway, we associate the rule with a fuzzy likelihood schema. If it's not absolute then we can find an exception. We don't have 95%, 99%, 50% schema. Either it's absolute or it's not. So if it's not, our brain is always looking for loopholes. Can we get away with violating the rule? Will there eventually be new leaders who change the rule? Can we convince the leaders that we deserve an exception to the rule. If we think there is a chance, then our brain keeps working on solutions. And because of that, the rationalization never happens.

Dr. Laurin’s research focuses on emigration policies. She found that if you have no chance of leaving a country because of a dictator, then people’s subconscious rationalizes that the dictatorship isn’t as bad as it seems. We have stability don’t we? Security? This is kind of similar to the Stockholm syndrome experienced by kidnap victims. But if there is some leeway. A weak dictator, someone to bribe, etc. this never happens.

So the general conclusion is that if you are going to implement unpopular rules, you need to make them absolute. You will get that subconscious rationalization and buy-in. But if there is any leeway, people will keep trying to find loopholes. And no buy-in.

So why do I think that research on emigration in dictatorships is related to shop floor management? Well, we always have some rules and policies that are unpopular. Hopefully not many, but there are always a few. The key to having them accepted is that they have to be absolute. 100% enforcement on 100% of the relevant employees. No turning a blind eye when the rule would delay shipment to a good customer. No exceptions for pet workers. You might think that this is being the corporate asshole Robert Sutton writes about. But if you are really 100%, then you get that subconscious rationalization effect. Workers can’t help but think the rule must be better than they thought. You must be smarter than they thought for having it. But it only works if you enforce it 100%.

The results can bleed into the corporate culture. We can enforce all of our rules and regs 100%. If a rule needs exceptions, put them in writing or change the rule. Then we get an entire culture of acceptance and compliance. If all rules are 100%, you must really be smart and competent. The rules must be really appropriate and in our best interest. Consistency in rule enforcement creates this rationalization effect that pervades the entire culture and reinforces itself over time.

But having even just a few rules that are acceptable to violate reduces the compliance culture. Maybe one or two rules are 100% compliance if they make sense (like wearing a respirator when coal mining). But the rest . . . . would be hit or miss.

My recommendation – make up the best set of rules you can, write exceptions and exclusions into the official rule. And then don’t make exceptions on the fly. The one time that this might be an advantage is well compensated by the extra compliance and buy-in you get from consistency.

More happiness research

2011-11-08T13:15:00.000-05:00

Warning, this is a little random - I am having trouble focusing today.

As you know, I am an avid reader of the happiness literature. Not the psychobabble type, but legitimate research using rigorous and valid methods. Not that there is anything wrong with that . . . .

Anyway, here are a few recent findings I thought I would share, and then brainstorm a few Human Factors implications.

One study found that:

Happiness is composed of 50% genetic predisposition, 10% circumstances, and 40% mental and behavioral strategies to cope.
Varying the coping strategies is better than using the same one repetitively.

So what is the HF implication? First, it means that individual differences are the most important thing when it comes to attitude (in this case happiness). So when we are measuring user satisfaction or branding strength, a lot of what we want to impact through design is already pretty set in stone.

The impact of coping strategies is also telling. Many studies find that user performance is as much a factor of things like self-efficacy as they are with design ease of use. Confidence makes you good at things. And in a self-fulfilling cycle, being good at things makes you more confident. This has incredible implications for training and education. Using techniques like scaffolding, slowly increasing difficulty, quick feedback, user-customized speed, etc all create a virtuous cycle of confidence and performance.

And happiness.

Another finding is that varied thinking increases happiness. Whether it is varied and fast (like brainstorming) or varied and slow (like daydreaming), varied thinking increases happiness. On the other hand, focused thinking does the opposite, leading to depression in extreme cases. Focused and slow (obsession) or focused and repetitive (panic) decrease happiness.

A related finding is that whether you are good at multi-tasking or not (which I have blogged about before), it makes you less happy to do it. There is something soothing about focusing on one thing at a time (like meditation) that makes you happier. Of course, keeping in mind what we learned in the previous study, we need to have enough variety in this one focused task to keep it interesting. Boring isn’t good, but confusion isn’t either.

So the ideal way to optimize your productivity is the concept of Flow – create a single task that someone can get totally involved in but is challenging enough to be interesting. Of course, you already knew all of this. These studies just add some details about how to do it.

Attention blink, emotion, and productivity

2011-10-31T09:56:00.000-05:00

When we are multi-tasking, we aren't really doing two things at once. We are really working on one activity, pausing it while keeping the current status in working memory, and then switching to the second activity. And then the same thing when we switch back.

So this depends on two abilities. You have to have good working memory to keep all of the first activity stored while you are working on the second. Otherwise, you have to review what you have forgotten every time you switch. This is no longer multi-tasking.

The second ability you need is attention switching. The attention blink is the delay that occurs when you switch from one activity to the other. Your brain can't do it instantly. There is some amount of time that your brain needs to refocus on the second activity. This is just lost time. It makes multi-tasking, even when you have good working memory, inefficient.

So people with big working memory capacity and quick attention switching ability better at multi-tasking than people who have less.

Interestingly, a new study in the journal Neuropsychology reports that psychopaths have great attention switching ability. Apparently, their brains are perfectly happy to put aside one activity and move to the next one. I'm not sure why, but I thought this would be a fun fact to add.

The study I want to talk about in a little more detail is the effect of emotion. A new study by Helen Tibboel in Cognition and Emotion found that when the activity we are switching to is an emotional/arousing activity, we can switch faster. This is related to the fight or flight instinct. It also helps switch from texting to braking when someone cuts in front of you on the highway (assuming you notice it). Our brains have somehow learned that emotional/arousing things are very important and worth dropping the previous task, even if it means forgetting more of it. So it will take longer to go back to the original activity because we will have to review more of it to get back to where we left it.

This has good points and bad points. It means in the workplace, when there is a safety issue (which is usually high arousal) we can switch to it quickly and protect ourselves. But it means that every time this happens, it takes longer to get back to work, so productivity takes a big hit. It is well worth it for companies to invest in eliminating safety risks, even if no one is getting injured, just because of this impact on productivity.

Loss Aversion

2011-10-30T13:30:00.000-05:00

Here is a really interesting example of loss aversion. I listen to a game show on NPR called Says You. In one of the rounds, they give one team an obscure word, they come up with three definitions, and the other team has to guess which one is correct. After listening to the show 100 times, I have realized that the way they decide is not based on the once most likely to be correct, but rather the one that would be most embarrassing if it turns out to be wrong. So sometimes they think the silliest sounding answer is the correct one, but are afraid to guess that one, so they guess their second choice instead. You can tell this is what they are doing because they discuss the answers out loud as a team. And this is often what it sounds like they are doing.

Interesting that they would rather be wrong than look foolish. But not surprising.

Multivitamins???

2011-10-28T11:23:00.000-05:00

An interesting debate on On Point tonight regarding taking vitamin and mineral supplements. They had two scientists (both legitimate experts on nutrition) but one was in favor and one was against taking them. Unfortunately, because of what we know about behavioral science, they are both right.

It is true that many of our diets are crap. And even if they are decent, there is good chance they are short of something important. Who knows what has phosphorous or manganese? So a multivitamin is a good insurance policy.

But here is where behavioral science comes in. As soon as you take your multivitamin, you feel overconfident that you have enough of everything. So for the rest of the day, you are going to put less attention on eating a good diet. So ironically taking a multivitamin increases the likelihood that you will need one. And because of the way our bodies digest food, it is better to get vitamins and minerals from food than from pills. So we are not doing ourselves any favors relying on our insurance policy.

It would be like someone with good car insurance driving faster and riskier because they are not worried about the crashes. Or someone with good health insurance refusing to quit smoking because the insurance will pay for any cancer treatment they might need. Why bother eating right when I can pop a multivitamin and go to BK?

So it is better NOT to take a multivitamin and concentrate on eating a good diet. If your diet sucks, it is better to take a multivitamin. But taking a multi-vitamin might make your diet suck rather than the other way around.

Flashrobs v Google Image

2011-10-26T15:16:00.000-05:00

This is an interesting arms race between two technologies. I often blog about the freedoms that I wish we didn’t give up after 9/11, as embodied in the Patriot Act, Homeland Security, et al.

But here is one perhaps where I lean in the other direction. I am sure you all are familiar with flashmobs. In advance, a bunch of people prearrange (often on some social network or another) to meet in the middle of a public place and do something in synch. On TV, they show dancing flashmobs, but really it can be anything.

So in comes the idea of a flashrob. This is where the group prearranges to all be in a store at a prearranged time and on a signal they all grab something and walk out the door (without paying). If you have 40 people all shoplifting at the same time, there is not much the store can do. Even if they have a security guard, he can grab maybe one or two people. And to prevent any violence, injury, or lawsuits, the salespeople are instructed not to interfere.

So in comes technology to the rescue. A security guard may be able to grab one or two and perhaps recognize the faces of one or two more, but a couple of well placed video cameras can catch all their faces. Then you run it through an Internet-based facial recognition to find a photo of them somewhere online. Up pops a photo of them on Flickr or Facebook and they are busted. Google has developed the facial recognition app already. You put the security photo in the search box and the Google Image Search looks for close matches based on an algorithm that works the same way as the ones you see on CSI.

In this case, I am rooting for the tech to win.

What kind of fish are you really eating ???

2011-10-25T09:52:00.000-05:00

I want to present an alternative perspective on the big Boston fish scandal. For anyone who hasn’t been following it, some investigative reporters did DNA tests on 200 orders of fish from Boston restaurants and grocery stores to see if the fish that was being sold was really what was being advertised. Of course, they found that about half were a cheaper alternative. The restaurant’s had various excuses. One said he just didn’t like the look of the snapper that morning, so he got something else (which was of course cheaper). One said that they intentionally used cheaper ingredients to avoid raising prices (but of course didn’t change the menu). One said it wasn’t his deception, the distributor he bought the fish from must have lied to him. The excuse I like the best is that one said the actual fish they use has a terrible name, so they use the name of a fish that sounds better (i.e. it wasn’t the price of the fish).

So, customers are getting cheated at some of Boston’s best restaurants. Everything from Legal Seafood to neighborhood sushi bars. The honest ones were Trader Joes, Whole Foods, and The 99 (low end sit down place). The fish most likely to be fake was Red Snapper (which was often Tilapia), White Tuna (which was often Escolar), and Cod (which was often Hake). Customers are paying for $5/lb fish (red snapper) and being told they are getting $5/lb fish and are really getting $2/lb fish (tilapia). Or $10 fish (white tuna) v $5 fish (escolar).

And it is true, the restaurants are cheating. But it is also true that it isn’t as bad as it seems. There is a lot of behavioral science research which shows that if you really think you are eating a $10/lb fish, it will taste like it. You will enjoy it just as much. And most of the value in the entrée is really in the recipe, cooking and preparation skill, presentation, and atmosphere. If you were asked to try two dishes of the same recipe and chef, both labeled as red snapper but one really tilapia (or white tuna and escolar or cod and hake), you probably wouldn’t notice any difference. You might even like the cheaper one better.

I haven’t seen studies that focused on fish, but they have found this result with wines, colas, and other products. There is enough top down processing that if you think you are drinking a $50 /bottle wine, it really does taste like it. Even if it is really $10 wine. Even wine experts often couldn’t tell the difference.

Why we buy into simplistic plans

2011-10-22T17:17:00.000-05:00

Bloomberg had an excellent, scathing editorial about Herman Cain this week. I blogged about the politics of it on my political blog. But there is a major human factors implication too.

Why do people buy into crap like this? It is because it seems so simple. Our brains are wired to prefer simple to complicated. Through 200,000 years of evolution, simple plans usually worked out better. So we evolved to prefer them. Unfortunately, our world is much more complicated than it used to be. We need people willing to put together 100 page plans. I agree that much of our tax code and other regs are too complicated and need simplification. But tax reform is one thing, 9-9-9 is something completely different.

How is Cain going to solve the conflict in Afghanistan? He will consult with the generals and "wish" a victory. That enough will take care of everything. When people hear this, are they justifiably skeptical? Nope. We have become so despondent and unconfident about our ability to solve any of the world's problems, we just want them to go away in some simple plan. 9-9-9. Drill drill drill will solve the energy problems. Global warming? It must be some kind of conspiracy theory.

Humans are very good at motivated reasoning. Instead of looking at facts and coming to a logical conclusion based on them, we pick the answer we want and then focus only on the facts (or rumors) that support it. It is a combination of emotion, anchoring, and confirmation bias. It explains many things, from battered spouse syndrome to Chicago Cubs fans. Unfortunately, it also helps us decide who to vote for President.