It’s fascinating to explore the effects of cognitive biases on our behavior. Here’s a short video that explains the self-serving bias.
WHEN You Choose Can Impact WHAT You Choose
People tend to favor maintaining the status quo to such an extent that it’s a recognized cognitive bias, one of many systematic distortions of thinking we’re prone to. The status-quo bias goes hand-in-hand with the loss-aversion bias, which leads us to pay more attention to what we might lose than to what we might gain. The status quo often feels less risky, whether or not it actually is.
It stands to reason, then, that when faced with making a choice between an option that maintains the status quo (the default option) and an alternative option, we’d be more likely to choose the default option. And we are—but only if we make the choice immediately. If we delay making a choice that we could have made immediately, we’re much more likely to choose the alternative option.
There have been a number of studies over the past 25 years, all of which show the same results. Simply delaying making a decision we could have made immediately decreases the likelihood we’ll choose the default option. It doesn’t matter what the options are or which option, if either, is the better choice. Delay itself casts doubt on the default option.
Failure to Choose
This isn’t hard to understand. If we could have made a choice immediately, then why didn’t we? The know-it-all interpreter—or explainer—inside our head has an answer for this, as it does for just about everything: obviously there’s some doubt as to the appeal of the default option. Otherwise, based on the status quo bias, we would have chosen it immediately.
It also turns out that being in a state of doubt about something that is completely unrelated to the choice at hand can have the same impact on our choice. Doubt, in general, influences us to choose the alternative option rather than the default option.
Delay and doubt are factors we should take into consideration when we’re faced with making a choice between a default option and an alternative option. The conventional wisdom is that taking time to make a choice leads to making better choices. That seems reasonable, but it isn’t entirely accurate. Yes, delay has an effect; it’s just not the effect we may have attributed to it.
If we’re aware that delay tends to make the default option seem less appealing, we can factor that in when choosing when to choose. We can mitigate some of the effect of delaying choice just by knowing the effect is there.
Thinking Is Difficult
The Forward “Why?”
After years, probably decades, of dismissing why? questions as irrelevant and pointless—especially in regard to human behavior—I’ve finally found a use for them!
The problem with why? questions is that we almost always ask them in the wrong direction. We ask them backward instead of forward.
We ask why something that happened happened the way it did. We ask why people are the way they are or behave the way they behave. We ask why we are the way we are. We’re looking for explanations, rationales, reasons, or maybe even excuses. But those questions can’t really be answered, at least not with any degree of certainty. We simply don’t have, and never will have, all the information. We don’t even have all the information about what’s going on right this second, let alone anything that happened in the past.
The other problem with asking why? about what already happened is that it involves spending a lot of time looking backward. Our heads get stuck in the past searching back there for answers to questions about our present or even our future. All we can expect to come up with is a facsimile of an answer and not even a reasonable one.
Asking “Why?” forward instead of backward, however, is actually useful. More than that, it can be revelatory.
- Is there something you want to do or someplace you want to go? Why?
- Is there a decision you’re trying to make? Why are you considering it?
- Is there a goal you’re working toward? Why?
- Is there a habit you’re trying to start? Why?
- Is there a change you’re thinking about making? Why?
- Is there something you want to get or have? Why?
The list goes on.
Don’t stop with asking why? just once. If you keep asking why? repeatedly, you’ll eventually get to the last answer. Then you’ll know something you may not have known before. You’ll get closer to the heart of what’s at stake. You’ll be in a better position to decide what to do.
The backward why? is just a habit of thought. It can’t take us anywhere new. It has no surprises. The forward why? is where all the action is. It can dissolve limits and barriers. It can open up our world.