What are unintended consequences?
In his famous essay ‘What is seen and what is not seen’, Bastiat wrote: “There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.” Bastiat’s words are not limited to economists but extend to all of us who have to make decisions. When we make big decisions at work, we make pros and cons lists, do a SWOT analysis, study trends and look at data and finally come to a calculated conclusion (or we believe we have). But how many times has it happened you decided to go one way but something entirely else happened? Then believing yourself as an elite thinker, did you gracefully fall for hindsight bias and concocted the most logical theory for the past? The theory that made you go “Aha! That totally made sense! How could I have not seen it before?” Our brain loves stories, and it whips out one to make sense of things that make little sense. So, let me ask you again, was your calculated conclusion calculated or just a throw in the dark? When we make decisions, do we account for unintended consequences or just work with what is in front of us? Before we understand what are unintended consequences, let us understand a few basic categories our decisions fall into.
Basic categories of decisions
There are three kinds of decisions.
- Known Outcome: These are the decisions where we know the outcome for certain. For example, we know what will happen if we decide to drive our cars with eyes closed during peak traffic hours. (Please don’t try these stunts). Hence, we decide every day to drive with our eyes open. These are the easiest decisions to make.
- Unknown Outcome, Known Probabilities: These are the decisions where we know all possible outcomes but don’t know what the outcome will be this time. For example, when you play any sport, you know you will win, lose, have a draw or the game will get cancelled but you don’t know which of these will exactly happen. You are aware of the range of possible outcomes, but not the current outcome.
- Unknown Outcome, Unknown Probabilities: This is the scenario where we do not know the range of the possible outcomes and don’t know the individual probability of each outcome. Welcome to the real world, my friend. We believe we are making the first and second kind of decisions when, in reality, we are making the third type.
We are at higher risk of encountering with unintended consequences when we believe we are making decisions of the second type and are ignorant that we live in a world full of decisional situations of the third type.
“Any endeavour has unintended consequences. Any ill-conceived endeavour has more.”
— Stephen Tobolowsky, The Dangerous Animals Club
What are the unintended consequences?
The law of unintended consequence relates to any purposeful action taken that will generate unintended consequences. A mismatch between what you expect the outcome of your action and the actual reality of the outcome. Unintended consequences may sound like it’s all bad, but sometimes, the consequences can also be serendipitous. Your rom-com movies are filled with examples of positive unintended consequences. Watching two lovers oblivious and unexpectedly falling in love is what makes it such a great treat to watch when coupled with ice-cream after an unpleasant day. Coming back from la-la-land, we also see unintended benefits in the real world.
In 1953, when the Korean War ended with the Korean Armistice Agreement, a Korean Demilitarized zone was created which was 150 miles long and 2.5 miles wide to separate North Korea and South Korea. After virtually being untouched by humans for around six decades, animals and birds unable to survive in the Korean peninsula began thriving in the no-man’s-land. Who would have thought of this outcome when they were signing the treaty? It might have happened in your lives when you didn’t prepare for your exams and your schools closed because of the global pandemic (Not feeling so serendipitous after three months, huh?)
When things go well, no one bats an eye. We want to control the scenarios when our purposeful actions lead to negative unintended consequences. Unintended consequences are known by many names — Murphy’s law, boomerang effect and cobra effect. Let me illustrate its workings better with my favourite story — the story of the famous cobra effect.
When the Britishers ruled India during colonial times, the government was very concerned with the increasing number of venomous cobras in Delhi. To reduce the mayhem caused by the cobras, the government came up with a plan — they placed a bounty on them. A generous amount paid for every dead cobra presented to the government. The scheme seemed to work as the number of cobras on the roads reduced. However, even when the number of cobras outside reduced, the government spending on bounties did not. So what was exactly happening? With no cobras on the road, why did the government had to keep paying the bounty? What had happened was that the people of Delhi turned rather entrepreneurial and started breeding cobras at their homes, which they would later kill to collect the bounty. As soon as the government realised what was happening, they did what they could do to stop the loss of money — cancelled the bounty. Now, there were many Delhi residents with cobras at their homes and no use for them, who also did what they could do — released the cobras into the streets. What were they supposed to do with so many cobras in their homes anyway? As a result, Delhi had even a bigger cobra problem than they had before. This is such a classic example of unintended consequences that sometimes problems caused by unintended consequences are called ‘cobra problems’ in social sciences and business.
We live in a complex world. When we try to change anything in this complex system, we find it hinged to everything else. The first step of ensuring that you get your desired outcome in the world where you are blinded by possibilities of unintended consequences is to be aware of its existence and constantly questioning yourself. As humans, we are wired to find a linear cause and effect explanation for everything in our surroundings. Unwire yourself consciously when making decisions.
References:
https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/540/handouts/french/unintconseq.html
