5 mistakes that prevent making the right decisions

Do you consider yourself a person who makes only carefully thought-out, logical decisions? We hasten to disappoint you: over the past decades, researchers have discovered a fairly wide range of errors in our psyche that interfere with rational thinking. Let’s look at the most important of them.

1. “Systematic survivor error”

The “systematic survivor’s mistake” is the tendency of people to pay attention to the “winners” in a certain area and try to follow their example, completely ignoring the fact that there are “losers” in the same area. Does it sound unclear? Let’s explain now.

Almost every day in one media or another, you can find articles about famous and successful people with headlines like “Mark Zuckerberg: How a college dropout became a billionaire”, or “Unique workout secrets from LeBron James”. Facts from celebrity biographies are presented as universal recipes for success. But no one will write an article about the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of people who also dropped out of college, but instead of a huge fortune, they “made” only debts and depression. No one thinks about the fact that thousands of guys train in the same way as LeBron — but they will never go beyond the institute basketball team.

We mistakenly overestimate the tips or ways to achieve success of one “winner”, without having information about how many “losers” used the same strategies. And, therefore, we cannot say how effective this or that strategy is.

2. “Aversion to losses”

Loss aversion refers to the tendency of people to avoid losses by all means. So, studies show that the purchase of an extra $ 10 will not cause people any strong emotional feelings, but the loss of the same amount can make many quite upset.

The fear of losing what we have makes us make stupid irrational decisions. As a result, we hold on to what we already have too much, afraid to take advantage of new chances.

A simple illustration of this phenomenon: imagine that you bought a new, unremarkable pair of shoes that turned out to be not very comfortable to wear. You understand that it makes sense to give it, for example, to charity, but for some reason it is very sad to part with it: after all, it is your thing. This is the epitome of loss aversion.

3. “Accessibility heuristics”

Our brain often makes the mistake of determining the importance of an event according to examples that come to mind easily and quickly.

Research by scientist Steven Pinker from Harvard University has shown that our generation lives in the most peaceful time in the history of mankind.Most people, when they hear about this, are genuinely amazed: what about the military actions, terrorist attacks, crimes and accidents that we hear about in the news several times a day? The answer is as follows: we really live in the most peaceful time, but instant access to information about any accident in any corner of the Earth makes us believe that such disasters used to happen much less often. This is not true — in fact, they occurred much more often, just information about it was not distributed around the world.

We overestimate events that we remember and know about, and underestimate what we may not be aware of.

4. “Binding effect”

Imagine that you decided to buy a regular burger. Going into the diner, you see an ad: “You can choose no more than 6 types of cheeses per burger.” The first thought that will flash through your head: “This is absurd, why do you need so many types of cheese in one bun?”. After a second, this thought will be replaced by another: “Which 6 types should I choose?”. And this is despite the fact that initially you did not plan to take so much cheese at all, and the announcement seemed ridiculous to you.

This is an illustration of the binding effect, when a person chooses digital values close to the numbers seen earlier.

It is not surprising that this technique is most often used for advertising purposes. So, $500 for a wristwatch may seem to you an unreasonably high amount, but if, when you go into the store, you first see a watch for $ 1,500 in the window, and then for $ 500, this price will suddenly seem very acceptable to you.
If it were not for the binding effect, many large companies would not be able to sell even half of the volume of products they sell.

5. “Propensity to confirm one’s point of view”

This term refers to the tendency of a person to seek and give preference to the information that corresponds to his beliefs, while ignoring and devaluing information that contradicts these beliefs.
For example, a person who is seriously concerned about the problem of global warming will be inclined to seek out and read articles about environmental conservation, climate change and renewable energy sources. At the same time, a person who does not believe in this problem will prefer articles that global warming is a myth. Thus, both will remain each with their own beliefs.

This phenomenon makes it very difficult to try to change your mind about anything. The more we believe in something, the more we ignore information to the contrary.

Knowing about these and other mistakes that our brain sometimes makes can help us control our own thinking and make more informed decisions.