Month: April 2020

Motivated Reasoning – Arguments to Continue Believing As We Already Do

Posted on by jabittan
Recently I have been thinking a lot about the way we think. To each of us, it feels as though our thinking and our thought process is logical, that our assumptions about the world are sound and built on good evidence, and that we might have a few complex technical facts wrong, but our judgments are not influenced by bias or prejudice. We feel that we take into consideration wide ranges of data when making decisions, and we do not feel as though our decisions and opinions are influenced by meaningless information and chance.

 

However, science tells us that our brains often make mistakes, and that many of those mistakes are systematic. Also, we know people in our own lives who display wonderful thinking errors, such as close-mindedness, gullibility, and arrogance. We should be more ready to accept that our thinking isn’t any different from the minds of people in scientific studies that show the brain’s capacity to traverse off course or that we are really any different from the person we complain about for being biased or unfair in their thinking about something or someone we we care about.

 

What can make this process hard is the mind itself. Our brains are experts at creating logical narratives, including about themselves. We are great at explaining why we did what we did, why we believe what we believe, and why our reasoning is correct. Scientists call this motivated reasoning.

 

Dale Carnegie has a great explanation of it in his book How to Win Friends and Influence People, “We like to continue to believe what we have been accustomed to accept as true, and the resentment aroused when doubt is cast upon any of our assumptions leads us to seek every manner of excuse for clinging to it. The result is that most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.” 

 

Very often, when confronted with new information that doesn’t align with what we already believe, doesn’t align with our own self-interest, or that challenges our identity in one way or another, we don’t update our thinking but instead explain away or ignore the new information. Even for very small thing (Carnegie uses the pronunciation of Epictetus as an example) we may ignore convention and evidence and back our beliefs in outdated and out of context examples that seem to support us.

 

In my own life I try to remember this, and whether it is my rationalization of why it is OK that I went for a workout rather than doing dishes, or my self-talk about how great a new business idea is, or me rationalizing buying that sushi at the store when I was hungry while grocery shopping, I try to ask myself if my thoughts and decisions are influenced by motivated reasoning. This doesn’t always change my behavior, but it does help me recognize that I might be trying to fool myself. It helps me see that I am no better than anyone else when it comes to making up reasons to support all the things that I want. When I see this in other people, I am able to pull forward examples from my own life of me doing the same thing, and I can approach others with more generosity and hopefully find a more constructive way of addressing their behavior and thought process. At an individual level this won’t change the world, but on the margins we should try to reduce our motivated reasoning, as hard as it may be, and slowly encourage those around us to do the same.

We Might Be Wrong

Posted on by jabittan
“If you can be sure of being right only 55 percent of the time,” writes Dale Carnegie in the book How to Win Friends and Influence People, “you can go down to Wall Street and make a million dollars a day. If you can’t be sure of being right even 55 percent of the time, why should you tell other people they are wrong?”

 

We always feel so sure of our judgments and conclusions. From the health and safety of GMO foods, to the impacts of a new tax, to who is going to win the Super Bowl, we are often very confident people. The world seems to always want our opinions, and we are usually very excited to offer our opinion with a staggering amount of confidence. This has lead to a lot of funny social media posts about people being incorrect about history, science, and sports, but more seriously, it can create thinking errors that lead nations to invade countries for poor reasons, lead to mechanical failures of spacecraft and oil platforms, and can cause us to loose huge sums of money when the game doesn’t turn out the way we knew it would.

 

I think a good practice is to look for areas where we feel a high degree of confidence, and to then try to ascribe a confidence level to our thoughts. We can try to tie our confidence levels back to real world events to help us ground our predictions: The percent chance of getting blackjack in a given hand is 4.83%, Steph Curry’s 3-point shooting percentage is 43.5%, and the percent chance of getting heads in a coin flip is of course 50%. Can you anchor your confidence (or the chance you are wrong) to one of these percentages?

 

I haven’t studied this (so I could be wrong – I’d wager the chance I’m wrong and this is not helpful at Steph Curry’s 3-point percentage), but I would expect that doing this type of exercise would help us recognize how overconfident we often are. It might even help us get to the next step, admitting that we might be wrong and considering different possibilities. Carnegie continues:

 

“You will never get into trouble by admitting that you may be wrong. That will stop all argument and inspire your opponent to be just as fair and open and broad-minded as you are. It will make him want to admit that he, too, may be wrong.”

 

The important thing to remember is that the world is incredibly complex, and our minds are only so good at absorbing lots of new data and articulating a comprehensive understanding of the information we synthesize. We should be more willing to consider ways in which our beliefs may be inaccurate, and more willing to listen to reasonable people (especially those who have demonstrated expertise or effective thinking skills) when they suggest an idea that does not conform to our prior beliefs. Try not to be close-minded and overly confident in your own beliefs, and you will be better at avoiding thinking errors and making better long-term decisions.

Arguing for Importance

Posted on by jabittan
In his book How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie shares a story about a tax consultant and an argument that the consultant had with a government auditor. The two were in a heated debate over a relatively small sum of money and whether it was assessed and taxed properly. A shouting match ensued with both parties being a bit arrogant and ego driven. In the end, the tax consultant realized that the debate was no longer about the facts of tax law or the money in question, the government auditor was arguing for his own importance.

 

The consultant, Mr. Parsons, decided that continuing the debate was not worthwhile and shifted the conversation, complimenting the auditor for the difficult work and decisions he had to make on a daily basis, often in the face of recalcitrant individuals defending questionable financial practices. He didn’t provide the tax inspector with empty flattery but acknowledged that his job was difficult, yet important in a democracy. Carnegie writes about what he learned from this story:

 

“This tax inspector was demonstrating the most common of human frailties. He wanted a feeling of importance; and as long as Mr. Parsons argued with him, he got his feeling of importance by loudly asserting his authority. But as soon as his importance was admitted and the argument stopped and he was permitted to expand his ego, he became a sympathetic and kindly human being.”

 

My wife is a human development specialist, and while she typically works with little ones from 0 to 3, her studies have provided her insights into childhood and adolescent development through early adulthood. She has talked to me about the ways that children and teenagers will seek negative attention, behaving badly and acting out, because even negative attention is a form of attention. Negative attention is still a recognition of the importance of another individual, and childish as it may be, even fully grown and professional adults may from time to time seek negative attention via conflict and arguments.

 

The tax collector in the story wanted to be recognized and wanted his authority respected. It may have been petty, he may have been on an ego and power trip, but nevertheless, becoming angry and indignant didn’t help to reduce his ego and make him a more reasonable person. What it took to get him to be more flexible and cooperative was kindness, not criticism. Positive attention may not have been 100% deserved, but honest praise (as opposed to empty flattery) provided him with a sense of importance and acknowledgement and allowed him to be comfortable with being more cooperative.

 

We should be aware of both sides of this story. We should try to recognize in ourselves how often we are making a power play, not adding much real value to the argument, discussion, market, or opinion that we are advocating for, but simply trying to be an important player. When we see that we are driven by ego and a desire to feel important, we should step back and ask if it is truly necessary, if we will really make things better for ourselves and others, or if we are just being a burden. At the same time, we should try to see this in others and avoid criticizing them for having a human desire that we share and often fall victim to ourselves. We don’t have to provide them with undue flattery, but we can adopt their perspective, recognize the positive aspects of their viewpoint, and try to provide them with recognition and acknowledgement so that we can start to cooperate and work together in a more reasoned and sensible manner.

Other People Are Important

Posted on by jabittan
The golden rule is basically a recognition that other people think and feel the way that we feel. If we have complex emotions, fears, desires, and feel that we are important, then surely other people do as well. From this follows the idea that we should treat people the way we would like to be treated.

 

We know that other people are important, but our actions don’t always reflect that. We often put ourselves ahead of others for no real reason. We go out of our way to make sure we have every possible desire filled, without considering the way that our behavior impacts what is available for others. We think about ourselves constantly, often forgetting that other people have valid thoughts and opinions just as we do.  Getting outside our own heads and remembering people is not just a nice thing we should do, but it is something that is vital to living a successful life. Dale Carnegie explains in his book How to Win Friends and Influence People:

 

“There is one all-important law of human conduct. If we obey that law, we shall almost never get into trouble. In fact, that law, if obeyed, will bring us countless friends and constant happiness. But the very instant we break the law, we shall get into endless trouble. The law is this: Always make the other person feel important.”

 

When we recognize that other people are important, we can take steps to actually show them that we think they are important. Often these can be small gestures, such as letting someone in line at the grocery store with just one item jump ahead of us with our full shopping cart. It can look like grabbing flowers for our partner or their favorite candy at the store as a little something extra. Sometimes it can just be listening to another person and thinking of a way to incorporate an idea they had in the office or give them credit when it is due.  Small steps like this can help foster relationships and improve our lives by helping us work and live better with the people around us.

 

Carnegie asks us to remember, “The unvarnished truth is that almost all the people you meet feel themselves superior to you in some way, and a sure way to their hearts is to let them realize in some subtle way that you recognize their importance, and recognize it sincerely.” Carnegie does not suggest we should simply give everyone around us what they want, but to remember that we can learn from others and that in some way, everyone we meet does have something they can teach us. If we see this same superiority complex in ourselves, we can learn to think beyond it, and ultimately prevent ourselves from getting into useless status measuring competitions with people who think of themselves as superior to us. Instead we can learn to let the ego fall to the side, give people recognition, and ultimately diffuse tension caused by unruly egos and work to get stuff done.

Tips on Listening

Posted on by jabittan
The last few years I have been working on becoming a better listener, and I am still not great at it. Advice from Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People is helpful for anyone who wants to be a better listener, and has made me a better listener during the times I have remembered it. His advice is fairly simple and summed up by one of his principles to live by, “Principle 4: Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.”

 

A funny scene occurs in a lot of movies is one where one person is doing all the talking in a scene. They may be venting about their problems, rambling on about an idea they had, or just blurting out a string of facts and opinions. The other character in the scene usually won’t have a chance to get a word in, or will be so unsure of what to actually say that they just stammer or shrug, not actually saying a word. The character who does all the talking then turns to them and comments on how good the conversation has been, when in reality there was no conversation or dialogue, just a monologue from a single person.

 

These scenes work from a comical perspective, but they are not far from reality for many of our conversations. Even Carnegie has a line in his book about talking to a botanist that aligns with that common comedy scene. “And so I had him thinking of me as a good conversationalist when, in reality, I had been merely a good listener and had encouraged him to talk.”

 

People want to be listened to for validation. They want someone to hear their ideas, to acknowledge their complaints and suffering, and to share their perspective on the world. People seek audiences.

 

We can be receptive audiences, but often times our own desire for an audience gets in the way of us being the good listening audience for others. We want to talk as much as other people in our conversations, and don’t actually want to listen to them and provide the validation, empathy, and acknowledgement that they are looking for.

 

Carnegie continues on what happens when we fail to listen, “If you want to know how to make people shun you and laugh at you behind your back and even despise you, here is the recipe: Never listen to anyone for long. Talk incessantly about yourself. If you have an idea while the other person is talking, don’t wait for him or her to finish: bust right in and interrupt in the middle of a sentence.”

 

To be a good listener you have to let others talk, and the good news is that other people love talking about themselves. Simple questions and acknowledgement of other people’s challenges and thoughts can allow them to continue to talking about themselves, and they will find you to be a good conversation partner who listens to what they really have to say. This builds trust and relationships, helping you become closer with the people around you.

The Magic of a Name

Posted on by jabittan
I remember that as a child I was really good with names, but not that good with faces. I could remember all 30 names of the kids in my elementary class, and in the other classrooms, but I could not always remember a face to go with the name. This kept up through about high school, but at some point it switched, and I became better at remembering faces than names. I remember growing up hearing people say they remembered faces but not names, and thinking that I must have been different for being the opposite. I’m not sure exactly what caused the change, but I suspect that somewhere along the line I started paying less attention to people, especially people I would only know for a semester in college before moving on, and as a result I only vaguely remember faces and never really got their names down.

 

In general day to day life, this probably isn’t a big deal for me. But if I am trying to build meaningful relationships with people who will be bigger parts of my life than just someone I saw at a party once or someone who made my coffee one day, then remembering names is important. Dale Carnegie explains why in his book How to Win Friends and Influence People:

 

“We should be aware of the magic contained in a name and realize that this single item is wholly and completely owned by the person with whom we are dealing … and nobody else. The name sets the individual apart; it makes him or her unique among all others. The information we are imparting or the request we are making takes on a special importance when we approach the situation with the name of the individual.”

 

Part of the power in remembering a name is just signaling. It tells the other person that we actually paid attention to them when we interacted with them in the past, enough to where we at least remembered their name. Going back to my opening paragraph, part of my suspicion of why I forget names is because I stopped paying as much attention to other people, focusing instead on my studies or class discussion, or on other trivial things like what I was going to eat for dinner.

 

Remembering someone’s name signals to them that they are valuable enough to be remembered. That you truly listened to them in the past and cared enough about them to take them seriously. Forgetting their name shows that you instantly forgot them, and that you never really cared about them in the first place. Building relationships requires that you actually like the other person you want to build a relationship with, or minimally at least respect them, and remembering their name helps make a public display of your level of sincerity in terms of your relationship building.

Self-Seeking Versus Unselfishness

Posted on by jabittan
“The world is so full of people who are grabbing and self-seeking. So the rare individual who unselfishly tries to serve others has an enormous advantage.”

 

Dale Carnegie wrote that line in his book How to Win Friends and Influence People. The line comes right after he describes a day where he encountered two life insurance salesmen. The first mentioned a new life insurance option, but because he didn’t have much information, didn’t press the sale and make much of an effort. The second salesman also didn’t have much information, but showed a lot of enthusiasm, encouraged setting up an additional appointment with someone from the company who knew more, and offered to help handle some of the paperwork to get the sign up process started more quickly. The second salesman got the sale.

 

When I read the quote in isolation I thought about people hording supplies during our current social distancing efforts to limit the spread of the Coronavirus. I thought about how tempting it can be to try to make a quick buck, even if the couple hundred dollars the hoarders might make by selling marked-up toilet paper won’t really make much of a difference in the lives of most of them. I also thought about a conversation from the Ezra Klein Show, where Klein, the host, interviewed Jane McAlevey, a union organizer who discussed the way that employees could instinctive tell if you actually care about them when you show up on the job-site, or if you look down on them and think that they are not as smart and deserving as you think of yourself. To live in a world that doesn’t price gouge during a crisis, and to be effective in working with other people requires an unselfishness that recognizes that you are not better than other people, no matter what your degree, your bank account, or the social status of your job says. Being truly unselfish means that you view everyone as having at least the capacity for having the virtues that you prize in yourself, and being willing to help them express those virtues.

 

There is a difference between the way I thought about unselfishness when reading the quote in isolation versus the way that Carnegie thought while writing the quote in his book. For Carnegie, the idea is that you can use your selfish impulses and personal desires to improve the lives of others, at least if you can step into the other person’s shoes, see what they need, and fulfill that need in a way that is deserving of compensation on your end. It is a capitalistic view of selflessness, and while it is not a terrible thing on its own, it requires the possibility for Pareto efficiency, for the world to be in a state where an action can be taken that would improve the world for both you and everyone else. It requires that our actions have only positive externalities. This is the view the inspired the entire book How Stella Saved the Farm, in which a brave sheep steps us to lead a farm and creates prosperity for everyone working on and depending on the farm through an embrace of good management in a capitalistic system.

 

The other view of selflessness is a much more social form. It doesn’t ask if there is a Pareto efficiency that can be met, but instead asks if our goals and desires are really necessary. It asks if the resources we have can be better used by people who are in need. It is part of a bigger question of whether we can do things that will improve the lives of not just us and the person in front of us, but of the entire society.

 

I don’t think that either view is necessarily wrong, but I do think that both views can easily be overstretched. Thinking of selflessness in purely the context of capitalism, as Carnegie was and as is presented in How Stella Saved the Farm can be good, but it can also create a system where our core societal value is what you contribute and produce in an economic sense. As we are not Homo Economicus, this can put many of us who are not great market thinkers and are not inspired business efficiency and productivity in a tough place where we are viewed as undeserving.

 

The second view sees us as valuable and deserving simply by being human beings, but it does raise question about how we reach economic development. An argument can be made that big business and technological development are crucial for improving living standards and actually improving lives more than just social do-gooding. Indeed, Tyler Cowen has made these arguments, and while I’m not sure he fully considers how damaging many of the negative externalities can be, I think he is broadly correct.

 

In the end, I fall back on what both perspectives have in common, which is captured in another line from Carnegie’s book just a few sentences later than the line that opened this post, “If out of reading this book you get just on thing – an increased tendency to think always in terms of other people’s point of view, and see things from their angle – if you get that one thing out of this book, it may easily prove to be one of the building blocks of your career.” I would switch the final word career to life, but the idea is there. Thinking about the world and others from other people’s perspectives is crucial for avoiding selfishness and for making a positive impact on the world. Whether you chose to do so through business and capitalism, through direct work with those who need it the most, or a combination of both approaches, you must first be able to see beyond your own wants and desires and understand the way that others see the world.

Different Angles

Posted on by jabittan
In his book How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie quotes Henry Ford on seeing things from another person’s perspective: “If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.” 

 

I am fascinated by the mind, our perception of the universe, and how we interpret the information we take in to make decisions. There is so much data and information about the world, and we will all experience that information and data in different ways, and our brains will literally construct different realities with the different timing and information that we take in. There may be an objective reality underlying our experiences, but it is nearly impossible to pinpoint exactly what that reality is given all of our different perspectives.

 

What we can realize from the vast amount of data that is out there and by our limited ability to take it all in and comprehend it is that our understanding of the universe is woefully inadequate. We need to get the perspectives of others to really understand what is happening and to make sense of the universe. Everyone will see things slightly differently and understand the world in their own unique way.

 

Carnegie’s book addresses this point in the context of business. When we are trying to make a buck, we often become purely focused on ourselves, on what we want, on how we think it is best to accomplish our goals, and on the narrow set of things that we have identified as necessary steps to get from A to B.

 

However, we are always going to be working with others, and will need the help of other people and other companies to achieve our goals. We will have to coordinate, negotiate, and come to agreement on what actions we will all take, and we will all bring our own experiences and motivations to the table. If you approach business thinking purely about what you want and what your goals are, you won’t be able to do this successfully. You have to consider the perspectives of the other people that you work with or rely on to complete any given project.

 

Your employees motivation will be different than the motivation of the companies who partner with you. Your goal might be to become or remain the leader in a certain industry, but no one cares if you are the leader in your space. Everyone wants to achieve their own ends, and the power of adopting multiple perspectives helps you see how each unique goal can align to compound efforts and returns. Remember, your mind is limited and your individual perspectives are not going to give you the insight you need to succeed in a complex world. Only by seeing the different angles with which other people approach a given problem or situation can you successfully coordinate with and motivate the team you will be working with.

How to Influence People

Posted on by jabittan
“The only way on earth to influence other people,” writes Dale Carnegie in his book How to Win Friends and Influence People, “is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.”

 

Carnegie’s book is one that I have heard recommended over and over by successful guests on the various podcasts that I listen to. I was excited to read it to get real insight into how to be a more likable person and how to be a more influential person in the groups and organizations that I participate with. The book, however, doesn’t provide you with any hacks to trick people into being your friend or to slyly convince people to do what you want them to do. The book focuses on relationships and the importance of being sincere and present in your relationships with others in order to develop meaningful connections with the people around you. The quote above is part of that advice.

 

We don’t influence other people’s decisions by preaching at them, by constantly yelling at them when they do something we consider to be wrong, or by nagging them to do things the way we want. We influence other people by connecting their actions, behaviors, and beliefs to larger outcomes that the other person is aiming for. In the ultimate sense, we show how the other person’s behaviors, actions, and beliefs are either in or out of alignment with their personal values.

 

In 2016 I started the Masters in Public Administration program at the University of Nevada, Reno. For years I had heard my sister tell me about the benefits of universal health care. I had heard my parents and uncles talk about the ways that welfare lead to people staying home to play video games instead of working. I had listened to people talk about trickle down economics and the values of federalism, and I wanted to enter a masters program where I could learn how to sort out all the arguments people discussed regarding public policy and governance. I wanted concrete facts so I could make rational decisions on all these topics and tell my family members who was empirically correct and who was wrong.

 

What I learned, however, is that all of these policy discussions hinge on something deeper than the cold hard rational facts. They hinge on values. As I learned what the scientific research showed about universal healthcare, tax rates, and social welfare programs, I told my family members where their ideas seemed to make sense and where they seemed to be in conflict with the actual data. My empirical evidence has meant nothing to my family members and has not changed any minds. The data is only useful when it supports the position that people want to hold based on their values. Changing minds and influencing people, therefore has to be connected to the values they already hold or that they aspire to.

 

Carnegie’s quote at the start of this post is all about connecting to values. You have to talk to people about what they want to see in life, why they want to see those things, and what values are driving the ways they hope the world turns out to be. Then you need to show them how the things you support, the ideas you think the other person should hold, and how the actions that you hope they will take help get the other person and society closer to those values.

 

For whatever reason we don’t like to talk about our values openly. Partly this is because for many of us our number one value is our own self-interest, and we don’t want to say that directly. But we also make up excuses around issues of abortion, healthcare, and taxes where we claim that economics or good health are the values we care about, but really we care much more about identity, self-interest, and whether the world is fair to us. If we could discuss those values directly, rather than hiding behind economic BS, then maybe we could actually compromise or be less hateful of those who don’t agree with us. In the end, we should remember that it is our values which underlay everything we say or due (that includes me, you, and that person on social media you hate). If we want to try to shape the world for the better, we better understand what values are driving us, what values drive others, and how we communicate our values in terms of how we think the world should operate. We won’t influence people to live better if we are not up front about our values and can’t connect other people’s actions back to the values question.