Faulty Decision-Making

Imagine that you are preparing to go on a vacation to one of two islands: Moderacia (which has average weather, average beaches, average hotels, and average nightlife) or Extremia (which has beautiful weather and fantastic beaches but crummy hotels and no nightlife). The time has come to make your reservations, so which one would you choose? Most people pick Extremia.

But now imagine that you are already holding tentative reservations for both destinations and the time has come to cancel one of them before they charge your credit card. Which would you cancel? Most people choose to cancel their reservation on Extremia.

Why would people both select and reject Extremia? Because when we are selecting, we consider the positive attributes of our alternatives, and when we are rejecting, we consider the negative attributes.

Extremia has the most positive attributes and the most negative attributes, hence people tend to select it when they are looking for something to select and they reject it when they are looking for something to reject.

Of course, the logical way to select a vacation is to consider both the presence and the absence of positive and negative attributes, but that's not what most of us do.

Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness

Disruptive Innovation

Innovation distance explains why so many of those who turn an industry upside down are outsiders, even outcasts. To understand this point we need to grasp the difference between the two types of innovation. Sustaining innovations are improvements that make the product better, but do not threaten its market. The disruptive innovation, conversely, threatens to displace a product altogether. It is the difference between the electric typewriter, which improved on the typewriter, and the word processor, which supplanted it.

Another advantage of the outside inventor is less a matter of the imagination than of his being a disinterested party. Distance creates a freedom to develop inventions that might challenge or even destroy the business model of the dominant industry. The outsider is often the only one who can afford to scuttle a perfectly sound ship, to propose an industry that might challenge the business establishment or suggest a whole new business model. Those closer to - often at the trough of - existing industries face a remarkable constant pressure not to invent things that will ruin their employer. The outsider has nothing to lose. But to be clear, it is not mere distance, but the right distance that matters; there is such a thing as being to far away.

Tim Wu, The Master Switch

We mistakenly conclude that we will feel tomorrow as we feel today

You’ve had an awful day—the cat peed on the rug, the dog peed on the cat, the washing machine is busted, World Wrestling has been preempted by Masterpiece Theatre—and you naturally feel out of sorts.

If at that moment you try to imagine how much you would enjoy playing cards with your buddies the next evening, you may mistakenly attribute feelings that are due to the misbehavior of real pets and real appliances ("I feel annoyed") to your imaginary companions ("I don't think I'll go because Nick always ticks me off").

Indeed, one of the hallmarks of depression is that when depressed people think about future events, they cannot imagine liking them very much.

Vacation? Romance? A night on the town? No thanks, I'll just sit here in the dark.

Their friends get tired of seeing them flail about in a thick blue funk, and they tell them that this too shall pass, that it is always darkest before the dawn, that every dog has its day, and several other important cliches. But from the depressed person's point of view, all the flailing makes perfectly good sense because when she imagines the future, she finds it difficult to feel happy today and thus difficult to believe that she will feel happy tomorrow.

We cannot feel good about an imaginary future when we are busy feeling bad about an actual present. But rather than recognizing that this is the inevitable result of the Reality First policy, we mistakenly assume that the future event is the cause of the unhappiness we feel when we think about it.

Our confusion seems terribly obvious to those who are standing on the sidelines, saying things like "You're feeling low right now because Pa got drunk and fell off the porch, Ma went to jail for whupping Pa, and your pickup truck got repossessed—but everything will seem different next week and you'll really wish you'd decided to go with us to the opera."

At some level we recognize that our friends are probably right. Nonetheless, when we try to overlook, ignore, or set aside our current gloomy state and make a forecast about how we will feel tomorrow, we find that it's a lot like trying to imagine the taste of marshmallow while chewing liver. It is only natural that we should imagine the future and then consider how doing so makes us feel, but because our brains are hell-bent on responding to current events, we mistakenly conclude that we will feel tomorrow as we feel today.

Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness

Don't Forget about the Blue Goat

The most popular episode of the 1970s sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show was titled Chuckles Bites the Dust. The main character (Mary Richards, played by Mary Tyler Moore) was a news producer for a TV station where one of the shows featured Chuckles the Clown.

Chuckles served as grand marshal of a city parade when a rogue elephant attacked and killed him. Throughout the episode, Mary’s colleagues made jokes at the poor man’s expense. But she took his death seriously and chastised them for the inappropriate behavior. That is, until Chuckle's funeral. That’s when the roles reversed. Her coworkers became solemn and sober, but Mary couldn’t suppress her urge to giggle during the eulogy at the clown’s comedic demise and references to his silly routine for children.  

It was ranked #1 on TV Guide's 1997 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time.

Ever tried not to laugh at a wedding, church, or another solemn event? The more you fight it, the stronger the urge becomes to burst out howling. Ever had a crazy thought pop into your head about disrupting a meeting? Have you ever wondered what would happen if you stood up in a restaurant and started yelling? Or start a food fight? Have you had a crazy thought pop into your head about what it would be like if you jumped out of a one-story window to the surprise of your coworkers? 

Suppress that contrarian thought, and it can become an outright urge. Suddenly, you are wondering if you can prevent yourself from doing something completely outrageous and inappropriate. The more you try to avoid the idea, the stronger the desire becomes to do it. Anyone who’s tried to quit smoking or stop drinking alcohol probably knows the feeling. 

A paper in the Journal Science tries to explain the phenomenon. Harvard psychologist Daniel Wegner says if you keep ruminating on the idea of something bad happening, it can make it more likely to occur. 

Our brains are busy suppressing impulses all the time. We use a great deal of energy to keep inclinations in check. When we focus intensely on avoiding errors and taboos, the impulse can be strengthened because the brain is locked on the idea. 

Just try not to think of a blue goat.

In sports, players may be told not to swing their bat or golf club a certain way. Soon, the athlete can barely avoid doing it and feels obsessed and distracted, especially under pressure.

Are you not thinking of a blue goat? 

It’s hard to shake until something new shoves the thought out of the way. There’s the solution: Instead of trying to keep down the stray thought, use your energy to focus on something else that can take its place.

Basketball players are more successful when they visualize the ball going through the hoop and the process of getting it there. Rather than focusing on "not missing," they see success through visualizing accomplishment. Even thoughts of depression can sometimes be squeezed out by changing our focus from our own situation to helping someone else.

Just don’t forget about the blue goat.

Stephen Goforth

Our Brains Trick Us

The futures we imagine contain some details that our brains invented and lack some details that our brains ignored. The problem is that our brains fill in and leave out. God help us if they didn’t.

No, the problem is that they do this so well that we aren’t aware it is happening. As such, we tend to accept the brain’s products uncritically and expect the future to unfold with the details—and with only the details—that the brain has imagined. One of imagination’s shortcomings, then, is that it takes liberties without telling us it has done so.

Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness

Imagination inflation can lead to false memories

Imagination inflation refers to the tendency of people who, when asked to imagine an event vividly, will sometimes begin to believe, when asked about it later, that the event actually occurred. Adults who were asked "Did you ever break a window with your hand?" were more likely on a later life inventory to report that they believe this event occurred during their lifetimes. It seems that asking the question led them to imagine the event, and the act of having imagined it had the effect, later, of making them more likely to think it had occurred (relative to other group answer the question not having previously imagined it occurring).

Accounts that sound familiar can create the feeling of knowing and be mistaken for true. This is one reason that political or advertising claims that are not factual but are repeated can gain traction with the public, particularly if they have emotional resonance. Something you once heard that you hear again later carries a warmth of familiarity that can be mistaken for memory, a shred of something you once knew and cannot quite place but are inclined to believe. In the world propaganda, this is called "the big lie" technique—even a big lie told repeatedly can come to be accepted as truth.

Peter C. Brown and Henry L. Roediger III, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

The Suburb within

You might live in the middle of a big city, but there could still be a white picket fence around your imagination. You can take the subway to work but still park your identity in a two-car garage. This is the inner suburbia, and you probably moved her long ago. You’ve learned to contain your longings and sympathies within a comfortable zone, measures and mediocre. To grow, you must move toward otherness. You must quit the ranch house of your soul and head for the forbidden place—your inner wilderness, inner bohemia, or even your inner inner city. The answer you need lie there, where you are least at home.

Andrew Boyd, Daily Afflictions

The Willingness to be Misunderstood

Invention requires a long-term willingness to be misunderstood. You do something that you genuinely believe in, that you have conviction about, but for a long period of time, well-meaning people may criticize that effort … if you really have conviction that they’re not right, you need to have that long-term willingness to be misunderstood. It’s a key part of invention.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder