PsyBlog: 4 Belief Biases That Can Reduce Pleasure

The term is from the book ‘Crossing the Chasm’ by Geoffrey Moore. For the readers in the audience, you’ll remember that the early adopter is actually the 2nd stage of customer in the technology adoption lifecycle.
There is actually a smaller, albeit still important, group called ‘Innovators.’

An Innovator will pursue new technology aggressively. They have a central tendency to admire, appreciate, and try out new inventions, regardless of the current state of development. They are very forgiving about short-comings and realize that new technology has bugs. ( Most people in the Valley would consider themselves early adopters, but in fact they are closer to innovators when you consider the U.S. proper and the world as a whole. )

Companies have a hard time tracking Innovators. Here is one site that is completely dedicated to Innovators: Make Magazine (website, blog ) . If I were a business considering new ideas, I’d keep a running tab on this site. Keeping a tab on Innovators helps a company identify new trends and could even create an opportunity for an early market move. The ideas on the site are unrefined and unpolished – this is a site for Innovators.

However, with a little bit of vision, it will become quickly apparent how to find new product concepts.

The most important piece of information from the article. The average half-life of a front-page story on Digg is 69 minutes.

Read the full piece here.

Many people use hindsight bias to help resolve inconsistencies between something occurring today and the decision making process in the past. This quirk of reasoning can lead to a negative feedback loop. You may start out on some goal, run into a snag, and then berate yourself with “I should have seen this coming.” A few snags and then you convince yourself that you won’t be able to be successful at your endeavor.

The thing is – You will never be able to anticipate all things. You can’t predict the future. When you look back on a past activity, you have new perspective and data that you didn’t have earlier in time. So, of course you will have a different opinion on the situation. You have more information.

The best way to handle it? Treat is as a mental sunk costs. Realize that you have more information today, but don’t get hung up on the negatives. Take notes, don’t make the mistake again, and getting moving forward.

You, your product, or your business are always being compared against something. It could be an industry standard, a previous supplier, or your competition. Those of you that have ever received a RFP (request for proposal) from a large company understand this intimately.

If you should ever get another RFP and you know that you are not in the top 3 choices. Don’t submit it.

First, if you are competing in a category where you are 4th or 5th, I would suggest finding a niche where you can dominant. You’ll be happier in the long run.

Second, an organization who is faced with too many choices won’t spend time analyzing all of them. They will spend their time on the top players and use the ‘bottom-half’ of the list for other things. Like negotiation of price… The prospect may be telling you that you are in the game, but if you aren’t in the top 3 choices, run away.

The issue is not competing. Everyone is competing with someone.  You want to find your niche in which are competing from a position of strength, not of weakness.

When you consider all the external influences such as bad moods, good moods, rainy days, insomnia, traffic delays, and other sorts of malaise and discomfort, is it really possible to be completely rational?

Economists have a term for the perfectly rational person: homo oeconomicus. This perfectly rational being makes absolutely rational decision in his actions and in his thinking. How does that happen?

One interpretation is the application of the principle of ‘maximization of expected utility. ‘ He tries to get the most from the future out of the decisions made today. This simple statement sounds straightforward until you realize that homo oeconomicus can’t predict the future. By the way, you can’t either. So, you really have no idea how your decision today will affect the future.

To compensate for this evolutionary hiccup in human capabilities, there is a process to determine the best outcome for your decision today. You take into account multiple possibilities for the future and assign a probability to each event based on it’s likelihood of occurring. Then you evaluate each of the probabilities. Once you’ve performed the math, you choose the decision that brings you the most value.

Sounds reasonable, right?

Except that’s not how people make decisions. Most people make a decision because they are stressed by their spouse or their mortgage payment is overdue.

There is a place for rational decision making, but it does not exist in a pure form in the human brain.

Do you send off your report over an email to your boss and assuming that he’ll get it? No.

Do you rattle off a long list of reasons why this idea is a winner, hoping to inundate him with facts? No.

Do you create a complex chart of market conditions highlighting the potential revenue? No.

What do you do?

Step 1:You take a step back and continue to do your research. This time, focus your research on the person you hope to influence. Learn about their previous decisions, how they make decisions, and typical risk factors they considered. Then carefully craft your message according to how this person makes decisions.

Step 2: Take the single most important point and highlight it in your proposal. Use the information that you just learned from Step 1 to guide the manner that you present your facts.

Step 3: You will quickly get a response from the person to learn more.

Here’s why this works:

We, as individuals at our jobs, have millions of things that occupy our day. Further, we are constantly being interrupted with things that command our attention. In order to eliminate noise, we discard ideas or appointments that don’t fall into our core belief of success. Translated : If something isn’t going to help me as a person, then it’s unlikely that I’ll pursue it.

So, by presenting your idea in terms that your boss understands, your pushing the proper buttons to help her understand what she gets out of your proposal. By focusing on the single most important item, you are reducing the overall amount of time that your boss needs to make a decision. In the beginning, all you really want is a conversation. By presenting just one idea, your creating a sense of interest to learn more.

Follow both of these steps and you’ll have people fawning over you for your great ideas.

Each person has a particular and individual worldview, consisting of their beliefs, education, upbringing, values, opinions, experiences, and many other things.  This worldview influences our opinion, our moods, and our life choices. The problem for communication is that each worldview is different. There are millions of variations on each word and it’s interpretation. The meaning from the speaker may or may not be interpreted correctly by the listener. Because of this, I’m surprised we even communicate at all.

As you speak, the words you use may not be interpreted the same as you intend. Here are some quick suggestions:

1) Pay special attention to the facial expression of the listener – If they suddenly get a scowl or a furrowed brow, something has set them off. Try to rephrase your last few comments.

2) Encourage them to repeat back what you’ve said – If the listener can repeat back the core of your message, then you can be reasonably sure they are making sense of it all.

3) Adjust your tone, volume, velocity, proximity as necessary – Sorry for the Seinfeld reference, but if you are a ‘close-talker,’  you are taking the focus away from your message and transferring it to your proximity.

4) Choose your words as appropriate for the audience – It’s really great that you’ve just completed the “Oxford Dictionary Advanced Training on 12 CDs”, but it’s more important that you get your message across, not impress people with your use of vocabulary.

5) Be friendly – Your message will be received better if you are nice compared to you being indifferent. Here’s a hint – smile!

I’d like you to consider this scenario. You are sitting in a chair in a large conference hall with several hundred other attendees. You are about to listen to a lecture of someone famous. The lights are dark and the room is filled to capacity. All the seats are taken and it’s standing room only.

A speaker walks out onto the brightly stage and provides some interesting news. It turns out there will be a surprise lottery before the lecture. There will be one winning ticket and the grand prize is a new car – a Toyota Prius. The sticker price is approximately $20,000 and all details regarding shipping will be handled by the company sponsoring the event. At this point, you get a little excited. You’ve come into a lecture hall with several hundred people expecting to hear a talk and now you have the opportunity to get a new car. Cool.
The sponsors have taken great care to create a purely random drawing. Everyone will be handed a sealed envelope with a ticket inside. That ticket with be marked with your lottery number. Once all the tickets have been handed out, the drawing will be held on the stage in front of all of the people.

You are handed your ticket and you wait patiently for all the envelopes to get out. As all of the tickets are handed to these several hundred people, the energy in the room builds and the chatter amongst the participants goes up. Towards the end, there is a great din of chatter and conversation as all of the participants anxiously await the drawing. You can’t help but feel your blood start to pump a little faster.

You look down at your envelope and wait until the announcer ask you to open your ticket. As you tear back the flap, you start to imagine yourself driving in a brand new car. A small grin involuntarily pops up on your face. You pull out your lottery ticket and you look at the number. It reads “#0001″

How do you feel now? Do you think you will win? Be honest.

If you feel a little disappointed, you shouldn’t be.  Your ticket has the exact same probability as winning as every other ticket. Still, you can’t help but feel a loss. Everyone knows that tickets with the number 1 don’t win.  And that feeling of discomfort is exactly why aspects of your unconscious can influence the most logical part of our brain.

The big question – How often does this happen to you?

Source – This example is inspired by a comment I was reading a few months ago. I am actively looking to find the reference. I will post an update as soon as I have it.