Decisive: How to make better choices in life and work

by Chip Heath

The confirmation bias53 leads us to hunt for information that flatters our existing beliefs.

A recent meta-analysis of the psychology literature illustrated how dramatic this effect is. In reviewing more than 91 studies of over 8,000 participants, the researchers concluded that we are more than twice as likely to favor confirming information than dis-confirming information. (So, scientifically speaking, you’d probably read twice as many four-star reviews as two-star reviews.)

(as in Upton Sinclair’s observation, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it!”).

The confirmation bias also increased when people had previously invested a lot of time or effort in a given issue.

In our individual decisions, how many of us have ever consciously sought out people we knew would disagree with us?

How can we plan for disagreement inside organizations? Some have created devil’s advocate–style traditions. The Pentagon used a “murder board55,” staffed with experienced officers, to try to kill ill-conceived missions.

The most important lesson to learn about devil’s advocacy isn’t the need for a formal contrarian position; it’s the need to interpret criticism as a noble function.

Another alternative is to seek out existing dissent rather than creating it artificially. If you haven’t encountered any opposition to a decision you’re considering, chances are you haven’t looked hard enough. Could you create a safe forum where critics can air their concerns?

Roger Martin56, the dean of the Rotman School of Business and the author of The Opposable Mind and other well-regarded business books, said that people often complain to him that their strategy meetings “descend into adversarial position-taking.”

He issued the group a challenge: Let’s stop arguing about who is right, he said. Instead, let’s take each option, one at a time, and ask ourselves: What would have to be true for this option to be the right answer?

But Martin’s question adds something constructive: What if our least favorite option were actually the best one? What data might convince us of that?

In some organizations, hiring managers have become smarter about reference calls. Some ask the references for additional people to contact who weren’t on the original list. Those secondary interviews will tend to yield more neutral information.

Rather than ask for an evaluation of the candidate (“Would you say Steve’s performance was closer to ‘stunning’ or ‘breathtaking’? Be honest.”), many firms now seek specific factual information. For example, Ray Rothrock, a venture capitalist with Venrock, says that one of the best diagnostic questions he’s discovered in assessing entrepreneurs is “How many secretaries has this entrepreneur had in the past few years?” If the answer is five, chances are you’ve got someone with some issues.

Every big firm claims that it is different. Every big firm denies that it is a sweatshop. Every big firm insists that, although its attorneys work hard, they lead balanced lives. This is almost always false. It has to be. There is no free lunch…. Ask tough questions of the lawyers you meet. When you are at a recruiting dinner with a couple of lawyers from the firm, don’t just ask them, “So, do you folks have any kind of life outside of work?” They will chuckle, say “sure,” and ask if you want more wine. Instead, ask them how many times last week they had dinner with their families. And then ask them what time dinner was served. And then ask them whether they worked after dinner. Ask them what their favorite television show is or what is the last good movie they saw. If they respond, respectively, Welcome Back, Kotter and Saturday Night Fever, you will know something’s wrong…. When a lawyer tells you that he gets a lot of interesting assignments, ask for examples. You may be surprised at what passes for “interesting” at the firm. And when a lawyer tells you that associates are happy at the firm, ask for specifics. How many associates were hired five years ago? How many of those associates remain at the firm? Who were the last three associates to leave the firm? What are they doing now? How can you contact them?

The buyers in the negotiation, who were cronies of the researchers, tried three different strategies. When the buyers asked about the iPod, “What can you tell me about it?,” only 8% of the sellers disclosed the problem. The question “It doesn’t have any problems, does it?” boosted the disclosure to 61%. The best question to ask, in hopes of discovering the truth, was this one: “What problems does it have?” That prompted 89% of the sellers to come clean.

There’s a similar signaling effect with Judge Schiltz’s57 questions. A law student is likely to get straight answers to the questions “How many associates were hired five years ago?” and “How many of those associates remain at the firm?”

So, for doctors to gather trustworthy information, they’ve got to be diligent about asking open-ended questions—much more like the generic iPod question, “What can you tell me about it?” That kind of question was ineffective in the iPod situation, but it works wonders with patients.

Before Dr. Barbour, none of Joseph’s doctors had thought to ask him what he meant by “feeling dizzy.” They had never considered that the cause might be emotional rather than physical. Dr. Barbour argues that doctors are trained to be expert disease detectors, taught to diagnose patients based on fragments of information: a fever, an odd pain, a spell of disorientation. But this disease hunt can backfire, tempting them to lock on to a possible diagnosis prematurely.

Barbour recommends a process that is better equipped to dodge the confirmation bias. When the doctor starts asking questions, she should start broad and open-ended: “What was the pain like? How did you feel?” Then she can move slowly and cautiously toward more directed questions: “Was it sharp or dull?” “Were you sad?” In this way, the doctor can avoid unwittingly biasing the interview.fn2

To interrupt this cycle, some organizational leaders urge their employees to “assume positive intent62,” that is, to imagine that the behavior or words of your colleagues are motivated by good intentions, even when their actions seem objectionable at first glance. This “filter” can be extremely powerful.

She said, “When you assume negative intent, you’re angry. If you take away that anger and assume positive intent, you will be amazed…. You don’t get defensive. You don’t scream. You are trying to understand and listen because at your basic core you are saying, ‘Maybe they are saying something to me that I’m not hearing.’”

ASSUMING POSITIVE INTENT AND keeping a marriage diary are two examples of what psychologists call “considering the opposite.” I think my spouse is selfish—but perhaps I should keep track of situations where he’s looking out for me. I think my colleague is being rude and abrupt—but what if he’s not being abrupt and is just trying to respect my time? (Oops, and what if he thinks I’m disrespecting his time when I try to chat?) This simple technique of considering the opposite has been shown, across multiple studies, to reduce many otherwise thorny cognitive biases. (See endnotes for more63.)

in his book, Brilliant Mistakes, his team started by listing some of the key assumptions underlying their efforts, an exercise that surfaced the “conventional wisdom” that, in most organizations, is never articulated or questioned. After they’d identified ten key assumptions, they whittled the list down to three—those they were least confident about and that, if proven wrong, had the highest potential payoff for the business:

WHY COULDN’T YOU RUN Schoemaker’s game plan in your organization? Could you create a “Mistake of the Year” program?

three approaches for fighting the confirmation bias: One, we can make it easier for people to disagree with us. Two, we can ask questions that are more likely to surface contrary information. Three, we can check ourselves by considering the opposite.

CHAPTER FIVE IN ONE PAGE Consider the Opposite 1. Confirmation bias = hunting for information that confirms our initial assumptions (which are often self-serving). The hubris of CEOs can be counteracted by disagreement. We need the same disagreement to counteract our confirmation bias. 2. We need to spark constructive disagreement within our organizations. The devil’s advocate, murder boards, and The Gong Show all license skepticism. How can we? Roger Martin’s brilliant question: “What would have to be true for this option to be the very best choice?” 3. To gather more trustworthy information, we can ask disconfirming questions. Law students: “Who were the last three associates to leave the firm? What are they doing now? How can I contact them?” iPod buyers: “What problems does the iPod have?” 4. Caution: Probing questions can backfire in situations with a power dynamic. Doctors are wiser to use open-ended questions. “What do you mean by ‘dizzy’?” 5. Extreme disconfirmation: Can we force ourselves to consider the opposite of our instincts? A marriage diary helps a frustrated spouse see that his/her partner isn’t always selfish. “Assuming positive intent” spurs us to interpret someone’s actions/words in a more positive light. 6. We can even test our assumptions with a deliberate mistake. Schoemaker’s firm won $1 million in business by experimenting with the RFP process. One woman actually married her “mistake.” 7. Because we naturally seek self-confirming information, we ne...