Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life

by Ozan Varol

The psychologist Gerald Wilde calls this phenomenon risk homeostasis.75 The phrase is fancy, but the idea is simple. Measures intended to decrease risk sometimes backfire. Humans compensate for the reduced risk in one area by increasing risk in another. Consider, for example, a three-year study conducted in Munich.76 One portion of a taxicab fleet was equipped with an antilock brake system (ABS). The remainder of the cabs had traditional, non-ABS brakes. The cars were identical in all other respects. They drove at the same time of day, the same days of the week, and in the same weather conditions. The drivers also knew whether their car was equipped with ABS. The study found no tangible difference in accident rates between the ABS-equipped cars and the remainder. But one difference was statistically significant: driving behavior. The drivers of the ABS-equipped cars became far more reckless. They tailgated more often. Their turns were sharper. They drove faster. They switched lanes dangerously. They were involved in more near misses. Paradoxically, a measure introduced to boost safety promoted unsafe driving behavior.77 Safety measures also backfired in the Challenger mission. The managers believed that O-rings had a sufficient safety margin “to enable them to tolerate three times the worst erosion observed up to that time.”78 What’s more, there was a fail-safe in place. Even if the primary O-ring failed, the officials assumed the secondary O-ring would seal and pick up th...