Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

by Maria Konnikova

  Holmes knows better than anyone else how important engagement is for proper observation and thought. Your mind needs to be active, to be involved in what it’s doing. Otherwise, it will get sloppy—and let pass a crucial detail that almost gets the object of your observation killed. Motivation matters. Stop being motivated, and performance will drop off, no matter how well you’ve been doing up until the end—even if you’ve successfully done everything you should have been doing up to now, the moment motivation and involvement flag, you slip up.

  When we are engaged in what we are doing, all sorts of things happen. We persist longer at difficult problems—and become more likely to solve them. We experience something that psychologist Tory Higgins refers to as flow, a presence of mind that not only allows us to extract more from whatever it is we are doing but also makes us feel better and happier: we derive actual, measurable hedonic value from the strength of our active involvement in and attention to an activity, even if the activity is as boring as sorting through stacks of mail. If we have a reason to do it, a reason that engages us and makes us involved, we will both do it better and feel happier as a result. The principle holds true even if we have to expand significant mental effort—say, in solving difficult puzzles. Despite the exertion, we will still feel happier, more satisfied, and more in the zone, so to speak.

  What’s more, engagement and flow tend to prompt a virtuous cycle of sorts: we become more motivated and aroused overall, and, consequently, more likely to be productive and create something of value. We even become less likely to commit some of the most fundamental errors of observation (such as mistaking a person’s outward appearance for factual detail of his personality) that can threaten to throw off even the best-laid plans of the aspiring Holmesian observer. In other words, engagement stimulates System Holmes. It makes it more likely that System Holmes will step up, look over System Watson’s shoulder, place a reassuring hand on it, and say, just as it’s about to leap into action, Hold off a minute. I think we should look at this more closely before we act.

  To see what I mean, let’s go back for a moment to Holmes—specifically, to his reaction to Watson’s overly superficial (and unengaged) judgment of their client in “The Adventure of the Norwood Builder.” In the story, Dr. Watson demonstrates a typical System Watson approach to observation: judging too quickly from initial impressions and failing to correct for the specific circumstances involved. Though in this particular case the judgment happens to be about a person—and as it applies to people, it has a specific name: the correspondence bias, a concept we’ve already encountered—the process it illustrates goes far beyond person perception.

  After Holmes enumerates the difficulties of the case and stresses the importance of moving quickly, Watson remarks, “Surely the man’s appearance would go far with any jury?” Not so fast, says Holmes. “That is a dangerous argument, my dear Watson. You remember that terrible murderer, Bert Stevens, who wanted us to get him off in ’87? Was there ever a more mild-mannered, Sunday school young man?” Watson has to agree that it is, in fact, so. Many times, people are not what they may initially be judged to be.

  Person perception happens to be an easy illustration of the engagement process in action. As we go through the following steps, realize that they apply to anything, not just to people, and that we are using people merely to help us visualize a much more general phenomenon.

  The process of person perception is a deceptively straightforward one. First, we categorize. What is the individual doing? How is he acting? How does he appear? In Watson’s case, this means thinking back to John Hector McFarlane’s initial entrance to 221B. He knows at once (by Holmes’s prompting) that their visitor is a solicitor and a Freemason—two respectable occupations if ever there were any in nineteenth-century London. He then notes some further details.

  He was flaxen-haired and handsome, in a washed-out negative fashion, with frightened blue eyes, and a clean-shaven face, with a weak, sensitive mouth. His age may have been about twenty-seven, his dress and bearing that of a gentleman. From the pocket of his light summer overcoat protruded the bundle of endorsed papers which proclaimed his profession.

  (Now imagine this process happening in the exact same way for an object or location or whatever else. Take something as basic as an apple. Describe it: how does it look? Where is it? Is it doing anything? Even sitting in a bowl is an action.)

  After we categorize, we characterize. Now that we know what he’s doing or how he seems, what does that imply? Are there some underlying traits or characteristics that are likely to have given rise to my initial impression or observation? This is precisely what Watson does when he tells Holmes, “Surely the man’s appearance would go far with any jury.” He has taken the earlier observations, loaded as they might be—handsome, sensitive, gentlemanly bearing, papers proclaiming his profession as a solicitor—and decided that taken together, they imply trustworthiness. A solid, straightforward nature that no jury could doubt. (Think you can’t characterize an apple? How about inferring healthiness as an intrinsic characteristic because the apple happens to be a fruit, and one that appears to have great nutritional value given your earlier observations?)

  Finally, we correct: Is there something that may have caused the action other than my initial assessment (in the characterization phase)? Do I need to adjust my initial impressions in either direction, augmenting some elements or discounting others? That sounds easy enough: take Watson’s judgment of trustworthiness, or your judgment of healthiness, and see if it needs to be adjusted.

  Except, there’s one major problem: while the first two parts of the process are nearly automatic, the last is far less so—and often never happens at all. Consider that in the case of John McFarlane, it is not Watson who corrects his impression. He takes it for what it is and is about to move on. Instead, it is the ever-engaged Holmes who points out that Watson’s reasoning “is a dangerous argument.” McFarlane may or may not be able to rely on his appearance to go far with any jury. It all depends on the jury—and on the other arguments of the case. Appearance alone can be deceptive. What can you really tell about McFarlane’s trustworthiness from simply looking at him? Back to that apple: can you really know it is healthy by examining its exterior? What if this particular apple is not only not organic, but has come from an orchard that is known to use illegal pesticides—and has not been properly washed or handled since? Appearances can deceive even here. Because you already have a schema of an apple set in your mind, you may deem it too time consuming and unnecessary to go any further.

  Why do we so often fail at this final stage of perception? The answer lies in that very element we were discussing: engagement.

  Perception comes in two flavors, passive and active, and the distinction is not the one you might think. In this case, System Watson is the active one, System Holmes, the passive. As passive perceivers, we just observe. And by that I mean that we do not do anything else. We are not, in other words, multitasking. Holmes the passive observer focuses all of his faculties on the subject of observation, in this case, John Hector McFarlane. He listens, as is his habit, “with closed eyes and fingertips together.” The word passive can be misleading, in that there is nothing passive about his concentrated perception. What is passive is his attitude to the rest of the world. He will not be distracted by any other task. As passive observers, we are not doing anything else; we are focused on observing. A better term in my mind would be engaged passivity: a state that is the epitome of engagement but happens to be focused on only one thing, or person, as the case may be.

  In most situations, however, we don’t have the benefit of simply observing (and even when we do, we don’t often choose to do so). When we are in a social environment, which defines most situations, we can’t just stand back and watch. Instead, we are in a state of de facto multitasking, trying to navigate the complexities of social interaction at the same time as we make attributional judgments, be it about people, things, or environments. Active perception d
oesn’t mean active in the sense of present and engaged. Active perception means that the perceiver is, literally, active: doing many things at once. Active perception is System Watson trying to run all over the place and not miss a thing. It is the Watson who not only examines his visitor, but worries about the doorbell, the newspaper, when lunch will be served, how Holmes is feeling, all in the same moment. A better term here would be disengaged activity: a state where you seem to be active and productive, but are actually doing nothing to its fullest potential, spreading thin your attentional resources.

  What separates Holmes from Watson, the passive observer from the active one, engaged passivity from disengaged activity, is precisely the descriptor I’ve used in both cases: engagement. Flow. Motivation. Interest. Call it what you may. That thing that keeps Holmes focused exclusively on his visitor, that enraptures him and prevents his mind from wandering anywhere but to the object at hand.

  In a set of classic studies, a group of Harvard researchers set out to demonstrate that active perceivers categorize and characterize on a near-subconscious level, automatically and without much thought, but then fail to implement the final step of correction—even when they have all of the information to do so—and so end up with an impression of someone that does not take into account all of the variables of the interaction. Like Watson, they remember only that a jury would like a man’s appearance; unlike Holmes, they fail to take into account those factors that might make that appearance a deceptive one—or those circumstances under which a jury would dismiss any appearance, no matter how trustworthy, as false (like additional evidence so weighty it renders all subjective aspects of the case largely irrelevant).

  In the first study, the researchers tested whether individuals who were cognitively “busy,” or multitasking in the way that we often are when we juggle numerous elements of a situation, would be able to correct initial impressions by making the necessary adjustment. A group of participants was asked to watch a series of seven video clips in which a woman was having a conversation with a stranger. The clips did not have sound, ostensibly to protect the privacy of those speaking, but did include subtitles at the bottom of each clip that told participants the topic of conversation. In five of the seven videos, the woman behaved in an anxious fashion, while in the other two she remained calm.

  While everyone watched the exact same videos, two elements differed: the subtitles and the task that the participants were expected to perform. In one condition, the five anxious clips were paired with anxiety-provoking topics, such as sex life, while in the other, all seven clips were paired with neutral topics like world travel (in other words, the five clips of anxious behavior would seem incongruous given the relaxing subject). And within each of these conditions, half of the participants were told that they would be rating the woman in the video on some personality dimensions, while the other half was expected to both rate personality and be able to recall the seven topics of conversation in order.

  What the researchers found came as no shock to them, but it did shake up the way person perception—the way we view other people—had always been seen. While those individuals who had to focus only on the woman adjusted for the situation, rating her as dispositionally more anxious in the neutral topic condition and as less anxious in the anxiety-inducing topic condition, those who had to recall the conversation topics completely failed to take those topics into account in their judgment of the woman’s anxiety. They had all of the information they needed to make the judgment, but they never thought to use it. So even though they knew that the situation would make anyone anxious in theory, in practice they simply decided that the woman was a generally anxious person. What’s more, they predicted that she would continue to be anxious in future scenarios, regardless of how anxiety-provoking those scenarios were. And the better they recalled the topics of conversation, the more extremely off their predictions were. In other words, the busier their brains were, the less they adjusted after forming an initial impression.

  The news here is both good and bad. First, the obviously bad: in most situations, under most circumstances, we are active observers, and as such, more likely than not to make the error of unconsciously, automatically categorizing and characterizing, and then failing to correct that initial impression. And so we go by appearances; we forget to be subtle; we forget how easily a person can be influenced at any given point by myriad forces, internal and external. Incidentally, this works whether or not you tend, as most Westerners do, to infer stable traits over passing states, or, as many Eastern cultures do, to infer states over traits; whatever direction you err in, you will fail to adjust.

  But there’s good news. Study after study shows that individuals who are motivated correct more naturally—and more correctly, so to speak—than those who are not. In other words, we have to both realize that we tend to form autopilot-like judgments and then fail to adjust them, and we have to want, actively, to be more accurate. In one study, psychologist Douglas Krull used the same initial setup as the Harvard anxiety research—but gave some participants an additional goal: estimate the amount of anxiety caused by the interview questions. Those who regarded the situation were far less likely to decide that the woman was simply an anxious person—even when they were busy with the cognitive rehearsal task.

  Or, let’s take another commonly used paradigm: the political statement that is assigned to a subject rather than deliberately chosen. Take capital punishment (since we’ve mentioned that same issue in the past, and it fits nicely into Holmes’s criminal world; it’s also often used in these experimental settings). Now, you might have one of three, broadly speaking, attitudes toward the death penalty: you might be for it, you might be against it, or you might not particularly care, or not really know, or have never really given it much thought. If I were to give you a brief article with arguments that support capital punishment, how would you respond to it?

  The answer is, it depends. If you don’t particularly know or care one way or the other—if you are more disinterested or disengaged—you are more likely than not to take the article at something like face value. If you have no real reason to doubt the source and it seems logical enough, you are likely to let it persuade you. You will categorize and characterize, but there will be little need for correction. Correction takes effort, and you have no personal reason to exert any. Contrast this with your reaction if you are a passionate opponent/proponent of the death penalty. In either case, you will pay attention at the mere mention of the theme of the article. You will read it much more carefully, and you will expend the effort necessary for correction. The correction may not be the same if you agree as if you disagree—in fact, you may even overcorrect if you oppose the article’s points, going too far in the opposite direction—but whatever the case, you will engage much more actively, and you will exert the mental effort that is necessary to challenge your initial impressions. Because it matters to you to get it right.

  (I chose a political issue on purpose, to illustrate that the context need not be related to people, but just think what a difference in perception there would be if you met for the first time a random person versus someone you knew was going to be interviewing or somehow evaluating you shortly. In which case are you more likely to be careful about your impressions, lest you be wrong? In which will you expend more effort to correct and recalibrate?)

  When you feel strong personal engagement with something, you will feel it is worth that extra push. And if you are engaged in the process itself—in the idea of observing more carefully, being more attentive and alert—you will be that much more likely to challenge yourself to accuracy. Of course, you need to be aware of the process to begin with—but now you are. And if you realize that you should engage but don’t feel up to it? Psychologist Arie Kruglanski has spent his career studying a phenomenon known as the Need for Closure: a desire of the mind to come to some definitive knowledge of an issue. Beyond exploring how individuals differ in that need, Kruglanski has demonstrated that we can
manipulate it in order to be more attentive and engaged—and to make sure we complete the correction stage in our judgments.

  This can be accomplished in several ways. Most effectively, if we are made to feel accountable in our judgments, we will spend more time looking at angles and possibilities before making up our minds—and so will expend the correctional effort on any initial impressions, to make sure they are accurate. Our minds won’t “close” (or, as Kruglanski calls it, “freeze”) in their search until we are fairly sure we’ve done all we can. While there isn’t always an experimenter there to hold us accountable, we can do it for ourselves by setting up each important judgment or observation as a challenge. How accurate can I be? How well can I do? Can I improve my ability to pay attention over the last time? Such challenges not only engage us in the task of observation and make it more intrinsically interesting, but they also make us less likely to jump to conclusions and issue judgments without a lot of prior thought.

  The active observer is hampered because he is trying to do too many things at once. If he is in a social psychology experiment and forced to remember seven topics in order, or a string of digits, or any number of things that psychologists like to use to ensure cognitive busyness, he is basically doomed. Why? Because the experiments are forcibly preventing engagement. You cannot engage—unless you have eidetic memory or have read up on your memory palace skills—if you are trying desperately to remember unrelated information (actually, even if it’s related information; the point is, your resources are engaged elsewhere).