by Pawel Motyl
Think about the times someone has angered you with their behavior on the road. Sometimes, you maybe felt like killing them, right? Or at least getting out of the car and reminding them of a few of the rules of the road with your fists... Several hours later, the incident seems trivial, you let it go, frequently surprised that such a banal situation made you so angry. With time, conflicts, arguments, and misunderstandings pale in significance, though at the time we were ready to fight to the death. This is the same mechanism as the one revealed in Dan Ariely’s experiment: uncontrolled anger is like the second stage (sexual excitement), and rational reflection only comes once we stop masturbating, or our anger subsides.
Just how dangerous anger can be at the wrong time and in the wrong place was perfectly illustrated by an incident that outraged Americans in April 2014. The nation was rocked by recordings published on TMZ.com that featured Donald Sterling, a US real estate magnate and longtime owner of the Los Angeles Clippers. A few months earlier, in fall 2013, while speaking with V. Stiviano, a friend of his some fifty-one years his junior, the irritated millionaire had voiced some, to say the least, inappropriate opinions on the subject of African Americans. Stiviano recorded the conversation and, at the end of April 2014, pretty much on the day of the eighty-year-old’s birthday, handed it over to the media. During the minutes-long chat, you hear the owner of the Clippers, clearly upset by a photo of Stiviano with the legendary Earvin “Magic” Johnson, which she had posted on Instagram, saying, among other things:
It bothers me a lot you want to broadcast that you’re associating with black people. Do you have to? [... ]
You can sleep with [black people]. You can bring them in, you can do whatever you want. The little I ask you is not to promote it on that... and not to bring them to my games. [... ]
I’m just saying, in your lousy [expletive] Instagrams, you don’t have to have yourself with, walking with black people. 5
I’ve listened to the whole recording, and I honestly have to say it doesn’t sound to me like authentic hate speech, so I have no idea if Sterling really is racist or if he’s just another jealous man who said things he shouldn’t have said in a fit of anger. The question is, to what degree did the emotions involved affect his ability to assess the consequences of his words? Did he consider that, as a wealthy public figure, he might be recorded? Was he aware that his words might be presented to the American public, for whom racism is a particularly emotive topic? Did he consider how the NBA might react, and all the teams that are dominated by players of color? In other words, in deciding to talk to Stiviano about the photos in such a way, did Sterling make a conscious, rational decision? 6
It’s hard to comprehend the events, similarly drenched in powerful emotions, that occurred in the home of Oscar Pistorius, the South African athlete who for so long was the golden boy of the media and public opinion. Pistorius, also known as Blade Runner, lost both his legs before the age of one as a result of serious illness and for the rest of his life used artificial limbs. However, he didn’t see this as a barrier to practicing sport, and alongside athletics, he played tennis and boxed. Eventually, though, he settled on the 400 m, in which he achieved better and better times. This was thanks not only to a natural talent bolstered by intensive training but also to the ever-improving prosthetics he ran in. In 2007, the sportsman achieved something that had previously been considered impossible: he participated in an official IAAF race meeting, competing against able-bodied athletes. In the years that followed, Pistorius set himself higher and higher goals, and while he wasn’t able to compete at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, four years later he again made his mark in the annals of track and field by becoming the first disabled athlete to compete in the Olympic Games, held in London that year.
Simultaneously, Pistorius became a more public figure. TV stations and magazines of all types followed his life and achievements, creating a high-profile image of him as a sporting celebrity. The vast majority of people spoke positively about him, admiring his determination in achieving his dreams and citing him as an example of how to conquer personal challenges. A few criticized the admission of the runner to IAAF competitions, commenting that the ultra-modern carbon fiber prosthetics actually gave Pistorius an advantage over his able-bodied rivals.
This beautiful fairy-tale picture was shattered by the tragedy that took place in Pistorius’s Pretoria home on February 14, 2013. That day, early in the morning, the runner shot his girlfriend, model Reeva Steenkamp, through the bathroom door, later claiming that he’d thought she was an intruder. The trial revealed at least several anomalies in his version of events: Pistorius fired two shots, but some sources claimed that, before her death, Steenkamp was also hit by a cricket bat, and neighbors testified that there had been previous arguments in the sportsman’s home. Friends of the athlete admitted that he was quick to anger and had previously fired shots into the air.
Regardless of the truth of the matter, and whether or not Oscar Pistorius murdered his girlfriend, or if the whole sad story truly was a tragic accident, the same question arises: Did Pistorius, in either of the two scenarios, make a conscious decision, or was he guided by emotion, which prevented him from properly assessing the situation and the possible consequences? 7
Bypassing the neocortex, responsible for rational thinking, happens not only under the influence of emotion or stimuli, but also in response to chemical stimulation. For example, the effects of C2H5OH on decision-making can be seen every weekend—just swing past a club or bar at night and observe the behavior of both sexes.
Just like unfaithful husbands, drunk clubbers mostly have the great good fortune that their unsavory behavior remains only in the memories of their partners in crime and probably results only in a hangover (this time both physical and moral) the following day. The actor Mel Gibson wasn’t quite so lucky—his drunken antics provoked outrage in the media and were later analyzed in detail by US neurologist David Eagleman in his excellent book titled Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain (Gibson might not feel the same way about the book as I do, of course). On the night of July 28, 2006, the actor was stopped by California police on the Pacific Coast Highway for speeding and also asked to take a breath test—a reasonable request, seeing as his passenger was a half-empty bottle of tequila. The results of all this were not good for the actor, as not only did the test show a breath alcohol concentration (BrAC) of 0.12 percent, but the actor also lost his temper and his abusive comments were all placed in the report drawn up by James Mee, the police officer who had stopped Gibson’s vehicle. A few days later, the report was leaked to the media and was published on—yes—TMZ.com. Internauts from across the globe learned that a drunk Mel Gibson said to the officer: “Fucking Jews... the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world,” and went on to ask James Mee: “Are you a Jew?” 8
When he sobered up and realized the scale of the problem, Gibson reacted immediately. The next day he read out a statement and apologized for the incident, explaining it was down to his alcoholism and declaring his will to continue battling it. Gibson added a further statement that was directly addressed to Jewish communities, which had been particularly offended by the actor’s words:
There is no excuse, nor should there be any tolerance, for anyone who thinks or expresses any kind of anti-Semitic remark. I want to apologize specifically to everyone in the Jewish community for the vitriolic and harmful words that I said to a law enforcement officer the night I was arrested on a DUI charge. [... ] The tenets of what I profess to believe necessitate that I exercise charity and tolerance as a way of life. [... ] But please know from my heart that I am not an anti-Semite. I am not a bigot. Hatred of any kind goes against my faith. 9
These words provoked a heated debate. Some took the actor’s side, stating that Gibson wasn’t the first person to say something under the influence of alcohol (or other substances) that didn’t reflect their actual beliefs. It’s worth noting that this
attitude was strongly supported by film producer Dean Devlin, who is Jewish and one of the actor’s closest friends, who stressed Gibson’s devotion and loyalty to his family. Opponents put forth equally strong arguments that alcohol should not be shouldering the blame: TV host Mike Yarvitz actually got drunk on air to the same degree as Gibson had been and ironically ensured viewers that, despite being decidedly fuzzy-headed, he felt no urge to insult the Jews.
David Eagleman, then, asks an extremely interesting question: Will the real Mel Gibson please stand up? Are his authentic convictions and attitudes revealed in his sober statements to the media, or was his true face shown via the alcohol? In vino veritas? Or are there, in fact, two different Mel Gibsons, and both of them are... true?
In the case of the film star, a similar mechanism to amygdala hijack seems to have occurred. Certain circuits appear to have been activated and, for a period, stomped all over the rational brain, switching off the processes of conscious analysis of the situation and drawing conclusions.
In each of us, there appears to be an ongoing battle between logic and emotion, conscious and unconscious. Two mechanisms conflict, one trying to make choices based on cold, factual analysis (even if it’s struggling with deficits in the cognitive mechanisms), the other, not so keen on this type of approach, unleashing the powerful forces lurking within us, such as sex drive or anger. Libido, powerful emotions, and alcohol are only a few examples of our frenemies—the range of foes inside our heads is much wider. Our unfettered emotions constantly battle our desire to make rational and considered decisions. Every single one of us has at some point said something we wish we hadn’t, and the only thing that saves us from ourselves is that we’re not famous—unlike the people above—and thankfully the mass media isn’t remotely interested in our stupid utterances.
The two conflicting forces were named by Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist, economist, and Nobel Prize winner, as System 1 (emotional, automatic) and System 2 (rational, logical). System 1 is also about thinking fast; System 2 about thinking slowly. 10 System 1 is responsible for creating automated decision schema, accelerating our actions. System 2 is a kind of supervisory board, making sure that important matters aren’t treated in a routine manner (just like the approach to decision-making described in Chapter 4—routine versus the advocacy and inquiry modes). The problem is that System 2 doesn’t always manage to get its voice heard, as the protagonists in this chapter found out to their cost when their rational thinking was overtaken by stimulants or libido. Worse still, when our “supervisory boards” lose control over our decision-making, we ourselves carry on thinking everything is fine and that we’re still making considered rational decisions.
A classic experiment illustrating this trap, which our automated rapid thinking system sets for us, is the baseball bat and ball puzzle. It goes something like this:
A baseball bat and ball together
cost 1 dollar and 10 cents.
The bat costs a dollar more than the ball.
How much does the ball cost?
The puzzle looks ridiculously easy, and the majority of students tested answer right away without thinking that the ball costs 10 cents. Admit it—that’s what you first thought too. If so, you made exactly the same mistake as the students, as the automatic, rapid response is given by System 1. However, if we set System 2 in motion and look closer at the problem, we see that the ball must cost 5 cents, and the bat $1.05. If the ball were to cost 10 cents, we’d have to pay $1.10 for the bat, giving us a total cost of $1.20, and so 10 cents too much. If you were taken in, don’t get upset—you’re in good company. More than half the students at Harvard, Princeton, and MIT whom researchers tested made the same mistake, and in some schools, the proportion of wrong answers was as high as 80 percent. Of course, the less focused we are, the more likely it is that our System 2 will miss the traps set for us by System 1. On the other hand, if even the form of the question demands that we concentrate, our analytical thinking is far more easily engaged. If the problem is presented in a typeface that’s difficult to read, the number of right answers goes up significantly.
In another of Kahneman’s uncomplicated experiments, he showed that it’s enough to simply rephrase a question to get radically different answers. In 1982, at an international conference, he divided participants into two groups whom he asked to assess the prognoses for oil consumption for 1983. The first group was given a statement formulated in the simplest possible way: Demand for oil will fall in 1983 by 30 percent. The information given to the other group had slightly different information: Demand for oil in 1983 will fall by 30 percent due to increased prices for crude. As you may imagine, those in the second group presented a prognosis that they received as being far more credible and likely, thus falling headfirst into the trap of the narrative paradox. When we see information accompanied by a narrative that justifies what is being said, we see that information as more valuable, without bothering to test the cause and effect relation in the content.
In social psychology, this phenomenon is called priming, which involves triggering unconscious associations in the test subject that influence their decision-making. This effect is achieved by making subtle suggestions without the subject’s noticing.
An example of how powerful priming can be is the famous experiment conducted by the psychologist John Bargh, in which New York University students participated. He divided them into two groups and asked them to solve simple questions involving four-word sentences from a mix of five words. The words were different for each group: the first set was chosen to be suggestive of tiredness and old age, the second set was not emotionally marked. Bargh and his associates observed the behavior of the students on finishing the experiment and measured how long it took them to walk down the corridor leading to the exit. The people from the first group walked significantly slower. This research was continued in further experiments demonstrating priming. For example, two English-speaking groups were primed with different sets of images and words. The first was bombarded with things connected to food (spaghetti, restaurants, cutlery, etc.), the second had things associated with the bathroom (shampoo, showers, towels, etc.). The two groups were later asked to perform a very simple task, supplying the missing letter in the word SO_P. It turned out that the vast majority of people in the first group chose the word SOUP, while almost all those in the second group wrote SOAP.
John Bargh carried out one further experiment, whose results have far more serious implications for our daily functioning. As in the test above, the students were divided into two groups, primed with different words. The first group solved tasks using words like aggression, strength, hooligan, attack, and so on; the second used words connected with gentleness (e.g., compromise, respect, harmony). On completing the experiment, Bargh asked the students to go one by one to the office of one of his associates to receive further instructions. When they arrived, the associate whom the students had gone to see was busy talking to someone else in his office. This pair carried on talking for ten minutes, paying no attention to the waiting student. Bargh wanted to measure the time it took for the waiting student to decide to interrupt the conversation. The difference between the two differently primed groups was massive. The “aggressively” primed students interrupted after about five minutes; those who were primed to be gentle... didn’t interrupt at all, patiently waiting their turn! I wonder what would have happened if the conversation time hadn’t been limited to ten minutes...
While tests like these have no influence on how we make decisions, they reveal the underlying decision-making mechanisms. Think about the last time you felt undermined and irritated the whole day, without any clear reason. Or the other way round—you got out of bed on the right side and spent the whole day feeling positive about things. If you can’t recall a specific incident from the morning that could have evoked such feelings, it’s entirely possible that you were unconsciously caught in the priming trap. It’s a trap
that businesses are using more and more frequently on their customers. Have you ever walked into a pricy, organic grocery store and bumped into a vase of fresh flowers by the entrance? Was the produce displayed on a tray of ice? Were the prices written in chalk on a blackboard? As if they changed every day... Don’t be fooled, all those accessories are deliberately placed to evoke associations of newness and freshness.
Another interesting phenomenon frequently encountered in business is the anchoring trap, a derivative of the priming trap. During the workshops on decision-making that I have the pleasure of running for managers of leading companies, I invite the participants to try a simple experiment. Each person gets a small piece of paper on which are written two questions, and each person is asked to answer them as quickly as possible. The exercise is individual, and participants are not allowed to use the Internet; if they don’t know the answer, they have to guess, to answer according to their intuition. After a minute or so, I ask everyone in turn to read their answers to the second question, “What is the population of Burma?” 11 out loud. I write the answers on the flipchart. I start from one side of the room and initially nothing surprising happens. The values given are relatively close to one another and range from several to a dozen or so million. The surprise comes when I reach the second half of the participants on the other side of the room. They display more boldness, claiming the population of Burma is tens or even hundreds of millions. The effect is startling, and the difference is as plain as day. I have conducted this experiment several hundred times in the last few years, and it’s always the same—there’s always a massive difference between the answers of the two groups. The trick, though impressive, is extremely simple: although the second question for each group is the same, the first one is slightly different. Half the participants get a card with the question “Do more than 6 million people live in Burma?” with the option of answering YES or NO, followed by a question asking for a specific figure. The other half get a card with the first question “Do more than 50 million people live in Burma?” The number in the first question constitutes the anchor in this mini-experiment, which the participants’ thoughts circle around. The phenomenon of anchoring is a popular tool for negotiators—if they have to purchase, for example, a certain product or service, they immediately propose a dramatically low figure, knowing full well that it’s unrealistic but that, as the initial value, it becomes the anchor for further negotiation. In the sales situation, the technique is reversed, with the first figure stated being massively inflated.
