It hap­pens. Often.

Why?

We just secured an inter­view with Ori Braf­man, co-author of Sway: The Irre­sistible Pull of Irra­tional Behav­ior (Dou­ble­day Busi­ness, 2008), to dis­cuss our Dark Side (well, he calls it “dif­fer­ent hid­den forces” and “psy­cho­log­i­cal under­cur­rents”).

While read­ing some reviews about his book, I par­tic­u­lar­ly enjoyed find­ing, after the usu­al impres­sive long col­lec­tion of endorse­ments, this “dis­claimer”:

*DISCLAIMER: If you decide to buy this book because of these endorse­ments, you just got swayed. One of the psy­cho­log­i­cal forces you’ll read about in Sway is our ten­den­cy to place a high­er val­ue on opin­ions from peo­ple in posi­tions of promi­nence, pow­er, or author­i­ty. (But you should still buy the book.)

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez (AF): Ori, what is SWAY? can you give us a cou­ple quick exam­ples?

Ori Braf­man (OB): Sway is about why per­fect­ly ratio­nal peo­ple make irra­tional choic­es. We inter­viewed busi­ness exec­u­tives, air­line pilots, doc­tors, and even a Supreme Court Jus­tice to uncov­er the psy­cho­log­i­cal forces that affect our deci­sion-mak­ing. What was espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing was to find out that we all get swayed, and that these psy­cho­log­i­cal forces are much more ubiq­ui­tous than we thought.

Take, for instance, the sto­ry of Jacob Van Zan­ten who was the head of safe­ty for KLM. One fog­gy after­noon, Van Zan­ten took off with­out get­ting tow­er clear­ance, caus­ing the biggest air­line acci­dent in his­to­ry. Why would this man, who’s the head of safe­ty make such an irra­tional choice?

Or look at the sto­ry of Har­vard Busi­ness School stu­dents who paid $204 for a twen­ty-dol­lar bill.

AF: Hap­py to have attend­ed Stan­ford… Now, how did that hap­pen?

OB: The pro­fes­sor set up an auc­tion for a $20 bill. But there was a twist. The win­ner would get the $20 bill. But the sec­ond place bid­der, would still have to hon­or his bid, but would get noth­ing. At first there are lots of bid­ders, but then as the bid­ding approach­es $20 peo­ple start pulling out. Inevitably, though two peo­ple stay in. As the bid­ding con­tin­ued to rise, the sec­ond-place per­son became deter­mined to not be the suck­er who pays good mon­ey for noth­ing in return. The amaz­ing thing is that time after time the auc­tion con­tin­ues well past the $20 point. Peo­ple are just so deter­mined not to lose, that they keep on bid­ding up.

AF: Why do peo­ple get Swayed?

OB: With­out real­iz­ing it, we get swept up by a host of dif­fer­ent hid­den forces. I think of it like being in a boat in the mid­dle of the ocean. It may look like we’re stand­ing still, but under­neath the sur­face, under­cur­rents move us with­out us real­iz­ing it. The same thing hap­pens with psy­cho­log­i­cal under­cur­rents. In Sway, we look at some of the major under­cur­rents and explore how they inter­sect trig­ger­ing so many dif­fer­ent irra­tional behav­iors. The thing is that we’re prone to psy­cho­log­i­cal sways all of the time–whether we’re con­duct­ing a job inter­view, going out on a first date, or decid­ing whether to sell a stock.

AF: Let’s be prac­ti­cal for a minute… what can peo­ple do to Sway oth­er peo­ple?

OB: We’re con­stant­ly engaged in a hid­den dance of sorts where we sway peo­ple around us and are swayed by oth­ers. One of the most unusu­al stud­ies we encoun­tered has to do with what we call the chameleon effect. In the study, a group of men and women–who had nev­er met each other–were told to have a short phone con­ver­sa­tion. Now, before the con­ver­sa­tion, each man was shown a pic­ture of the woman he’d be talk­ing to. Unbe­knownst to the men, the pic­tures were fake. And half the men were shown a pic­ture of a beau­ti­ful woman, while the oth­er half were shown a pic­ture of a less attrac­tive woman. The pic­tures had noth­ing to do with how the real women looked like, and the real women had no idea that there were any pic­tures shown. The kick­er is that the women who the men thought were pret­ty end­ed up sound­ing beau­ti­ful on the phone. And the women who the men thought were less attrac­tive end­ed up sound­ing less beau­ti­ful. We take on the roles oth­ers ascribe to us. Think about that with employ­ees or even with your kids. If we think some­one is smart, there’s a good chance they’ll live up to that role.

AF: And what can peo­ple do to pre­vent being Swayed?

OB: The biggest step is to rec­og­nize how often we get swayed. We have a ten­den­cy to think that our deci­sions are ratio­nal, when in fact, dif­fer­ent sways may have informed the deci­sion. Once we real­ize that we’re prone to get swayed, the sec­ond step is fig­ur­ing out spe­cif­ic strate­gies to counter the sway.

It ranges from tak­ing a long-term per­spec­tive to using empir­i­cal mod­els for job inter­views.

AF: For exam­ple?

OB: We have a propen­si­ty to “diag­nose” a job can­di­date from the first moment we meet him or her. We assign a diag­no­sis, and are unable to see things in a dif­fer­ent light despite objec­tive evi­dence to the con­trary. It’s for this rea­son that job inter­views are ter­ri­ble pre­dic­tors of actu­al per­for­mance. A much more effec­tive approach is to con­duct very struc­tured inter­views that don’t allow man­agers to get swayed. In these inter­views, the ques­tions are pre-script­ed and focus on expe­ri­ence and abil­i­ty rather than vague things like “what’s your biggest strength?” We call these the Joe Fri­day inter­view (just the facts…) These inter­views may seem less per­son­al, but they’re actu­al­ly much more effec­tive for actu­al­ly select­ing a good can­di­date.

AF: Ori, thank you very much for your time.

OB: My plea­sure!

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For more infor­ma­tion:

- Sway: The Irre­sistible Pull of Irra­tional Behav­ior (Dou­ble­day Busi­ness, 2008).

- Oth­er Brain and Mind Books.

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Can you share a recent Stu­pid Deci­sion made by a Smart Brain? If it refers to yourself…you get 1,000 bonus points! I’ll be hap­py to share mine as a com­ment below in a cou­ple of days.