Outsmart Your Own Biases

How to broaden your thinking and make better decisions

by

and

John W. Payne

by

and

John W. Payne

From the Magazine (May 2015) · Long read

Artwork: Millo, 2014, B.ART-Arte in Barriera, Turin, Italy

Summary.

When making decisions, we all rely too heavily on intuition and use flawed reasoning sometimes. But it’s possible to fight these pernicious sources of bias by learning to spot them and using the techniques presented in this article, gleaned from the latest research. They’ll open up your thinking about possible outcomes, objectives, and options and lead to better choices.

To broaden your perspective on the future, the authors suggest, you can use proven tactics for improving the accuracy of estimates and preparing for contingencies. You’ll think more expansively about your objectives if you come up with many possibilities before deciding what’s most important, get input from others, and then carefully examine one goal at a time. And you’ll generate better options if you identify several and evaluate them side by side. Don’t settle for the first one that’s acceptable; imagine that you can’t pursue it, and you might find an even stronger alternative.

Strong emotional attachments or investments make cognitive biases even harder to overcome. When that’s the case, use checklists and algorithms to stay focused on the right things, and set “trip wires” to trigger planned responses at key points in the decision-making process.

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Idea in Brief

The Problem

Cognitive biases muddy our decision making. We rely too heavily on intuitive, automatic judgments, and even when we try to use reason, our logic is often lazy or flawed.

The Cause

Instead of exploring risks and uncertainties, we seek closure—it’s much easier. This narrows our thinking about what could happen in the future, what our goals are, and how we might achieve them.

The Solution

By knowing which biases tend to trip us up and using certain tricks and tools to outsmart them, we can broaden our thinking and make better choices.

Suppose you’re evaluating a job candidate to lead a new office in a different country. On paper this is by far the most qualified person you’ve seen. Her responses to your interview questions are flawless. She has impeccable social skills. Still, something doesn’t feel right. You can’t put your finger on what—you just have a sense. How do you decide whether to hire her?

A version of this article appeared in the May 2015 issue (pp.64–71) of Harvard Business Review.

JS

Jack B. Soll is an associate professor of management at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. He is a coauthor of “A User’s Guide to Debiasing,” a chapter in The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making, forthcoming in 2015.
Katherine L. Milkman is the James G. Campbell Jr. Assistant Professor of Operations and Information Management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. She is a coauthor of “A User’s Guide to Debiasing,” a chapter in The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making, forthcoming in 2015.
JP

John W. Payne is the Joseph J. Ruvane Jr. Professor of Business Administration at Fuqua. He is a coauthor of “A User’s Guide to Debiasing,” a chapter in The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making, forthcoming in 2015.

Outsmart Your Own Biases

Idea in Brief

The Problem

The Cause

The Solution

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