Holte's corner

Why Choose a Fracase?

In the article "Why Hawks Win", the Psychologists Daniel Kahneman,
and Jonathan Renshon write about the reasons why Governments make bad
policy decisions:

http://www.greenwood.com/psi/book_detail.aspx?sku=C9085or Amazon:
http://tinyurl.com/25gksy

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3660

The Magazing Foreign Policy says about this article:

"Why are hawks so influential? The answer may lie deep in the human
mind. People have dozens of decision-making biases, and almost all
favor conflict rather than concession. A look at why the tough guys
win more than they should."

The authors talk about a number of psychological issues which produce
bad outcomes in decision making. They draw this material from studies
on behavior at the Corporate and local decision making level.
However, the material is so applicable to politics that they were
surprised they were the first ones to talk about this.

"Vision Problems" (Fundamental Attribution Error)
"CARELESSLY OPTIMISTIC " ("They'll greet us with flowers")
"DOUBLE OR NOTHING" (Rather Gamble on a terrible loss over a sure loss)

"Vision Problems" (Fundamental Attribution Error)

The authors talk about "Fundamental Atribution Error" in terms of how
it creates "Vision problems" for those involved in decision making.

"Imagine, for example, that you have been placed in a room and asked
to watch a series of student speeches on the policies of Venezuelan
leader Hugo Chávez. You've been told in advance that the students
were assigned the task of either attacking or supporting Chávez and
had no choice in the matter. Now, suppose that you are then asked to
assess the political leanings of these students. Shrewd observers, of
course, would factor in the context and adjust their assessments
accordingly. A student who gave an enthusiastic pro-Chávez speech was
merely doing what she was told, not revealing anything about her true
attitudes. In fact, many experiments suggest that people would
overwhelmingly rate the pro-Chávez speakers as more leftist. Even
when alerted to context that should affect their judgment, people
tend to ignore it. Instead, they attribute the behavior they see to
the person's nature, character, or persistent motives. This bias is
so robust and common that social psychologists have given it a lofty
title: They call it the fundamental attribution error."

We who were involved in "reforming" the Gakkai, or debating with NST
members, experienced this first hand. People making policy decisions
are subject to this "vision" problem even more than we were.

"CARELESSLY OPTIMISTIC "

"Excessive optimism is one of the most significant biases that
psychologists have identified. Psychological research has shown that
a large majority of people believe themselves to be smarter, more
attractive, and more talented than average, and they commonly
overestimate their future success. People are also prone to
an "illusion of control": They consistently exaggerate the amount of
control they have over outcomes that are important to them—even when
the outcomes are in fact random or determined by other forces. It is
not difficult to see that this error may have led American
policymakers astray as they laid the groundwork for the ongoing war
in Iraq."

And of course, this doesn't mean that there aren't other concerns
involved in such decision making. But it does show that really bad
decisions can be made even without factoring in such things as
corruption, dishonesty, and bad intentions.

The next one should sound familiar:

"DOUBLE OR NOTHING"

"It is apparent that hawks often have the upper hand as decision
makers wrestle with questions of war and peace. And those advantages
do not disappear as soon as the first bullets have flown. As the
strategic calculus shifts to territory won or lost and casualties
suffered, a new idiosyncrasy in human decision making appears: our
deep-seated aversion to cutting our losses. Imagine, for example, the
choice between:

"Option A: A sure loss of $890"

"Option B: A 90 percent chance to lose $1,000 and a 10 percent chance
to lose nothing."

"In this situation, a large majority of decision makers will prefer
the gamble in Option B, even though the other choice is statistically
superior. People prefer to avoid a certain loss in favor of a
potential loss, even if they risk losing significantly more. When
things are going badly in a conflict, the aversion to cutting one's
losses, often compounded by wishful thinking, is likely to dominate
the calculus of the losing side. This brew of psychological factors
tends to cause conflicts to endure long beyond the point where a
reasonable observer would see the outcome as a near certainty."

This can be called "playing poker with people's future."

And there are more reasons, but this is all the article covers.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3660
Chris

Posted by cholte at February 11, 2007 11:33 AM