Three hidden loyalties that prevent us from solving problems

Ana­lys­ing a prob­lem object­ively, ima­gin­ing ration­al solu­tions and choos­ing the most rel­ev­ant options implies tak­ing a reas­on­able step back from three psy­cho­lo­gic­al “loy­al­ties” or biases of which we are not always aware.

#1 Loy­alty to the past

Fix­a­tion effect

Have you ever had a fixed idea that pre­ven­ted you from mov­ing for­ward? You try to get rid of it, by think­ing about some­thing else, for example, but the more you try to stop think­ing about it, the more the idea comes back and blocks your thought pro­cesses. This phe­nomen­on occurs when men­tal auto­mat­isms have been inter­n­al­ised. It is true that this allows us to solve recur­rent prob­lems quickly and effi­ciently, but a prob­lem often has an unex­pec­ted character.

To under­stand the dynam­ics of fixed ideas, let’s start with a very simple prob­lem-solv­ing task: to devise as many solu­tions as pos­sible in ten minutes so that a chick­en egg dropped from a height of 10 metres does not break! Let’s see how the “fix­a­tion” effect of auto­mat­isms linked to pro­fes­sion­al prac­tices works¹. When we put this prob­lem to engin­eers or indus­tri­al design­ers, we find that the lat­ter are more cre­at­ive: they come up with more ideas, and these ideas are more ori­gin­al. They have an impli­cit loy­alty to their pro­fes­sion­al back­ground, even though this is irrel­ev­ant to the prob­lem to be solved.

Is it pos­sible to com­bat these effects? Return­ing to our egg drop prob­lem, the research­ers² provided an example along with their instruc­tions to help the par­ti­cipants solve this prob­lem: « you can, for example, design a para­chute for the egg, » they explained. The res­ult was counter-intu­it­ive, how­ever, since this example leads to a drop in the num­ber of solu­tions on the one hand and a drop in their ori­gin­al­ity on the oth­er. This was true for both engin­eers and designers.

How should we inter­pret these res­ults? Research­ers will show that some examples (known as restrict­ive examples) reduce cre­ativ­ity while oth­ers (expans­ive examples) will increase it. In our situ­ation, the example of the para­chute is a restrict­ive example in the sense that it is one of the most clas­sic examples. It is com­mon and has noth­ing ori­gin­al about it since it is usu­ally cited spon­tan­eously by the par­ti­cipants. But, provid­ing it as an example will activ­ate a fixed idea and lim­it reflec­tion. Where­as expans­ive examples such as « train an eagle to retrieve the egg in flight; freeze the egg » are more unex­pec­ted, they will have the effect of free­ing the mind from the fix­a­tion effect.

In oth­er words, it is pos­sible to stim­u­late par­ti­cipant cre­ativ­ity in prob­lem solv­ing, provided that you avoid activ­at­ing the fix­a­tion effect by not provid­ing clas­sic­al examples and encour­age by provid­ing atyp­ic­al examples.

#2 Loy­alty to the present

Emo­tions and imme­di­acy bias

There are few situ­ations in which we solve prob­lems with com­plete peace of mind: stress, fatigue, haste and emo­tions are the daily lot of many pro­fes­sions. What is the weight of these factors in the way we approach a prob­lem? To answer this, let us con­sider a well-known prob­lem-solv­ing situ­ation: the ulti­mat­um game ³⁴.

Ima­gine a play­er (the « pro­poser ») who is giv­en 100 euros. He is tasked with split­ting this amount with a second play­er. The lat­ter, the « respon­der », must accept the sum or refuse it. If they accept, both play­ers go home with the money. If they refuse, both play­ers have to give all the money back and go home empty-handed. The res­ults of course show many vari­ations (e.g. accord­ing to anonym­ity, age), but it can be seen that the pro­posers alloc­ate on aver­age 40% of the ini­tial sum to the respon­der. How do respon­ders respond? Well, when the amount offered to them is less than 20% of the amount to be shared, respon­ders refuse the money, con­sid­er­ing that they have been wronged: they would rather lose and have someone lose than be treated in a way that is con­sidered highly unfair.

Based on these res­ults, many research­ers⁵⁶ have manip­u­lated the emo­tion­al states of par­ti­cipants (in this case the respon­ders). What do the res­ults show? In situ­ations of intense emo­tion, such as anger or indig­na­tion, respond­ents have a heightened mor­al sens­it­iv­ity. They tend to refuse offers that are not close to 50/50. In oth­er words, they would rather lose than see the oth­er per­son get more than them! The res­ol­u­tion of the prob­lem is thus determ­ined more by how they man­age their frus­tra­tion than by the pro­spect of gain. They want equal­ity more than fair­ness and there­fore pos­i­tion them­selves in a pun­it­ive pos­ture in rela­tion to the pro­poser. It is the imme­di­acy bias that gov­erns the way they deal with the situ­ation, to the det­ri­ment of the time per­spect­ive of a mon­et­ary reward of the ‘bet­ter than noth­ing’ type.

Think about the unpleas­ant email you receive from a col­league, and how you will deal with it: do you reply back imme­di­ately to vent your frus­tra­tion straight away, even if you regret it later, or do you write a response and save it in drafts to read the next day after you have had time to reflect? It’s a ques­tion of man­aging the present time! Neg­at­ive emo­tion­al states are asso­ci­ated with ris­ki­er beha­viours as they oper­ate in an ‘accel­er­ated present’ that ignores tomor­row: beware of your­self in the present!

#3 Loy­alty to the future

Excess­ive optim­ism and belief in one’s own promises

We try to solve many future prob­lems in the present by mak­ing prom­ises we believe in, but which we will not always keep. It is not because we have planned to act in a cer­tain way that we will neces­sar­ily do so in a giv­en situ­ation: atti­tudes and good inten­tions are some­times poor pre­dict­ors of beha­viour⁷. For example, it is not because we have fol­lowed, under­stood and accep­ted a safety train­ing ses­sion that we will remain vigil­ant, attent­ive and avoid danger or reduce risk-tak­ing when we have to solve a par­tic­u­lar prob­lem. At issue is the optim­ism bias, which leads us to believe today that we will be less exposed to neg­at­ive events tomor­row than oth­er people. As a res­ult, we min­im­ise the dif­fi­culty of future prob­lems and some­times become spe­cial­ists in mak­ing unten­able prom­ises: think of com­mit­ments to lose weight, reduce our addic­tions, reg­u­late our emo­tions, com­plete a pro­ject on time, etc.

Some of our prom­ises escape us because we lack mod­esty about our future selves. In oth­er words, our way of look­ing at tomor­row’s prob­lems today lacks real­ism con­cern­ing the nature of the prob­lem we will face and our abil­ity to man­age this future situ­ation. Of course, it is not about becom­ing pess­im­ist­ic, but put­ting in place coun­ter­meas­ures to « fight back » when required.

This is how Odys­seus acts in the Odys­sey: Odys­seus, known as ‘the wily one’, is aware of the weak­nesses of the human will and how dif­fi­cult it will be to res­ist the sirens’ songs if he hears them in the future. All the over-ambi­tious sail­ors before him fell vic­tim to their own over­con­fid­ence and were there­fore devoured by the sirens. Curi­ous by nature, Odys­seus wants to gain access to this unat­tain­able know­ledge any­way, while dis­trust­ing him­self at the same time. He uses a stratagem to con­trol the per­son he will be in the future by hav­ing him­self tied to the mast of his ship while his sail­ors put wax balls in their ears to avoid them hear­ing the sirens. Arriv­ing near the island of the mer­maids and seduced by their song, Odys­seus begs his com­pan­ions to untie him, but they don’t. This pre­vent­ive strategy stops him from suc­cumb­ing to the sirens. Odys­seus grows thanks to this epis­ode as he now knows bet­ter than any­one how the human soul can be manipulated.

To achieve this, he forced him­self to lim­it his choices by exer­cising a con­strain­ing self-con­trol. This is a way of solv­ing prob­lems by anti­cip­at­ing the self! These strategies for anti­cip­at­ing future prob­lems are called ‘self-nudging’⁸⁹¹⁰. They help to anti­cip­ate impuls­ive beha­viour gov­erned by over-optim­ism. You already use gentle self-nudging tech­niques to anti­cip­ate a future that is dif­fi­cult to con­trol: the piggy bank you buy to keep your hol­i­day money safe, or the prom­ise you pub­licly make to all your friends that you will lose weight by the sum­mer… In con­clu­sion, there are three prices to pay for solv­ing prob­lems with dis­cern­ment: make peace with your past¹¹, be wary of the accel­er­ated present, and cen­sor cer­tain beha­viours planned for tomor­row… Con­trolling our dark side is far from being a smooth ride!