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!