Why Smart Public Officials Make Dumb Decisions
Understanding why smart people make bad decisions requires looking at the delicate nature of the human capacity to think. Is thinking -- like breathing and eating -- ingrained in human nature? While we may suspect that others have lost their critical faculties, we rarely suspect this of ourselves.
But thinking, like playing tennis or bridge, can exist on many levels. It’s easy to slip from higher to lower levels without even noticing it. In fact, conditions we take for granted may lead to dangerously low levels of logical thinking and even to illogical thinking. These conditions often characterize public office at the highest level.
I first became aware of this phenomenon many years ago, when I visited a distinguished colleague after he took a high government position. As a professor at one of the world’s best universities, he was known for his scholarly contributions characterized by high levels of reflective thinking. He was not only logical, he carefully considered all the reasons for a conclusion, weighed all the contributing factors, analyzed the short- and long-term consequences, and examined his judgment against a variety of established and emerging standards. His work was almost the definition of the highest levels of reflective reasoning—the type we expect in a classic Supreme Court case discussion.
When I first met my scholarly colleague in his government office, I was amazed to see an entirely different person. He jumped from topic to topic without always making logical connections. When he drew a conclusion, it was often of the polarized, all-or-nothing variety, rather than a subtle, nuanced one. There was little or no consideration of alternative conclusions, careful weighing of contributing factors, considerations of history or future consequences, or analysis of his own judgment. I noticed that his thinking was fragmented and, at best, concrete and polarized, and wondered what was going on.
As I listened carefully, I got my answer. He talked about being pulled in sixteen different directions, anxiously mentioning that he had to testify before Congress, respond ASAP to this or that policy initiative, outwit political opponents, keep the media at bay, and had no time to reflect, let alone make long-term policy decisions. Each day’s business was conducted on the run between meetings, briefings, and new crises.
While my friend was a good actor and could appear calm and competent, it was clear that he was operating under enormous stress all the time. Since then, I’ve observed the same phenomenon in many high-ranking elected and appointed government officials, on all sides of the political spectrum: bright, thoughtful, often gifted individuals operating nowhere near their capacity or potential as they try to deal with the daily challenges of running the government, too overwhelmed by the crises in front of them to address long-range issues.
In group meetings, where all the key individuals are experiencing this type of stress, the effect on decision-making is compounded. The higher the level of the stress, the more the group members tend to look to the most powerful officials to provide direction, and the more likely the group will embrace or eventually accept polarized, all-or-nothing -- rather than well-thought-out -- decisions. The more uncertainty in a group, the more likely it is to find security in easily accessible extreme positions. Such a group also tends to close ranks and insulate itself from differing opinions in order to hold on to the fragile security it has created.
The decision-makers are often unaware of this process. They may justify their decisions -- as well as the secrecy and rigidity surrounding them -- by claiming political expediency and the need to gain support. But in fact, such decisions (however realistic they may appear in today’s political climate) often reflect a polarized thinking process, rather than reflective processes that seek out and thoroughly consider alternate views.
Polarized thinking tends to result in a crisis orientation, in which a problem doesn’t fully register on our radar until it is extreme enough to fit in with our all-or-nothing worldview. Subtle, nuanced reasoning, on the other hand, enables the anticipation of problems before a crisis occurs. Unfortunately, we’re observing the former kind of thinking when we ask ourselves or our friends, “How could [that official] have done that?” or “How could our government have made this or that decision?”
Quite apart from whether we agree or disagree with a particular decision, we can examine the reasoning process leading to the decision, and see whether it reveals relatively higher or lower levels of reflective thinking. For example, does it reflect: Accurate information, or distortions, where facts are changed or “spun” far from any sense of reality? Logical thinking (characterized by a causal sequence of ideas), or fragmented and illogical thinking, as seen in far-fetched explanations or rationalizations? Subtle, nuanced, “gray-area” thinking, where multiple factors and the different degrees of their contributions are considered, or polarized, all-or-nothing thinking, where only two extremes are considered and communicated with simplified images or slogans? Judgment based on existing and emerging standards, including considerations of the present, past, and short- and long-term consequences, and both narrow (e.g., nationalistic) and broad (e.g., international) perspectives, or narrow judgments that exclude consideration of critical factors?
Some may argue that public officials and other leaders deliberately employ polarized images or slogans to control public opinion. Ironically, when this occurs, the leaders themselves become controlled by the very public opinion polls they are influencing. Once the process begins, it’s quite hard to know who is leading who. The long-term victim, however, is democracy itself, which requires an informed electorate.
What can be done to protect public officials and the nation from such stress-based thinking? A few possibilities come to mind. The first is to educate the public to expect a high standard of reflective thinking in public discourse. The media can help significantly by providing this type of analysis, while resisting the temptation to use polarized images in their headlines and sub-heads. Even the most sophisticated news analysis can’t undo a polarized headline. Unfortunately, the media and public fascination with “competition” fuels polarization. Who won or lost the debate, or who did better than expected, becomes the headline, while the substance of the policy debate is often buried in the fine print.
A second strategy is to encourage -- in the workplace and at home -- the conditions that favor reflective attitudes. If a high standard of thinking becomes the public’s expectation, perhaps public officials and political leaders will take the time needed to be truly reflective, resisting the tendency to indulge in the heightened sense of importance that goes with high office and fuels the hurried, on-the-run atmosphere that leads to unreflective decisions.
The third strategy to consider is to reduce decision-making insulation. The tendency to be intolerant of differing opinions and insulate oneself with a buffer of like-minded colleagues is often a result of heightened self-importance and stress. Increasing personal contact with others who hold differing views can counter these tendencies.
Long term, we need to consider better ways to educate future policy makers in both the cognitive and psychological aspects of decision-making. Intelligence and intelligent decisions are products of these aspects working together. For example, most students in high school, college, and graduate school don’t receive enough training in how to be their own internal devil’s advocate. They don’t learn how to raise questions about their own hypotheses that would stretch their reasoning capacities. They especially don’t receive training in how to identify their own psychological predilections and biases that would lead them to over-weigh the evidence for their favorite conclusion, rather than the alternative. To be truly objective requires not only a rigorous reasoning process, but an awareness of one’s own biases. The smarter we are, the easier it is for us to rationalize a subtle, unacknowledged bias by a skillful weighing of certain facts over others. The processes that lead to outstanding thinkers and decision makers are embedded in both family and educational experiences. In the future, given the growing interdependency and complexity of the world, we’ll need to greatly improve these processes.
It’s easy to focus only on the result of a decision itself -- whether it worked or didn’t work -- and not pay attention to the process that led to the decision. In fact, we often only examine decision-making processes when we get into hot water and try to figure out how we made such a “lousy” decision. Commissions that are created to examine the causes of a bad political decision usually focus only on the substance of the particular decision, rather than on the thinking processes themselves. Therefore, the risk of future poor decisions isn’t changed. We repeat history because we don’t generalize about the faulty thinking processes and only focus on the particular bad decision, as though the exact same situation will arise again.
In addition, we often disparage a focus on the processes of decision-making as the province of “eggheads” who are incapable of effective action. It’s important to counter this argument with the point that thoughtful, firm policy conclusions are often the product of thoughtful, reflective thinking. A good example is the definitive leadership in a time of crisis, fueled by reflective considerations, shown by Churchill during WWII. In contrast, a shoot-from-the-hip, polarized decision may be a lucky guess in one situation, but get us into hot water in another. Thoughtfulness and definitiveness are not mutually exclusive, and more often than not, go together. The best examples of this are in successful businesses, where polarized, illogical decisions are often associated with major catastrophes and only rarely with fortuitous success.
It may be naïve to think that political leaders will slow down and take the time needed to reflect on the long-term implications of a given decision. It may also be naïve to think that the media could rein in its profit-motivated use of polarized headlines and more fully direct the nation’s interest to the substantive policy issues. But, as the world becomes more interdependent and complex, the dangers of poor decision-making escalate, so the business of thinking needs our attention. Hopefully, by raising these issues, what seems naïve today may be viewed as sensible tomorrow. If we can learn to look not just at the ideas but the thought processes behind the ideas, we can understand why smart people and even smart groups make dumb decisions, and perhaps those decisions will begin to improve.
But thinking, like playing tennis or bridge, can exist on many levels. It’s easy to slip from higher to lower levels without even noticing it. In fact, conditions we take for granted may lead to dangerously low levels of logical thinking and even to illogical thinking. These conditions often characterize public office at the highest level.
I first became aware of this phenomenon many years ago, when I visited a distinguished colleague after he took a high government position. As a professor at one of the world’s best universities, he was known for his scholarly contributions characterized by high levels of reflective thinking. He was not only logical, he carefully considered all the reasons for a conclusion, weighed all the contributing factors, analyzed the short- and long-term consequences, and examined his judgment against a variety of established and emerging standards. His work was almost the definition of the highest levels of reflective reasoning—the type we expect in a classic Supreme Court case discussion.
When I first met my scholarly colleague in his government office, I was amazed to see an entirely different person. He jumped from topic to topic without always making logical connections. When he drew a conclusion, it was often of the polarized, all-or-nothing variety, rather than a subtle, nuanced one. There was little or no consideration of alternative conclusions, careful weighing of contributing factors, considerations of history or future consequences, or analysis of his own judgment. I noticed that his thinking was fragmented and, at best, concrete and polarized, and wondered what was going on.
As I listened carefully, I got my answer. He talked about being pulled in sixteen different directions, anxiously mentioning that he had to testify before Congress, respond ASAP to this or that policy initiative, outwit political opponents, keep the media at bay, and had no time to reflect, let alone make long-term policy decisions. Each day’s business was conducted on the run between meetings, briefings, and new crises.
While my friend was a good actor and could appear calm and competent, it was clear that he was operating under enormous stress all the time. Since then, I’ve observed the same phenomenon in many high-ranking elected and appointed government officials, on all sides of the political spectrum: bright, thoughtful, often gifted individuals operating nowhere near their capacity or potential as they try to deal with the daily challenges of running the government, too overwhelmed by the crises in front of them to address long-range issues.
In group meetings, where all the key individuals are experiencing this type of stress, the effect on decision-making is compounded. The higher the level of the stress, the more the group members tend to look to the most powerful officials to provide direction, and the more likely the group will embrace or eventually accept polarized, all-or-nothing -- rather than well-thought-out -- decisions. The more uncertainty in a group, the more likely it is to find security in easily accessible extreme positions. Such a group also tends to close ranks and insulate itself from differing opinions in order to hold on to the fragile security it has created.
The decision-makers are often unaware of this process. They may justify their decisions -- as well as the secrecy and rigidity surrounding them -- by claiming political expediency and the need to gain support. But in fact, such decisions (however realistic they may appear in today’s political climate) often reflect a polarized thinking process, rather than reflective processes that seek out and thoroughly consider alternate views.
Polarized thinking tends to result in a crisis orientation, in which a problem doesn’t fully register on our radar until it is extreme enough to fit in with our all-or-nothing worldview. Subtle, nuanced reasoning, on the other hand, enables the anticipation of problems before a crisis occurs. Unfortunately, we’re observing the former kind of thinking when we ask ourselves or our friends, “How could [that official] have done that?” or “How could our government have made this or that decision?”
Quite apart from whether we agree or disagree with a particular decision, we can examine the reasoning process leading to the decision, and see whether it reveals relatively higher or lower levels of reflective thinking. For example, does it reflect: Accurate information, or distortions, where facts are changed or “spun” far from any sense of reality? Logical thinking (characterized by a causal sequence of ideas), or fragmented and illogical thinking, as seen in far-fetched explanations or rationalizations? Subtle, nuanced, “gray-area” thinking, where multiple factors and the different degrees of their contributions are considered, or polarized, all-or-nothing thinking, where only two extremes are considered and communicated with simplified images or slogans? Judgment based on existing and emerging standards, including considerations of the present, past, and short- and long-term consequences, and both narrow (e.g., nationalistic) and broad (e.g., international) perspectives, or narrow judgments that exclude consideration of critical factors?
Some may argue that public officials and other leaders deliberately employ polarized images or slogans to control public opinion. Ironically, when this occurs, the leaders themselves become controlled by the very public opinion polls they are influencing. Once the process begins, it’s quite hard to know who is leading who. The long-term victim, however, is democracy itself, which requires an informed electorate.
What can be done to protect public officials and the nation from such stress-based thinking? A few possibilities come to mind. The first is to educate the public to expect a high standard of reflective thinking in public discourse. The media can help significantly by providing this type of analysis, while resisting the temptation to use polarized images in their headlines and sub-heads. Even the most sophisticated news analysis can’t undo a polarized headline. Unfortunately, the media and public fascination with “competition” fuels polarization. Who won or lost the debate, or who did better than expected, becomes the headline, while the substance of the policy debate is often buried in the fine print.
A second strategy is to encourage -- in the workplace and at home -- the conditions that favor reflective attitudes. If a high standard of thinking becomes the public’s expectation, perhaps public officials and political leaders will take the time needed to be truly reflective, resisting the tendency to indulge in the heightened sense of importance that goes with high office and fuels the hurried, on-the-run atmosphere that leads to unreflective decisions.
The third strategy to consider is to reduce decision-making insulation. The tendency to be intolerant of differing opinions and insulate oneself with a buffer of like-minded colleagues is often a result of heightened self-importance and stress. Increasing personal contact with others who hold differing views can counter these tendencies.
Long term, we need to consider better ways to educate future policy makers in both the cognitive and psychological aspects of decision-making. Intelligence and intelligent decisions are products of these aspects working together. For example, most students in high school, college, and graduate school don’t receive enough training in how to be their own internal devil’s advocate. They don’t learn how to raise questions about their own hypotheses that would stretch their reasoning capacities. They especially don’t receive training in how to identify their own psychological predilections and biases that would lead them to over-weigh the evidence for their favorite conclusion, rather than the alternative. To be truly objective requires not only a rigorous reasoning process, but an awareness of one’s own biases. The smarter we are, the easier it is for us to rationalize a subtle, unacknowledged bias by a skillful weighing of certain facts over others. The processes that lead to outstanding thinkers and decision makers are embedded in both family and educational experiences. In the future, given the growing interdependency and complexity of the world, we’ll need to greatly improve these processes.
It’s easy to focus only on the result of a decision itself -- whether it worked or didn’t work -- and not pay attention to the process that led to the decision. In fact, we often only examine decision-making processes when we get into hot water and try to figure out how we made such a “lousy” decision. Commissions that are created to examine the causes of a bad political decision usually focus only on the substance of the particular decision, rather than on the thinking processes themselves. Therefore, the risk of future poor decisions isn’t changed. We repeat history because we don’t generalize about the faulty thinking processes and only focus on the particular bad decision, as though the exact same situation will arise again.
In addition, we often disparage a focus on the processes of decision-making as the province of “eggheads” who are incapable of effective action. It’s important to counter this argument with the point that thoughtful, firm policy conclusions are often the product of thoughtful, reflective thinking. A good example is the definitive leadership in a time of crisis, fueled by reflective considerations, shown by Churchill during WWII. In contrast, a shoot-from-the-hip, polarized decision may be a lucky guess in one situation, but get us into hot water in another. Thoughtfulness and definitiveness are not mutually exclusive, and more often than not, go together. The best examples of this are in successful businesses, where polarized, illogical decisions are often associated with major catastrophes and only rarely with fortuitous success.
It may be naïve to think that political leaders will slow down and take the time needed to reflect on the long-term implications of a given decision. It may also be naïve to think that the media could rein in its profit-motivated use of polarized headlines and more fully direct the nation’s interest to the substantive policy issues. But, as the world becomes more interdependent and complex, the dangers of poor decision-making escalate, so the business of thinking needs our attention. Hopefully, by raising these issues, what seems naïve today may be viewed as sensible tomorrow. If we can learn to look not just at the ideas but the thought processes behind the ideas, we can understand why smart people and even smart groups make dumb decisions, and perhaps those decisions will begin to improve.
posted by Stanley I. Greenspan, M.D. at 3:31 PM
7 Comments:
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You wrote: "The media can help significantly by providing this type of analysis..."
To me this seems the most important issue at this time. Yes, we should teach kids to think better, being their own devil's advocate, but these kids grow up and go out into the daily grind, where for many the media becomes their only source of "continuing education." Yet the U.S.'s media in particular seems only interested in profits, and the focus is on the quick and easy: the thrill of war, the latest missing white woman, the latest sex crime, etc.
I think the best thing that could happen for our nation now would be to return integrity to our media.
Trouble is, I don't know what can be done about this.
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