Success Blog: Psychology, Human Behaviour, Self-Development, Relationships, and Affirmations

Last week I talked about the three traps of diagnosis (or decision making). Just to recap the traps,

Trap 1: Ignoring Objective Data
Trap 2: Giving Credit To Irrelevant Information
Trap 3: The ‘Chameleon Effect’

Yesterday I gave you an example of the first trap hard at work in the NBA. Today I want to give you a more detailed example of the second trap of the diagnosis bias. This example is also from the book Sway, and it is about the job interview. These days many of you may be changing jobs or looking for jobs. In either case, you will likely have to go through a job interview, so you may find this interesting.

If you were to conduct a job interview, how well do you think you’ll be able to gage the prospect’s fit and their future performance in your organization? Most people think that they would be quite successful at that task. Professor Allen Huffcutt would beg to differ. Mr. Huffcutt has spent countless hours studying the different hiring practices and their effectiveness. Research in this area shows that there is very little correlation between the scores that managers assign to the prospect during the interview and the prospect’s job performance. Why does that happen?

The answer lies with the second trap – giving too much credit to irrelevant information. Most of the hiring is done based on a personal interview. And most interviews are unstructured and free-flowing in their nature. Allen Huffcutt calls it a ‘first date interview’.

During the interview the two parties get to know each other, much like two people would on a first date. Sure, the questions are different in their nature, but they are largely irrelevant to the future performance (job or relationship). None of the questions get any true indication of the prospect’s fit in the company; instead they invite standard, rehearsed answers from the prospect. The managers, however, give this irrelevant information a lot of weight, making it easy to make the wrong decision. How many times have you gone on that first date and formed a certain opinion of the person only to learn later, after you got to know the person better, that you were completely off?

The big thing that the manager wants to discover in the interview is how well he or she would get along with the prospect. It makes sense – they will be spending a lot of time together at work, so it makes sense for them to get along. The manager ends up getting along with a prospect with whom they are similar in nature, while it can be much more advantageous for the company to hire someone who is dissimilar. Dissimilar people create a more diverse environment, that, when cultivated, can produce more different, unique, interesting ideas. Similar people are unlikely to do as well because their thought processes are more similar.

Allen Huffcutt says that managers would make much better hiring decisions if they gave their prospects some standard tests that would give them an indication of how that prospect will perform in the organization. Then, out of the prospects that make the cut, the managers can conduct personal interviews to make sure the chemistry is right. Most companies, however, do not follow this guideline, even after being told about the pitfalls of having a personal interview with prospects without any aptitude tests.

Tomorrow I will give you the 10 most commonly asked questions during the job interview.

Until next time,

V

Last week I talked about the three traps of diagnosis (or decision making). Just to recap the traps,

Trap 1: Ignoring Objective Data
Trap 2: Giving Credit To Irrelevant Information
Trap 3: The ‘Chameleon Effect’

Today I want to give you a more detailed example of the first trap of diagnosis bias. This is the example from the book Sway which I found very fascinating. This example is about one of my favorite sports, basketball, and comes from a study of the NBA performed by Barry Staw and Ha Hoang.

Before we get into the example, let me ask you a question. What effect do you think a player’s draft pick number have on his career? When the authors of Sway posed that question, my response was ‘An insignificant one!’. Is your answer similar? I thought that what mattered was how the player played – his scoring and shooting percentage, his rebounding, his steals, his assists, his free throw percentages, his leadership, and his commitment to the team and to the game. To me it is pretty logical that it is how a player plays rather than his draft pick number that would ultimately affect his playing time, his salary, and the length of his career. Turns out I am wrong.

Now don’t get me wrong. I get how the draft works. The best players are supposed to be picked before the great players; the great players are supposed to be picked before the good players. The problem is that the tryouts that the players go through when they showcase their talents and abilities to the different teams are not the best indication of their future performance in the NBA, their commitment and dedication to the game, their coachability, and their leadership. It is rather a snap shot of players current skills and the draft is in many ways a guessing game. And what happens is that there are two player who perform exactly the same way in the league, yet they are treated differently by their coaches. And all of this comes from their draft order.

This is the first trap hard at work. As ridiculous as it sounds, the coaches ignore the objective data about the player (his playing statistics), and let their initial judgment obstruct the clear view of the situation. Players draft pick number sticks with them throughout their carriers. According to the study, a single increment in a players draft pick number decreases his playing time by 23 minutes when compared to another player with the same statistics. Staw and Hoang also point out that, again all other things being equal, a player picked in the first round would have a career lasting 3.3 years longer than a player picked in the second round. This is due to the fact that players picked later in the draft run a higher chance of being traded and then, in turn, not having their contract renewed. This is a great example of how we are reluctant to let go of the initial label that we put on a person, in spite of having obvious facts telling us a different story.

Do you think you would act differently? Well, picture the following scenario. You need to hire a contractor to replace the roof of your home. You have a choice between a contractor who shows you a certificate that tells you he finished first in college, and another contractor who has no distinguishing accomplishments. Who would you hire and who would you be willing to pay more? Now, say you hire the second contractor. Two months later you have a wind storm in your city and some shingles come off. Chances are you would say to yourself, ‘If I hired the top-of-the-class contractor, this would not happen’. You would be saying that even if they are both equally qualified and would do the same quality of a job. The only reason you would say that is because of the ’second rate’ label that you put on the hired contractor.

So, how can you avoid the first trap?

Until next time,

V

We tend to think that we always make rational decisions based on hard facts. This is actually very far off from the truth. The book Sway: The Irresistible Pull Of Irrational Behavior, written by Ori and Rom Brafman, talks about the three traps of decision making that I found totally fascinating.  Today I want to talk a little bit about the three traps and after the weekend I’ll give more detailed examples of those traps in real life.

Trap 1: Ignoring Objective Data

People often ignore facts and important quantifiable information when it comes to decision making. As you are reading this, it sounds absurd, however let me assure you that this is true. I am not saying that all people ignore all objective data, but they do ignore some of the vital and available information. We often do this when this new information goes against the positions that we have taken or the decisions that we have made.

How often have you made up your mind about a place, a person, or an event and later found some facts that contradicted your formed opinion? Now, be honest! When you heard this new information, did you give it your full attention and consideration or did you belittle it and dismissed it as probably not very important and maybe not even true?

For example, when it comes to people, we make a judgment about them long before they open their mouths – it takes as little as 38ms to form that initial opinion. After you form that opinion and decide that the person is friendly (as opposed to standoffish, for example), you will likely ignore facts that point to the contrary and embrace things that go along with your point of view. This leads us to the next trap…

Trap 2: Giving Credit To Irrelevant Information

When you form an opinion about something or someone you will pay more attention to irrelevant information as long as it reinforces your point of view. And sometimes people pay too much attention to the irrelevant information even when there is no previously formed opinion. I’ll give you an example. Have you ever bought an item that you only got because there was an attractive sales person helping you? Logically the attractiveness of the sales person should not be a factor in your decision making when making a purchase, but somehow we become irrational for the time being.

Trap 3: ‘Chameleon Effect’

‘Chameleon Effect’ is when the formed opinion of Person A about Person B affects Person B’s behaviour. And there are a lot of psychological nuances at play with the Chameleon Effect. When Person A has established an attitude towards Person B, they start acting in accordance with their opinion and emit a complimentary vibe. As a result, Person B picks up on that vibe and on the subtle body language of Person A, and responds accordingly only to meet the expectations of Person A.

To bring back the example used in description of the first trap, if your initial impression of the person is that they are cold and standoffish, when you talk to them you will be more guarded and cold yourself. They will pick up on that attitude and will be a lot less friendly than usual, to you. You will see that as confirmation of your initial assessment of that person.

I briefly described the three traps that we can often fall into when making a decision. After the weekend I will talk about more specific examples of the above three traps from Sway to give you a better understanding of them and hopefully help you avoid them in your future.

Until Monday,

V