Hack 74. Maintain the Status Quo (2)
This bias is the result of a number of factors, not least the fact that people’s previous choice is often the best one or the one that best reflects their character. But also we have mental biases,3 like the mental biases we have about numbers [Hack #70], which produce consistent habits and an innate conservativism.
Biases in reasoning are tendencies, not absolutes. They make up the mental forces that push your conclusions one way or the other. No single force ever rules completely, and in each case, several forces compete. We’re mostly trying to be rational so we keep a look out for things that might have biased us so we can discount them. Even if we know we can’t be rational, we mostly try to be at least consistent. This means that often you can’t give the same person the same problem twice if it’s designed to evoke different biases. They’ll spot the similarity between the two presentations and know their answers should be the same.
I’m carelessly using the word “rational” here, in the same way that logicians and people with a faith in pure reason might. But the study of heuristics and biases should make us question what a psychological meaning of “rational” could be. In some of the very arbitrary situations contrived by psychologists, people can appear to be irrational, but often their behavior would be completely reasonable in most situations, and even rational considering the kind of uncertainties that normally accompany most choices in the everyday world.
T.S.
But some biases are so strong that you can feel them tugging on your reason even when the rational part of your mind knows they are misleading. These “cognitive illusions” work even when you present two differently biased versions of the choice side by side. The example we’re going to see in action is one of these.
Taken from : Mind Hacks
