Focusing Bias

EXERCISE 1 The Riddle

Who is the person in the following riddle?

The new chief executive, one of the youngest in his nation’s history, is being sworn into office on a bleak, cold, cloudy day in January. Standing beside him is his predecessor, a military leader who had led the nation through a world war. The new chief executive was raised as a Catholic and rose to his new position in part because of his vibrant charisma. He is revered by the people and will play a crucial role in a military crisis that will face his nation. His name will become legendary.

If the description brings John F. Kennedy to mind, the intended answer may surprise you: Adolf Hitler, beside President Paul von Hindenburg, a military leader during World War I. But the riddle contains a faulty clue: Hindenburg was Germany’s president, not Hitler’s predecessor as chancellor. The intended answer does not justify accepting every clue uncritically.

The phrase “one of the youngest in his nation’s history” may bring Kennedy to mind. Jones links this to vividness bias: a readily retrieved image can shape the interpretation of later clues.

Once the idea of Kennedy has been planted, we instinctively focus on it and look for supporting evidence, which we readily find:

Predecessor was military leader—Eisenhower

Catholic—yep

Charismatic—yep

Revered—by most people

Crucial role in a military crisis—the Cuban missile crisis

Legendary—certainly

As the evidence confirming Kennedy mounts, we are certain we have the answer. (It’s the explaining compulsion at work.) Because we feel comfortable and confident in our judgment that it was Kennedy, we are disinclined to consider other alternatives.

Likewise, consider a manager who rejects out of hand the possibility that her cashier stole missing money because she is focused on the explanation that someone else is guilty. Someone else had to be guilty. Her mind-set regarding the cashier’s honesty would not permit her to entertain the alternative—that he was dishonest.

These examples illustrate a risk of focusing on the first explanation that seems to fit: we may stop examining alternatives or checking whether all the evidence supports it.

Our propensity to focus has been underscored in experiments where people repeatedly and conspicuously fail to correct their initial responses, even when all relevant information is made available to them to show that they are wrong.

A remarkable example of our one-dimensional mind-set is an incident, related in an article in The Washington Post, that occurred in Professor Jay Sekulow’s classroom at Regent University Law School.

Professor Sekulow was discussing with his students a ruling of a federal appeals court that prohibited a public school from allowing a church group to conduct services in the school building after hours.

The students had no difficulty presenting the church’s position, with which they agreed: The school is a public building to which access cannot be denied because the requesting party is a religious group.

But when Sekulow asked the students to present the school district’s view, he was met with stony silence. He asked again, and beheld a room of silent, shaking heads.

He was stunned. His pupils were simply unable to view the situation from the school district’s perspective.

Having focused on a solution, we, like Sekulow’s students, are captivated by it and thus become uninterested in alternative solutions. Our fixation on our chosen solution therefore causes us to value evidence that supports that solution and to devalue, disbelieve, discredit, and discard evidence that does not. We therefore tend to accept at face value information that is consistent with our beliefs and to critically scrutinize and discount information that contradicts them. One can see, then, how the mind’s tendency to focus can warp the objectivity of our analysis.

We’re looking for a night job. We hear of one with really good pay, but it’s located in a high-crime area. We need the money, so we downplay the risk. We do the opposite when the case is reversed. Let’s say we don’t want a night job but are being urged to find one. We’re told of a really well-paying job in a high-crime area. Now we cite the high crime as the reason not to apply for the job.

We tend to see in a body of evidence what, according to our mindset, we expect and want to see and tend not to see, again according to our mind-set, what we don’t expect or don’t want to see. The mind subtly, unconsciously reconfigures the evidence to make it consistent with our expectation.

If you doubt that this tendency exists or that its effects are significantly detrimental to problem solving, try the following experiment on a friend. Ask your friend to identify an issue about which he or she has strong feelings. Ask your friend to state his or her position on the issue and to defend that position with argumentation. When your friend has finished making a case, quietly and calmly ask him or her to make the opposite case. If your friend was for something, ask him or her to make a case against it. If your friend was against something, ask him or her to make a case for it. Chances are your friend will be struck dumb for a moment, unable to respond. (I suspect it’s the subconscious going into shock.) When your friend does speak, the answer will be something like “Make a case against it? I just told you I’m in favor of it!” Then say, “I realize that. You said such and such should happen. Now explain to me why it shouldn’t happen!” Most people can’t do it effectively; some can’t do it at all and become quite upset when asked to. They are so focused on their interpretation of the issue that they cannot adequately articulate the other side (or sides).

A memorable example of this focusing trait was the statement in 1912 by newswoman Mary Field as she covered the famous trial The People v. Clarence Darrow. Asked why her reporting didn’t explain both sides of the case, she declared, “There aren’t both sides. There’s only one side, and that’s the right side, and that’s the Labor side.”