Eyes Wide Open: How to Make Smart Decisions in a Confusing World

Even when it comes to our investment decisions, colour has a marked impact.

Doron Kliger is a behavioural economist at the University of Haifa, with an interest in how colour affects judgement in the financial sector. By carrying out experiments on investors, Kliger has discovered that when we are given information about a stock set against a red background, we focus on its potential to fall in value, making us less likely to want to buy it. Whereas if we read the same information on a green background, we focus on the stock’s potential for gain, and therefore consider it a more appealing buy.22 (#litres_trial_promo)

It may seem extraordinary that decisions as important as the evaluations of people we meet, whether or not to be vaccinated, or what portfolio of shares to invest in, can be affected by the colour associated with the information we are given – but there is a large body of evidence to prove that this is the case.

And it’s not just colours that mess with our decision-making.

Studies have shown that wine merchants sell more French wine when they play French music, and more German wine when they play German music. (#litres_trial_promo)23 That in restaurants, people spend more when slower-tempo music is being played, or classical rather than pop.24 (#litres_trial_promo) That waiters who briefly touch customers receive larger tips than ones who do not.25 (#litres_trial_promo) And that individuals asked to sign a petition are also more likely to do so if they’ve been briefly touched.26 (#litres_trial_promo) So, if you’re trying to get a favourable response, you might want to touch someone on the forearm when making a request – patients who are touched on the forearm for one to two seconds by their doctors adhere significantly better to their medication regime than those who are not, with the biggest increase being for males.27 (#litres_trial_promo)

By triggering emotions, reactions and at times memories, touch and sound have proved capable of powerfully steering our choices in one direction or another.

So too has another of our senses.

What happened when identical pairs of Nike trainers were placed in two identical but separate rooms – one room sprayed with a mixed floral scent, the other not? Eighty-four per cent more consumers preferred the shoes displayed in the fragrant room. They also estimated the ‘fragrant’ pair to cost $10.33 more than the identical pair in the unscented room.28 (#litres_trial_promo)

It’s not just in supermarkets, restaurants and shopping malls that our senses can be scarily manipulated, without our being aware of it.

Did you know that you’re more likely to offer a job to a candidate if you’ve been handed their CV on a heavy clipboard, rather than on a light one?29 (#litres_trial_promo) Or that the way you judge someone’s behaviour may depend on something as simple as what you are holding in your hands?

A group of researchers at Yale gave participants either a soft blanket or a hard block of wood to handle. They then read a passage about an ambiguous interaction between a supervisor and employee. Those who’d touched the wooden block judged the employee to be more harsh and set in their ways than those who’d been stroking the blanket.30 (#litres_trial_promo)

Did you know that you’re more likely to act stingily with your money if the room you’re in has a briefcase in it rather than a rucksack?31 (#litres_trial_promo) The mere presence of the briefcase unconsciously triggers business-related associations, thereby putting you in the mindset of ‘grab’ and ‘compete’.

Or that you are more likely to make an offer for a house if it smells of freshly baked bread, as that evokes feelings of being cared for and nurtured?32 (#litres_trial_promo)

Even the most trivial aspects of our environment can have a profound effect on how we unconsciously assess things. In a recent study, two groups of participants were asked to judge the stability of celebrity relationships – couples like Barack and Michelle Obama, and David and Victoria Beckham. One group were seated at a table and chair that were regular and steady; the other group’s table and chair were wobbly. Sure enough, the wobbly group were more likely to see the couples as ‘likely to dissolve’. What’s more, when asked which traits they valued most in a relationship, the individuals sitting at wobbly furniture were more likely to value stability. The small change in their environment had given them a greater desire for emotional security, a need to cling on to something to make them feel secure.33 (#litres_trial_promo)

If you are a marketer, whether of ideas, policies, ideological positions, or just shampoo, knowing the impact of the right words, frames, metaphors, colours, sounds, smells and sensory experiences is extremely valuable. But if you are continually on the receiving end of these tricks, triggers and anchors, as most of us are, you need to be primed and ready for this continual barrage of deceptions.

If you are not, how can you be confident that the decision you have made is the right one?

So how do we make sure that we’re not this easily manipulated? That we’re not held hostage to our environments? It’s not easy. We can’t make real-world decisions in a vacuum. And sometimes the sophistication of the message, or the sheer volume and force of the barrage, can overwhelm us. But there are things we can do.

Reclaim the Truth

The bad news is that it’s not enough to give yourself a general note to avoid basing your decisions on anchors, sensory cues and rhetoric.34 (#litres_trial_promo) This tends not to make any difference at all.

The good news is that there are ways to regain control of your unconscious, at least to some degree. There are active thinking strategies that do deliver if you suspect you might be being spun or played, or that you might inadvertently be basing your decisions on an anchor.

One such strategy is to get into the habit of imagining an alternate scenario, in which your cue or anchor isn’t present. How would you respond then?

So, if you’re viewing a house for sale, and it smells of freshly baked bread, force yourself to consider whether you would be thinking less favourably about the property if it didn’t smell as good. Or before you turn down a date with Sally from match.com, make sure to ask yourself whether you might have said yes if her photo had been set against a red background rather than a green one. And if you’re about to put an offer in for a car in an auction, don’t just anchor your offer automatically around the guide price. Instead, ask yourself what offer you would have put in if you were thinking completely independently.

Studies show that simply by posing such ‘imagine if’ questions, which allow us to consider alternative explanations and different perspectives, we can distance ourselves from the frames, cues, anchors and rhetoric that might be affecting us.35 (#litres_trial_promo) Liberated from these tricks and triggers, we can consider information through a more neutral, less emotive, more analytical and nuanced lens.

You might also want to do some more active reflecting on the decision you’re making – look at prices of similar homes on the market, say, or think about how it is you actually use your car. By asking yourself additional questions – a car for long-distance journeys? A city runabout? A family car, or just for you? – you can dislodge the frames and anchors that others are attempting to influence you with, and substitute them for more accurate data points.36 (#litres_trial_promo)

Another tactic that works is to build a case for the opposite option to the one you are leaning towards.37 (#litres_trial_promo) So, write down the reasons why not to buy the house, or why to go on a date with Sally, or why to offer just half the guide-price for the car. By articulating possible reasons to do the opposite, you become better placed to look at your initial position in a more objective light.

Removing yourself from your original decision-making environment before you come to your conclusion is another tack to consider. Given that you may have come to your initial response under the sway of temporary influences you weren’t even aware of – background music, a smell, the touch of someone’s hand, a colour, a word or phrase – by physically removing yourself from the environment of the trigger and taking some time to consider your decision, you will be diluting that influence’s impact.38 (#litres_trial_promo) Again, if you can, take that beat. That pause that could make the difference between a good decision and a flawed one.

We should also make sure to ask ourselves, as a matter of practice, who is communicating the information to us. What might their agenda be? What is the organisation the ‘messenger’ is speaking for? How does he see the world, and how might that affect how he represents it to you? Does he want you to adopt a particular belief? Act in a particular way? Once you’ve established the messenger’s agenda, ask yourself how the way he’s presenting his case might be affecting you.

Alert now to just how sensitive to language we are when making a decision, there’s something else to do whether you are evaluating a proposal at work, a politician’s policies or an advertiser’s claims. Consider what impact the language you are hearing or reading might be having. What metaphors and adjectives are being used? What kind of words have been chosen, and why? How is the information being framed? What is the tone? How might all of this be swaying your judgement?

Then ask yourself whether your response would be different if emotional, evocative or politically loaded turns of phrase were not in the frame. Think here of Bush’s State of the Union speech, say, and how you might have reacted had fear not been the pervasive tone.

By actively interrogating the language used, and stripping the content of rhetorical flourishes, we can override our immediate responses.

Knowing also now how affected we are by ‘wrappers’ and ‘form’, there are further tactics we can put into regular practice. If you want to make a decision as objectively as possible, ask yourself if there is a way you could strip away the wrapper, or change the very form in which the information has been received. If those colours on the presentation risk leading you down one particular path, maybe ask for a straightforward copy in black and white. What impact would this have on your thinking? Or if you’re asking your HR department to send you a selection of CVs for a post you’re looking to fill, how about asking them to remove the names of the candidates, so you don’t know their gender? The year that University College Cardiff introduced anonymous marking, 47 per cent of female students achieved firsts or 2.1s. In the preceding four years, when graders knew the gender of the person whose final exams they were marking, only 34 per cent of women earned the top grades.39 (#litres_trial_promo)

All of the above are possible steps to take, but if you don’t have time, there’s a simpler strategy that may work. Admit to yourself just how susceptible you probably are to external influences, frames, cues and anchors, and then actively think about the extent to which your assessment may therefore be being distorted. This simple act of self-consciousness can eliminate the effect of the cue, frame or anchor. Reflecting on just how irrational our thinking can be seems to help us to re-establish rational thinking.40 (#litres_trial_promo) I tried this technique the last time I was at the beauty counter – and came home with no new purchases!

Takeaways

We’d drive ourselves crazy, of course, if we constantly tried to strip bare every piece of information we’re given. And at the end of the day, if you buy the ‘wrong’ moisturiser, it doesn’t really matter. But when the stakes are high and the decisions are of import – which house to put a down-payment on? Which business proposal to pick? Who to employ? Who to trust? Who to date? – we need to remind ourselves of the extent to which our decisions are prone to be influenced by situational and environmental factors as well as labels. And we must be aware of how sensitive we are to language, and the way it can distort our responses and our decision-making.

Thus aware, we should think of ourselves as a juror: bombarded by rhetoric and emotional appeals from the prosecution and the defence, by senses and sights and sounds. In the end it’s down to us to decide whether or not the evidence holds up. But we can judge most fairly if we apply some basic rules, and distance ourselves from the rhetoric and imagery thrust our way by others, whether they be salesman, politicians, professors or employers. I’ve suggested a few concrete ways to do this at the end of this chapter.

It’s also important, as ever, to retain a sceptical stance. Once we can see where someone’s coming from, we’re much better able to determine where it is they’re trying to take us. Only then can we properly assess whether it is actually somewhere we want to go. We also must remind ourselves of the importance of independent thinking, and where possible take control of our environment. If we don’t want others to con us, we need to be alert to their tricks.

Keeping our eyes wide open isn’t just about ensuring that those we are listening to are not manipulating us, and that we are not inadvertently conning ourselves. It’s also about being sure that we’re getting our information from the right people in the first place, and being willing to challenge claims, however supposedly certain and expert the source. Time to ditch deference, and take supposed mavens on …

QUICK TIPS TO AVOID BEING SCARED OF THE NACIREMA

• Ask yourself if you could be leaning towards or against a decision because of an irrelevant cue (colour, smell, sound). If so, imagine if that cue wasn’t there. How do you feel now?

• Strip any evocative or heart-tugging language away. Write out the key determinants of your decision in as dry a way as possible. Are you still affected in the same way by what you’re hearing or reading? If not, revise your initial assessment accordingly.

• Remember how influenced we are by ‘wrappers’. How would you feel if the claim wasn’t made in scientific language? If you didn’t know the gender of the applicant? Would you still be making the same decision?

• Look out for any anchors in your environment, any numbers or data points that you might be unconsciously basing a decision on. If you’re not sure if or how they’ve affected you, consider the opposite option to the one you’ve been leaning towards. Does this make you think differently about your initial decision?

• Where you have the ability to ‘dress the environment’, create as blank a backdrop as you can. Blind evaluations so as to remove gender or ethnic bias; limited sensory distractions so as to make your decision as ‘cleanly’ as possible.

• Play with form. Turn percentages into ratios, and stories into statistics. Re-frame the information you’ve been given. Ask for a black-and-white version of a colour document. How do you feel now about the decision at hand?

• Remove yourself from your decision-making environment for a moment. Go for a walk before your final decision – or if you can’t do that, at the very least leave the room briefly. By removing yourself from cues and environmental influences, their impact becomes diluted.

BECOME YOUR OWN CUSTODIAN OF TRUTH (#ufc35ab50-20fa-5b82-b206-9fdae6e0d1ec)

STEP FOUR (#ufc35ab50-20fa-5b82-b206-9fdae6e0d1ec)

Ditch Deference and Challenge Experts

From Harley Street to the Mayo

I am sick, really sick. I look in the mirror and see hollow cheeks, eyes ringed with tiredness. I am weak. Walking to the end of my street feels like a huge effort. My weight has plummeted by thirty pounds in just three months. In swift succession I have transformed from slim, to thin, to very thin, to looking ill. On doctor’s orders I stuff my face with cream cakes, chips and plates of buttered bread. Yet my BMI remains dangerously low; I gain no weight. If anything, I am getting ever thinner.