Decisions, decisions, all of them wrong

Over the course of my first semester as a doctoral student, I’ve been thinking a lot about decision-making. What started as an academic pursuit has permeated my life so that, now, not even my choice to eat a second slice of birthday cake escapes a post-hoc analysis. Humans like to think of our species as intelligent, or at least capable of being logical and well-intentioned when it comes to interpreting facts. Yet we all understand–and research confirms–that humans are inherently fallible. 

When I think about bad decision-making, I think of the second slice of chocolate cake that made me feel sick on my birthday last Friday, and the subsequent decision to indulge in a second, second piece of cake the following day. I think about the teens on Tik Tok who perform stunts like lighting their entire body on fire (while a friend does “the renegade” in the foreground), for the likes. [In trying to find that video again, I discovered a plethora of Tik Tok trends that have seriously endangered the teens participating in them, so I don’t recommend that Google search]. But I also think about decisions with a larger magnitude of impact, such as the countless bad decisions politicians have made that led to an avoidable and endless war, or, say, an uncontrolled pandemic. 

In a recent Vox article about decision-making, Dr. Robert Pearl discusses the infamous Lori Loughlin and her involvement in the 2019 nationwide college admissions scandal. The Full House actress paid $500,000 to get her daughters into USC under the pretense that they were rowing team recruits (they had never competitively rowed in their lives). We can all agree: a Bad Decision. She was publicly shamed and sentenced to two months in prison. [As an aside–given the length of time non-celebrities serve for minor crimes, potential biases in the judge’s decision-making about the Loughlin case should also be scrutinized.] 

You don’t have to be a dopamine-driven teen with an underdeveloped pre-frontal cortex or an out-of-touch celebrity with a penchant for fame and fortune to make bad decisions. Many of us could fall into a Lori Loughlin-style trap, under the right conditions. Pearl states that, under certain circumstances, the brain begins to perceive the world around us in ways that “contradict objective reality.” He calls it brainshift. Brainshift can arise when the choices you are making contradict the choices of your peers or the people around you–this phenomenon is related to what is commonly referred to as groupthink. You lose the ability to see what is true and right because you are surrounded by others who appear to think otherwise. Anxiety, too, can shift your ability to notice and react to things that would normally be obvious to you, leading you to make decisions that you later can’t explain. Brainshift can also occur when you are seeking a reward so desirable that it inhibits your ability to correctly interpret reality, as may have happened in the case of Lori Loughlin. 

At the end of Pearl’s article, he suggests a potential way to mitigate bad decisions: he argues that individuals should visualize what the worst outcome of their decision could be, and then re-evaluate their decision with that worst-case-scenario in mind. I can imagine the Tik Tok teens might have had second thoughts about fire stunts, but would Lori Loughlin have sent her children to a college where they rightfully belonged had she taken a moment to weigh the reality of the worst-case outcome of getting caught? Maybe, but I think this decision-aid is too simple. I feel confident that I am not the only one that considers worst-case-scenarios when making just about every decision. The result is an aptitude for catastrophizing that makes my decision-making process more agonizing but, arguably, not more effective. 

Pearl’s decision-making strategy addresses only some of the cognitive biases that have been identified by psychologists, economists, and neuroscientists over the last several decades.  Decision-making research seeks to understand why humans are so bad at decisions, describing a variety of concepts that help explain where our decisions are vulnerable to mistakes. I study child maltreatment, which means that much of my thinking about decision-making has been through the lens of a child protective services worker and the decisions they make in the homes of families accused of maltreating their children. It’s not a light topic. The hope is that, with a better understanding of where the system is affected by cognitive bias, we can develop tools and policies to improve the system (or develop arguments to overhaul it completely, but that’s a whole separate blog post). 

In 2018, child protective services in the United States received referrals for alleged maltreatment involving 7.8 million children. Among those 7.8 million children, just 678,000 were found to be substantiated victims of abuse. Of those substantiated victims, 146,706 received foster care services. Given the staggering numbers of referrals to the hotline—each presenting an extensive family history—as well as the potentially devastating consequences of a wrong decision, it is no surprise that enhancing decision-making in the child welfare system has been identified as a high priority.

If, as Pearl suggested, you ask a child welfare worker to imagine the worst possible outcome of leaving a child in their home, that caseworker would imagine some objectively horrible things. Do we want caseworkers to imagine the worst each time they make a decision about a child? Maybe. But, I fear that doing so would lead caseworkers to remove more children, not necessarily the right children. Removing a child from their home, even when necessary in order to protect that child, is a traumatic experience, and research shows that children removed from their homes are at heightened risk of countless negative health and well-being outcomes. Recognizing where human biases come into play can help us to identify ways to help individuals to think rationally when faced with emotionally-charged choices, unthinkably high stakes, and incomplete information. 

When I think about decision-making in child welfare, I think a lot about anchoring bias–or the phenomenon where individuals put too much weight on the information that they gleaned early on in a situation. In the case of child welfare, that early information might be the neighborhood in which a family lives, the smell of trash in the family’s kitchen, or the race or ethnicity of the family. These facts shouldn’t be important clues as to whether abuse has occurred, but humans cling to the things they learn early and might overemphasize their importance in an investigation. There are other biases and heuristics that could get in the way in this context. Behavioral economists discuss the empathy gap, a concept coined by George Loewenstein that revolves around the idea that our decisions are state-dependent. When I am angry, it is unimaginable to remember what it feels like to be calm, and it’s difficult to accept that my decisions might be altered by my angry state. The concept also relates to the inter-personal such that an empathy gap prevents us from understanding why others might have made certain decisions when they were in a state that we have not personally experienced. 

There is another concept in decision-making that I’ve been thinking about a lot: decision fatigue. It’s the idea that, as humans are asked to make more and more decisions, their ability to make a “good” decision declines. Specifically, the concept describes the way that individuals who are asked to make many decisions begin to use instinct rather than thought. They subconsciously act on impulse to avoid the work that is required to make a good decision in the face of uncertainty. One can easily imagine an overburdened caseworker facing decision fatigue.

The relentlessness of 2020 has brought all of us to a point of fatigue, I think. In March, when Americans were asked to hunker down and isolate for a while in order to protect our fellow citizens, some of us made better decisions about how to protect ourselves and our communities (although, we also seemingly made some bizarre decisions about hoarding toilet paper). For eight months now, we’ve made difficult decision after difficult decision. Is it safer to fly or drive? Should we go into the grocery store or should we pay extra to have groceries delivered? Should our children go to school? Do I need to wear a mask while I run? Which mask? Now, eight months into this never-ending saga, we are starting to notice the impact of decision fatigue. Some of us may feel decision paralysis, or the inability to make a decision at all. Others of us may simply make worse decisions. We start to think that, maybe, eating in a crowded restaurant isn’t such a bad idea after all, or that maybe we could have the big wedding we’ve agonizingly postponed for so long, in spite of the fact that COVID-risk is higher than ever. As we face a long, dark winter, Americans are filling airports again, despite the risk they pose to their families when they arrive and the pleas of health care workers staffing hospitals at full capacity. 

On Twitter, I’ve seen a common argument that state- and nation-wide restrictions on businesses, travel, and gatherings amidst this pandemic are condescending and betray a lack of trust in our fellow citizens to do what is right. It is, in many ways, a particularly American argument–one that emphasizes independence and free-will above all else. Upon reflection, I’ve decided it’s somewhat true; I don’t have much faith in humans to make good decisions. It’s not because I think my fellow humans are dumber than me; to the contrary, I–almost to a problematic extent–believe that most humans are smarter than me. It’s also not because I believe that my fellow humans are unkind or unable to show empathy for their fellow humans–I subscribe to the almost-religious belief that people are generally good. The reason I don’t want Americans to make their own decisions about whether they are allowed to hold a large, indoor church service during a pandemic is partially because I’ve spent time thinking about the intrinsic cognitive biases that make humans vulnerable to bad decision-making. Humans aren’t always aware of the stimuli that are affecting us and how those stimuli can result in brainshift, or decisions that diverge from the rational.

Given all I know about being human, who am I to judge those on my Instagram that are attending parties and chilling in crowded, indoor bars? We are experiencing decision fatigue at a magnitude that few of us have experienced before. We are experiencing decision fatigue amidst a stressful pandemic, increasingly fewer daylight hours, and a dire lack of national leadership, all while continuing to deal with our natural cognitive biases and limitations. For me, that’s where policies and leadership are most needed: so we can cut the average American a break and let someone with more support, information, and expertise do the heavy lifting for a while. 

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In a feedback loop referred to as post-hoc analysis, I’ve begun reflecting on every decision I make with a more critical lens–this time with language that helps me better identify what went right and wrong. In early spring, I made the decision about where to move for grad school. I, like the rest of the world, had no clue what 2020 had in store. I knew that a professor I admired and wanted to work with was moving to North Carolina. I knew that Neal was agreeable to the move. I knew that James Taylor had written a song about Carolina and a quick Google search told me he was from Chapel Hill. He seemed like a good egg. Beyond that, I knew that North Carolina was on the other side of the country from Southern California, which was where I’d originally planned to go to school–a location that would have put Neal and I near family and friends. It was top of my priority list to be near family. And yet, in spite of that priority, I chose North Carolina. 

Celebrating my birthday last week, confident in my decision to match my outfit to this silver door

In truth, I never would have chosen to move to Carolina had I known that this pandemic was going to be as interminable as it has been. I would have been certain that it would be too difficult to be so far from family for so long during such a dark time. Knowing what I do now, I probably would have forecast a deep depressive state during a holiday season void of family. And yet, since arriving, I haven’t doubted my choice to be here. I miss my family just as deeply as I assumed I would, but I underestimated my ability to fight through that–especially during a time when it is difficult to see family safely, regardless of whether they live in your neighborhood or several states away. I am also feeling so intensely blessed to be doing work that I am interested in and that challenges me. To be doing any work at all during this period of high unemployment feels like I won the lottery and I didn’t even know I bought a ticket. Without the distraction of meaningful work, I imagine this year would have been much more difficult to stomach. In the academic literature about decision-making, what I am describing is conceptualized as affective forecasting, or the idea that humans are not good at predicting what their emotions will feel like in the future.

On a Zoom call with other doctoral students last week, I said that, in a way, I was glad I didn’t have a complete dataset when I made my choice about where to go to school. I made an uninformed choice that turned out to be much better than any decision I would have made under optimal decision-making circumstances. Another student replied, “let this be a cautionary tale for overthinkers everywhere.”  

After that Zoom call, I was feeling really positive. I congratulated myself for being exactly where I am meant to be and celebrated that my good decisions have led me to the inevitable and right place at the inevitable and right time. Then, I paused, remembering the concept of confirmation bias, or the unconscious selective search for evidence that supports certain conclusions and the simultaneous disregard for facts that might challenge those conclusions. Confirmation bias, the literature suggests, leads to overconfidence in one’s decisions. Surely, I thought, my brain would never be so fallible…right?

Joining my 567,894th Zoom call as a doc student in 2020