3BI: astrology, overconfidence, and projecting bias
Happy Friday from Chicago! Here are this week’s three behavioral insights before you start the weekend.
Psychology of astrology
Astrology has been a consistent and ubiquitous presence in modern society, and may even be having somewhat of a resurgence.
We’re so used to seeing daily horoscopes and celebrities discuss astrological signs that we don’t realize how unique it is among similar beliefs:
Unlike other ancient but now-debunked beliefs like alchemy, or the reality of the city of Atlantis, astrology remains stubbornly with us into the 21st century. And unlike existing pseudosciences like Flat Eartherism, which are believed by only the tiniest minority of cranks, as we’ve seen astrology is surprisingly popular.
What is about astrology that’s so enticing and resistant to modern science? And why are such pseudoscientific belief systems so prevalent, anyway?
For one, it satisfies our psychological desire to explaining the world around us:
…the idea of wanting an explanation…is a major possibility for why people cling to belief in astrology. It’s been suggested that astrology is a way of explaining and organising our lives, which can otherwise be disconcertingly confusing and random.
Our minds don’t handle the idea of randomness well. Instead, we naturally try to identify patterns and find satisfying explanations for what happens around us. This is the same reason we latch onto conspiracy theories:
Similar ideas have been advanced for why people believe in conspiracy theories. The president gets shot. A new virus appears and kills millions. For many people it’s simply hard to believe that these things are chance occurrences: how could something so consequential have its origins in something so random? Surely there must be a secret plan – a conspiracy – from people behind the scenes who are running it all.
Astrology isn’t a plan as such, but it is an explanation – or at least, it looks like one. Why has my mood been so low over the past few weeks? Why did I argue with my best friend? Why have things been going well at work this year? Well, it’s all to do with the way the planets are moving. Not something I can control, but something that, with a little bit of reading of star charts, I might be able to understand. Again, how can the true explanation – which probably involves a large dose of inexplicable randomness – compare to that?
While there are many ways we may satisfy that desire, the explanations provided by astrology are particularly alluring. Modern personality tests are empirical tools to do so, but the idea of being molded by the cosmos is much more interesting than a boring questionnaire devised by psychologists.
Astrology also balances that interestingness with a persuasive amount of complexity. Astrology experts back their claims with a surprising amount of detail that satisfies our bias to complexity. When someone explains a concept we don’t fully understand with lots of seemingly technical details, we tend to think they know what they’re talking about.
So, astrology satisfies our need for order and explanation in chaotic world with a persuasive mix of allure and complexity. Why is it so much more popular than similar pseudoscientific beliefs, though? Why is it growing while spiritual belief systems like religion are shrinking?
Perhaps the stars and planets feel more concrete and scientific than spirituality centered around gods that we can’t see. Maybe it’s just a fun hobby that people find comfort in without fully believing. Perhaps, though, such analysis is simply an attempt to explain randomness in a more logical way:
Maybe the desire to explain it is just a way for the more scientific minded to find explanations for randomness, though. It’s just as likely that we’re seeing a fairly arbitrary upswing in the popularity of one complex meme that spreads well and is easy to market online. In a few years it could easily be something else.
Read more at iNews.
Projecting biases onto data and science
That’s a reminder that we aren’t free from bias by simply using scientific methods. The Atlantic has an interesting piece on how a surprising finding about ice cream’s nutritional benefits was met with dismissal rather than curiosity by many nutrition scientists and featured this interesting quote:
In 2004, the English epidemiologist Michael Marmot wrote, “Scientific findings do not fall on blank minds that get made up as a result. Science engages with busy minds that have strong views about how things are and ought to be.” Marmot was writing about how politicians deal with scientific evidence—always concluding that the latest data supported their existing views—but he acknowledged that scientists weren’t so different.
We like to think that our beliefs are supported by scientific findings and data, but in reality, we’re confirmation bias machines with a natural tendency to use such data points after we’ve already drawn conclusions emotionally. Such self-reflection is needed for those who want to be data-driven in their decision-making.
Read more at The Atlantic.
The types of overconfidence
One of the reasons we don’t engage in such reflection and self-awareness is because of overconfidence bias. It’s so powerful and pervasive that legendary psychologist Daniel Kahneman considered it to be the most damaging of cognitive biases:
The most damaging of these [biases] is overconfidence: the kind of optimism that leads governments to believe that wars are quickly winnable and capital projects will come in on budget despite statistics predicting exactly the opposite. It is the bias he says he would most like to eliminate if he had a magic wand.
According to UC Berkeley Haas School Professor Don Moore, overconfidence can come in two forms:
Over-precision: when we're too sure about the accuracy of our knowledge. This is often demonstrated in those who confidently forecast the future. Studies have demonstrated this in forecasters like chief financial officers and economists who provide influential predictions about the economy. They share their predictions with a high level of confidence that doesn’t match their eventual accuracy.
Over-placement: when we overestimate our placement relative to others, like whether we are better or worse than average at something. One infamous study found that 93% of Americans think they're better than average drivers, which is obviously mathematically impossible. Another example is in entrepreneurship, where business founders overestimate the odds of their venture succeeding while underestimating them for competitors.
On the flip side, we can also be underconfident. Under-placement is when we underestimate our skills compared to others. An example is imposter syndrome, “where capable people who are struggling with a difficult task all think that they don't have what it takes,” per Moore.
Neither lead to good outcomes:
Both are errors, but over-placement leads us to enter competitions that we will lose, take risks that won't pay off well, and make asses of ourselves by stepping out and taking public stances or showing off in ways that other people don’t appreciate as much as we think they will.
Under-placement on the other hand, leads us to shrink back to avoid competition, to stay out, not to put ourselves forward. And the loss there is a missed opportunity. Whereas the errors we make due to over-placement are errors of commission where we wind up investing, taking risks, taking stances, or entering competitions that won't work out well.
How can we avoid such fates? According to Moore, it requires questioning those beliefs regularly:
I routinely ask myself why I might be wrong and consider alternative points of view. When those alternative points of view come from other people, I take them as seriously as I can and try to learn from the information they have that I lack. So, the criticism that comes my way from blunt-spoken colleagues or from teenage children — I listen to it for information that suggests I’m making a mistake or I could be doing better. That information is precious.
This is the kind of self-reflection we need to reduce bias in our decisions.
Read more at Katy Milkman’s newsletter.
Other stuff
Have a great weekend.