3BI: Attribution Bias, "If This, Then That", Data Perception
Welcome to my 3BI newsletter, where I share three insights from the world of behavioral science on psychology, decision-making, and behavioral change.
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Attribution Bias
Think about the best meal you had recently. What made it so great? Was it the flavor? The ambiance of the restaurant? The company? Maybe even the mood you were in at the time?
According to behavioral science, the latter aspect is a much bigger influence on our perception of the experience than we realize. Attribution bias refers to the systematic errors people make when trying to explain the causes of behaviors, events, or even memories. From UCLA Professor of Behavioral Economics Kareem Haggag:
The basic idea is that when judging the value of a good, people tend to be overly influenced by the state in which they previously consumed it. States refer to things like our hunger, thirst, fatigue, or even what the weather is like. The amount of enjoyment we get out of consuming a product or experience often depends on what state we happen to be in. For example, food is tastier when you're hungry.
However, a large body of research in psychology and behavioral economics suggests that we fail to appreciate the extent to which our preferences change with our states, and that can lead to misattributions.
When reflecting on that great meal, it’s likely that we attribute our enjoyment to the more obvious parts of the experience like the quality or uniqueness of the food, the restaurant’s ambiance, great service, or good company, but fail to recognize the impact of our internal state at the time. We could have been really hungry, in a celebratory mood after getting some good news, or more buzzed than we thought from a pre-dinner drink. That means we could be a little disappointed on a return visit when it’s not quite as good as we remember because our internal states are different.
This is because of our broader psychology around anchoring and adjustment. Anchoring is a cognitive bias where we rely too heavily on the first piece of information (the “anchor”) received when making decisions. The initial reference point influences subsequent judgments and estimates. According to Haggag, we anchor on what our experience is in the moment, and it’s very difficult to fully parse it after the fact, even when the state at the time is very salient.
Attribution bias can have a bigger impact than just how we feel about a meal out, though. Haggag conducted a study on students at West Point to evaluate how class times for introductory courses impacted their choice of major and found that students randomly assigned to the 7:30 a.m. section are about 10% less likely to choose the corresponding major than a student who takes that class later in the day. Our emotional states at a given time can influence our choice of career!
To counter attribution bias, we should be cognizant of our state of mind and remember that it’s influencing our perceptions more than we realize. We can plan around these states by doing things like scheduling meetings at later times after we’ve had coffee and fully woken up or making sure we eat enough before events to not be “hangry” and distracted. We should also remember that this is affecting the people around us, too, and consider how it’s influencing their actions.
Read more at Milkman Delivers.
“If This, Then That” Behaviors
Behavior isn’t fixed, but is heavily influenced by our environment and other factors surrounding the decision. When we find ourselves not following through with our intentions, we should remember this and not take it personally. Our inability to follow through with something is often not due to an inherent flaw in our discipline, but an issue in our environment.
I’ve been trying to remind myself of this with an “if this, then that” approach. If a distraction or temptation is in our immediate environment, then we’re much less likely to follow through on what we want to do.
For example, I’ve found that many nights when I’m finally done with all of my responsibilities for the day, I have a hard time choosing an activity to fill the time with and wind down. Should I read a book? Watch a movie? Which one should I watch from the infinite amount of choices on my streaming services? Often, the decision process becomes exhausting and I end up browsing on my phone and wasting time instead of doing something more satisfying. It’s not that I’m incapable of making a choice and focusing on something, but having a distraction machine like my phone within reach makes it too easy to do that instead.
We can re-frame this for many common behavioral challenges. It isn’t “I can’t focus,” it’s “I can’t focus when my phone is next to me.” Not “I can’t resist unhealthy snacks,” but “I can’t help but eat unhealthy snacks when they’re easy to grab.” We can then alter our environment to remove the temptation, like leaving our phone in another room or keeping snacks on another floor of the house where they’re harder to reach.
This is also important because of the role identity plays in shaping our behaviors and habits. How we see ourselves matters because people tend to act in ways that align with their self-concept. When a behavior is tied to identity, it becomes more consistent, internalized, and automatic - for better or for worse. Saying “I can’t focus on anything” internalizes it as a personality trait, but “I can’t focus when my phone is next to me” recognizes the influence of external factors we can control.
That self-talk matters!
How Information is Displayed Impacts Perception
Take a close look at the image below. Are the dots shown 55% blue or 55% red?
Pretty hard to tell, right?
Think of how you’d perceive the same information as a simple probability instead of a visual representation. If a predictive model said the likelihood of an event like an election or sporting event was 55% outcome A vs 45% for outcome B, we’d often view that as a relatively decisive prediction.
However, when represented visually, it’s nearly impossible to tell the difference with the naked eye. It shows that there’s very little functional difference between a 55% or 45% probability - it’s essentially a coin flip. Our mind just views the information differently when shown numerically vs visually.
It’s 55% red, by the way.
Image via Lakshya Jain