Think Again
Table of contents
- first-instinct fallacy - most test takers change answers from wrong to right, but the ones that you change from right to wrong loom larger in the memory, leading to the perception that your first instinct is more often right
- seizing and freezing - we prefer comfort of conviction to the discomfort of doubt – sticking to our guns
Individual Rethinking
Four Modes of Thinking
- preacher - when our sacred beliefs are in jeopardy: we deliver sermons to protect and promote our ideals
- prosecutor - when we recognize flaws in other people’s reasoning: we marshal arguments to prove them wrong and win our case
- politician - politician mode when we’re seeking to win over an audience: we campaign and lobby for the approval of our constituents
- scientist - when we’re searching for the truth: we run experiments to test hypotheses and discover knowledge
- confirmation bias - we see what we expect to see
- desirability bias - we see what we want to see
- rethinking goes in a cycle, starting with intellectual humility, then doubt from our shortcomings, curiosity to fill in those gaps, then finally discovery of missing knowledge Anton’s syndrome - deficit of self-awareness where a person is oblivious to a physical disability but otherwise is cognitively fine
- armchair quarterback vs impostor syndrome – an over-abundance of confidence vs. a lack of it
- impostor syndrome can force us to work harder, smarter, and make us better learners
- Dunning-Kruger effect - when we lack competence we tend to brim with overconfidence
The most effective leaders score high in both confidence and humility. Although they have faith in their strengths, they’re also keenly aware of their weaknesses. They know they need to recognize and transcend their limits if they want to push the limits of greatness. (48)
- Murray Davis paper That’s Interesting argues that ideas survive because they are interesting
- totalitarian ego - keeps out threatening information to identity
- How much rethinking is necessary? – superforecasters changed their assessments of probability ~4 times compared to 2 for average forecasters
Two Types of Conflict
- relationship conflict - personal, emotional clashes that are often filled with animosity
- task conflict - clashes about ideas and opinions
- Many successful teams have task conflict, want to avoid relationship conflict
HIPPO - Highest Paid Person’s Opinion
Experiments show that simply framing a dispute as a debate rather than as a disagreement signals that you’re receptive to considering dissenting opinions and changing your mind, which in turn motivates the other person to share more information with you. A disagreement feels personal and potentially hostile; we expect a debate to be about ideas, not emotions. Starting a disagreement by asking, “Can we debate?” sends a message that you want to think like a scientist, not a preacher or a prosecutor—and encourages the other person to think that way, too. (91)
Interpersonal Rethinking
- How can we convince others?
- many weak arguments dilute the strength of a single strong argument
We can demonstrate openness by acknowledging where we agree with our critics and even what we’ve learned from them. Then, when we ask what views they might be willing to revise, we’re not hypocrites.
There are times when preaching and prosecuting can make us more persuasive. Research suggests that the effectiveness of these approaches hinges on three key factors: how much people care about the issue, how open they are to our particular argument, and how strong-willed they are in general. If they’re not invested in the issue or they’re receptive to our perspective, more reasons can help: people tend to see quantity as a sign of quality. The more the topic matters to them, the more the quality of reasons matters. It’s when audiences are skeptical of our view, have a stake in the issue, and tend to be stubborn that piling on justifications is most likely to backfire. If they’re resistant to rethinking, more reasons simply give them more ammunition to shoot our views down. (110)
[t]he person most likely to persuade you to change your mind is you. (113)
What expert negotiators do - Rackham’s Study
- map out areas of agreement
- present fewer, but stronger arguments
- avoid defend-attack spirals
- ask more questions rather than declarative statements
- comment on feelings of the process and understand other side’s feelings
Paul Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement
- important to get folks to think about arbitrariness of their animosity – not positive qualities of rivals, to change minds
As a general rule, it’s those with greater power who need to do more of the rethinking, both because they’re more likely to privilege their own perspectives and because their perspectives are more likely to go unquestioned. In most cases, the oppressed and marginalized have already done a great deal of contortion to fit in. (140)
motivational interviewing
starts with an attitude of humility and curiosity, involves three key techniques:
- ask open-ended questions
- engage in reflective listening
- affirm the person’s desire and ability to change
- sustain talk - commentary about maintaining the status quo
- change talk - referencing a desire, ability, need, or commitment to make adjustments
Many communicators try to make themselves look smart. Great listeners are more interested in making their audiences feel smart. (158)
- inverse charisma - a way of describing a great listener
Collective Rethinking
- binary bias - basic human tendency to seek clarity and closure by simplifying a complex continuum into two categories – an antidote is complexifying
- when you force someone on the fence to make a decision, the emotional, political, and economic pressures tilt in favor of disengaging or dismissing a problem
fact-checker guidance:
- interrogate information instead of simply consuming it
- reject rank and popularity as a proxy for reliability
- understand that the sender of information is not always its source
learning cultures
- essential to establish accountability and psychological safety
- key question: “How do you know?”
- need to build accountability for teams to think past just results, as that incentivizes confidence in bad strategy and maintaining status quo
[C]hanging the culture of a team is more feasible. It starts with modeling the values we want to promote, identifying and praising others who exemplify them, and building a coalition of colleagues who are committed to making the change. (212)
- escalation of commitment - when we double down on resource commitment to a project or plan that is not going well – “ah, I just need to work harder!”
- identity foreclosure - settle prematurely on a sense of self without enough due diligence and close our mind to alternative selves
FDR quote – “the country demands bold, persistent experimentation”. Love this, should use it.
Two Key Takeaways
- Four methods of thinking and communication: preacher, prosecutor, politician, and scientist. Useful heuristic for the way we approach our external communication and how we keep open minds. Confirmation bias is real and affects even those who spend their lives thinking about it, so maintaining scientific thinking, complete with the rigor of hypothesis-experiment-adjust-repeat loops, is essential to learning.
- Ask much more frequently, how do you know that? Also, this concept of motivational interviewing, which is similar to deep canvassing and seems to have similar methodologies and results. Use the tenets when
Brief Thoughts
Rating: 7/10 Self-help books fall along a gradient of scientific rigor. Fortunately, Think Again makes its case for rethinking by bolstering its argument with studies, presented as evidence rather than justification, and strips out the simplistic geometric images of most self-help books that, although make good slideshow presentations for selling a consultancy framework, often deceive or over-simplify. Grant takes your time more seriously (although he doesn’t take himself too seriously, peppering the book with humorous comics and images). The book is a compelling toolset for personal rethinking, although there might’ve been some room to more thoroughly declare an epistemology and especially how that is tied up with our identities.