Can it be Irrational to prize Rationality? What is Rationality?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melancholia

I am a big fan of Scott Plous's The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making, because not only does it call out cognitive failure modes, but it also suggests remedies.  The book is written in a non-technical style, so uses the conventional language of modes of thought being "Rational" or "Irrational", and "biases" leading to "Irrational" decisions.

I found a blog post "Is postdecisional dissonance functional?" that takes exception to calling "Post-decision dissonance" irrational (post-decisional dissonance is where the self-judged value of a chosen item increases, and the value of a declined item decreases, compared to the self-judged values before the choice is made: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance#Post-decision_dissonance ).

"Is postdecisional dissonance functional?" seems like a yes/no question, but the answer can change from situation to situation.  We can construct a situation where this bias is "Irrational/dysfunctional", or is "Rational/functional".

Example: If postdecisional dissonance is the way that one "stops" the decision process, instead of endlessly revisiting a decision and wasting time and energy, then postdecisional dissonance is functional (this is the point raised by Konrad Talmont-Kaminski).  If postdecisional dissonance keeps you from switching decisions when later you are offered the alternate choice along with a small but real payment, because you deny yourself the additional payment even though the options were judged to be identical in value, postdecisional dissonance is dysfunctional.

Which is the most likely scenario?  What is the cost of a more rigorous and rational analysis?  Different answers from subtle changes to these questions...

All of these biases, because they are manifest in humans today, cannot absolutely prevent reproductive success or success in cultural transmission of ideas, obviously.  So you are on very shaky ground calling these biases non-adaptive.  And if you cannot call them non-adaptive, what is the exact basis for calling them "Irrational/dysfunctional"?

Modeling, instead of using the language of Bias and Rationality and Functionality

George Mason University,
Dept of Statistics,
Gallery of Great Statisticians,
George E. P. Box
http://statistics.gmu.edu/pages/famous.html

That is why it is not always wise to use the culturally defined notion of rationality, or assume an implied sound situationally defined notion of rationality, and why *sometimes* there is benefit to specifically stating:

(1) the failure mode of decision that you are trying to avoid and

(2) how you are modeling the
(2A) cost of falling victim the failure mode and the
(2B) cost of remedy

(3) how you are modeling the likelihood of different scenarios taking place.

And different models will give different answers.  As George E. P. Box says "All models are false but some models are useful."

[Edit 7/29/2010]

Very helpful reply [ http://deisidaimon.wordpress.com/2010/07/25/is-postdecisional-dissonance-functional/#comment-1675] from academic Konrad Talmont-Kaminski, but my profound ignorance prevents me from getting much from it.  I am self-taught exclusively from an engineer's perspective of decision making from Decision Analysis texts [ term coined in 1964 by Ronald A. Howard ].

I fixed the post above, to add

1) specific examples as to how postdecisional dissonance can be functional or dysfunctional,

2) why one is unjustified to call manifest biases non-adaptive, and

3) the need to model the likelihood of different situations arising, or else the the analysis is nonsensical.

[Edit #2 7/29/2010]


Konrad Talmont-Kaminski recommends the writings of Herbert Simon, Nobel Prize winner in Economics 1978.

Avoiding committing Cognitive Biases, not merely identifying them

Via Boing Boing, via The Quantified Self, from the Royal Society of Account Planning:

[A] visual study guide to cognitive biases (defined as "psychological tendencies that cause the human brain to draw incorrect conclusions). It includes descriptions of 19 social biases, 8 memory biases, 42 decision-making biases, and 36 probability / belief biases.

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/19/a-visual-study-guide.html
http://www.kk.org/quantifiedself/2010/05/a-visual-guide-to-cognitive-bi.php

Very nice to categorize all these cognitive failure modes, but just knowing about these biases does nothing to prevent one from indulging in them.

For example, Ian Plimer called out those who denied evolution, but now practices the most shabby form of global warming denialism, using exactly the same shabby techniques of the creationists he previously battled.

http://watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/ian-plimer-caught-out-again-co2-is-magic-argument-continues-to-lie-about-volcanoes/

There is the very nice (and surprisingly thin and readable) _The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making_ by Scott Plous.  Very nice feature of the book is that after identifying each bias, Plous gives the research on effective techniques to avoid committing those biases in your own thinking.

http://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Judgment-Decision-Making/dp/0070504776

[Edit 06/01/10]

More here:

Steve Easterbrook - Serendipity: Another cognitive bug: Attempting to correct a misperception often reinforces it

I’m fascinated by the cognitive biases that affect people’s perceptions of climate change. I’ve previously written about the Dunning-Kruger effect (the least competent people tend to vastly over-rate their competence), and Kahan and Braman’s studies on social epistemology (people tend to ignore empirical evidence if its conclusions contradict their existing worldview).

...

[F]actual corrections in newspaper articles don’t appear to work for those who are ideologically motivated to hold the misperception, and in two out of the four studies, it actually strengthened the misperception. So, fact-checking on its own is not enough to overcome ideologically-driven beliefs.

Maybe the press handling climate disruption as "he said/she said" is actually doing science a favor by not laying out the scientific case.

Don't start group discussions by sharing initial preferences

Flickr StreetFly JZ
http://www.flickr.com/photos/streetfly_jz/2764158005/

Don't start group discussions by sharing initial preferences

British Psychological Society's Research Digest blog

http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2010/04/dont-start-group-discussions-by-sharing.html

When groups of people get together to make decisions, they often struggle to fulfil their potential. Part of the reason is that they tend to spend more time talking about information that everyone shares rather than learning fresh insights from each other. In a forthcoming paper, Andreas Mojzisch and Stefan Schulz-Hardt have uncovered a new reason groups so often make sub-optimal decisions. The researchers show that when a group of people begin a discussion by sharing their initial preferences, they subsequently devote less attention to the information brought to the table by each member, thus leading the group to fail to reach the optimal decision. The practical implications are clear - if you can, avoid beginning group decision-making sessions with the exchange of members' initial preferences.

I personally don't think groups should meet until they write up their own views in advance. I will strive to focus on the task of "devoting attention to the information brought to the table by each member", maybe the output of the first meeting should be nothing more or less than a summary of all the different viewpoints, and a rough ad-hoc synthesis of all the viewpoints into a whole (however inelegant). And "real" work begins at the SECOND meeting, in a manner where nothing can be swept under the rug, meaning no viewpoint can be discarded.

The Backfire Effect

By way of "icebrc" on Google Reader, by way of Larry Moran; nice write-up in Mother Jones, by Kevin Drum [ http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/09/backfire-effect ]

When Corrections Fail: The persistence of political misperceptions Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler http://www.duke.edu/~bjn3/nyhan-reifler.pdf

Larry Moran:

Can factual information change people's minds? Most people assume the answer is "yes." After all, if people believe something that isn't true then exposing them to the truth should cause them to abandon their beliefs, right?

Image via Wikipedia

Wrong. There's plenty of evidence that life is much more complicated. An interesting posting on MotherJones.com entitled The Backfire Effect, alerts us to a study suggesting that knowledge may even have the opposite effect to what you expect. ... The authors review the literature and conclude that substantial numbers of people are quite resistant to facts when they hold strong opinions. Surprisingly, some people actually become more convinced they are right after hearing facts that contradict their belief. This phenomenon [is] called "The Backlash Effect"...

This suggests to me that rationality, free will, choice, consciousness, self-knowledge, etc. demand that people use techniques to counter-act bias and failure-modes of human thought.