Your gut feels just as sure when it's wrong
Oct 9
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Five names on the whiteboard. One of them will lead the new customer project. Before anyone has said a word, you circle Jonas. He is easy to talk to. Clients like him. Two of the others have better results on paper. Nobody asks why it's Jonas. You don't ask either.
Early in his career, the psychologist Daniel Kahneman helped choose candidates for leadership training. He and his colleagues watched groups of eight carry a long log over a high wall. They could see who took charge and who held back. One hour on a field turned into a story about a whole career. They felt sure who would make a good leader.
Months later the results came back from the training. Their predictions were barely better than blind guesses. With the next group, they felt just as sure again. I think we all trust our gut far too much.
Early in his career, the psychologist Daniel Kahneman helped choose candidates for leadership training. He and his colleagues watched groups of eight carry a long log over a high wall. They could see who took charge and who held back. One hour on a field turned into a story about a whole career. They felt sure who would make a good leader.
Months later the results came back from the training. Their predictions were barely better than blind guesses. With the next group, they felt just as sure again. I think we all trust our gut far too much.
The fast answer and the slow one
Kahneman later described two ways the brain thinks. System 1 is fast and automatic. It reads a face, a tone and a way of speaking. Then it hands you an answer in a second. System 2 is slow. It weighs, compares and checks.
Kahneman later described two ways the brain thinks. System 1 is fast and automatic. It reads a face, a tone and a way of speaking. Then it hands you an answer in a second. System 2 is slow. It weighs, compares and checks.
The slow thinker sits at the front of the brain, in the prefrontal cortex. I usually call her Corty. She is the decision maker, the one who can stop and ask whether the fast answer is right.
But Corty gets tired easily. Careful thinking takes a lot of energy. So the brain saves her for when she's needed. Most of the day, System 1 runs the show. Corty steps in when something feels wrong.
And the familiar never feels wrong. System 1 looks for what it already knows. What we know feels safe. So the answer comes with a feeling of being sure. That feeling is what we call gut feeling. It is just as strong when the gut is wrong. On a full day Corty is busy elsewhere. She glances at the answer. It looks fine. She waves it through.
Why the gut gets people wrong
The gut can be right. But only where it gets to learn from its mistakes. A nurse who has seen thousands of patients can sense trouble before the tests show it. She finds out within hours, one patient at a time, whether she was right.
The gut can be right. But only where it gets to learn from its mistakes. A nurse who has seen thousands of patients can sense trouble before the tests show it. She finds out within hours, one patient at a time, whether she was right.
Kahneman's team got their answer months later, as a table of numbers. That is too slow and too far away for the gut to learn from. So it stayed just as sure. It is the same with Jonas. A year later the project went well, or it didn't. You can't tell if it was him.
Two well-known biases make it worse. In my book I write about ingroup bias. We see people who are like us as a little better and a little more trustworthy. The other is confirmation bias. Once you've decided Jonas is good with people, you notice everything that proves it. You miss what doesn't.
Write down the reason before you decide
First, notice when it's your gut deciding. The sign is speed. If you knew the answer before anyone spoke, it came from System 1. So did any reason that sounds like a feeling. Easy to talk to. Good fit. Feels right. Write that reason down in one sentence. Then look at it. Does it say what the person can do?
Then do what Kahneman did next. He had interviewers rate six traits, one at a time. Only after that could they close their eyes and give their gut feeling. This time the gut feeling predicted well. So wipe the circle off the whiteboard. Write down two or three things the job needs. Go through every name, one thing at a time. Then let your gut have its say. If Jonas still wins, good. Now you have a reason you can explain.
The gut will keep handing you fast answers. On most days that is exactly what you need. But in decisions about people, it mostly tells you who feels familiar.
The gut will keep handing you fast answers. On most days that is exactly what you need. But in decisions about people, it mostly tells you who feels familiar.
Think of the last person you picked because it just felt right. What would you have written on the paper?
/ Maria