What if I told you that - I am a forty something male, who
enjoys films, believes in freedom of thought and the reasoning of mankind and I
instinctively disliked the Nobel Prize winning, best selling book, Thinking Fast
and Slow by Daniel Kahneman?
Which of the following two alternatives is more
probable?
1. I work in advertising.
2. I work in advertising and I
dislike modern planner’s strategic hyperbole.
All will be revealed.
Why is the advertising industry
jumping on today’s fashionable thinking that human behaviour is without reason?
That a brand’s advertising should solely illicit emotions from it’s viewers, as
people buy on feelings alone? When didn’t advertising jump on a bandwagon, you
may well ask.
The idea today that human
behaviour is fated is fashionable again in modern societies. Just like it was
for the Roman or Greek philosophers where the Gods controlled their world. We
were all in their hands.
Today, instead of the Gods, more
sophisticated arguments to prove ‘determinism’ (which is a less dogmatic sounding word than fate) are put forward by cognitive scientists, behaviourists, neuroscientists (and
brand planners). In fact stick neuro in front of any word today and you’ll get
heads nodding In agreement. Neuro-planners anyone?
Their list of biases (list bias
included) that determine human behaviour grows everyday. Apparently we don’t make decisions with
reason. Daniel Kahneman, similarly to Plato with his reason v emotions, points out our brain has two system for
thinking about decisions. System 1
is lazy, instinctive and prone to error, and although system 2 is more reasoning, it is slow and hard graft, burning up energy faster than Lewis Hamilton's Formula One car.
So system 2 just post
rationalises system 1's instinctive knee jerk feelings. The problem is that system 1 is poor at making choices, as
it bases decisions on gut-feelings,
inferring cause and effect where there is none. So system 2 just
confirms the instinctive decision of system 1. Or at least so it goes.
Of course there aren’t really
two systems in the brain but many, as Kahneman states at the beginning of his book. Although, like any film with an opening scene of the protagonist going to
sleep as the film ploughs along, we forget about that part till the end nears.
Then we are finally reminded that it was all just a dream. But with Kahmann
there is no such reminder that, far from their being two systems, there are many, containing billions of neural pathways.
In fact, dividing the brain up at
all can be misleading. Very little is really understood about the brain, what with it being the
most complex thing in the known universe. But we’ll get there I am sure (using
science and reason, noticeably).
Like the cinematic trick I think
at times Kahneman is a tad of a trickster too. He has started with a theory as all
good scientist do and then tried to find the data. As Darwin noted he had the
theory framework, he now needed the data. The data proved his theory right.
Some scientists refuse to admit
they work like this, but they do. You have to start somewhere. Richard Feynman
was crystal clear on this - you start with an idea / hypothesis, then you try
and prove it. If you can’t prove it, it’s wrong. But that was physics and this is social science which is a
more slippery fish.
As Kahneman will tell you, people
don’t like being wrong, so guess what they do? They make their theories fit,
especially in social behaviour studies. You can fiddle to make anything fit near enough. Especially when it fits
to fashionable thinking. Is Kahneman prone to a confirmation bias? Makes you
think, doesn’t it?
One way to prove that people are
a bit thick is to give them trick questions. You probably know the sort. Kahneman specialises in them.
One of his classic well-discussed problems is called ‘The Linda Problem’ that goes a bit like this:
Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very
bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with
issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in
anti-nuclear demonstrations.
Which of the following two alternatives is more
probable?
1. Linda is a bank teller.
2. Linda is a bank teller and active in the feminist
movement.
Rationally, statement 2 cannot be more likely than
statement 1, as 2 is a subset of 1, but 85 percent of respondents said that it was.
Kahneman argues that in making this kind of judgment
we seek the closest resemblance between causes and effects (here, between
Linda’s personality and her behavior), rather than calculating probability, and
that this makes statement 2 seem preferable. It’s called a ‘conjunction
fallacy’.
There are loads of versions of
this problem touting conjunction fallacy. Today people never grow tired of
showing how clever they are by showing how dumb others are. If there is a kick to be had today
pointing out human biases forms the basis of it.
And as everyone in planning
departments knows, people are FAPS (thick as pig shit) and this be proof, if
proof be need be. If they can prove that clients and their customer are dumb
they win. Kerching.
Back to the the Linda problem, I
instinctively knew it was designed to trick. All I had to do now was to find the data.
The problem is actually a wording issue. The word
probable means something different in everyday language compared to
mathematically speaking.
So the answer is to reframe the
Linda problem so it is easier to answer:
Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very
bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with
issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in
anti-nuclear demonstrations.
There are 100 people who fit the
description above. How many of them are:
1. Bank tellers
2. Bank tellers and active in the feminist movement too
Guess what happens to the
results? Yep, the conjunction fallacy disappears – far more participants now
choose 1. (90%) over 2.
This would be a better lesson to
learn for the advertising industry, clarity of communication counts, rather than
people’s lack of reason or their stupidity.
Although me reframing the
problem may not be necessary, because guess what, you have learned the trick
and so you will be unlikely to fall for it again.
Other problems that Kahneman sets
are similarly problematic, rather than proving that we are dumb and
unreasoning. Some show that we don’t have a firm grasp of probability for
example. Nothing that a few rounds
of playing poker wouldn’t solve I reckon.
The problems posed in Thinking,
Fast and Slow are often not in understandable terms. Needing a firm grasp of
maths at times, more than anything else. Yet, instead they infer we
act on system 1’s instincts that lead to bad decisions being made.
The problem with tricks,
including those used in advertising, is that they don't last long. Once the audience knows them, it’s game over.
Remember the two parallel lines
that look different lengths but aren’t? Did you fall for that a second time? Even when
the optical illusion endures, you now know they’re not the same length, so your reason over-rules system 1.
Or guessing which is the heaviest
a kilo of gold or a kilo of feathers, did you fall for that twice? What about, would you rather, run a
mile, jump a stile or eat a country pancake?
My point is that far from being
dumb we learn from our mistakes. Trick me once, fool on me, trick me twice, go
on then. Three times, what is the matter with you?
If you want to prove people are
gullible go for it, you’ll have no end of successes, but so what? What next?
“Hey look your laces are undone.”
“No they’re not.”
“Tricked yer.”
“Blimey, you’re tedious.”
People will stop trusting you
- that is what the end result will
be.
This is of interest to
advertising. Tricks don’t last long because they get revealed. People don’t like being tricked by
advertising, eventually it erodes trust. And trust in a brand, and what it says, is important.
The question in advertising
should be, what do viewers want to get out of advertising?
If your advertising is tricksy, for example playing on people’s emotions in irrelevant ways, once people find
out your trick they rebel, kick back and shame you with your disingenuous
intents, and so trust is broken.
This is why advertising that
solely targets people’s emotions will have its day. Its intentions are unworthy
and far from being informative and entertaining, it is manipulative and verging
on a confidence trick.
And as people learn what purely
emotional advertising is doing, far from getting them to love your brand, they’ll despise it. “How dare you”. they’ll say “Who are you to say you sponsor
our Mums (
P&G), or to help us Find True Happiness (
Coke) or broker World
Peace Day (
Unilever)? You’re as a probable moral agency of change as
David Hasselhoff.”
However, not all is lost,
because these companies are pretty good at inventing nifty products.
How about they crack on and create great
products? We’ll buy them if they
fit into our lives and you give us a reason to buy. Albeit demonstrated entertainingly or charmingly as ads trip
into our living rooms during half-time or before I watch a film at the cinema, or
in between the pages of my newspaper, quid pro quo.
If I want to find your products
make sure I can find you on google, if you sell your wares online. But don’t
follow me around with your online ads you weirdos. That’s just creepy and we hate you for it, start learning, because we are.
In closing, we all make mistakes,
we all have our shortcomings, we are neither robotic or zombies. But reason is central to progress and
learning. And even if you disagree with me you’re going to have to use
reasoning to do it. You can't put
together a solely emotional argument and if you do you lose, remember when you
lost your cool in that pub chat, you lost right there.
As to my initial Linda style
problem at the beginning, what do you reckon, am I answer 1. Or 2?
I think you should have a bit of
trust in your own reasoning, and that is a good place to start. Then you’ll find
it easier to trust in others. So what if you are wrong now and then, I just called out a Nobel Prize winner, what
do you think the probability of me being right is?
