EA Efficacy and Community Norms (with Stefan Schubert)
Spencer Greenberg and psychologist Richard Nisbett discuss the unconscious mind's influence on behavior, the impact of environment on intelligence, the pitfalls of interviews, and the proper use of cost-benefit analysis.
Deep Dive Analysis
15 Topic Outline
The Unconscious Mind and Cognitive Processes
Misattributing Arousal and Fabricating Explanations
Leveraging the Unconscious Mind for Better Decisions
The Interplay of Intuition and Conscious Reflection
Revisiting the Heritability of Intelligence
Environmental Factors and IQ Development
Addressing the Black-White IQ Gap
Impact of Early Childhood Programs on Intelligence
The Law of Large Numbers and Evidence Variability
The Limited Value of Job Interviews
Structured Interviews and Expert Assessment
Underusing Cost-Benefit Analysis (COVID Example)
The Sunk Cost Principle and Its Applications
When Not to Overuse Cost-Benefit (Marriage Example)
Combining Skepticism and Support for New Ideas
6 Key Concepts
Lack of Access to Cognitive Processes
People are often unaware of the actual mental processes that lead to their judgments and behaviors, instead fabricating plausible but often incorrect explanations after the fact. This applies to perception, memory, and complex decision-making, where we act as external observers of our own behavior.
Misattribution of Arousal
Individuals can mistakenly attribute physiological arousal (e.g., increased heart rate, faster breathing) to an incorrect source, leading to altered emotional experiences or behaviors. This phenomenon shows that our conscious explanations for our feelings can be incorrect, as demonstrated by placebo experiments.
Law of Large Numbers (in judgment)
The accuracy of a judgment or problem solution improves with the amount of evidence it's based on. The importance of the amount of evidence is a function of the variability of the thing being judged; highly variable phenomena require more evidence for accurate assessment.
Heritability of IQ
The proportion of IQ variation in a population attributable to genetic factors. Its calculation is highly sensitive to environmental variability; in uniform environments, heritability appears high, but in diverse environments, environmental factors play a much larger role.
Sunk Cost Principle
A decision-making rule stating that past investments (time, money, effort) that cannot be recovered should not influence future decisions. Continuing a project or activity solely to justify previous unrecoverable costs is an irrational error, as the money is already gone.
Duffer Strategy (Chess)
The initial, often blind and rule-less, approach taken by beginners in complex tasks like chess. Over time, explicit rules are learned, but eventually, expertise leads to unconscious, automatic application of strategies, making it difficult for experts to articulate their processes.
7 Questions Answered
We are largely oblivious to the actual cognitive processes that lead to our thoughts and behaviors, often fabricating explanations after the fact rather than having direct insight into why we did or felt something.
Yes, the unconscious mind excels at certain tasks, such as aesthetic judgments, creative problem-solving, and complex pattern recognition, often performing better than conscious deliberation in these areas, especially when conscious verbalization can bollocks judgment.
While genes play a role, the impact of environment is hugely important, especially in early life. For lower socioeconomic status individuals, environmental factors are far more influential on IQ than genetics, whereas for upper-middle-class families, heritability appears higher due to more uniform environments.
High-quality pre-kindergarten programs can lead to significant long-term benefits, including higher IQs, increased high school graduation rates, greater college attendance, and reduced reliance on welfare, with some effects lasting into adolescence and beyond.
Standard 30-minute 'get acquainted' job interviews are largely worthless for predicting intellectual or social skills relevant to most jobs, often having a correlation of 0.10 or less with actual performance, and can introduce bias.
You should ignore sunk costs when deciding whether to continue an activity or project, as money, time, or energy already spent cannot be recovered, and factoring them into future decisions can lead to irrational choices that prolong suffering.
While generally irrational, intentionally leveraging the sunk cost principle (e.g., paying for a gym membership or services in advance) can serve as a pre-commitment mechanism to motivate desired behaviors, even if the money is technically already spent.
24 Actionable Insights
1. Invest in High-Quality Pre-K
Support and implement high-quality pre-kindergarten programs, as they yield massive long-term benefits in educational attainment, economic stability, and overall societal well-being, with a significant financial return on investment.
2. De-emphasize Standard Interviews
Avoid using typical 30-minute ‘get acquainted’ interviews for hiring or admissions, as they are largely worthless for predicting intellectual or social skills and can lead to poor judgment.
3. Prioritize Application Folders
When evaluating candidates, give significant weight to application folders containing GPA, recommendations, and specific accomplishments, as this evidence is a much better predictor of future performance than standard interviews.
4. Avoid Sunk Cost Fallacy
Do not continue a project or activity merely to justify past investments of time, money, or energy, as these ‘sunk costs’ are irrecoverable regardless of future action.
5. Alternate Conscious and Unconscious Thought
For complex problems, alternate between letting your subconscious mull over ideas and consciously evaluating those ideas, using both modes of thought as complementary tools.
6. Override Sunk Cost in Relationships
Do not apply the sunk cost principle rigidly to long-term relationships like marriage, as periods of unhappiness are normal, and commitment can help navigate ‘periods of unlove’ for future benefit, especially with children involved.
7. Conduct Explicit Cost-Benefit Analysis
Apply explicit cost-benefit analysis to major decisions, especially those with widespread societal impact (like public health policies), to thoroughly weigh all potential positive and negative outcomes.
8. Recognize Environmental Impact on IQ
Understand that environmental factors significantly influence IQ, especially in diverse or deprived settings, meaning interventions can profoundly affect intellectual development.
9. Trust Your Gut for Preferences
For aesthetic or preference judgments, rely on your gut feeling and unobserved processes, as conscious verbal analysis can sometimes lead to worse decisions.
10. Implement Structured Interviews
If interviews are necessary, use a highly structured format where questions are specified and asked in a precise order, as this approach can yield predictive information for specific roles.
11. Assess Variability for Evidence Needs
When making a judgment, consider the inherent variability of the subject matter; highly variable things (like weather) require much more evidence than stable things (like chemical properties).
12. Start Projects Early
Begin working on complex tasks, like term papers, as early as possible to allow your unconscious mind to process information and generate ideas over time.
13. Sleep on Difficult Problems
When stuck on a challenging problem, take a break and sleep on it, as the unconscious mind can continue working and often provides solutions upon waking.
14. Encourage Conversational Interaction
Engage in ‘serve and return’ conversations with children, where questions are asked and elaborated upon, as this interactive dialogue is a powerful context for learning and vocabulary expansion.
15. Foster Explicit Rule-Following
Engage children in activities that involve explicit rule-following, like board games with detailed instructions or cooking with recipes, to create a context for structured learning and intellectual growth.
16. Prioritize More Evidence
Base judgments and problem solutions on as much evidence as possible, recognizing that a greater quantity of evidence generally leads to more accurate outcomes, assuming quality is equal.
17. Refine Intuition with Reflection
When making decisions, allow your intuition to quickly identify promising options, then use conscious reflection to critically evaluate and narrow down those choices.
18. Acknowledge Unconscious Influence
Recognize that many important behaviors and thoughts are driven by unconscious processes, as merely knowing this can be useful.
19. Leverage Sunk Costs for Motivation
Intentionally create sunk costs (e.g., paying for a gym membership in advance) to motivate yourself to follow through on beneficial activities, even if it’s a known psychological ’trick’.
20. Use Interviews for Relevant Social Skills
Employ brief interviews specifically to assess social skills when those skills are directly relevant and crucial to the job’s performance, such as for a charismatic salesperson or a cocktail waitress.
21. Seek Trusted Book Recommendations
To avoid wasting time on potentially uninteresting books, only read those that have been personally recommended by someone you trust and who has read the book.
22. Embrace Learning Stages
Understand that learning often progresses from initial poor intuitions, to explicit strategies, and finally to intuitive mastery, allowing you to discard formal rules once they become automatic.
23. Acknowledge Interview Bias
Be aware that unstructured interviews can introduce socially injurious biases based on race, ethnicity, or cultural unfamiliarity, leading to unfair and inaccurate hiring decisions.
24. Be Aware of Mimicry Bias
Understand that unconscious mimicry of behavior can unfairly increase liking for an interviewee, potentially leading to biased hiring decisions unrelated to job qualifications.
6 Key Quotes
I don't have access to my conscious processes.
Richard Nisbet
The work is done by an unconscious process.
Brewster Gieselin
The proper time to begin working on a term paper is the first day of class. You'd be surprised how much work gets done.
Richard Nisbet
The 30-minute interview is worthless for predicting anything anybody ever tried to predict about them that involves intellectual matters or social skills or whatever. So the correlation is 0.10 or less...
Richard Nisbet
You shouldn't do anything because it will justify costs in terms of time, energy, money that have already been spent because you can't get those back by anything you do.
Richard Nisbet
Marriage is a way to get over the periods of unlove.
Richard Nisbet
1 Protocols
Structured Interview Protocol (for Military Officers)
Danny Kahneman- Specify all questions in advance.
- The interviewer must ask the questions exactly as they are stated.
- The interviewer must ask the questions in the specified order.