{"id":6,"date":"2023-08-30T14:58:59","date_gmt":"2023-08-30T18:58:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/?p=6"},"modified":"2023-09-07T11:49:27","modified_gmt":"2023-09-07T15:49:27","slug":"psychology-of-human-misjudgment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/","title":{"rendered":"The Psychology of Human Misjudgment lecture by Charlie Munger"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Charlie Munger \u2014 the billionaire investor and a business partner of Warren Buffett \u2014 gave a speech titled \u201cThe Psychology of Human Misjudgment\u201d at Harvard University in June 1995. In it, he talks about the many cognitive hurdles that cause people to make poor judgments in investing, business, and life.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Since then, the speech has gained a large audience among investors and psychology enthusiasts and has brought Munger many devout fans.<\/p>\r\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Here\u2019s a full transcript of the speech, sorted under appropriate subheads in order to make it more navigable.<\/p>\r\n<p><strong>Estimated reading time<\/strong>: 52 mins (~10,500 words)<\/p>\r\n<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_79 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-grey ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<div class=\"ez-toc-title-container\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<span class=\"ez-toc-title-toggle\"><a href=\"#\" class=\"ez-toc-pull-right ez-toc-btn ez-toc-btn-xs ez-toc-btn-default ez-toc-toggle\" aria-label=\"Toggle Table of Content\"><span class=\"ez-toc-js-icon-con\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 eztoc-toggle-hide-by-default' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#The_Psychology_of_Human_Misjudgment_transcript\" >The Psychology of Human Misjudgment (transcript)<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#24_Standard_causes_of_human_misjudgment\" >24 Standard causes of human misjudgment<\/a><ul class='ez-toc-list-level-3' ><li class='ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#1st_Cause_Under_recognition_of_reinforcement_and_incentives\" >1st Cause:\u00a0Under recognition of reinforcement and incentives<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-4\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#2nd_Cause_Psychological_denial\" >2nd Cause: Psychological denial<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-5\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#3rd_Cause_Incentive-cause_bias\" >3rd Cause: Incentive-cause bias<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-6\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#4th_5th_Cause_Bias_from_consistency_and_commitment_tendency\" >4th &amp; 5th Cause: Bias from consistency and commitment tendency<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-7\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#6th_Cause_Bias_from_Pavlovian_association\" >6th Cause: Bias from Pavlovian association<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-8\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#7th_Cause_Bias_from_reciprocation_tendency\" >7th Cause: Bias from reciprocation tendency<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-9\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#8th_Cause_Bias_from_over-influence_by_social_proof\" >8th Cause: Bias from over-influence by social proof<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-10\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#9th_Cause_Bias_from_contrast_caused_distortions_of_sensation_perception_and_cognition\" >9th Cause: Bias from contrast caused distortions of sensation, perception, and cognition<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-11\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#10th_Cause_Bias_from_over-influence_by_authority\" >10th Cause: Bias from over-influence by authority<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-12\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#11th_Cause_Bias_from_deprival_super_reaction_syndrome\" >11th Cause: Bias from deprival super reaction syndrome<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-13\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#12th_Cause_Bias_from_envy_jealousy\" >12th Cause: Bias from envy &amp; jealousy<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-14\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#13th_Cause_Bias_from_chemical_dependency\" >13th Cause: Bias from chemical dependency<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-15\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#14th_Cause_Bias_from_gambling_compulsion\" >14th Cause: Bias from gambling compulsion<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-16\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#15th_Cause_Bias_from_liking_distortion\" >15th Cause: Bias from liking distortion<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-17\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#16th_Cause_Bias_from_disliking_distortion\" >16th Cause: Bias from disliking distortion<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-18\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#17th_Cause_Bias_from_the_non-mathematical_nature_of_the_human_brain\" >17th Cause: Bias from the non-mathematical nature of the human brain<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-19\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#19th_Cause_Bias_from_over-influence_by_extra_vivid_evidence\" >19th Cause: Bias from over-influence by extra vivid evidence<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-20\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#20th_Cause_Mental_confusion_caused_by_information_not_arrayed_in_the_mind_and_theory_structures\" >20th Cause: Mental confusion caused by information not arrayed in the mind and theory structures<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-21\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#21st_Cause_Other_normal_limitations_of_sensation_memory_cognition_and_knowledge\" >21st Cause: Other normal limitations of sensation, memory, cognition, and knowledge<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-22\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#22nd_Cause_Stress-induced_mental_changes\" >22nd Cause: Stress-induced mental changes<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-23\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#23rd_Cause_Other_common_mental_illnesses_and_declines\" >23rd Cause: Other common mental illnesses and declines<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-24\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#24th_Cause_Mental_and_organizational_confusion_from_the_say-something_syndrome\" >24th Cause: Mental and organizational confusion from the say-something syndrome<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-25\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#Points_to_Consider\" >Points to Consider<\/a><ul class='ez-toc-list-level-3' ><li class='ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-26\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#1_Combining_the_effects\" >1. Combining the effects<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-27\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#2_Overlap\" >2. Overlap<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-28\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#3_Practical_Applications\" >3. Practical Applications<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-29\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#4_Special_Knowledge_Problems\" >4. Special Knowledge Problems<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-30\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#5_Psychology_Economics\" >5. Psychology &amp; Economics<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-31\" href=\"https:\/\/fallaciesoflogic.com\/de\/psychology-of-human-misjudgment\/#6_Educational_System\" >6. Educational System<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p><iframe title=\"Charlie Munger: The Psychology of Human Misjudgment (1995 Speach)\" width=\"1200\" height=\"900\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RhwsEs6JmOY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"The_Psychology_of_Human_Misjudgment_transcript\"><\/span>The Psychology of Human Misjudgment (transcript)<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\r\n<p>I am very interested in the subject of human misjudgment, and Lord knows I\u2019ve created a good bit of it. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve created my full statistical share, and I think that one of the reasons was I tried to do something about this terrible ignorance I left Harvard Law School with.<\/p>\r\n<p>When I saw this pattern of irrationality, which was so extreme. I had no fear or anything to deal with it, but I could see that it was extreme. And I could see that it was a pattern. I just started to create my own system of psychology &#8211; partly by casual reading, but lately from personal experience. And I used that pattern to help me get through life.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Fairly late in life, I stumbled into this <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Influence-New-Expanded-Psychology-Persuasion\/dp\/0062937650?ref=think-us-20\">book, &#8220;Influence&#8221; by a psychologist named Bob Cialdini<\/a>, who became a super-tenured hotshot on a 2,000-person faculty at a very young age. And he wrote this book, which has now sold 300 odd thousand copies, which is remarkable for somebody. Well, it\u2019s an academic book aimed at a popular audience that filled in a lot of holes in my crude system. When those holes had filled in, I thought I had a system that was a good working tool, and I\u2019d like to share that one with you.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>And I came here because of behavioral economics. How could economics not be behavioral? If it isn\u2019t behavioral, what the hell is it? And I think it\u2019s fairly clear that all reality has to respect all other reality. If you come to inconsistencies, they have to be resolved, and so if there\u2019s anything valid in psychology, economics has to recognize it, and vice versa. So I think the people that are working on this fringe between economics and psychology are absolutely right to be there, and I think there\u2019s been plenty wrong over the years.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Well, let me romp through as much of this list as I have time to get through. 24 standard causes of human misjudgment.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"24_Standard_causes_of_human_misjudgment\"><\/span>24 Standard causes of human misjudgment<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"1st_Cause_Under_recognition_of_reinforcement_and_incentives\"><\/span>1st Cause:\u00a0Under recognition of reinforcement and incentives<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>First. Under recognition of the power of what psychologists call reinforcement and economists call incentives. Well, you can say, \u201cEverybody knows that.\u201d Well, I think I\u2019ve been in the top 5% of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives, and all my life I\u2019ve underestimated it. And never a year passes, but I get some surprise that pushes my limit a little farther.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>One of my favorite cases about the power of incentives is the Federal Express case. The heart and soul of the integrity of the system is that all the packages have to be shifted rapidly in one central location each night. And the system has no integrity if the whole shift can\u2019t be done fast. And Federal Express had one hell of a time getting the thing to work. And they tried moral suasion, they tried everything in the world, and finally, somebody got the happy thought that they were paying the night shift by the hour and that maybe if they paid them by the shift, the system would work better. And lo and behold, that solution worked.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Early in the history of Xerox, Joe Wilson, who was then in the government, had to go back to Xerox because he couldn\u2019t understand how their better, new machine was selling so poorly in relation to their older and inferior machine. Of course, when he got there he found out that the commission arrangement with the salesmen gave a tremendous incentive to the inferior machine.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>And here at Harvard, in the shadow of B.F. Skinner, there was a man who really was into reinforcement as a powerful thought, and you know, Skinner\u2019s lost his reputation in a lot of places, but if you were to analyze the entire history of experimental science at Harvard, he\u2019d be in the top handful. His experiments were very ingenious, the results were counterintuitive, and they were important. It is not given to experimental science to do better.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>What gummed up Skinner\u2019s reputation is that he developed a case of what I always call man-with-a-hammer syndrome, to the man with a hammer, every problem tends to look pretty much like a nail. And Skinner had one of the more extreme cases in the history of academia, and this syndrome doesn\u2019t exempt bright people. It\u2019s just a man with a hammer and Skinner is an extreme example of that. And later, as I go down my list, let\u2019s go back and try and figure out why people, like Skinner, get the man-with-a-hammer syndrome.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Incidentally, when I was at the Harvard Law School there was a professor, naturally at Yale, who was derisively discussed at Harvard, and they used to say, \u201cPoor old Blanchard, he thinks declaratory judgments will cure cancer.\u201d And that\u2019s the way Skinner got. And not only that, he was literary, and he scorned opponents who had any different way of thinking or thought anything else was important. This is not a way to make a lasting reputation if the other people turn out to also be doing something important.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"2nd_Cause_Psychological_denial\"><\/span>2nd Cause: Psychological denial<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>My second factor is simple psychological denial. This first really hit me between the eyes when a friend of our family had a super-athlete, super-student son who flew off a carrier in the North Atlantic and never came back, and his mother, who was a very sane woman, just never believed that he was dead.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>And, of course, if you turn on the television, you find the mothers of the most obvious criminals that man could ever diagnose, and they all think their sons are innocent. That\u2019s simple psychological denial. The reality is too painful to bear, so you just distort it until it\u2019s bearable. We all do that to some extent, and it\u2019s a common psychological misjudgment that causes terrible problems.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"3rd_Cause_Incentive-cause_bias\"><\/span>3rd Cause: Incentive-cause bias<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Third: Incentive-cause bias, both in one\u2019s own mind and that of one\u2019s trusted advisor, where it creates what economists call agency costs.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Here, my early experience was a doctor who sent bushel baskets full of normal gallbladders down to the pathology lab in the leading hospital in Lincoln, Nebraska. And with that quality control for which community hospitals are famous, about five years after he should\u2019ve been removed from the staff, he was.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>And one of the old doctors who participated in the removal was also a family friend, and I asked him \u201ctell me, did he think, here\u2019s a way for me to exercise my talents,\u201d this guy was very skilled technically, \u201cand make a high living by doing a few maimings and murders every year, along with some frauds?\u201d And he said, \u201chell no, Charlie; he thought that the gallbladder was the source of all medical evil, and if you really love your patients, you couldn\u2019t get that organ out rapidly enough.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Now that\u2019s an extreme case, but in lesser strength, it\u2019s present in every profession and in every human being. And it causes perfectly terrible behavior.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>If you take sales presentations and brokers of commercial real estate and businesses, I\u2019m 70 years old, I\u2019ve never seen one I thought was even within hailing distance of objective truth. If you want to talk about the power of incentives and the power of rationalized, terrible behavior, after the Defense Department had had enough experience with the cost-plus percentage of cost contracts, the reaction of our republic was to make it a crime for the federal government to write one, and not only a crime but a felony.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>And by the way, the government\u2019s right. But a lot of the way the world is run, including most law firms and a lot of other places, they\u2019ve still got a cost-plus percentage of cost system. And human nature, with its version of what I call incentive-caused bias, causes this terrible abuse. And many of the people who are doing it you would be glad to have married into your family compared to what you\u2019re otherwise going to get.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Now there are huge implications from the fact that the human mind is put together this way. And that is that people who create things like cash registers, which make most behavior hard, are some of the effective saints of our civilization. And the cash register was a great moral instrument when it was created.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>And Patterson knew that, by the way. He had a little store, and the people were stealing him blind and never made any money, and people sold him a couple of cash registers and it went to profit immediately. And, of course, he closed the store and went into the cash register business. And so this is a huge, important thing. If you read the psychology texts, you will find that if they\u2019re 1,000 pages long, there\u2019s one sentence. Somehow incentive-caused bias has escaped the standard survey course in psychology.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"4th_5th_Cause_Bias_from_consistency_and_commitment_tendency\"><\/span>4th &amp; 5th Cause: Bias from consistency and commitment tendency<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Fourth, and this is a superpower in error-causing psychological tendency, bias from consistency and commitment tendency, including the tendency to avoid or promptly resolve cognitive dissonance.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Includes the self-confirmation tendency of all conclusions, particularly expressed conclusions, and with a special persistence for conclusions that are hard-won.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Well, what I\u2019m saying here is that the human mind is a lot like the human egg, and the human egg has a shut-off device. When one sperm gets in, it shuts down so the next one can\u2019t get in. The human mind has a big tendency of the same sort. And here again, it doesn\u2019t just catch ordinary mortals, it catches the deans of physics. According to Max Planck, the really innovative, important new physics was never really accepted by the old guard.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Instead, a new guard came along that was less brain-blocked by its previous conclusions. And if Max Planck\u2019s crowd had this consistency and commitment tendency that kept their old inclusions intact in spite of disconfirming evidence, you can imagine what the crowd that you and I are part of behaves like.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>And of course, if you make public disclosure of your conclusion, you\u2019re pounding it into your own head. Many of these students that are screaming at us, you know, they aren\u2019t convincing us, but they\u2019re forming mental change for themselves because what they\u2019re shouting out they\u2019re pounding in. And I think educational institutions that create a climate where too much of that goes on are in a fundamental sense, they\u2019re irresponsible institutions. It\u2019s very important to not put your brain in chains too young by what you shout out.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>And all these things like painful qualifying and initiation rituals, all those things, pound in your commitments and your ideas. The Chinese brainwashing system, which was for war prisoners, was way better than anybody else\u2019s. They maneuvered people into making tiny little commitments and declarations, and then they\u2019d slowly build. That worked way better than torture.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"6th_Cause_Bias_from_Pavlovian_association\"><\/span>6th Cause: Bias from Pavlovian association<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Sixth: Bias from Pavlovian association, misconstruing past correlation as a reliable basis for decision-making.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>I never took a course in psychology, or economics either for that matter, but I did learn about Pavlov in high school biology. And the way they taught it, you know, so the dog salivated when the bell rang. So what? Nobody made the least effort to tie that to the wide world. Well, the truth of the matter is that the Pavlovian association is an enormously powerful psychological force in the daily life of all of us.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>And, indeed, in economics, we wouldn\u2019t have money without the role of so-called secondary reinforcement, which is a pure psychological phenomenon demonstrated in the laboratory.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Practically, I\u2019d say 3\/4 of advertising works on pure Pavlov. Think how association, pure association, works. Take Coca-Cola company we\u2019re the biggest share-holder. They want to be associated with every wonderful image, heroics in the Olympics, wonderful music, you name it. They don\u2019t want to be associated with presidents\u2019 funerals and so forth. When have you seen a Coca-Cola ad, and the association really works.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>And all these psychological tendencies work largely or entirely on a subconscious level, which makes them very insidious.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Now you\u2019ve got Persian messenger syndrome. The Persians really did kill the messenger who brought the bad news. You think that is dead? I mean you should\u2019ve seen Bill Paley in his last 20 years. He didn\u2019t hear one damn thing he didn\u2019t want to hear. People knew that it was bad for the messenger to bring Bill Paley things he didn\u2019t want to hear. Well, that means that the leader gets in a cocoon of unreality, and this is a great big enterprise, and boy, did he make some dumb decisions in the last 20 years.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>And now the Persian messenger syndrome is alive and well. When I saw, some years ago, Arco and Exxon arguing over a few hundred millions of ambiguity in their North Slope treaties before a superior court judge in Texas, with armies of lawyers and experts on each side. Now, this is a Mad Hatter\u2019s tea party, two engineering-style companies can\u2019t resolve some ambiguity without spending tens of millions of dollars in some Texas superior court?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>In my opinion, what happens is that nobody wants to bring the bad news to the executives up the line. But here\u2019s a few hundred million dollars you thought you had that you don\u2019t. And it\u2019s much safer to act like the Persian messenger who goes away to hide rather than bring home the news of the battle lost.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Talking about economics, you get a very interesting phenomenon that I\u2019ve seen over and over again in a long life. You\u2019ve got two products, suppose they\u2019re complex, technical products. Now you\u2019d think, under the laws of economics, that if product A costs X, if product Y costs X minus something, it will sell better than if it sells at X plus something, but that\u2019s not so. In many cases when you raise the price of the alternative products, it\u2019ll get a larger market share than it would when you make it lower than your competitor\u2019s product.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>That\u2019s because the bell, a Pavlovian bell, I mean ordinarily there\u2019s a correlation between price and value, then you have an information inefficiency. And so when you raise the price, the sales go up relative to your competitor. That happens again and again and again. It\u2019s a pure Pavlovian phenomenon. You can say, \u201cwell, the economists have figured this sort of thing out when they started talking about information inefficiencies,\u201d but that was fairly late in economics that they found such an obvious thing. And, of course, most of them don\u2019t ask what causes the information inefficiencies.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Well, one of the things that cause it is pure old Pavlov and his dog. Now you\u2019ve got bios from the Skinnerian association, operant conditioning, you know, where you give the dog a reward and pound in the behavior that preceded the dog\u2019s getting the award. And, of course, Skinner was able to create superstitious pigeons by having the rewards come by accident with certain occurrences, and, of course, we all know people who are the human equivalents of superstitious pigeons. That\u2019s a very powerful phenomenon. And, of course, operant conditioning really works. I mean the people in the center who think that operant conditioning is important are very much right, it\u2019s just that Skinner overdid it a little.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Where you see in business just perfectly horrible results from psychologically rooted tendencies is in accounting. If you take Westinghouse, which blew, what, two or three billion dollars pre-tax at least loaning developers to build hotels, and virtually 100% loans? Now you say any idiot knows that if there\u2019s one thing you don\u2019t like it\u2019s a developer, and another you don\u2019t like it\u2019s a hotel.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>And to make a 100% loan to a developer who\u2019s going to build a hotel. But this guy, he probably was an engineer or something, and he didn\u2019t take psychology any more than I did, and he got out there in the hands of these slick salesmen operating under their version of incentive-caused bias, where any damned way of getting Westinghouse to do it was considered a normal business, and they just blew it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>That would never have been possible if the accounting system hadn\u2019t been such but for the initial phase of every transaction, it showed wonderful financial results. So people who have loose accounting standards are just inviting perfectly horrible behavior in other people. And it\u2019s a sin, it\u2019s an absolute sin. If you carry bushel baskets full of money through the ghetto and made it easy to steal, that would be a considerable human sin, because you\u2019d be causing a lot of bad behavior, and the bad behavior would spread. Similarly, an institution that gets sloppy accounting commits a real human sin, and it\u2019s also a dumb way to do business, as Westinghouse has so wonderfully proved.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Oddly enough nobody mentions, at least nobody I\u2019ve seen, what happened with Joe Jett and Kidder Peabody. The truth of the matter is the accounting system was such that by punching a few buttons, the Joe Jetts of the world could show profits, and profits that showed up in things that resulted in rewards and esteem and every other thing that human being. Well, the Joe Jetts are always with us, and they\u2019re not really to blame, in my judgment at least. But that bastard who created that foolish accounting system who, so far as I know, has not been flayed alive, ought to be.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"7th_Cause_Bias_from_reciprocation_tendency\"><\/span>7th Cause: Bias from reciprocation tendency<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Seventh: Bias from reciprocation tendency, including the tendency of one on a roll to act as other persons expect.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Well here, again, Cialdini does a magnificent job at this, and you\u2019re all going to be given a copy of Cialdini\u2019s book. And if you have half as much sense as I think you do, you will immediately order copies for all of your children and several of your friends. You will never make a better investment.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>It is so easy to be a patsy for what he calls the compliance practitioners of this life. But, at any rate, reciprocation tendency is a very, very powerful phenomenon, and Cialdini demonstrated this by running around campus, and he asked people to take juvenile delinquents to the zoo.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>And it was a campus, and so one in six actually agreed to do it. And after he\u2019d accumulated a statistical output he went around on the same campus and he asked other people, he said, \u201cGee, would you devote two afternoons a week to taking juvenile delinquents somewhere and suffering greatly yourself to help them,\u201d and there he got 100% of the people to say no.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>But after he\u2019d made the first request, he backed off a little, and he said, \u201cwould you at least take them to the zoo one afternoon?\u201d He raised the compliance rate from a third to a half. He got three times the success by just going through the little ask-for-a-lot-and-back-off.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Now, if the human mind, on a subconscious level, can be manipulated that way and you don\u2019t know it, I always use the phrase, \u201cyou\u2019re like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.\u201d I mean you are really giving a lot of quarters to the external world that you can\u2019t afford to give. And on this so-called role theory, where you tend to act in the way that other people expect, and that\u2019s reciprocation if you think about the way society is organized.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>A guy named Zimbardo had people at Stanford divide into two pieces, one were the guards and the other were the prisoners, and they started acting out roles as people expected. He had to stop the experiment after about five days. He was getting into human misery and breakdown and pathological behavior. I mean it was awesome. However, Zimbardo is greatly misinterpreted. It\u2019s not just reciprocation tendency and role theory that caused that, it\u2019s consistency and commitment tendency. Each person, as he acted as a guard or a prisoner, the action itself was pounding in the idea.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Wherever you turn, this consistency and commitment tendency is affecting you. In other words, what you think may change what you do, but perhaps even more importantly, what you do will change what you think. And you can say, \u201ceverybody knows that.\u201d I want to tell you I didn\u2019t know it well enough early enough.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"8th_Cause_Bias_from_over-influence_by_social_proof\"><\/span>8th Cause: Bias from over-influence by social proof<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Eight. Now, this is a lollapalooza, and Henry Kaufman wisely talked about this, bias from over-influence by social proof. That is, the conclusions of others, particularly under conditions of natural uncertainty and stress.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>And here, one of the cases the psychologists use is Kitty Genovese, where all these people, I don\u2019t know, 50, 60, 70 of them just sort of sat and did nothing while she was slowly murdered. Now one of the explanations is that everybody looked at everybody else and nobody else was doing anything, and so there\u2019s automatic social proof that the right thing to do is nothing.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>That\u2019s not a good enough explanation for Kitty Genovese, in my judgment. That\u2019s only part of it. There are microeconomic ideas and gain\/loss ratios and so forth that also come into play. I think time and time again, in reality, psychological notions and economic notions interplay, and the man who doesn\u2019t understand both is a damned fool.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Big-shot businessmen get into these waves of social proof. Do you remember some years ago when one oil company bought a fertilizer company, and every other major oil company practically ran out and bought a fertilizer company? And there was no more damned reason for all these oil companies to buy fertilizer companies, but they didn\u2019t know exactly what to do, and if Exxon was doing it, it was good enough for Mobil, and vice versa. I think they\u2019re all gone now, but it was a total disaster.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Now let\u2019s talk about efficient market theory, a wonderful economic doctrine that had a long vogue in spite of the experience of Berkshire Hathaway. In fact one of the economists who won \u2014 he shared a Nobel Prize \u2014 and as he looked at Berkshire Hathaway year after year, which people would throw in his face as saying maybe the market isn\u2019t quite as efficient as you think, he said, \u201cwell, it\u2019s a two-sigma event.\u201d And then he said we were a three-sigma event. And then he said we were a four-sigma event. And he finally got up to six sigmas; better to add a sigma than change a theory, just because the evidence comes in differently. And, of course, when this share of a Nobel Prize went into money management himself, he sank like a stone.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>If you think about the doctrines I\u2019ve talked about, namely, the power of reinforcement, after all, you do something and the market goes up and you get paid and rewarded and applauded and what have you, meaning a lot of reinforcement, if you make a bet on a market and the market goes with you. Also, there\u2019s social proof. I mean the prices on the market are the ultimate form of social proof, reflecting what other people think, and so the combination is very powerful.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Why would you expect general market levels to always be totally efficient, say even in 1973, 4 at the pit, or in 1972 or whatever it was when the Nifty 50 were in their heyday?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Fifty were in their heyday. If these psychological notions are correct, you would expect some waves of irrationality, which carry general levels to \u2026 until they\u2019re inconsistent with the reason.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>What made these economists love the efficient market theory is that math was so elegant, and after all, math was what they\u2019d learned to do. To the man with a hammer, every problem tends to look pretty much like a nail. The alternative truth was a little messy, and they\u2019d forgotten the great economist Keynes, whom I think said: \u201cbetter to be roughly right than precisely wrong.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"9th_Cause_Bias_from_contrast_caused_distortions_of_sensation_perception_and_cognition\"><\/span>9th Cause: Bias from contrast caused distortions of sensation, perception, and cognition<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\r\n<p>Bias from contrast caused distortions of sensation, perception, and cognition. Here the great experiment that Cialdini does in his class is he takes three buckets of water. One\u2019s hot, one\u2019s cold, and one\u2019s room temperature. And he has the student stick his left hand in the hot water and his right hand in the cold water. Then he has them remove the hands and put them both in the room temperature bucket, and of course with both hands in the same bucket of water, one seems hot, and the other seems cold because the sensation apparatus of man is over-influenced by contrast. It has no absolute scale. It\u2019s got a contrast scale in it, and it\u2019s scale with quantum effects in it, too. It takes a certain percentage change before it\u2019s noticed.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Maybe you\u2019ve had a magician remove your watch \u2014 I certainly have \u2014 without your noticing it. It\u2019s the same thing. He\u2019s taking advantage of your contrast-type troubles and your sensory apparatus. But here the great truth is that cognition mimics sensation, and the cognition manipulators mimic the watch-removing magician. In other words, people are manipulating you all day long on this contrast phenomenon.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Cialdini cites the case of the real estate broker. You\u2019ve got the rube that\u2019s been transferred into your town, and the first thing you do is you take the rube out to two of the most awful over-priced houses you\u2019ve ever seen, and then you take the rube to some moderately over-priced house and then you stick \u2019em. And it works pretty well, which is why the real estate salesmen do it. It\u2019s always gonna work.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>And the accidents of life can do this to you, and it can ruin your life. In my generation, when women lived at home until they got married, I saw some perfectly terrible marriages made by highly desirable women because they lived in terrible homes. And I\u2019ve seen some terrible second marriages, which were made because they were slight improvements over an even worse first marriage.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>You think you\u2019re immune from these things, and you laugh, and I wanna tell you you aren\u2019t. My favorite analogy, I can\u2019t vouch for the accuracy of. I have this worthless friend I like to Bridge with, and he\u2019s a total intellectual amateur that lives on inherited money. But he told me once something I really enjoyed hearing. He said: \u201cCharlie,\u201d if you throw a frog into very hot water, the frog will jump out, but if you put the frog in room temperature water and just slowly heat the water up, the frog will die there.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Now I don\u2019t know whether that\u2019s true about a frog, but it\u2019s sure as hell true about many of the businessmen I know, and there again, it is the contrast phenomenon. These are hot-shot high-powered people. These are not fools. If it comes to you in small pieces, you\u2019re likely to miss, so you have to\u2026if you\u2019re gonna be a person of good judgment, you have to do something about this warp in your head where it\u2019s so mislead by mere contrast.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"10th_Cause_Bias_from_over-influence_by_authority\"><\/span>10th Cause: Bias from over-influence by authority<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Well, here the Milgram experiment is it\u2019s caused\u2026I think there have been 1600 psychological papers written about Milgram. He had a person posing as an authority figure trick ordinary people into giving what they had every reason to expect was heavy torture by an electric shock to perfectly innocent fellow citizens. And the experiment has been\u2026he was trying to show why Hitler succeeded and a few other things. So it has really caught the fancy of the world. Partly it\u2019s so politically correct and\u2026<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Over-influence by authority has another very\u2026you\u2019ll like this one: You got a pilot and a co-pilot. The pilot is the authority figure. They don\u2019t do this in airplanes, but they\u2019ve done it in simulators. They have the pilot do something where the co-pilot who\u2019s been trained in simulators a long time. He knows he\u2019s not to allow the plane to crash. They have the pilot to do something where an idiot co-pilot would know the plane was gonna crash, but the pilot\u2019s doing it, and the co-pilot is sitting there, and the pilot is the authority figure. 25% of the time, the plane crashes. This is a very powerful psychological tendency.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>It\u2019s not quite as powerful as some people think, and I\u2019ll get to that later.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"11th_Cause_Bias_from_deprival_super_reaction_syndrome\"><\/span>11th Cause: Bias from deprival super reaction syndrome<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Eleven: Bias from Deprival Super Reaction Syndrome, including bias caused by present or threatened scarcity, including threatened removal of something almost possessed but never possessed.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Here I took the Munger dog, a lovely harmless dog. The one way, the only way to get that dog to bite you was to try and take something out of its mouth after it was already there.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Any of you who\u2019ve tried to do take-aways in labor negotiations will know the human version of that dog is there in all of us. I had a neighbor, a predecessor, on a little island where I have a house, and his next-door neighbor put a little pine tree in that was about three feet high, and it turned his 180-degree view of the harbor into 179 and three-quarters. Well, they had a blood feud like the Hatfields and McCoys, and it went on and on and on. People are really crazy about minor decrements down.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Then if you act on them, you get into reciprocation tendency because you don\u2019t just reciprocate affection, you reciprocate animosity. And the whole thing can escalate, and so huge insanities can come from just subconsciously over-weighing the importance of what you\u2019re losing or almost getting and not getting.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>The extreme business cake here was the new Coke. Now Coca-Cola has the most valuable trademark in the world. We\u2019re the major shareholder. I think we understand that trademark. Coke has armies of brilliant engineers, lawyers, psychologists, advertising executives, and so forth. And they had a trademark on a flavor, and they\u2019d spent the better part of 100 years getting people to believe that trademark had all these intangible values, too. And people associate it with a flavor, so they were gonna tell people not that it was improved because you can\u2019t improve a flavor. If a flavor is a matter of taste, you may improve a detergent or something, but telling you\u2019re gonna make a major change in a flavor, I mean\u2026So they got this huge Deprival Super Reaction Syndrome.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Pepsi was within weeks of coming out with old Coke in a Pepsi bottle, which would have been the biggest fiasco in modern times. Perfect, pluperfect insanity. And by the way, both Goizueta and Keough are just wonderful about it. They just joke. Keough always says I must\u2019ve been away on vacation. He participated in every single\u2026he\u2019s a wonderful guy. And by the way, Goizueta\u2019s a wonderful, smart guy, an engineer.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Smart people make these terrible blunders. How can you not understand Deprival Super Reaction Syndrome? But people do not react symmetrically to loss and gain. Now maybe a great Bridge player like Zeckhauser does, but that\u2019s a trained response. Ordinary people are subconsciously affected by their inborn tendencies.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"12th_Cause_Bias_from_envy_jealousy\"><\/span>12th Cause: Bias from envy &amp; jealousy<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Bias from envy\/jealousy. Well, envy\/jealousy made what, two out of the 10 commandments. Those of you who\u2019ve raised siblings or tried to run a law firm or investment bank or even a faculty. I\u2019ve heard Warren say half a dozen times, \u201cIt\u2019s not greed that drives the world but envy.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Here again, you go through the psychology survey courses. You go to the index \u2014 envy, jealousy. Thousand-page book, it\u2019s blank! There are some blind spots in academia. But it\u2019s an enormously powerful thing, and it operates to a considerable extent at a subconscious level, and anybody who doesn\u2019t understand it is taking on defects he shouldn\u2019t have.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"13th_Cause_Bias_from_chemical_dependency\"><\/span>13th Cause: Bias from chemical dependency<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Well, we don\u2019t have to talk about that. We\u2019ve all seen so much of it, but it\u2019s interesting how it always causes moral breakdown if there\u2019s any need, and it always involves massive denial. It aggravates what we talked about earlier in the aviator case, the tendency to distort reality so that it\u2019s endurable.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"14th_Cause_Bias_from_gambling_compulsion\"><\/span>14th Cause: Bias from gambling compulsion<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Well here, Skinner made the only explanation you\u2019ll find in the standard psychology survey course. He, of course, created a variable reinforcement rate for his pigeons, his mice, and he found that that would pound in the behavior better than any other enforcement pattern. He says: \u201cah-ha! I\u2019ve explained why gambling is such a powerful, addictive force in the civilization.\u201d I think that is, to a very considerable extent, true, but being Skinner, he seemed to think that was the only explanation.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>The truth of the matter is the devisers of these modern machines and techniques know a lot of things that Skinner didn\u2019t know. For instance, a lottery\u2026you have a lottery where you get your number by lot and then somebody draws a number by lot? It gets lousy play. You get a lottery where people get to pick their number, get big play. Again, it\u2019s this consistency and commitment thing. People think that if they\u2019ve committed to it, it has to be good. The minute they\u2019ve picked it themselves, it gets an extra validity. After all, they thought it and they acted on it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Then if you take slot machines, you get bar, bar, lemon. It happens again and again and again. You get all these near misses. Well, that\u2019s Deprival Super Reaction Syndrome, and boy do the people who create the machines understand human psychology.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>And for the high IQ crowd, they\u2019ve got poker machines where you make choices, so you can play blackjack, so to speak, with the machine. It\u2019s wonderful what we\u2019ve done with our computers to ruin civilization.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>But anyway, this gambling compulsion is a very, very powerful important thing. Look at what\u2019s happening to our country. Every Indian reservation, every river town, and look at the people who are ruined with the aid of their stockbrokers and others.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Again, if you look in the standard textbook of psychology, you\u2019ll find practically nothing on it except maybe one sentence talking about Skinner\u2019s rats. That is not adequate coverage of the subject.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"15th_Cause_Bias_from_liking_distortion\"><\/span>15th Cause: Bias from liking distortion<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Bias from liking distortion, including the tendency to, especially like oneself, one\u2019s own kind, and one\u2019s own idea structures, and the tendency to be especially susceptible to being misled by someone liked.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"16th_Cause_Bias_from_disliking_distortion\"><\/span>16th Cause: Bias from disliking distortion<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Disliking distortion. Bias from that. The reciprocal of liking distortion and the tendency not to learn appropriately from someone disliked. Well, here again, we\u2019ve got hugely powerful tendencies, and if you look at the wars in part of the Harvard Law School as we sit here, you can see that very brilliant people get into this almost pathological behavior, and these are very, very powerful, basic, subconscious, psychological tendencies or at least partly subconscious.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Now, let\u2019s get back to B.F. Skinner; man-with-a-hammer-syndrome revisited. Why is man-with-a-hammer-syndrome always present? Well if you stop to think about it, incentive caused bias. His professional reputation is all tied up with what he knows. He likes himself, and he likes his own ideas, and he\u2019s expressed them to other people, consistency and commitment tendency. I mean you\u2019ve got four or five of these elementary psychological tendencies combining to create this man-with-a-hammer-syndrome.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Once you realize that you can\u2019t really buy your thinking down. Partly you can, but largely you can\u2019t in this world. You\u2019ve learned a lesson that\u2019s very useful in life. George Bernard Shaw said, and a character say in The Doctor\u2019s Dilemma, \u201cin the last analysis, every profession is a conspiracy against the laity.\u201d But he didn\u2019t have it quite right because it\u2019s not so much conspiracy as it is a subconscious, psychological tendency.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>The guy tells you what is good for him, and he doesn\u2019t recognize that he\u2019s doing anything wrong any more than that doctor did when he was pulling out all those normal gallbladders. He believed that his own idea structures will cure cancer, and he believed that the demons that he\u2019s the guardian against are the biggest demons and the most important ones. And in fact, they may be very small demons compared to the demons that you face. So you\u2019re getting your advice in this world from your paid advisor with this huge load of ghastly bias. And woe to you!<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>And only two ways to handle it. You can hire your advisor and then just apply a windage factor like I used to do when I was a rifle shooter. I\u2019d just adjust for so many miles an hour wind. Or you can learn the basic elements of your advisor\u2019s trade. You don\u2019t have to learn very much, by the way, because if you learn just a little and you can make him explain why he\u2019s right. And those two tendencies will take part of the warp out of the thinking you\u2019ve tried to hire down.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>By and large, it works terribly. I have never seen a management consultant\u2019s report in my long life that didn\u2019t end with the following paragraph: \u201cWhat this situation really needs is more management consulting.\u201d Never once! I always turn to the last page. Of course, Berkshire Hathaway doesn\u2019t hire them, so\u2026I only do this in sort of a\u00a0<em>lawyeristic<\/em>\u00a0basis. Sometimes I\u2019m in a nonprofit where some idiot hires one.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"17th_Cause_Bias_from_the_non-mathematical_nature_of_the_human_brain\"><\/span>17th Cause: Bias from the non-mathematical nature of the human brain<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Seventeen: Bias from the non-mathematical nature of the human brain in its natural state as it deals with probabilities employing crude heuristics and is often misled by mere contrast.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>The tendency to overweigh conveniently available information and other psychologically rooted misthinking tendencies on this list when the brain should be using the simple probability mathematics of Fermat and Pascal, applied to all reasonably attainable and correctly weighted items of information that are of value in predicting outcomes. The right way to think is the way Zeckhauser plays bridge. It\u2019s just that simple.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>And your brain doesn\u2019t naturally know how to think the way Zeckhauser knows to play bridge. Now you notice I put in that availability thing, and there I\u2019m mimicking some very eminent psychologists\u2026Tversky, who raised the idea of availability to a whole heuristic of misjudgment.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>You know, they are very substantially right. Ask the Coca-Cola company, which has raised availability to a secular religion, if availability changes behavior. You\u2019ll drink a hell of a lot more Coke if it\u2019s always available. Availability does change behavior and cognition.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Nonetheless, even though I recognize that and applaud Tversky, Kahneman. I don\u2019t like it for my personal system except as part of a greater subsystem, which is you gotta think the way Zeckhauser plays bridge. It isn\u2019t just the lack of availability that distorts your judgment. All the things on this list distort judgment. And I wanna train myself to mentally run down the list instead of just jumping on availability. So that\u2019s why I state it the way I do.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>In a sense, these psychological tendencies make things unavailable because if you quickly jump to one thing and then because you\u2019ve jumped to it, the consistency and commitment tendency makes you lock in, boom, it\u2019s there. Number one.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Or if something is very vivid, which I\u2019m going to come to next, that will really pound in. And the reason that the thing that really matters is now unavailable and what\u2019s extra vivid wins is\u2026the extra vividness creates the unavailability. So I think it\u2019s much better to have a whole list of things that cause you to be less like Zeckhauser than it is just to jump on one factor.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Here, I think we should discuss John Gutfreund. This is a very interesting human example that will be taught in every decent professional school for at least a full generation. Gutfreund has a trusted employee, and it comes to light not through confession but by accident that the trusted employee has lied like hell to the government and manipulated the accounting system and was really the equivalent of forgery. The man immediately says, \u201cI\u2019ve never done it before, I\u2019ll never do it again; it was an isolated example.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Of course, it was obvious that he was trying to help the government as well as himself \u2019cause he thought the government had been dumb enough to pass a rule that he\u2019d spoken against. And after all, if a government\u2019s not gonna pay attention to a bond trader at Salomon, what kind of a government can it be?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>At any rate, this guy has been part of a little clique that has made way over a billion dollars for Salomon in the very recent past, and it\u2019s a little handful of people. So there are a lot of psychological forces at work. You know the guy\u2019s wife, he\u2019s right in front of you, and there\u2019s human sympathy, and he\u2019s sort of asking for your help, which is the form that encourages reciprocation, and there are all these psychological tendencies are working. Plus the fact he\u2019s part of a group that has made a lot of money for you.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>At any rate, Gutfreund does not cashier the man, and of course, he had done it before, and he did do it again. Well now you look as though you almost wanted him to do it again or God knows what you look like, but it isn\u2019t good. And that simple decision destroyed John Gutfreund.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>It\u2019s so easy to do. Now let\u2019s think it through like the bridge player, like Zeckhauser. You find an isolated example of a little old lady in the See\u2019s candy company, one of our subsidiaries, getting into the till, and what does she say? \u201cI never did it before, I\u2019ll never do it again, this is gonna ruin my life, please help me.\u201d And you know her children and her friends, and she\u2019s been around 30 years and standing behind the candy counter with swollen ankles. In your old age, isn\u2019t that glorious a life? And you\u2019re rich and powerful and there she is. \u201cI never did it before, and I will never do it again.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Well, how likely is it that she never did it before? If you\u2019re gonna catch ten embezzlements a year, what are the chances that any one of them, applying what Tversky and Kahneman called baseline information, will be somebody who only did it this once? And the people who have done it before and are gonna do it again, what are they all gonna say?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Well, in the history of the See\u2019s candy company, they always say, \u201cI never did it before, and I\u2019m never gonna do it again.\u201d And we cashier them. It would be evil not to because terribly behavior spreads. You let that stuff\u2026you\u2019ve got social proof, you\u2019ve got incentive caused bias, you got a whole lotta psychological factors that will cause the evil behavior to spread, and pretty soon the whole damn\u2026your place is rotten, the civilization is rotten. It\u2019s not the right way to behave, and\u2026<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>I will admit that I have\u2026when I knew the wife and children, I have paid severance pay when I fire somebody, for taking a mistress on an extended foreign trip. It\u2019s not the adultery I mind. It\u2019s the embezzlement. But there, I wouldn\u2019t do it where Gutfreund did it, where they\u2019d been cheating somebody else on my behalf. There I think you have to cashier, but if they\u2019re just stealing from you and you get rid of them, I don\u2019t think you need the last ounce of vengeance. In fact, I don\u2019t think you need any vengeance. I don\u2019t think vengeance is much good.<\/p>\r\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"19th_Cause_Bias_from_over-influence_by_extra_vivid_evidence\"><\/span>19th Cause: Bias from over-influence by extra vivid evidence<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Now we come bias from over-influence by extra vivid evidence. I\u2019m at least $30 million poorer as I sit here giving this little talk because I once bought 300 shares of a stock, and the guy called me back and said, \u201cI got 1500 more.\u201d I said, \u201cwill you hold it for 15 minutes while I think about it?\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>In CEO of this company, I\u2019ve seen a lot of vivid peculiarities in a long life, but this guy set a world record. I\u2019m talking about the CEO, and I just mis-weighed it. The truth of the matter is his situation was foolproof. He was soon gonna be dead. I turned down the extra 1500 share, and it\u2019s now cost me $30 million, and that\u2019s life in the big city.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>It wasn\u2019t something where stock was generally available, and so it\u2019s very easy to mis-weigh the vivid evidence. Gutfreund did that when he looked into the man\u2019s eyes and forgave the colleague.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"20th_Cause_Mental_confusion_caused_by_information_not_arrayed_in_the_mind_and_theory_structures\"><\/span>20th Cause: Mental confusion caused by information not arrayed in the mind and theory structures<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Twenty-two. Stress-induced mental changes, small and large, temporary and permanent.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Oh no, no no, I\u2019ve skipped one.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Mental confusion caused by information not arrayed in the mind and theory structures creating sound generalizations, developed in response to the question why. Also, mis-influence from information that apparently but not really answers the question \u201cwhy\u201d. Also, failure to obtain deserved influence caused by not properly explaining why.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Well we all know people who\u2019ve flunked, and they try and memorize, and they try and spout back, and they just\u2026doesn\u2019t work. The brain doesn\u2019t work that way. You\u2019ve got to array facts on theory structures answering the question \u201cwhy\u201d. If you don\u2019t do that, you cannot handle the world.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Now we get to Feuerstein, who was the general counsel of Salomon when Gutfreund made his big error. And Feuerstein knew better. He told Gutfreund, \u201cyou have to report this as a matter of morality and prudent business judgment.\u201d He said: \u201cit\u2019s probably not illegal. There\u2019s probably no legal duty to do it, but you have to do it as a matter of prudent conduct and proper dealing with your main customer.\u201d He said that to Gutfreund on at least two or three occasions, and he stopped. And, of course, the persuasion failed, and when Gutfreund went down, Feuerstein went with him. It ruined a considerable part of Feuerstein\u2019s life.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Well Feuerstein, was a member of the Harvard Law Review, made an elementary psychological mistake. If you want to persuade somebody, you really tell them why. And what did we learn in lesson one? Incentives really matter. Vivid evidence really works. He should have told Gutfreund, \u201cYou\u2019re likely to ruin your life and disgrace your family and lose your money.\u201d And is Mozer worth this? I know both men. That would\u2019ve worked. So Feuerstein flunked elementary psychology, this very sophisticated, brilliant lawyer. But don\u2019t you do that. It\u2019s not very hard to do, you know, just to remember that \u201cwhy\u201d is terribly important.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"21st_Cause_Other_normal_limitations_of_sensation_memory_cognition_and_knowledge\"><\/span>21st Cause: Other normal limitations of sensation, memory, cognition, and knowledge<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Other normal limitations of sensation, memory, cognition, and knowledge. Well, I don\u2019t have time for that.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"22nd_Cause_Stress-induced_mental_changes\"><\/span>22nd Cause: Stress-induced mental changes<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Stress-induced mental changes. Here, my favorite example is the great Pavlov. He had all these dogs in cages, which had all been conditioned into changed behaviors, and the great Leningrad flood came, and it just went right up. The dog\u2019s in a cage, and the dog had as much stress as you can imagine a dog ever having. The water receded in time to save some of the dogs, and Pavlov noted that they\u2019d had a total reversal of their conditioned personality.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Well, being the great scientist he was, he spent the rest of his life giving nervous breakdowns to dogs, and he learned a hell of a lot that I regard as very interesting. I have never known any Freudian analyst who knew anything about the last work of Pavlov, and I never met a lawyer who understood that what Pavlov found out with those dogs had anything to do with programming, and de-programming, cults, and so forth.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"23rd_Cause_Other_common_mental_illnesses_and_declines\"><\/span>23rd Cause: Other common mental illnesses and declines<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Then, we\u2019ve got other common mental illnesses and declines, temporary and permanent, including the tendency to lose ability through disuse.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"24th_Cause_Mental_and_organizational_confusion_from_the_say-something_syndrome\"><\/span>24th Cause: Mental and organizational confusion from the say-something syndrome<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Then, I\u2019ve got mental and organizational confusion from the say-something syndrome.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Here, my favorite thing is the bee, a honeybee. A honeybee goes out and finds the nectar, and he comes back, and he does a dance that communicates to the other bees where the nectar is, and they go out and get it. Well, some scientist who was clever \u2014 like B.F. Skinner \u2014 decided to do an experiment. He put the nectar straight up. Way up. Well, in a natural setting, there is no nectar way the hell straight up, and the poor honeybee doesn\u2019t have a genetic program that is adequate to handle what he now has to communicate.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>You\u2019d think the honeybee would come back to the hive and slink into a corner, but he doesn\u2019t. He comes into the hive and does this incoherent dance, and all my life I\u2019ve been dealing with the human equivalent of that honeybee. And it\u2019s a very important part of human organization to set things up so the noise, and the reciprocation and so forth of all these people who have what I call say-something syndrome don\u2019t really affect the decisions.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Points_to_Consider\"><\/span>Points to Consider<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"1_Combining_the_effects\"><\/span>1. Combining the effects<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Now, the time has come to ask two or three questions.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>This is the most important question in this whole talk: What happens when these standard psychological tendencies combine? What happens when the situation, or the artful manipulation of man, causes several of these tendencies to operate on a person toward the same end at the same time? The clear answer is the combination greatly increases the power to change behavior, compared to the power of merely one tendency acting alone.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Examples are Tupperware parties. Tupperware has now made billions of dollars out of a few manipulative psychological tricks. It was so schlock that directors of Justin Dart\u2019s company resigned when he crammed it down his board\u2019s throat. And he was totally right, by the way, judged by economic outcomes.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Moonie conversion methods; Boy, do they work. He just combines four or five of these things together.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>The system of Alcoholics Anonymous. A 50% no-drinking rate outcome when everything else fails? It\u2019s a very clever system that uses four or five psychological systems at once toward, I might say, a very good end.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>The Milgrim experiment: See, Milgrim\u2026It\u2019s been widely interpreted as mere obedience, but the truth of the matter is that the experimenter who got the students to give the heavy shocks in Milgrim, he explained why. It was a false explanation. \u201cWe need this to look for scientific truth,\u201d and so on. That greatly changed the behavior of the people. And number two, he worked them up, tiny shock, a little larger, a little larger. So commitment and consistency tendency and the contrast principle were both working in favor of this behavior. So again, it\u2019s four different psychological tendencies.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>When you get these lollapalooza effects you will almost always find four or five of these things working together. When I was young, there was a whodunit hero who always said\u00a0\u201c<em>Cherchez la femme<\/em>\u201c; what you should search for in life is the combination, because the combination is likely to do you in. Or, if you\u2019re the inventor of Tupperware parties, it\u2019s likely to make you enormously rich if you can stand shaving when you do it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>One of my favorite cases is the McDonald-Douglas airliner evacuation disaster. The government requires that airliners pass a bunch of tests. One of them is evacuation. Get everybody out, I think it\u2019s 90 seconds or something like that. It\u2019s a short period of time. The government has rules, makes it very realistic, and so on, and so on. You can\u2019t select nothing but 20-year-old athletes to evacuate your airline.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>So McDonald-Douglas schedules one of these things in a hangar, and they make the hangar dark. The concrete floor is 25 feet down, and they got these little rubber chutes, and they got all these old people. They ring the bell, and they all rush out. In the morning when the first test is done, they create, I don\u2019t know, 20 terrible injuries. People go off to hospitals. Of course, they scheduled another one for the afternoon. By the way, they didn\u2019t meet the time schedule either, in addition to causing all the injuries. So what do they do? They do it again in the afternoon.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Now, they create 20 more injuries and one case of a severed spinal column with permanent, unfixable paralysis. They\u2019re engineers. These are brilliant people. This is thought over through in a big bureaucracy\u2026Authorities told you to do it. He told you to make it realistic. You\u2019ve decided to do it. You\u2019d decided to do it twice. Incentive-caused bias. If you pass, you save a lot of money. You\u2019ve got to jump this hurdle before you can sell your new airliner.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Again, three, four, and five of these things work together, and it turns human brains into mush. And maybe you think this doesn\u2019t happen in picking investments. If so, you\u2019re living in a different world than I am.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Finally, the open-outcry auction. Well, the open-outcry auction is just made to turn the brain into mush. You get social proof. The other guy is bidding. You get a reciprocation tendency. You get deprival super-reaction syndrome. The thing is going away. I mean, it just absolutely is designed to manipulate people into idiotic behavior.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Finally, the institution of the board of directors of a major human, American company. Well, the top guy is sitting there. He\u2019s an authority figure. He\u2019s doing asinine things. You look around the board, nobody else is objecting. Social proof, it\u2019s okay. Reciprocation tendency, he\u2019s raising the director\u2019s fees every year. He\u2019s flying you around in the corporate airplane to look at interesting plants, or whatever in hell they do, and you go and you really get extreme dysfunction as a corrective decision-making body in the typical American board of directors.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>They only act, again the power of incentives, they only act when it gets so bad that it starts making them look foolish or threatening legal liability to them. That\u2019s Munger\u2019s rule. I mean, there are occasional things that don\u2019t follow Munger\u2019s rule, but by and large, the board of directors is a very ineffective corrector if the top guy is a little nuts, which, of course, frequently happens.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"2_Overlap\"><\/span>2. Overlap<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>The second question. Isn\u2019t this list of standard psychological tendencies improperly tautological compared with the system of Euclid? That is, aren\u2019t there overlaps, and can\u2019t some items on the list be derived from combinations of other items? The answer to that is, plainly, yes.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"3_Practical_Applications\"><\/span>3. Practical Applications<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Three. What good, in the practical world, is the thought system indicated by the list? Isn\u2019t practical benefit prevented because these psychological tendencies are programmed into the human mind by broad evolution so we can\u2019t get rid of them? Broad evolution, I mean the combination of genetic and cultural evolution, but mostly genetic.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Well, the answer is the tendencies are partly good and, indeed, probably much more good than bad, otherwise, they wouldn\u2019t be there. By and large these rules of thumb, they work pretty well for a man given his limited mental capacity, and that\u2019s why they were programmed in by broad evolution.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>At any rate, they can\u2019t be simply washed out automatically and they shouldn\u2019t be. Nonetheless, the psychological thought system described is very useful in spreading wisdom and good conduct when one understands it and uses it constructively. Here are some examples.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Karl Braun\u2019s communication practices. He designed oil refineries with spectacular skill and integrity. He had a very simple rule. Remember I said \u201cwhy\u201d is important? You got fired in the Braun company. You had to have five Ws. You had to tell who, what you wanted to do, where and when, and you had to tell him why. If you wrote a communication and left out the why, you got fired, because Braun knew it\u2019s complicated building an oil refinery. It can blow up. All kinds of things happen, and he knew that his communication system worked better if you always told him why. That\u2019s a simple discipline, and boy does it work.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Two: The use of simulators in pilot training. Here, again, abilities attenuate with disuse. Well, the simulator is God\u2019s gift because you can keep them fresh.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Three: The system of Alcoholics Anonymous. That\u2019s certainly a constructive use of somebody understanding psychological tendencies. I think they just blundered into it, as a matter of fact, so you can regard it as kind of an evolutionary outcome. But, just because they blundered into it doesn\u2019t mean you can\u2019t invent its equivalent when you need it for a good purpose.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Clinical training in medical schools. Here\u2019s a profoundly correct way of understanding psychology. The standard practice is\u00a0<em>watch one, do one, teach one<\/em>. Boy, does that pound in what you want pounded in. Again, the consistency and commitment tendency. That is a profoundly correct way to teach clinical medicine.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>The rules of the U.S. Constitutional Convention, totally secret, no vote until the final vote, then just one vote on the whole Constitution. Very clever psychological rules, and if they had a different procedure, everybody would have been pushed into a corner by his own pronouncements and his own oratory and his own\u2026and no recorded votes until the last one. And they got it through by a whisker with those wise rules. We wouldn\u2019t have had the Constitution if our forefathers hadn\u2019t been so psychologically acute, and look at the crowd we got now.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Six: The use of granny\u2019s rule. I love this. One of the psychologists who works with the center gets paid a fortune running around America, and he teaches executives to manipulate themselves. Now granny\u2019s rule is you don\u2019t get the ice cream unless you eat your carrots. Well, granny was a very wise woman. That is a very good system. So this guy, a very eminent psychologist, he runs around the country telling executives to organize their day so they force themselves to do what\u2019s unpleasant and important by doing that first and then rewarding themselves with something they really like doing. He is profoundly correct.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Seven: The Harvard Business School\u2019s emphasis on decision trees. When I was young and foolish, I used to laugh at the Harvard Business School. I said: \u201cThey\u2019re teaching 28-year-old people that high school algebra works in real life?\u201d We\u2019re talking about elementary probability. But later, I wised up and I realized that it was very important that they do that, and better late than never.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Eight: The use of post-mortems at Johnson &amp; Johnson. At most corporations, if you make an acquisition and it works out to be a disaster, all the paperwork and presentations that caused the dumb acquisition to be made are quickly forgotten. You\u2019ve got denial, you\u2019ve got everything in the world. You\u2019ve got a Pavlovian association tendency. Nobody even wants to even be associated with the damned thing, or even mention it. At Johnson &amp; Johnson, they make everybody revisit their old acquisitions and wade through the presentations. That is a very smart thing to do. By the way, I do the same thing routinely.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Nine: The great example of Charles Darwin is he avoided confirmation bias. Darwin probably changed my life because I\u2019m a biography nut, and when I found out the way he always paid extra attention to the disconfirming evidence and all these little psychological tricks, I also found out that he wasn\u2019t very smart by ordinary standards of human acuity, yet there he is buried in Westminster Abbey. That\u2019s not where I\u2019m going, I\u2019ll tell you. And I said: \u201cmy God, here\u2019s a guy that, by all objective evidence, is not nearly as smart as I am and he\u2019s in Westminster Abbey? He must have tricks I should learn.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>And I started wearing little hair shirts like Darwin to try and train myself out of these subconscious psychological tendencies that cause so many errors. It didn\u2019t work perfectly, as you can tell from listening to this talk, but it would\u2019ve been even worse if I hadn\u2019t done what I did. And you can know these psychological tendencies and avoid being the patsy of all the people that are trying to manipulate you to your disadvantage, like Sam Walton. Sam Walton won\u2019t let a purchasing agent take a handkerchief from a salesman. He knows how powerful the subconscious reciprocation tendency is. That is a profoundly correct way for Sam Walton to behave.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Then, there\u2019s the Warren Buffett rule for open-outcry auctions: don\u2019t go. We don\u2019t go to the closed-bid auctions too because they\u2026that\u2019s a counter-productive way to do things ordinarily for a different reason, which Zeckhauser would understand.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"4_Special_Knowledge_Problems\"><\/span>4. Special Knowledge Problems<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Four: What special knowledge problems lie buried in the thought system indicated by the list?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Well, one is a <em>paradox<\/em>. Now, we\u2019re talking about a type of human wisdom that the more people learn about it, the more attenuated the wisdom gets. That\u2019s an intrinsically paradoxical kind of wisdom. But, we have\u00a0<em>paradoxes<\/em>\u00a0in mathematics and we don\u2019t give up mathematics. I say damn the\u00a0<em>paradox<\/em>. This stuff is wonderfully useful.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>By the way, the granny\u2019s rule, when you apply it to yourself, is sort of a paradox in a paradox. The manipulation still works even though you know you\u2019re doing it. I\u2019ve seen that done by one person to another.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>I drew this beautiful woman as my dinner partner a few years ago, and I\u2019d never seen her before. Well, she\u2019s married to prominent Angelino. She sat down next to me, and she turned her beautiful face-up and she said, \u201cCharlie,\u201d she said, \u201cwhat one-word accounts for your remarkable success in life?\u201d Now, I knew I was being manipulated and that she\u2019d done this before, and I just loved it. I never see this woman without a little lift in my spirits. By the way, I told her I was rational. You\u2019ll have to judge yourself whether that\u2019s true. I may be demonstrating some psychological tendency I hadn\u2019t planned on demonstrating.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"5_Psychology_Economics\"><\/span>5. Psychology &amp; Economics<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>How should the best parts of psychology and economics interrelate in an enlightened economist\u2019s mind?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Two views. That\u2019s the thermodynamics model. You know, you can\u2019t derive thermodynamics from plutonium, gravity, and laws of mechanics, even though it\u2019s a lot of little particles interacting. And here is this wonderful truth that you can sort of develop on your own, which is thermodynamics.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Some economists \u2014 and I think Milton Friedman is in this group, but I may be wrong on that \u2014 sort of like the thermodynamics model. I think Milton Friedman, who has a Nobel prize, is probably a little wrong on that. I think the thermodynamics analogy is over-strained. I think knowledge from these different soft sciences have to be reconciled to eliminate conflict.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>After all, there\u2019s nothing in thermodynamics that\u2019s inconsistent with Newtonian mechanics and gravity, and I think that some of these economic theories are not totally consistent with other knowledge, and they have to be bent. And I think that these behavioral economics, or economists, are probably the ones that are bending them in the correct direction.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Now, my prediction is when the economists take a little psychology into account that the reconciliation will be quite endurable. Here, my model is the procession of the equinoxes. The world would be simpler for a long-term climatologist if the angle of the axis of the Earth\u2019s rotation, compared to the plane of the Euclyptic, were absolutely fixed. But it isn\u2019t fixed. Over every 40,000 years or so there\u2019s this little wobble, and that has pronounced long-term effects. Well, in many cases, what psychology is going to add is just a little wobble, and it will be endurable.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Here, I quote another hero of mine, who of course is Einstein, where he said: \u201cThe Lord is subtle, but not malicious.\u201d And I don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to be that hard to bend economics a little to accommodate what\u2019s right in psychology.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"6_Educational_System\"><\/span>6. Educational System<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>The final question is if the thought system indicated by this list of psychological tendencies has great value not widely recognized and employed, what should the educational system do about it?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>I am not going to answer that one now. I like leaving a little mystery.<\/p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\r\n<hr \/>\r\n<p><strong>Additional reading:<br \/><\/strong><\/p>\r\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/fs.blog\/intellectual-giants\/charlie-munger\/\">Who is Charlie Munger? Wit and Wisdom From The World\u2019s Most Irreverent Billionaire \u2014 FS blog<\/a><\/p>\r\n<p class=\"sc-407a1112-1 jeZjEC\" data-cy=\"articleTitle\"><a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/2023\/05\/08\/warren-buffett-charlie-munger-berkshire-shareholder-meeting-life-advice-write-your-obituary\/\">Life according to Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger: Write your own obituary and avoid toxic people &#8211; Fortune<\/a><\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Charlie Munger \u2014 the billionaire investor and a business partner of Warren Buffett \u2014 gave a speech titled \u201cThe Psychology<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[6,23,7],"class_list":["post-6","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-food-for-thought","tag-charlie-munger","tag-psychology-of-human-misjudgment","tag-the-psychology-of-human-misjudgment"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - 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