Block out the noise
Our everyday judgments can be quite unreliable, even on important matters. However, we can take steps to improve our decision making. These are the main themes of the brilliant book Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment.
Daniel Kahneman and his co-authors outline the problem of inconsistency, or scatter, in our judgments.
For example, if economic forecasters came up with very different predictions about house prices or interest rates, that would represent noise.
Another example might be job interviewers offering vastly different recommendations about which candidate to select.
The authors clearly explain how noise, or inconsistency in decision making, can be as problematic as bias, even though more attention is given to the latter. They then describe factors that can compound the problem of noise, including specific group processes.
Some of the problematic group influences they identify help explain how our political discourse has become more and more polarised.
Group processes can amplify noise. One form of this, cascading, happens when a person is to make a decision or recommendation and they have already heard the opinions of others beforehand.
Once one or two people have expressed a view or preference, social influence makes it more difficult to express a contrary opinion. This means that those who start first, or speak the loudest, or who are otherwise influential, are likely to have a disproportionate influence on the ultimate decision.
Another form of social influence is group polarisation. When people discuss their views as a group, they tend to end up taking a more extreme position than they would adopt on their own.
This phenomenon applies to juries, deliberating professionals and, presumably, voters.
With political preferences, this social influence would no doubt be strongly accentuated by social media algorithms that bias the information that reaches users and promote more strident views, so leftleaning voters on average become more left-leaning and conservative voters more right-leaning.
How might we counter this? We might keep in mind the authors’ advice that “even a little social influence can produce a kind of herding that undermines the wisdom of crowds”.
We might note their advice that group judgments are typically better if people first start to form their own independent opinion based on specific available evidence around particular criteria.
If others do the same, collective decisions will benefit from more independent thinking.
After identifying the criteria that represent what we most want in our political representatives, such as integrity, policies on important issues, engagement with the electorate or track record in particular areas, it would help to consider any factual evidence relevant to these concerns when comparing candidates.
Only then might we turn to our intuition.
Throughout, it helps to consider our own thoughts rather than too readily looking to others for their thoughts or recommendations.
When it comes to crowd decisions, a bit of independence is a good thing, whoever we vote for. Chris Mackey is a Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society. Practical tips for positive mental health and wellbeing, including the Psych Spiels and Silver Linings podcast, can be found at www.chrismackey.com.au/resources