Assignment and disc PSYV 333
Rude is WYSIATI Introduction
As a decision-making scientist I try to give the benefit of the doubt as much as possible (Kahneman, 2011). In fact I think it might be one of my most stable personality characteristics. If I ever send you an email you might even notice one of my signature lines is a quote by the biological chemist Linus Pauling who said “Do unto others twenty-five percent better than you expect them to do unto you." … The twenty-five percent is for error.” (WikiQuote, 2018). [footnoteRef:1] This personality characteristic is part of an overall optimism bias. The optimism described by our units and by Kahneman has predicable effects. It makes me more persistent, successful and easier to fool with positive information (Seligman, 2006). [footnoteRef:2] I see a less accurate and more adaptive version of the world. [1: I respect Dr. Pauling greatly but I also think that his expert advice on the value of vital amine C (Vitamin C) does not live up to the actuarial evidence. Mega doses of Vitamin C are much more likely to drain your financial/emotional resources than cure colds or cancer. My expert advice is to follow the actuarial data not the experts (Kahneman, 2011). I do own zinc lozenges because there is some evidence that they can reduce the length of colds but I still try to treat it them like they don’t work because I have been fooled before and medical advice is so tricky.] [2: For more details on optimism I really recommend Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman. I use this book in my psychology of happiness course and is summarized by Kahneman in the book you are reading.]
My story about heuristics is about a birthday dinner that I recently had with my sister-in-law. This experience made me see the principal of what you see is all there is (WYSIATI) because my experience and my sister-in-law saw very different things (Kahneman, 2011). To understand our different perspectives you have to know that I was sitting facing the waitress on a comfy booth. My sister-in-law and notably my wife were sitting faced towards the wall facing me but not the waitress. We had a big group and we were a little later than the reservations had said. The event was in a party room and there was another large group making a lot of joyous birthday chatter of their own. I was able to see all of this merriment on my comfy seat and it put me in a good mood. This situation created a halo effect for my perceptions and possibility my mother-in-law of the events because we were in a good mood, appreciative of them accommodating our lateness (a pet peeve of mine is lateness and the reservation was made by my mother-in-law so might have had an emotional endowment effect for it), I was facing a fairly attractive young waitress, seeing the merriment of the other group, we both have a general optimistic viewpoint, were sitting on a confortable spot, and general giving the benefit of the doubt disposition which my mother-in-law shares (Kahneman, 2011).
I suspect that both my sister-in-law and wife had a different Halo effect. They both are not convinced by my stories of Dr. Pauling, generally less forgiving, sitting in hard wooden chairs, not facing the attractive young waitress, not having the appropriate sexual orientation to be maximally affected by attraction effects (they are both married to men), not seeing the merriment of the other group but being closer to the distracting sounds they were making.
Our group first ordered cheese crisps which come with little lantern heaters. I saw the waitress struggle with these finicky things and even try to reach for one high on a shelf only to realize that it didn’t have a burner in it. One of our burners kept going out and needed to be relit at least twice in vain.
My representativeness heuristic halo effect had a positive impression of the waitress because I could see her frustrations and I suspect my sister-in-law had a negative one for the reasons specified above because she could not (Kahneman, 2011). When the waitress took our orders I was eager to order and the waitress could see this in my visible facial expressions. These expressions are important indicators of psychological frame of mind (Kahneman, 2011). We started ordering and explained that the person sitting at the head of the table was on the same check as the six-person family at the other end of the table. She started at the head of the table where my father-in-law was sitting and because he was a daily visitor to this restaurant when he worked in the building next door he was immediately ready to order and did so quickly. The waitress then moved to the opposite end of the table (they were on the same check) but my sister-in-law was not ready, there was a bathroom run as is typical for a family of six one with an extremely small bladder (I went to the bathroom with this particular niece 7 times during a Disney movie once), and could not see that the waitress was switching to her right away so the waitress had to get her attention in a loud room which I can imagine was frustrating for both of them.
Being flustered and not quite ready to order my sister-in-law did her best to order. She started with “for the kids” and ordered two orders of two tacos. Then ordered for two more kids from the normal specials menu. Then she ordered for her and her husband as he returned from the bathroom. We later learned that the first two kids got adult orders of tacos. Which upset my sister-in-law who is on a restrictive budget and thought she was clear about ordering “kids” meals. I was personally confused about the way these tacos were ordered and since my budget is not restricted would have paid for the extra tacos because in my mind these miscommunications are expected and I just laugh at the frailty of human communication (WikiQuote, 2018).
As the night went on my sister-in-law got more and more upset because I think her emotional anchor was already negative and did not sufficiently adjust to the mitigating circumstances that she couldn’t see (Kahneman, 2011). Or it’s possible that my optimistic anchor skewed reality and I did not sufficiently adjust to the negative reality of what was going on (Kahneman, 2011). In fact, because of optimistic tendency to be less accurate my perspective is more likely to be objectively incorrect. However, I also had more information so I don’t know how to weight these factors fairly.
The waitress came back to see if there was anything we needed and apologized for the disorganized way the food had come out. Apparently, as she said there was some disorder in the kitchen. I indicated that there was not anything I wanted (as is my typical disposition) and looked down because I was getting uncomfortable at the conflict brewing. However, my sister-in-law said nothing (which I took as an acceptance of the disappointment but a desire to move on) then a couple minutes later started angrily stating that they messed up the food and that they never came to see if anything was wrong. She was so upset that she had to leave to take an emotional break.
This whole experience suggests to me that WYSIATI is really a good way to understand decisions (Kahneman, 2011). The fact that I could literally see/hear things through my optimistically colored glasses gave me a wholly different perspective on the whole night than my sister-in-law. I think this was largely due to my place in seating because I could see and hear the waitress more completely. As evidence for this explanation my mother-in-law was sitting next to me and had the same optimistic perspective. However, she also has similar disposition to me so it’s unclear if emotional anchors or seating had the greatest effect in our judgments. My wife who was sitting next to my sister was so upset for her sister that she stayed behind to fill in my father-in-law who probably couldn’t hear anything in this loud room and was at the head of the table only had neutral perspective before the explanation. You too can be aware of your own halos, representativeness, and anchors to shift your perspectives to your liking as the objective reality of our judgments are always influenced by heuristics.
The fact that I’m viewing all of these events with the benefits of hindsight also clouds the reality of what actually happened (Kahneman, 2011). We know that hindsight emphasizes factors that fit our representations and current mood. One of my favorite concepts in memory science is transfer appropriate memory which says that you are more likely to remember things if they fit your mood. There are studies that show optimistic happy people remember happy things and pessimistic people remember more negative things about the same story (Watkins, Vache, Verney and Mathews, 1996). This likely happened in my retelling.
References
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Macmillan.
Seligman, M. E. (2006). Learned optimism: How to change your mind and your life. Vintage.
Watkins, P. C., Vache, K., Verney, S. P., & Mathews, A. (1996). Unconscious mood-congruent memory bias in depression. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 105(1), 34.
Wikiquote, (n.d.). Retrieved from https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Linus_Pauling