Narrative bias

Stories feel better than randomness — even when randomness may be the truth. Another reason that reading the papers is not always worth your time. This TEDx talk has a nice summary of a host of our common cognitive biases.

Published 30 Jan 2014

A weekly sketch by email

Learn something new in a sketch each Sunday

Sketchplanations in a book! I think you'll love Big Ideas Little Pictures

Prefer to listen?
Try the podcast

Like Sketchplanations?
Support me on Patreon

Keep exploring

Someone asks to cut in line at the photocopier with a lame reason - but the favour and reason combo mean the person mindlessly complies

Because

Approaches to asset valuation: the castles in the air approach and the firm foundations approach

Approaches to asset valuation: Castles in the air and firm foundations

Chaos monkey

Acronym vs initialism illustration: comparing the acronym laser—pronounced as a word— and the initialism FBI—pronounced by saying the letters

Acronyms and initialisms

Apophenia

Flow

It's an old study now known as the photocopier study. The experiment had the experimenter try to cut in line at a copy machine at a University campus. The researchers found that when the ask was small — just 5 pages to copy — asking to cut in line with the rather circular reason of 'because I have to make some copies' was almost as successful as asking to cut in for the valid reason of 'because I'm in a rush', and both of them beat providing no reason at all. The effect disappeared with a larger ask of 20 pages. The theory was that with a small ask just providing any reason after the word 'because' may trigger an automatic script of 'Favour + Reason --> Comply' — if we don't really think about it we just see the pattern and act. Which suggests that a) if you have a small ask you might be better off providing a reason for it, no matter how small, and b) if we want to avoid acting mindlessly when people ask a favour it may benefit us to pay closer attention. The study was led by Ellen Langer who has since gone on to write a host of books on mindfulness. Also see narrative bias From: Langer, E. J., Blank, A., & Chanowitz, B. (1978). The mindlessness of ostensibly thoughtful action: The role of "placebic" information in interpersonal interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36(6), 635–642.…It's an old study now known as the photocopier study. The experiment had the experimenter try to cut in line at a copy machine at a University campus. The researchers found that when the ask was small — just 5 pages to copy — asking to cut in line with the rather circular reason of 'because I have to make some copies' was almost as successful as asking to cut in for the valid reason of 'because I'm in a rush', and both of them beat providing no reason at all. The effect disappeared with a larger ask of 20 pages. The theory was that with a small ask just providing any reason after the word 'because' may trigger an automatic script of 'Favour + Reason --> Comply' — if we don't really think about it we just see the pattern and act. Which suggests that a) if you have a small ask you might be better off providing a reason for it, no matter how small, and b) if we want to avoid acting mindlessly when people ask a favour it may benefit us to pay closer attention. The study was led by Ellen Langer who has since gone on to write a host of books on mindfulness. Also see narrative bias From: Langer, E. J., Blank, A., & Chanowitz, B. (1978). The mindlessness of ostensibly thoughtful action: The role of "placebic" information in interpersonal interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36(6), 635–642.

Newer

RRandom

Older