It is worth pointing out that not only can justification happen at the level of the self, it can also happen at the level of groups. Probably the best recent example is the justification for the Iraq War on the basis of the alleged threat from weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). The British general public was told that Saddam Hussein had missiles that could reach the mainland within the infamous forty-five-minute warning. The nation was shocked. Despite repeated assurance by United Nations inspection teams that there was no evidence for such WMDs, we were told that they were there and that we had to invade. After the invasion and once it was clear that there were no WMDs, the instigators had to justify their actions. We were told that the invasion was necessary on the grounds that Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator who needed to be removed from power, even though such regime change was in violation of international law. We were told that if he did not have WMDs before, then he was planning on making them. The invasion was justified. We had been saved. It would appear that modern politicians do not need a thick skin so much as a carefully crafted capacity for mass cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive dissonance protects the self from conflicting stories and is at the heart of why the self illusion is so important but it also reveals the dangers that a strong sense of self can create. We use it to justify faulty reasoning. Although we do not appreciate it, our decision-making is actually the constellation of many processes vying for attention and in constant conflict. We fail to consider just how much of our decision-making is actually out of our control.
The Monty Hall Problem
There are essentially two problems with decision-making: either we ignore external information and focus on our own perspective or we fail to realize the extent to which our own perspective is actually determined by external influences. In both cases we are fools to believe that our self is making decisions independent of the external context. This can lead to some wondrous distortions of human reason.
Consider an egocentric bias that blinds us to important changes in the world when it comes to decision-making. If you have not already heard of it, then let me introduce you to the Monty Hall problem. The problem is named after the presenter of the American game show, Let’s Make a Deal, where the climax was to choose a prize from behind one of three doors. Try to imagine your self in this situation. You have made it all the way through to the final part of the show and have a chance of winning the jackpot. Behind two doors are booby prizes but behind one door is a fabulous prize. For the sake of argument, let’s say that it is a £250,000 Ferrari. You hesitate initially and then choose door A. The host of the show, Monty, says, ‘You chose door A, but let me show you what’s behind door C.’ He then opens door C to reveal one of the booby prizes. Monty says, ‘You chose door A initially, but do you want to change your decision to door B?’ What should you do? Most people who encounter this problem for the very first time think that it makes no difference, because they reason that it is a 50-50 chance to win the Ferrari with only two doors left to chose from. Indeed, people are reluctant to change their minds once they have made a choice. Some may say that we stubbornly stick with our decisions because we have the courage of our conviction. After all, it is important to be decisive.
What do you think you should do – switch or stick? If you don’t already know, the correct answer is to switch, but if you don’t know why, it is incredibly hard to understand. The Monty Hall problem has become a somewhat famous cognitive illusion appearing both in bestselling books and even in the Hollywood movie 21 (2008), about a bunch of mathematically minded Massachusetts Institute of Technology students who counted cards at the blackjack tables of Las Vegas to beat the casinos. The correct solution to the Monty Hall problem is to switch because you are more likely to win than if you stick with your first choice. It is difficult to see at first and when it initially appeared in the popular magazine, Parade, in 1990, the problem created a storm of controversy and disagreement among both the general public and experts. Over 10,000 people (1,000 with PhDs) wrote in complaining the switch decision was false!
The reason you should switch is that, when you first choose a door, you have a chance of one out of three that you are correct. Now, after Monty has revealed one of the booby prizes, with two doors left, the remaining door that you did not select has a one out of two chance, which has better odds than the door you first chose, which remains at one out of three. Remember, Monty always shows you an empty door. Simple – except that it is not simple for most people.
An easier way to solve the Monty Hall problem is to consider a variation in which there are 100 doors instead of three.9 Again you get to pick one door. Now Monty opens ninety-eight out of the remaining ninety-nine doors to show you that they are all empty. There are now only two remaining unopened doors. Would you switch now? Here we can see that our door is unlikely to be the correct one. What are the odds that I correctly selected the right door on my first chance? Actually, it’s odds of 100-1 to be precise. That’s why we immediately twig that Monty is up to no good. There is something deeply counterintuitive about the Monty Hall problem, which reflects our limited capacity to think outside of the box – or to be more precise, to think in an unselfish way.
Another reason that people fail to switch in the Monty Hall problem is a general bias not to tempt fate. When it comes to making decisions, inherently we fear loss greater than we value the prospect of a win. Despite the so-called rationality of the modern era, people still think that if they change their decision then there is more chance that they will regret doing so. It’s not so much stubbornness or superstition but rather that we fear loss greater than the potential for gains. For example, the social psychologist Ellen Langer sold $1 lottery tickets to fifty-three office workers. Each stub of the ticket was put into a box from which one lucky winner would receive the whole $53. Just before the lottery-draw a couple of days later, Ellen approached each worker and asked them for how much they would sell their ticket. If they had just been handed a ticket by the experimenter so they had exercised no choice, the average price for resale was $2, but if they had chosen the ticket themselves it was $8! Moreover, ten of the choosers and five of the non-choosers refused to sell their ticket.10 It turns out that it is the fear of regret that looms large in our minds. How many times have you deliberated over an expensive purchase only to hear the salesperson reassure you, ‘Go on, you’ll not regret it!’
Risky Analysis
What the Monty Hall problem illustrates so clearly is the limitations of human reasoning – especially when it comes to probability. Probability is all about external information. Reasoning in terms of probable outcomes is very difficult because most of us think in a very self-centred way. We make decisions from our own perspective and often fail to take into consideration the external information that is most relevant.
In fact, most complex science is based on probabilities and not absolute known truths about the universe. After the age of Newton and the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, it was assumed that the universe was one big clockwork mechanism that could be understood by measurement and prediction. It was thought that if we improved the accuracy of our measurements, then we would understand better how the universe worked. The opposite happened. The universe became more complex. With increasing efficiency, we discovered that the universe was much messier than we had previously imagined. There was more noise in the system and less certainty. This noise gave birth to the age of statistical modelling in which mathematicians tried to discover the workings of the universe using procedures that accounted, as best as possible, for all the variation that was observed. This is why the language of science is mathematics and its truths are based on probabilities.11