Anand Damani – Page 12 – Behavioural Design

How we get fooled by a feeling

Published December 9, 2014August 26, 2013 by Anand Damani

The debate is always on what’s better: to rely on intuition (feeling) or rely on deliberate thinking while making decisions. Fact is in some cases its better to rely on feeling and in some on deliberate thinking and the trick is to know which to choose when. This post is about learning how not to get fooled by a feeling from an experiment conducted by neuroscientist Read Montague, which demonstrates how our dopamine system leads us to lose money in the stock market.

In the simulated experiment, subjects were given $100 at the start. Players were to invest their money for twenty rounds and got to keep their earnings, if any. Interesting twist of the experiment was that Read Montague had people ‘play’ the Dow of 1929, Nasdaq of 1998, Nikkei of 1986 and S&P 500 of 1987 – what had been once real-life bubbles and crashes.

What the scientists observed from brain mapping, were signals emanating from dopamine rich areas of the brain, like ventral caudate, which was encoding the ability to learn from what-if scenarios. For example, the situation in which a player invested 10% of his total money – relatively small bet. Then he saw the market rise dramatically. What happened was his ungrateful dopamine neurons got fixated on the profits he missed. In such a situation, when the market was booming, like before the Nasdaq bubble of 1998, the players kept increasing their investments. Not to invest was to drown in the feeling of regret. The greedy brains were convinced that they’ve solved the stock market, but just when they are most convinced that it isn’t a bubble, the bubble burst. The Dow sank, the Nasdaq imploded and Nikkei collapsed. All of a sudden, those who regretted not investing more and subsequently invested more were now despairing their plummeting net worth. “When the markets head down,” says Montague, “you get the exact opposite effect. People just can’t wait to get out, because the brain doesn’t want the feeling of regret staying in. Investors dump any stock that’s declining. Panic.”

Jonah Lehrer, author of ‘How we decide’, says, “Our dopamine neurons that release the feel-good chemical, weren’t designed to deal with random oscillations of the stock market. The brain is so eager to maximize rewards that it ends up pushing its owner off a cliff. Casinos have learned to exploit this flaw of the human brain. So don’t try to perceive patterns when they don’t exist. The world is more random than you think it is. Don’t fixate on what might have been or obsess over someone else’s profits. But that’s what our emotions can’t understand.”

Now if you don’t get fooled in such circumstances, tell us how.

Get over your fear of making a mistake

Published August 5, 2013 by Anand Damani

Remember making a mistake at work or at home and the feeling attached with it. The word ‘mistake’ itself scares most of us. And that’s because unfortunately right from our childhood our focus has been on being smart, rather than putting our best effort. As a result we’ve learned to see mistakes as stupidity rather than building blocks of knowledge. However reality is just the opposite.

In her famous experiment in New York city schools, Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Stanford, gave more than four hundred 5^th standard students a relatively easy nonverbal puzzle. Post test, researchers revealed the scores to the students and praised them. Half the students were praised for their intelligence. The researcher said, “You must be smart at this”. Other half were praised for their effort. “You must have worked really hard.”

Then the students were allowed to choose from two different subsequent tests. The first one was described as more difficult. The students were told that they would learn a lot from it. The other option was easy, like the previous test. Of the group that were praised for effort, 90% chose the harder test. Amongst the group that was praised for intelligence, most chose the easy test.

This fear of failing actually inhibits learning, as seen by his next set of experiments. She gave all the students an even harder test, originally written for 8^th standard students. Kids praised for effort, got very involved. Many remarked, “This is my favorite test.” Kids praised for intelligence, were easily discouraged. Mistakes were seen as a sign of failure. After the test, students had to choose between looking at the papers of those who did worse than them or better than them. Kids praised for intelligence, almost always chose to bolster their self-esteem by comparing themselves to those who did worse. Kids praised for effort were more interested in those who scored more than them. They wanted to understand their mistakes, learn from their errors and figure how to do better.

In the third final round of testing with the same level of ease as the initial test, kids praised for effort raised their average score by 30%, while the smart group’s average score dropped by 20%. Praised for effort kids were willing to challenge themselves, even it meant failing at first, ending up performing at a much higher level. While for praised for intelligence kids, the experience of failure was discouraging that they regressed.

Jonah Lehrer, editor, blogger and author says, “This doesn’t apply to only 5^th standard students, but to everyone. Unless you experience unpleasant symptoms of being wrong, your brain will never revise its models. Before your neurons can succeed, they must repeated fail. There are no shortcuts for this painstaking process.”

We believe that’s how intuition gets developed amongst experts. Hours and hours of practice and lots of mistakes corrected. Any guess who in the Indian cricket team spends more time in the nets than the rest?

How to spot a liar

Published July 22, 2013 by Anand Damani

Some light reading on a Monday for a change.

You may have heard about the usual signs of how to spot when someone is lying, like liars tending to avoid eye contact or covering their mouths when talking or developing sweaty hands and faces or giving long and rambling answers to questions. Though intuitively appealing, it’s difficult to rely on these as proof, as these are also signs of nervousness and not necessarily proof for lying.

There is one scientific proof that can be relied with accuracy: Scientists at the Smell and Taste Treatment & Research Foundation found that when you lie, chemicals known as catecholamines are released, causing the tissue inside the nose to swell. Special imaging cameras showed that intentional lying causes an increase in blood pressure, which inflates the nose and causes the nerve endings in the nose to tingle, which makes you want to rub your nose briskly to get rid of the itch.

American neurologist Dr. Alan Hirsch and psychiatrist Charles Wolf did an extensive analysis of Bill Clinton’s testimony on his affair with Monica Lewinsky, and found that he touched his nose about 26 times when lying. Conversely, Bill Clinton did not touch his nose at all when he answered truthfully.

Hope you will use this knowledge with discretion. If you see us rubbing our noses in the meeting, it could be because we’re suffering from hay fever or cold.

A way of boarding that saves time and lowers blood pressure

Published December 9, 2014June 24, 2013 by Anand Damani

Warning: This post is the longest we’ve ever written, but we think you are likely to find it rewarding.

There are long queues at boarding no matter which airline you travel by. And once inside the plane, we’re often waiting in line once again for someone in front us whose is trying to keep his/her cabin luggage overhead. Imagine the time that gets wasted for you and the airline. In this industry, more than any, time is money. The quicker the airline can board, the more it will be on-time, the more satisfied will be its customers, the more money it can make. But how can this be made possible?

Southwest Airlines in the US has a unique solution to this problem. Southwest doesn’t have seat assignments. Here’s how it works:

In airlines that assign seat numbers, when you’re trying to get to your seat, you’re not only waiting for someone to find their seat, you’re also waiting for them to put their bag in the overhead bin. So if you’re assigned to say, Seat 26A, you must wait until Seat 22C puts his/her bag in the overhead compartment.

But if you’re on Southwest Airlines, the procedure and behaviour of passengers is completely different.

So let’s say you’re flying on Southwest with a carry-on bag. You’re anxious about getting a window seat and making sure your bag gets in the compartment, so you check-in online 24 hours beforehand (the beginning of the check-in window), and are placed in boarding group A. Group A gets to board first.

Southwest keeps in mind that most people don’t care if they sit in row 10 or row 25, but they are likely to have a strong opinion about having a window or an aisle seat.

Fast forward to the airport. You arrive and get into the queue for group A, confident that there is a very good chance that you’ll get the seat you want and overhead space.

Now you’re walking onto the plane and suggested to move towards the further rows. The person in front of you has a bag and spots an aisle seat in row 25, and stops to put their bag in the bin. You’re a window person, and see one in row 21. The person behind you also wants a window, and stops at row 18. Notice what happened here: no one was held up because of the person in front of them. You all sit down, and the process repeats.

The boarding process becomes similar to a conventional boarding process as the seats fill up – if you’re in Group C (last to board) and say there’s only one window seat left and it’s at the very back of the plane, you have to wait 20 seconds for the person in front of you to claim their aisle seat at the front.

Compare this to a conventional boarding process: not only would you have had to wait for Seat 21C to put his bag in the compartment, Seats 21 A, B and D have to fight with their bags, and the other seats’ bags in order to fit their bags in. Multiply this by 30 rows, and you can see how this adds time to the boarding process.

What Southwest has done is eliminate that 20-to-30 second delay for 80% of passengers and instead limited it to, say, the 30% of passengers at the end of Group C. These passenger-to-seat delays add up quickly; and with roughly 130 seats each at 20 seconds each, that’s potentially 43 minutes of delays during seating! This, among other reasons, means that Southwest can turn around their planes in about 25 minutes, the fastest of any airline.

And not to forget, lower your BP. Travelers who are the most anxious about getting their preferred seat and their bag in the bin are more likely to check-in at the first second, earning them a coveted spot in Group A. But people in group B know there is, say, a 50% chance they’ll get a good seat and space in the overhead bin. Group C knows their chances are slim of getting either. The point here is that everyone has a rough idea of their probabilities and also that the probability is the direct result of their own actions, i.e., how quickly they checked in.

And the best thing I like about this way of boarding: I’ll never be seated in the wrong seat!

Big thanks to Michele Walk, Operations Manager at Engage for the information.

Bleep – Horn reduction system video

Published October 25, 2023June 3, 2013 by Anand Damani

Bleep has been featured in TIME, BBC, Fast Company, BMW Guggenheim Lab, USA Today, The Strait Times, Times of India (2), The Economic Times (2), Mint, CNBC Overdrive, Hindustan Times, NDTV, Top Gear, Radio One (2), Mumbai Boss, The Sunday Guardian, DNA and TEDxGateway talk.

Indiscriminate honking is a bad habit and a huge irritant in India, parts of Asia and South America, or even by cab drivers in NY. If you are visiting us from a country where the habit of honking is a problem, share this video on facebook, twitter, linkedin, pinterest and help spread the word.

A big thank you in advance for your support. To get us in touch with a Govt. or NGO representative of your country, write to us at work@brief-case.co

Every share counts. Every little helps.

The middle path to getting picked up

Published December 9, 2014May 20, 2013 by Anand Damani

There a lot of biases that affect the way we make choices. We of course go about our daily routine completely unaware of them. Here’s one such interesting example, called the ‘Centre Stage effect’ – our preferential bias towards items located in the middle.

Paul Rodway, Experimental Psychologist from University of Chester and his colleagues showed 100 participants a questionnaire consisting of 17 questions, wherein each question featured five different pictures of the same type of item (e.g. five scenic views). Each set of five pictures was arranged in a horizontal row and the task for participants, depending on the question, was either to pick their most preferred or least preferred item. Central items were selected approximately 23 per cent of the time. The selection rate for items in other locations averaged below 20 per cent. By contrast, no position bias was found when selecting their least favoured items.

A second study was similar to the first, but this time each array of five items was arranged vertically – once again there was a bias for the central item. A third study used real objects – five pairs of identical white socks – pinned in a vertical array on a large piece of cardboard. Again, participants were asked to pick out their preferred option and again they showed a bias for the middle choice.

These findings build on past researches showing that observers tended to overestimate the performance of quiz show contestants located in central positions.

I wonder whether this phenomenon has to do with our beliefs linking importance or prestige with being centrally located. If we look at sports podiums on which winners get facilitated, Gold being the most prestigious award, is placed in the middle. In office meetings you are most likely to find the top boss sitting in the middle of the boardroom table. The bride and groom at wedding receptions always sit in the middle overlooking the hall.

This ‘middle’ bias has implications on consumer’s shopping behaviour. If a brand has 5 variants, with the same MRP, the one with the maximum margin should be placed in the middle. If your brand competes with others on retail shelves, ensure its placed bang in the middle, as long as consumers can view all options at one go. But no guarantee about you getting picked up if you stand in the middle of your friends at the night club. Well, you could try.

We are all horny

Published May 14, 2015April 15, 2013 by Anand Damani

Honking is so embedded in Indian driving etiquette that Audi India has confirmed, in media, having designed extra loud, ultradurable horns for vehicles sold in India. Meanwhile people face a rapidly growing problem with many side effects of noise pollution. Some of them being increased hyper-tension, blood pressure, hearing loss, increased risk of heart attacks and disturbed sleep patterns. Reports in Indian cities show that noise levels are way beyond the permissible limits. Truly we are all horny.

Honking like other behaviour, over time, becomes a habit. And habits are essentially automatic behaviour where one does not consciously think about the action, but rather, the decision-making happens automatically. So we thought that it was important to shift the driver from an automatic mode of honking as a habit, to make him deliberate on whether the situation really demanded that he honk. We needed to make the driver conscious of the habit of honking by giving him immediate feedback while the driver was still driving the car, so that the next time the driver honked only when he thought it was necessary, rather than honk indiscriminately.

This approach led us to create a ‘Horn Reduction System’ we’ve called Bleep that has proved to reduce honking amongst each and every one of participants by an average of 61%.

Bleep – A horn reduction system

Bleep is a device with a simple red button fitted in an easily accessible place on the dashboard of a car. The red button has a frown sketched on it and when the driver presses the horn, the red button begins to beep and flash. In order to switch the device off, the driver needs to press the red button.

The 6-month long experiment

Bleep has been tested on manual and automatic geared cars amongst 30 people including men, women and chauffeurs of private vehicles, over 6 months and over 3800 kms. The participants were given either of two cars – manually geared Swift or automatic Honda City, with Bleep fitted, to be driven for 4 days during the working weekdays. Two days with Bleep off and the next two days with Bleep on, so that we could compare the number of honks per kilometer in the control situation (pre-Bleep) with the experimental situation (post-Bleep). Bleep has been tested as triggering off every time the horn is pressed, which is a stricter version in the manually geared Swift car, as well as triggering off every third time the horn is pressed, which is more lenient, in the automatic Honda City. In the first phase of the experiment the drivers were not given any information about the experiment. In the second phase they were simply shown how the system works.

The results

We have found a reduction in honking in each and every one of the participants wherein honks per km reduced between 19% to 96% (on an average by 62.5%) when Bleep was triggered every time the horn was pressed (stricter version). A reduction in honks per km was found between 16% to 91% (on an average by 60.3%) when Bleep was triggered every third time the horn was pressed (lenient version). These numbers prove that the reduction in honking relates to indiscriminate honking that drivers can do without.

The science of Bleep

The science behind the effectiveness of Bleep is that it assists the driver in reducing honking by using a visual-cum-sound reminder. The driver gets instant feedback when the red light with the frown beeps and flashes when he honks, making the driver conscious about his inappropriate behaviour of honking and making him deliberate about when he really required to honk. The driver having to physically switch off the reminder further helps in persuading him to honk lesser. The frown on the device is designed to indicate that honking is socially inappropriate behaviour. A study called ‘Overcoming Intuition’ done by Alter, Oppenheimer, Epley and Eyre has shown that frowning helps the brain reduce the reliance on intuition and activates analytical reasoning. Another research at the Stanford University School of Medicine has shown that peak brain activity (arresting attention) occurred during a short period of silence between musical movements, which is evidence that sounds that have a pause in between make you more alert. That’s why a seatbelt reminder like sound was used in the beep.

Bleep comes with many other unique features like recording, displaying and transmission of vehicle data like number of honks, speed at time of honk, location, time, etc., inside the vehicle or at a remote location and many other customised features. Patent pending.

Bleep has been featured in Fast Company, BMW Guggenheim Lab, Times of India, CNBC Overdrive, Radio One 94.3, Top Gear India’s June issue, Mint-WSJ, Mumbai Boss, The Sunday Guardian and DNA till now.

Brainstorms actually stifle creativity

Published October 25, 2023April 1, 2013 by Anand Damani

Back in 1940s, advertising executive Alex Osborn argued that it was possible to enhance creativity by putting a group of people in a room and have them follow a simple set of rules, like coming up with as many thoughts as possible, encouraging wild and exaggerated ideas, not criticizing or evaluating anyone’s comments. Not surprisingly it became a hit. Over the years, organizations around the world have encouraged their employees to tackle key problems using this approach, commonly known as brainstorming.

But the scientists aren’t convinced. (Nor am I). Brian Mullen from the University of Kent at Canterbury and his colleagues analyzed twenty studies that tested efficacy of group brainstorming and discovered that in the vast majority of experiments, participants working on their own produced a higher quantity and quality of ideas than those working in groups.

The reason, group brainstorming fails, is because of a phenomenon called ‘social loafing’. Simply put it is diffusion of responsibility. When people work on their own, their success or failure is entirely due to their own abilities and hard work. If they do well, the glory is theirs. If they fail, they carry the can. However, add people to the situation and everyone stops trying so hard, safe in the knowledge that, though they will not receive personal praise if the group does well, they can always blame others if it performs badly.

Years of brainstorming may have inadvertently been stifling, not stimulating, creative juices. So have faith in yourself, work alone, regroup to discuss your ideas with your team and kick ass.

What you wear can affect how you act

Published October 25, 2023February 25, 2013 by Anand Damani

We feel confident when we wear good clothes, and may be not that confident when wearing clothes we feel not good enough. Seems intuitive. But did you know that if you wear a white coat that you believe belongs to a doctor, your ability to pay attention increases sharply. While if you wear the same white coat believing it belongs to a painter, you will show no such improvement.

Dr. Adam Galinsky, a professor at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and his colleague Hoja Adam call this phenomenon ‘enclothed cognition’ to describe the systematic influence that clothes have on the wearer’s psychological processes. That’s a play off the term ‘embodied cognition’, a line of research that examines the ways bodily sensations influence our thoughts and emotions.

As a test of the ‘enclothed cognition’ perspective, their research explored the effects of wearing a lab coat on ordinary people. They had to look at two very similar pictures side by side on a screen and spot four minor differences. It was found that attention (finding more number of differences) did not increase when the coat was not worn or associated with a painter. Attention only increased when the coat was a) worn and b) associated with a doctor. The effect occurs only if you actually wear the coat and know its symbolic meaning — physicians tend to be careful, rigorous and good at paying attention.

“There is a huge body of work on embodied cognition”, says Dr. Galinsky. “The experience of washing your hands is associated with moral purity and ethical judgments. People rate others personally warmer if they hold a hot drink in their hand, and colder if they hold an iced drink. Other experiments have shown that women who dress in a masculine fashion during a job interview are more likely to be hired, and a teaching assistant who wears formal clothes is perceived as more intelligent than one who dresses more casually.”

Stare at your own risk

Published October 25, 2023February 18, 2013 by Anand Damani

Just glancing at a photo of a rich and gooey chocolate cake can set your brain circuits sparking, switching on cravings and revving up your appetite.

The proof is in the brain scans. Researchers found that when people stare at sugary treats, regions of the brain known to be involved in appetite control and pleasure and reward light up, according to the study presented at the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society.

The new study parallels earlier research in cocaine addicts. When addicts were shown anti-drug commercials that included crossed-out needles, the brain regions associated with pleasure fired up and the addicts reported increased craving. Contrary to public health officials’ plans, only the needles registered in the addicts’ brains, not the big red Xs crossing them out.

Dr. Kathleen Page, a professor of medicine at the University of Southern California says “We see parallels between substances of abuse, like cocaine, and highly palatable foods. Some of the same brain regions light up.”

Page and her colleagues scanned brains of obese Hispanic women looking at images of alluring foods such as cupcakes, chocolate cake and chocolate chip cookies. “What we saw was that the regions of the brain that are involved in reward and hunger lit up,” Page said. The women, who were also asked to rate their appetite at the beginning and end of the experiment, reported greater hunger and desire for food after looking at the photos.

And in an intriguing second experiment, the researchers asked the women to each consume a sugary drink of approximately 200 calories. Then the researchers repeated the scans as before with the women looking at photos of tasty treats.

“Surprisingly, consumption of the sugar drink actually increased the ratings of hunger and desire,” Page said. “We didn’t predict a hunger increase with the sugar drink. Apparently the brain saw it as an appetizer.”

It’s not clear how average people can protect themselves from photos of tempting treats, Page said. And it’s funny, but when I conducted the studies and looked at the pictures myself, I was thinking, I could eat a piece of chocolate cake right now.

Feel like having one?

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