#ThinkfullyHabit: Stop and Think
If a bat and a ball together cost $1.10, and the bat costs a dollar more than the ball, how much does the ball cost?
This is a question that Daniel Kahneman made famous in his book ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’. It’s a question that reveals how our instinctive, rapid response can lead us astray. Many of us will automatically generate the wrong answer of ‘ten cents’ in our heads. Our slower more logical thinking takes some time to catch up.
Problems like this have an obvious but wrong answer, while the correct answer is possible to calculate with some reasoning and effort. It reveals that our minds often have a tendency to jump to answers without processing them fully. People who stop, think and check out their intuitions should be less biased when making decisions.
“Many people are overconfident, prone to place too much faith in their intuitions. They apparently find cognitive effort at least mildly unpleasant and avoid it as much as possible.”
WHY?
We have a tendency to answer a problem with the first answer that comes into our head. Psychologist Shane Frederick first used the bat and ball question in 2005 as part of a test to measure someone’s tendency to go beyond an incorrect ‘gut response’ in order to work through the problem. It has become one of the most widely used measures of someone’s willingness to think analytically.
Behavioural scientists have also made the connection between a tendency to go with the wrong instinctive answers and a belief in false information. Gordon Pennycook, David Rand and colleagues argue that people see false claims and share them impulsively, not because they cannot figure out that the claims are false, but because they don't stop long enough to try*. They found that encouraging people to think about the accuracy of information increases the quality of the news they go on to share. Spotting fake news, like realising the price of the ball, requires us to take a moment to stop and think.
The way to reduce bias and error is to check out our first answer. This is particularly essential in times of change and uncertainty. Psychologists call this cognitive reflection. If the ball really does cost 10 cents and the bat is 1 dollar more than the ball then the bat would be 1 dollar and 10 cents. This would mean the price of the bat and ball together would be 1 dollar and 20 cents, which it isn’t. So, the instinctive, gut response answer of 10 cents is wrong.
The implications are that when we have an answer to a problem that matters to us, we should stop and think to check it out. Was it an instinctive response? Can we refute the answer? Can we work back from the intuitive answer to see if it still makes sense? If the answers are ‘yes’, it means we can get a little closer to taming our thinking bias.
By the way, if you're still working it out, the ball is 5 cents…
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