On June 3, 1995, the American Jeffrey Z. Rubin, a conflict resolution expert, died while attempting to climb a mountain in Maine, USA. He was 54 years old.
The mountain, in Baxter State Park, in the north of the state, is part of a circuit of 100 peaks very popular among mountaineers, whose goal is to climb them all.
A lover of the sport and quite experienced, Rubin came close to achieving his goal: he had already climbed the other 99 peaks.
The last person to see him alive was a student he was climbing with.
As they were climbing, a very thick fog descended and visibility was reduced to practically zero. The student told him it was better not to continue as it was dangerous but Rubin decided to continue alone. His body was found two days later.
The great irony is that this story illustrates a theory that Rubin himself was a pioneer in developing: entrapment.
According to it, we are prone to get stuck in situations or projects even when there are clear indications that further persistence will not benefit us.
And it’s not just about fog-covered mountains, but also about toxic jobs or relationships, and even major unwinnable wars.
Against common sense
In the 1970s, Rubin conducted an experiment that served as the basis for his theory.
He invited participants to complete a crossword puzzle that had eight answers, some of them very difficult.
Each volunteer would receive US$8, no matter how many words they got right, plus US$2 for each correct answer.
The time to turn in the crossword puzzle was limited: after a certain time, they began to lose the money they had accumulated, and if they went over the final limit, they lost it all.
To solve the most difficult questions, the researcher offered participants the option of consulting a crossword dictionary.
But there was only one, so if they wanted to use it, they would have to wait.
The question was, would they wait for the dictionary, even at the risk of losing up to US$8?
As it turns out, yes.
Apparently, once we get involved in a project, we don’t give up, even when it’s very clear that continuing is going to hurt us.
Even knowing that we tend to act that way doesn’t help us make better decisions.
It didn’t help Rubin, for example.
“If anyone could understand this problem and our phenomenal ability to ignore the signals we get that we shouldn’t continue, it was Jeffrey Rubin,” notes psychologist Annie Duke on BBC’s The Spark.
As a former professional poker player, who amassed winnings of more than US$4 million, Duke is an expert at saying “no more.”
In poker, pros are much more likely to fold early than amateurs. Why?
Because they know the odds and when they are dealt a 2 and a 7, statistically the worst possible hand, they don’t let their judgment be clouded by the hope of an incredible turn on the final card.
In his new book “Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away,” Duke argues that we would all benefit from applying a little more logic to the decisions we make in our daily lives.
That includes knowing when to quit whether it’s an unsatisfying job, an unhappy relationship, a doomed project or a foreign policy misadventure.
Lost Causes
But why do we cling to obviously lost causes?
According to the researchers’ observations, we get stuck in dead ends when we are emotionally involved in such situations.
If Rubin had been at the foot of the mountain when the fog descended, he might not have initiated the ascent.
“But he was in the middle of the climb and wanted to complete the circuit, so he kept going.”
After identifying the phenomenon, the experts wondered what mental processes might be behind it. And they found logical errors in the way we think that get in the way of our decision-making.
Wars are a classic example of how this cognitive phenomenon can hold some of the world’s most powerful people hostage.
“I think there are two reasons why it’s so hard to get out of a war,” says Duke.
The first has to do with a “cognitive trap” that economists call the “sunk cost fallacy.”
It occurs when we feel we’ve already invested so much that we can’t stop what we started, even though it’s obvious that continuing will most likely result in greater losses.
That trap can influence our decisions far beyond the world of finance.
And many of us have fallen into it, whether it’s staying in a restaurant even though it’s been over an hour and they haven’t even taken our order, or in a job or relationship that doesn’t promise to improve.
But in the case of war, “we’re not only talking about billions of dollars spent, but also lives lost.”
Duke cites the testimony of U.S. General Tony Thomas, former commander of U.S. Special Operations Command in Afghanistan, who was told by the father of a fallen soldier, “Don’t let my son die in vain. Win this war!”
“This is the most extreme version of the sunk cost problem,” he says.
“It’s heartbreaking, a person’s life was lost in the war. But the question is, is it worth putting more lives at risk?” he asks.
“We weren’t programmed to think that way.
“And from a political standpoint it gets even more complicated because, even if the politician comes to think, ‘It’s tragic that lives were lost, but I’m not going to put more lives at risk in a war that I know we’re losing,’ he or she will be judged by the public.”
For Duke, who is also a decision strategist, that fear of public opinion is the other reason leaders find it hard to walk away from failed battles, as happened with Vietnam.
Or think of all the gamble Vladimir Putin has taken with the current conflict in Ukraine.
a monkey on a pedestal
Duke goes on to say that the intractable pricing error is just one of the psychological processes that create barriers to decision making.
According to her, we have a number of cognitive biases that prevent us from breaking free, including… Status quo bias “causes us to prefer what we’re already doing over other options that might be better for us.”
The omission bias causes us to “treat inaction differently than action.” Loss aversion is a tendency that is more influenced by losses than gains. But the key is to put your defense “mechanisms” in place before you commit to a particular project or situation.
“The idea is to make sure we know as soon as possible if something is worth pursuing,” he said. “Once you’re deep into a problem, the sooner you make a decision, the cheaper it will be to get out of it.”
To illustrate this, he describes the following scenario:
You decide to train a monkey to play with a lighted torch on a pedestal. If you can do this, you will make a lot of money. To reach your goal, you need to train the monkey and build the base. What do you do first? “The answer is: not a pedestal,” said the psychologist.
“You know you have a chance to build a podium. If you build it, you feel like your project is making progress, but it’s false progress, because if you can’t train a monkey, you don’t need a base.”
“It teaches us to solve the hardest problem first, because if we can’t solve it, there’s no point in solving other problems.”
worth giving up
The monkey and pedestal challenge, which psychologists call “mental models of problem solving,” are most easily applied in the early stages of a project, before they reach the “iceberg beyond the 99th peak.”
“By then, even if the fog has lifted, we will have made some very bad decisions.”
“Like Jeffrey Rubin, we end up doing things we shouldn’t be doing. So a big part of the solution to improving our ability to break a startup is to get out of the moment and get out of our own way,” Du Ke said. recommended. A good approach is to seek counsel, that is, seek advice from someone who is not involved in the problem and can help you see it from a distance.
But he cautioned against approaching the analysis from a neutral perspective. “I’m not suggesting that attrition should be taken more seriously, but it should be considered from an equity and continuity perspective.”
It takes effort because we tend to value persistence.
“It has to do with the ideas that make up our character. We believe that we should never give up on something because it shows a lack of character in us, that we are cowards or losers. “
For her, it’s about rebalancing. And consider both options equally: “What’s the point of continuing? What’s the point of giving up? ” she suggested.