ADHD and Our Mental Models for Making Decisions
It's season 28 and we're kicking it off with a look at how we make decisions. See, we all have models through which we see the choices before us. We decided to start this series with a look at some of the acknowledged mental models around decision-making to help us create a vernacular we can use to discuss how our brains are impacted by choices in our lives and our ADHD.
Mental models are bite-sized, condensed views that help us understand ourselves and the world around us. We explore various mental models that can both aid and hinder our decision-making, such as the tendency to want to do something, confirmation bias, hindsight bias, overgeneralizing from small samples, social proof, and opportunity costs. We discuss the importance of using these models with caution and not relying on them entirely for decision-making. Join us as we explore these fascinating concepts and gain insights into how our biases and tendencies can influence our choices.
Links & Notes
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Pete Wright:
Hello everybody and welcome to season 28 of Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast on TruStory FM. Happy New Year. I'm Pete Wright, and this right there is Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer:
Hello everyone.
Pete Wright:
Hello.
Nikki Kinzer:
Season 28 makes me feel really old.
Pete Wright:
It's weird, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Right because if you think about it, I know this isn't true to podcast in the podcast world, but 28 seasons of something is like 28 years of something.
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Nikki Kinzer:
That's [inaudible 00:00:37].
Pete Wright:
We're actually... Technically, I think we're 14.
Nikki Kinzer:
Which still isn't really that-
Pete Wright:
It still feels...
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, yeah.
Pete Wright:
This is the thing I have to say out loud, and this is what I was doing this morning because I screwed up our recording schedule, is I went through to figure out when are we going to hit episode 600?
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, how close are we?
Pete Wright:
600. We are very close.
Nikki Kinzer:
Wow.
Pete Wright:
[inaudible 00:01:03] very close. We will hit it in just 12 episodes from now. It is episode 12 of this season, we will hit 600 episodes of the show.
Nikki Kinzer:
So that means that our dear listener and friend Brian is going to have to create a new song for us to celebrate the 600 episode.
Pete Wright:
Yes, yes. Whatever it takes.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yep.
Pete Wright:
Come hell or high water, there will be a song.
Nikki Kinzer:
There will be.
Pete Wright:
Outstanding.
Nikki Kinzer:
Indeed.
Pete Wright:
Yes. That's super fun. It's super fun. I can't believe we've been doing this quite that long. 600 episodes for crying out loud. Well, today we are kicking off our little series on decision making and it might be a little academic. There's a dash of history. I'm very excited about it. I get worked up about this stuff. And so we're going to be talking about the mental models that we use naturally. All of us that we use, maybe unconsciously, subconsciously, maybe intentionally when it comes to being faced with hard decisions. And I'm pretty excited about it. Any decision doesn't even have to be hard. It could be any decision.
Nikki Kinzer:
I think this is going to be really helpful, because it's hard to make decisions. And I think this might help people kind of break it down and maybe find a different way on how to make them.
Pete Wright:
I think so too. So that's what we're going to do today. So get ready, get out your note-taking pens and pencils and put on your thinking hats.
Nikki Kinzer:
I wish I had a hat.
Pete Wright:
I do too. That just made me think-
Nikki Kinzer:
I know.
Pete Wright:
... God I wish I had a thinking hat.
Nikki Kinzer:
I really wish I had a hat
Pete Wright:
Man.
Nikki Kinzer:
Okay.
Pete Wright:
Okay, well do all that. If you have a thinking hat, don it now and we're going to get started. Before we do that, head over to takecontroladhd.com, get to know us a little bit better. Listen to the show right there on the website or subscribe to the mailing list right there on the homepage. And we will send you an email, every time a new episode drops. Connect with us on Facebook or Instagram or Pinterest, @takecontroladhd and jump into the Discord server. ADHD Discord community is fantastic. We've got a bunch of free channels over there and then if you up the ante, you up the ADHD ante by heading over to patreon.com/theadhdpodcast. When you become a patron, you get more stuff in Discord. It's like magic. There's a magic curtain that parts when you become a patron. And let's just talk about Patreon. Patreon is listener-supported podcasting. It is the thing that supports this show.
These shows are not free to produce and they take a ton of time, a ton of prep, a ton of production time of many people who are working on this show, and it helps immeasurably to have Patreon support making this show happen. So again, patreon.com/theadhdpodcast. Sign up, get discord stuff, other benefits you can check out on the site. We'd love to have you in the community.
Mental models, Nikki mental models. The season 28, it's a season of models. Right now we're going to be talking... We need to talk about what are the mental models that are at work in our lives. And one of the reasons I love about this is that we all have them. We're wired for them in some way, shape or form, and many of us don't have the words to describe, how we look at the world. And so starting out with a conversation on these mental models. I feel like gives us a new language, a new vernacular that we can talk about how we make decisions and how we are biased in one direction or another, when we make decisions and maybe a little bit more aware. Right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. It's interesting because you had the idea for this series. It was hard for me to wrap my head around it until we actually did a Google search during our meeting and said, "Let's look at mental models and see what comes up." And then all these things started coming up and I realized the most common one that I am fully aware of is the growth mindset versus the fixed mindset from Carol Dweck, but there's so many more. And that's what was so fascinating to me is that there's a lot. And I know for me anyway, I was not aware of it, so I'm looking forward to learning.
Pete Wright:
Well, and the fact that a lot of these things have been written about for millennia. We've been thinking about mental models and how we make decisions since the Greeks and we'll talk about that in a bit. The whole point of looking at mental models, a mental model is a bite-sized condensed view or perspective that explains how someone might view themselves in the world around them. It's just an organizing principle. They can help you or hinder you or just make you aware of the decisions you make and why you make them. And there are hundreds of them. It's living in search of metaphor that I love so much. And so I don't know that necessarily makes sense to talk about just, "Here are all the mental models," outside of the context of the theme. And that's why we're talking about decision-making, but know that there are a lot of mental models that support every single kind of interaction you have with the world. This is just one that resonates with us for ADHD.
Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely.
Pete Wright:
These do not describe the truth. This is not about objective fact. This is a model that works in large part because of how we're wired to see the world and operates in absence or in ignorance of fact. Because largely these are based on beliefs and that can be a fuzzy, squishy, gooey kind of thing to talk about, but that's just where we are. Again, organizing principles. And one of the things that I find as I read through these and I research them and look at how they relate to my life is that my gut response to reading these things is, "Oh no, I don't do that." Or "I always do that." Which is in fact a mental model itself at work on my digestion of mental models. It is such a meta conversation that we kind of have to dance around a little bit of that. So do you want to just dig in?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
Do you have any preamble yourself?
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, no. The only other thing I was going to say is that we're not experts on these things. This is the first time that I've really dug into this information. So we're really just going to talk about it, what they are, and we're just going to have a conversation around it. So that's it.
Pete Wright:
For sure. All right, so a couple of mental models for making decisions. The first one is, it doesn't have a very good name. It needs to be rebranded, but it really is at work for ADHD in a kind of legendary way. It is the tendency to want to do something, right? It's the tendency toward action. It's also known as boredom syndrome. So I think we get a sense of how that might play into ADHD.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, I think so.
Pete Wright:
I think so. It is feeling the need to act, even if action isn't necessary, required or even recommended. How do you see this play out?
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, I think it's very much to the H in the ADHD, the hyperactivity. There's basically, from the research I've done and well, this can get into different areas. But the three main categories of ADHD, I'll put it that way, is ADHD with the H, which is with the hyperactivity. ADHD with less hyperactivity or you have a combination of both. And they don't call it ADD anymore, it's just ADHD. This is what pops up for me with ADHD is that impulsivity and just needing to move even, like it's hard to sit still. So I see my daughter moving her leg all the time. It's that kind of wanting to do something but also wanting to move, not sit still. And boredom, that's the worst thing, right? I mean...
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Do people with ADHD experience boredom? Yes, but it doesn't often look like boredom looks for people who don't live with ADHD.
There's very little like pining at the window on a rainy day. That's just not how it works because it's unmetered energy, right? Something's going on in your head or your body that is constantly moving and doing something. I think it's interesting when we look at it from the perspective of productivity. And this is where I think the model for tendency to want to do something plays tricks on us. So I offer a quote from Roman satirist Petronius Arbiter. That's right. Roman-
Nikki Kinzer:
Wow, I'm so glad you said that.
Pete Wright:
... satirist. Yes. Here's the quote. I think this is really interesting. "We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form into teams, we would be reorganized." "I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganization, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization." This is what happens when the tendency to want to do something, often is the wrong thing. It is the thing that gets in the way of actual productivity, when you're confusing preparation and getting started with the end goal. And those two things are not the same. It is the recipe for lying to ourselves and others. And I think that's a really important thing to note about yourself.
And when you find yourself inarticulately, just sort of doing things, organizing papers, moving files around on your computer, reorganizing Dropbox-
Nikki Kinzer:
Busy work.
Pete Wright:
... I'm just saying all the things I've done in the last couple of days.
Nikki Kinzer:
For sure.
Pete Wright:
Maybe it's because you are hiding from something that could actually be an end goal, a productive goal. There's something you have to process and that's not always a bad thing. Maybe you just need the movement to get towards something else. But I think it's really important to at least know it and say it and call it out, "This is what I'm doing right now, this is what I'm doing."
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, Great awareness because I hear it all the time of, "I know what to do, I know what my priorities are, but I'm always working on other stuff. I'm not working on the right thing." And yeah, this is definitely part of that.
Pete Wright:
This leads us to confirmation bias.
Nikki Kinzer:
Okay.
Pete Wright:
This one's a doozy. This is the one I was so excited to talk about. Most of all, I was excited to talk about this one because I think it's another... Oh, it's another number one with a bullet for ADHD mental models and for all of our mental models in a modern media society, this is what happens. And if you've heard of confirmation bias, you might be able to figure out what it means. But just in terms of history, this is one of the ones that's been around for a long time. Thucydides was a Greek historian who lived from 460 to 395 BC. And he was talking about confirmation bias all the way back then. The term was actually coined by Peter Wason in 1960 and he was doing a test on how people reinforce their decisions and how they reinforce their decisions in groups.
And he coined this term, it's confirmation bias. And then in 1987, these two other guys, Klayman and Ha wrote this paper. And they said, "You know what? Wason's experiments were fine, but they don't actually demonstrate confirmation bias." So they renamed his thing, Wason's thing, positive test strategy, and they built a better test... hypothesis and test for confirmation bias. And in academic circles, that is the most incredible power move you can make, is say you coined a thing and your definition was wrong. So we are going to do it better. That is mind-blowing. I had not heard that story until I was researching this morning, and I cannot believe that that's how we landed on confirmation bias.
Nikki Kinzer:
That is pretty amazing. Wow.
Pete Wright:
Amazing, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Pretty bold.
Pete Wright:
"What you're doing is wrong." So bold. So bold.
Nikki Kinzer:
But you know what... I mean, I don't know anything about any of these, so I can't say for sure. But I think it's okay too. It's all right to question what was being said in 460-395 BC era. It's okay to question that.
Pete Wright:
But he was the guy, Thucydides was the guy who got it right. Wason is the guy in 1960-
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh 1960. Okay, oh wow.
Pete Wright:
These guys Klayman and Ha said, "1960, this is just 30 years prior."
Nikki Kinzer:
Right, right.
Pete Wright:
He tested for the wrong thing. Klayman and Ha came up with this test for confirmation bias. And basically what it underscores is "We see what we want to believe." We see what... We already have an ingrained belief system. And so the things that we see are the things that we already believe. The simplest sort of experience of that is, it's similar to, but not the same as the Volkswagen bug test. When you're thinking about a Volkswagen bug, then all you see are bugs, right? It's that same thing when you're going to buy a car, suddenly you see all the cars that are the same as yours on the market. And so that's just sort of the easiest way to look at it.
But where it gets more complicated is when you look at a little bit of the history, sort of the mechanism of why it works the way it does. We with ADHD, we believe that we have the script that says, "I can't do this thing because none of the stuff that I've tried ever works for me. Why would this be any different?" And the corollary to that is, "This stuff always works for me so that I can do this thing and it's the only thing that will work for me." Right? That's kind of the interesting corollary to it.
Nikki Kinzer:
So that's the confirmation bias is the second one. That, "This stuff always works for me only"-
Pete Wright:
They're the same.
Nikki Kinzer:
They're the same.
Pete Wright:
They're both the same. They're both confirmation bias. It's this strong belief that the evidence that I have supports the outcome and therefore that is truth.
Nikki Kinzer:
So that's a limiting belief.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
I mean you just defined that. Okay, interesting.
Pete Wright:
Right. But it ends up being much more complicated. So there are a number of different ways to look at how this confirmation bias shows up at our lives. One of them is a biased search for information. When we are looking for evidence for something that we are looking for, maybe I'm looking for research on time blocking. I'm biased because of my internal belief naturally before I start the search. And if I believe time blocking works, the stuff that I'm going to trigger on in my research is stuff that supports time blocking. And if I believe time blocking doesn't, then the research I come up with will hate on time blocking. So that's biased search for information.
Nikki Kinzer:
This is so interesting to me because I've done a lot of presentations around time blocking and there will be questions that come up. And I will have already answered the question. Like the actual question I have on the screen and it'll say something about, "Time blocking doesn't work because..." And then they'll ask me a question that was actually in that slide. And I think it's what you're saying is that they're looking for something to not work. So that's coming up to mind and not seeing the answer or hearing it or really processing it.
Pete Wright:
Yes. Now check this out. There are two more ways that this bias shows up in terms of the mechanism, and I think you're going to hear exactly what you're talking about. So we talked about the biased search for information. That's where I think I want to learn more and my biases are showing up on the research that's coming up. The second one is biased interpretation of information. You're feeding me information in your presentation and I'm going to choose how to believe it, as it comes to me. The third is biased memory recall of information. So now the facts and figures that stick in my head, in my memory align with my already cemented internal bias. So when I'm talking about this and recalling this information, I'm only recalling the facts that align with my bias. So biased search, biased interpretation, and biased recall, those are the three big kind of categories of how cognitive bias plays into our daily life.
Two more points, I promise. Once you get into those three, you have to talk about why our brains are working the way they do. So there are two explanations of these. One of them is the cognitive explanation. And that says quite simply, our brains are too simple to handle the conflicts of information, the cognitive dissonance that comes when we're truly authentically and unbiasedly looking at new information. They're too simple. And so we throw out the stuff that we don't understand or can't integrate and we stick with the stuff that already aligns to our belief system. It's just what we do. The second explanation is called motivational. And a motivational explanation says I already have a belief system, so I'm intentionally only doing the things that line with my belief system, my worldview. And I am not open to anything else because I am a motivated participant. My brain is maybe cognitively not dealing with issues. That may be an explanation, but here I am with intention falling in line to exactly how I see the world.
And I think all of these things, biased search, biased interpretation and biased memory recall, coupled with cognitive and motivational explanations of confirmation bias. Define so much of how we relate to our own self-care and self-treatment of ADHD. Because we have such a strong belief that the stuff that we live through has formed an indelible, un-editable story about our ADHD. And breaking that story feels impossible. What do you think? Now my rant is over.
Nikki Kinzer:
What do we do with that Pete, right? Because I don't want anything to be impossible.
Pete Wright:
I know, but it feels impossible, right? It's not impossible. It feels impossible, but I think it comes out to why we're doing this show. If you're listening to this right now and you're like, "Okay, great, Pete, what do I do with it?" The point is, you now might have a model to see and use language around when you are making decisions that are not in your best interest. But are maybe aligned to internal limiting beliefs that you've said about yourself all along. So I think the whole point is to internalize the words, is to internalize how these biases, how your belief system informs everything around the world. And it might not be just ADHD, it might be your fandom. It might be things you love in your life, it might be your politics, it might be religion. These are the complicated things that form social alignment and form our belief systems. And if we aren't saying out loud why these things matter to us and testing those beliefs, then we're not really authentic members of a group right?
Nikki Kinzer:
I think it's important to talk about it. And I think you just said something that really kind of actually put it together for me, and that's the reason why. Really digging into why, and what is it that you want?
Pete Wright:
That leads us to another old favorite. It's a classic. This puppy is hindsight bias. I mean, what's your relationship with hindsight bias?
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, it just brings up a lot of anxiety. I wish I could have done that a little differently. Yeah, I think that this... Related to ADHD I know that one of the executive functions that's difficult for ADHD is to actually remember and learn from the past. We tend to block that out. It's not a consideration in what you're deciding right now. So I would be interested to hear more about what you have to say here.
Pete Wright:
Well, so this is one that was... The term was formalized in the 1970s, and really it's all about, "I knew it all along." Infact that's the sort of pseudonym of hindsight bias. It's the, "Knew it all along" formula. And it came about-
Nikki Kinzer:
Is that kind of like, "I told you so," kind of thing? Or is that different?
Pete Wright:
Similar.
Nikki Kinzer:
Similar, okay.
Pete Wright:
Similar, but well, the history of it is interesting. So the concept is once you know the final outcome of a decision. Then often the instinct is to say, "Oh, I knew that all along." I was prophetic. I already knew the answer before we started the decision-making process. I knew we would end up here because I'm so smart and I'm a fortune-teller. And it comes about because a social scientist named Paul Meehl observed, doctors overestimated their ability to have foreseen the outcome of a particular medical case. So they claimed they knew it all along. So you imagine Dr. House, House MD. He's doing his work, he starts a case and by the end of the case he says out loud, "When I started the episode forty-five minutes ago, I knew it would end up here." Now that's never the case with Dr. House. He's wrong all the time and he has to test a lot of things before he gets to a right answer.
But physicians writ large, and at this conference, this is kind of where these guys started formulating the hypothesis for hindsight bias. They were like, "Doctors are really keen on doing this." They say all the time "Where we started, I knew then where we would end up." And that turns out was not true. It was just not objectively true. So these two guys, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. Dan Kahneman is... He's kind of legendary in social science research. They researched this whole thing by asking subjects. They asked the subjects in their test, to judge the likelihood of Nixon's trips to Beijing and Moscow before he went to the trips. They said, "What do you think is going to happen?" And then Nixon takes the trips and then time passes cue sometime later. And they go back to a subset of the people who were part of the test and they said, "Okay, I'd like you to reconstruct your belief on what you said was going to happen before and tell me what you think about your perceptions now after."
And the people who responded by and large said, "Yeah, I totally knew it was going to turn out this way. I am a political genius. I'm political prophet. I knew that Nixon's, Beijing and Moscow trips were going to turn out exactly the way they did." And by and large, they were wrong. Their memories were wrong of the experience that Nixon had in Moscow. It was motivated by any number of other complicating factors in their own personal ideology, their worldview. But their alignment with objective facts to their perception of what would happen was just off. So this skews your version of history where you may have made a different decision and your belief system now sort of cements that you made the right decision based on a number of complicating things afterwards.
So now that you know the final outcome, you change your beliefs about your original thoughts or feelings before you knew the answer, right? You're rewriting history in your brain. And that I think is something... I'll speak for myself, that's something that I do. I'm sure that I do that in how I sort of live my worldview. I'm sure that I have rewritten stuff because we all do it. We all do it. This is not an admission of guilt. This is our...
Nikki Kinzer:
It's a bias.
Pete Wright:
Humans are... We're complex organisms and this is how we do it. So what do you do about that? Well, I feel like there's a practice that comes to hindsight bias. And it really comes down to... I know I've talked about this on the show. My dear friend, Kurt Sifford who's a programmer and sometime podcaster, and he says, "I love being wrong because it gives me an opportunity to be right again later." And that is a thing that I've been trying to internalize for the last year. Because what that does is it lets me cement the places where I'm wrong, say out loud, "I was wrong, I screwed up." So that later I've internalized the experience of being wrong toward a better future where I'm not wrong as often because I've learned something, I've trained myself.
I think part of the practice is being able to look at your experience and look at how things are working and say, "This isn't working for me." I'll just use our favorite time blocking. "Time blocking is not working for me right now." It's not working for me right now, and I need to cement that, but also cement why, right? Let's talk about why it's screwing up for me. What are the symptoms, what's going on? Write about it, journal about it, whatever it is to try not to or to try to absolve yourself of the guilt of rewriting history unintentionally.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, and what I love about what you're saying here too is that I think it's giving us another... You know knowledge is power, and so now this is in our universe, our thinking. That the next time you feel like you are up to making a decision and you're thinking, "I already know the outcome," that that should be like a little red beeping light that says pause, pause, pause, pause. Because this hasn't happened. We really don't know the outcome. So it gives you that moment to recognize that that's what you're saying, that like, "Well, why would I do this?" Because it doesn't work. "I know it's never worked. Okay, and it's not going to work now." "All right, stop, pause." Pause for a moment. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Beware of generalization, of hypergeneralization. Beware of those, because that's... As it turns out, an incredible segue because that's the next mental model.
Nikki Kinzer:
Look how-
Pete Wright:
Tendency to over-
Nikki Kinzer:
... smooth that was.
Pete Wright:
So smooth, so smooth. Tendency to overgeneralize from small samples versus the law of large numbers. Overgeneralizing from small samples is... I feel like we don't need to spend a whole lot of time on it because it is the lifeblood of ADHD. We get it. I'm going to take my experience and I'm not even going to rewrite my experience as some sort of grand truth for everybody. I'm just going to say, "Because I have this experience one time, it's going to be my permanent indelible truth." That's fine for you, great. But it also closes the door on change. And that's the note for this one to me. Once we say, "This thing happened to me 1, 2, 6 times, therefore the outcome's always going to be the same." We close the door on change in that aspect of our lives, and I think it's important to be aware of that.
Nikki Kinzer:
There was a quote, now I can't remember what it is. If I find it, I'll let you know. But it was something about trying so many times and then the 100th time it worked or something like that. And so it kind of just reminds me of that. You got to keep trying and... Oh, there was also a quote from Michael Jordan where he said he had missed so many baskets, but then won all of these championships and all this stuff. So it was really good about, how you can't stop trying, you have to keep trying. And it is really easy, and I don't think this is just ADHD. I think it's harder for ADHD because of the RSD factor. Any kind of criticism... One little thing you're going to hold on to, and it doesn't matter how many great things there are that's being said. You're going to always remember that. And that's tough. I mean it's hard because you have to process that.
Pete Wright:
Well, and here's the interesting thing. This is another Dan Kahneman thing. We as humans focus more on story rather than sort of reliability of data and numbers because quote, "People are not adequately sensitive to sample size." So when you read a story that says 300 elderly people surveyed prefer Tums to Pepto-Bismol, right? Of those 300, the majority prefer Tums to Pepto-Bismol. What do you take out of that sentence? You take, "Oh, elderly people like Tums."
Nikki Kinzer:
Right. "I'll get Tums for my grandma."
Pete Wright:
"Go get Tums for the grandma," right? Because clearly elderly people like Tums. But what you don't ask is like, "Oh, does the fact that you only ask 300 people matter?" Majority in 300 people is a 151 people. That might not be the case that proves the norm. And so that's why when you look at how researchers talk about this. They say human beings can recognize pretty reliably the difference between a sample size of six and 6 million, but between 300 and 3000, we can't. We decide norms are built on numbers that are irrational in social science and we take as fact the thing that is just an assertion that might be worth for the research.
Nikki Kinzer:
Would this be true for political polls?
Pete Wright:
Oh, yes.
Nikki Kinzer:
Okay. I don't want to get into that, but I'm just curious.
Pete Wright:
No, we're not going to get into it, but the answer is yes, of course. These are the kinds of questions they're asking about how we do surveys of anything. Whether it's Tums to politics, to whatever it is. And this gets us into the law of large numbers. And the law of large numbers says that in any significantly large or increasing sample size. You'll find an increasingly reliable norm that says, "Okay, we can make a judgment based on this in huge sample size of people." That there is a norm inside here that says, "Okay, of 6 million people that we're interviewing, if 5 million of them prefer Tums, we can take advantage of that." But that doesn't tell us anything about outliers and ADHDers are outliers by and large. So this is why understanding how our own efforts to collect data on our behavior can be swayed. And why it's so important to stop and recognize, "Wait a minute, I'm making an assumption based on my experience over six tries or one year or whatever."
"And the fact is there are a lot of people out there trying the same thing, doing it in different ways. And maybe something that somebody else is doing is a thing that I should try. I should be open to opportunity to learn about myself and how important that is." Okay.
Nikki Kinzer:
Love it.
Pete Wright:
What do you think? How's that? Is that okay?
Nikki Kinzer:
Very good.
Pete Wright:
Because that leads us right into a fantastic one right now for our social media modern age, and that is social proof. Oh, [inaudible 00:34:58]-
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh boy.
Pete Wright:
... social proof. People tend to gravitate toward being part of a large group for safety. Because when we were living in the caves, the guy who went out of the cave was eaten by the saber-toothed tiger. That's our evolutionary bias toward social proof-
Nikki Kinzer:
Safety in numbers.
Pete Wright:
Safety in numbers. This is how humanity exists is because we formed communes, to villages and towns, to cities, to metropolis. This is where we are. It's how [inaudible 00:35:33]. And a lot of the evolutionary bias no longer serves us. We're not going to be eaten by saber-toothed tigers anymore-
Nikki Kinzer:
I hope not.
Pete Wright:
That just doesn't happen. I should hope not to. That's why I don't go to museums. Anyway, the point is that there are a lot of mechanisms by which we gauge unintentionally and invisibly social proof. We're constantly looking at, "This is what the experts say." "I heard it on this expert podcast." Like this is how I became a fandom, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
I love that. It's "they," exactly who is, "they?"
Pete Wright:
Who is, "they?"
Nikki Kinzer:
I really question that. Yeah, because I really want to know who they are.
Pete Wright:
And then you go to celebrities, there's a very explicit, "they." You have "theys" who are pitching something and you think it's because they, the celebrity uses that thing. Because they're expert at telling you that story and painting that picture.
Nikki Kinzer:
And they're also getting paid millions of dollars to do it, yeah.
Pete Wright:
Then you get Matt Damon in trouble because he's on a commercial, in movie theaters and on sporting events. Pitching people to go buy crypto right before Sam Bankman-Fried is judged guilty. This is another version of social proof is how much attention we pay to celebrities and how they're endorsing things. Other users, we look at reviews and-
Nikki Kinzer:
Testomonials.
Pete Wright:
Star ratings. That's yet another way to judge our social proof, wisdom of the crowds. What is the crowd doing? What is the crowd reading? Wisdom of friends. What is my social group doing? This is how these trends sort of spread at a microcosm. And certification, "Oh, I'm only using products if they're certified organic." "I'm only using products if they're certified green." "I only partner with companies that are certified B Corps." There are all kinds of ways to use certifications as definitions of social proof. And that leads to different ways for us to be guided in our decision making. Herd behavior, over-reliance on social proof leads to herd behavior where people make decisions that are based on what others are doing rather than their own information and analysis. This takes back to our law of large numbers, our over-generalization, our confirmation bias. All of these things play into our ability as human beings to do things for other people's reasons rather than our own.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. Yes.
Pete Wright:
Right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, absolutely.
Pete Wright:
Social proof can be manipulated. If anything we have seen is that social media is manipulated in order to manipulate social proof. By purchasing fake reviews, by stuffing organic posts that aren't real, aren't legitimate. We are manipulated, quality versus popularity. Just because something is popular doesn't mean it is high quality or the best choice for your individual needs and sometimes-
Nikki Kinzer:
That reminds me of social groups, just because I just can hear my mom saying, "Just because, so-and-so jumped off the bridge doesn't mean you need to jump off the bridge," or whatever it is. But yeah, I can see that too. That's interesting.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, just going through this whole list makes me really question my own behavior and the things that I'm using, and why did I do this thing? Why did I get this thing? Why am I a fan of this group? It really comes back for me too, as a sort of media lover. How do we address our own fandom of problematic creators? How do we separate that? Why are we fans of people who are just distasteful, for any number of reasons? And this leads to our last one, I promise. I know this has been a bit academic, but this is our last mental model; opportunity costs. And it's a challenging one because it's an economics concept, right? Opportunity cost comes out of economics, and so when we look at opportunity costs, we have to first agree that it is what it is. It's this fundamental concept that refers to the value of the best alternative that is foregone when a choice is made, right?
It's the value of the thing that you're not getting once you get a choice. And the emotional part of it is how do you feel once you have made that choice? And it boils down to the heads or tails test in a coin toss for me. When you... And I still use this, it's like, "Okay, I have two choices to make." I'm going to say one is heads, one is tails, and I'm going to flip a coin, and if I get heads and I feel good about heads. Then I'll know that the relative value of tails was not higher than the value of heads. I won't have any questions. It'll feel totally natural to me. But if I get tails and I feel bad about it, then I'll know maybe I should reconsider because of heads. That can also lead to decision paralysis-
Nikki Kinzer:
For sure.
Pete Wright:
... But for a lot of questions, it can at least tell you how your gut feels about it, because you have this object in your hand that is supposedly representative of choice, and we are easily programmable machines. So the bottom line is when you say yes to a thing, you are explicitly saying no to another thing. You have to think of it that way because you cannot do everything.
Nikki Kinzer:
And that's the question. And I really like the framing of this because I think when we do look at choices and we have to make a decision. We look at the pros and the cons, but I like that we also look at this now. If I say yes to this, what am I saying no to? And it really just gives it a different flavor of thinking, like what am I... And how do I feel about it? I mean, I totally get what you're saying. Am I going to be happy about this or I'm going to be resentful about this?
And I think it also going into decision-making as far as boundaries with your time. I think it's really important that we think about this, because your time is so valuable and we have so little of it that it really does make sense to pause for a moment and how do I really feel about it? Because it's very difficult to take your emotions out of it. We have to consider those and how you feel about it overall, what you're giving up.
Pete Wright:
For sure.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Well, and this leads to the major challenges, right? First of all, exactly what you're talking about. It's super subjective, right? It screams spotlight syndrome, that you're just so focused on yourself. And sometimes you can lose track of the fact that decisions are not often as isolated to self as we tend to believe, especially when we're in this zone. It's also incredibly difficult to measure intangible benefits and costs. And when we're outside of the realm of economics where we have massive data sets to be able to talk about how countries' currencies flow. When we're talking about how we feel about something, it's so hard to measure that. How do you measure what my gut says? I don't know, Joules? I don't know. I don't know how you measure that. So that of course leads to the last one, which we already mentioned upfront. Which is the over emphasis on opportunity costs can lead to paralysis, it can lead to exhaustion, and then you don't make choices.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, and then the choices are made for you. This also reminds me of going back to what Casey [inaudible 00:43:28] taught us, a few shows back around being okay to disappoint people. That I really think that when the emotions come and we are really trying to set those boundaries. We are going to have to disappoint people and get comfortable with that uncomfortableness of disappointing people. Because you're right, it's not always about me, it's about other people, but I also have to protect me. And that may mean disappointing somebody else and letting that happen and being okay with it.
Pete Wright:
And what you're describing is exactly why it's important to look at these mental models of decision-making as a whole, as a conversation. Because making this decision leads right back into social proof. Who are we trying to please? Because we might be biased toward pleasing a group we're not even aware of consciously until we start talking about it. We might be making a decision that is influenced by our history through hindsight bias or is being confirmed somehow because of research and an internal belief that we haven't ever questioned. And I think that's the piece that is so interesting to me about building this vocabulary for us to talk about things this season and for everybody to listen to. And just remember, you probably heard of a lot of these things, but how does it play with the decisions that you make every day? What if it's not just academic rhetoric? What if it really is today is the day I question my confirmation bias?
Today is the day I question the biases about the research I'm doing. Today is the day I question the soft drink I'm drinking or the car I drive or whatever. What if today's the day I start poking at these decisions that I've made and make sure they're the right decisions for me? And maybe building a worldview around that will allow us to move forward with decisions about our ADHD brains in a way that gives us more confidence and maybe a little courage.
Nikki Kinzer:
Love it.
Pete Wright:
Feels good. What do you think?
Nikki Kinzer:
Great job.
Pete Wright:
[inaudible 00:45:36] okay.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. This was great. Really-
Pete Wright:
Don't know if you can tell. I love this subject, so please share your thoughts. We'd love to hear what you guys are thinking. And I hope this gives you stuff to think about. And that you don't just hear, "Oh, mental models, turn it off. I don't need to think about it right now." Because I think this is really interesting stuff. And I think ignorance of it is a further bias, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, right. For sure.
Pete Wright:
Not being willing to challenge it, is actually a further bias. And it's okay. It's okay. No judgment. It's just how... It's what we are. So anyway, hey, thanks for tuning in everybody. It's 28, 01. Oh, season 28. Thanks for being here for the first episode. We appreciate you downloading and listening to the show. Thanks for your time and your attention. Don't forget, if you have something to contribute to the conversation, head over to the ShowTalk channel in the Discord server. And you can join us right there by becoming a supporting member at the deluxe level or better. On behalf of Nikki Kinzer, I'm Pete Wright, and we'll see you right back here next week on Taking Control, The ADHD Podcast.
