Attention scarcity and the case for self-nudging to build a better tomorrow

Why is nudge necessary?

As our level of responsibility increases, be it about building a family or better career development, the multitude of important choices which we have to make, also inevitable increase. These choices can have significant long term consequences, good and bad. An average adult makes about 35,000 decisions each day (remotely conscious or otherwise)[i]. This can lead to decision fatigue especially in high-stakes environment. Decision fatigue is the deterioration of the quality of decisions being made after a long session of decision making. This phenomenon has been tested in multiple real life scenarios, including judiciary[ii]. For society, this can result in consumers making poor choices with their purchases. And if too many options are being presented, people either defer making decisions and/or experience lower life satisfaction.

The study of options and the accompanying paradoxes has been studied by researchers such as Barry Schwartz[iii] and Dan Ariely. Therefore, to make optimal high stake decisions, famous successful figures such as Barack Obama, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg have all been known to reduce the number of decisions they make each day. The most famous example would be reducing their everyday clothing down to one or two outfit types. To help us in decision making, we rely on quite a lot of mental short-cuts. Many of our cognitive biases or predilections are manifestations of our own mental short-cuts. As global challenges are usually presented in a negative frame of reality, i.e. ‘glass half empty’, negativity bias is the focus of this article.

Negativity bias

People respond quicker to negative words, like “cancer”, “bomb” or “war”. These words triggered people to react faster than words like “baby”, “smile” or “fun”. This is despite the latter being more pleasant inducing and slightly more common than the former[iv]. This negativity bias is reasoned to be a result of evolution, fine-tuning our psychology to pay more attention to signs of threats or dangers. In our hunter-gatherer days, this negativity bias served us well to avoid and run away from dangerous predators, thus ensuring our survival. This negativity bias is also one of the reasons why negative headlines tend to dominate news channels and social media platforms, regardless of the accuracy of the source material or actual representation of reality. Consumption of negative news or information is the default mode, whereas consumption of positive news or information requires a bit more cognitive effort.

In modern times, the negativity bias does impact our social environment. One negative interaction cannot be counter-acted by just one positive interaction, or even two or three positive interactions. This could explain why researchers find that for a positive social environment to be created and to endure, the “magic ratio” is five positive interactions for every negative interaction. This “magic ratio” was determined by John Gottman’s research[v] on success rates of marriages, and Losada and Heaphy’s research[vi] in productive workplace.

“It seems that investment into creating a healthier social environment is much more of an effort than spiralling into dysfunctional social environment.”

Global challenges

So where does this negativity bias leads us in addressing global challenges? We have admonished big companies and governments for lacking urgency or political will to address global challenges like climate change, or slow response to threat of global pandemic. Yet, as a society, for example, we collectively have problems staying at home to slow the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19)[vii],[viii], [ix]. Behavioural change is perhaps difficult after all, especially if it means sacrificing individual quality of life for the sake of collective common good.

Also, would society not be jaded by the constant barrage of negativity bias behind global challenges like climate change and ecosystem collapse? While negativity bias in Palaeolithic times had helped us immensely in avoiding threats and predators, ensuring our survival; in the 21st century, negativity bias may not actually empower us with know-how to address global challenges head-on. On the contrary, negative headlines are seemingly self-defeating collectively, serving as constant reminders to ourselves that our effort to tackle global challenges to be Sisyphean. (Note: I am a big fan of Greek mythology. ‘Sisyphus or Sisyphos was the king of Ephyra, punished for his self-aggrandizing craftiness and deceitfulness by being forced to roll an immense boulder up a hill only for it to roll down every time it neared the top, repeating this action for eternity’)

Debugging our “auto-pilot” software

The decisions that we make, are never done in isolation with 100% self-agency. How we decide consciously or otherwise, is affected by the defaults[x] presented to us, marketing tactics, aesthetics, etc. In the age of attention scarcity, information overload, economic uncertainty induced by COVID-19, and professional demands, rarely do we have the time to consciously evaluate our own everyday lives thoroughly, which are mostly run on ‘autopilot’. Life on ‘autopilot’ can be sub-optimal with hidden communal risk until it is too late (think Boeing 737 Max’s MCAS flight control).

Like any tool, technological or otherwise, nudges can be used for selfish reasons or for communal good. With the population projecting to reach 10 billion by 2050, global challenges like climate change, poverty, hunger, and inequality, are existential threats to all of us regardless of creed, class, and ethnicity. If there are better psychological tools (e.g. positive reinforcement and positive psychology) that can help us and nudge us to become a better and more sustainable version of ourselves (akin to having improved and debugged version of an autopilot software) for communal good, maybe it is time that we should consider designing our lifestyle around incorporating these nudges to do good things subconsciously all the time.

“Positive reinforcement: a behaviour which is strengthen through rewards, for example, a mother gives her daughter praise (reinforcing stimulus) for doing homework (behaviour).”

“Negative reinforcement: a behaviour which is strengthened by stopping, removing, or avoiding a negative outcome or aversive stimulus, for example, a son does the dishes (behaviour) so as to stop his mother’s nagging (aversive stimulus).”

An example of nudging towards zero food waste

An initial social experiment conducted by MyFood Matters showed that through the utilisation of positive reinforcement and positive psychology, there was no food waste on 598 plates of diners’ meals, which was equivalent to a reduction of 28kg of food waste at consumption, 50kg of CO2 emission prevented, 3400 litres of water saved, and 30 minutes of electricity for 200 households[xi]. Of the 35,000 decisions we made each day, about 200+ decisions are on food alone[xii], so if these interventions can prevent us from wasting food without cognitively overwhelming us, why not embrace it? (Note: On hindsight, Hawthorne effect was not accounted for, but should be. The Hawthorne effect is a reactivity in which subjects modify their behaviour in response to their awareness of being observed. In this case, diners did not waste food because they could have been aware that any leftovers were being collected and weighed, which they deem would harm their self-image, although MyFood Matters never ranked diners against each other).

A Better Tomorrow

“Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present” Albert Camus

Though this truism may not be agreeable to everyone, it is still embraced by many. The younger demographics are the ones with the highest aspirational selves. So let this be a call-to-action to leaders, change-makers, dreamers, and social entrepreneurs alike, to be aspirational and be inspirational. Let us fan the flame of passion for a better tomorrow, by lowering our own internal behavioural friction. And if fear of critics would ever make us doubt ourselves to be the solutions that the world so desperately needs, then do let the words of Jean Sibelius, the legendary Finnish music composer, sink in to provide the confidence boost for our forward momentum,

“A Statue Has Never Been Set Up in Honour of a Critic”

This article is written in collaboration with Dr. Daniel Mahadzir and Shirley Chiu

Recommended books on human behaviour

1. “Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty” by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo;
2. “Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman;
3. “Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness” by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler.

References

[i] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/stretching-theory/201809/how-many-decisions-do-we-make-each-day

[ii] Danzigera, Shai; Levav, Jonathan; Avnaim-Pesso, Liora (2011), “Extraneous factors in judicial decisions”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108 (17): 6889–6892, doi:10.1073/pnas.1018033108, PMC 3084045, PMID 21482790

[iii] Paradox of Choice, Harper Perennial 2004

[iv] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-9280.t01-1-01412

[v] Gottman, J. (1999). The Marriage Clinic: A Scientifically Based Marital Therapy. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co

[vi] Losada, M., & Heaphy, E. (2004). The Role of Positivity and Connectivity in the Performance of Business Teams. American Behavioral Scientist, 47(6), 740–765.

[vii] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/05/coronavirus-churches-florida-social-distancing

[viii] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/us/florida-spring-break-coronavirus.html

[ix] https://twitter.com/BrightonHoveCC/status/1246399430510759936

[x] https://behavioralscientist.org/defaults-are-not-the-same-by-default/

[xi] http://www.myfoodmatters.org/

[xii] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227344004_Mindless_Eating_The_200_Daily_Food_Decisions_We_Overlook