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The Neuroscience of Screwing Up

I stole the title of this posting from an article in the January 2010 issue of Wired magazine.

The Wired article caught my attention because of a new book I’m writing called Brave New Worldview. The main theme of my book is that we generally see the world through the lens of a three-centuries old worldview that is hopelessly inadequate for dealing with many issues we face in the 21^st century.

We still define the world in which we live in terms of mechanistic properties framed by Isaac Newton. We especially covet the predictability of Newtonian science. For example, mainstream economics rests on the premise that the twists and turns of markets are generated by people acting rationally in their own interests. This makes it possible to predict t markets with a high degree of accuracy – or so economists have long believed. However as late as midyear 2008 – the year of the great Crash of 2008 – no prominent economist saw the Crash coming.

A review of economists’ record in economic forecasting reveals a dismal record. Shockingly, former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan told John Stuart on the Daily Show, “I’ve been in the forecasting business for 50 years. I’m no better than I was and nobody else is. Forecasting was as good or bad 50 years ago as it is today.”

Newtonian science rests on a platform created by the French philosopher René Descartes.  As the founder of the scientific method Descartes proposed that nothing should be considered true until specifically shown to be. He left no room for probability. Something either was or it wasn’t. It was to be or it was not to be. Uncertainty, paradox and discontinuity had no place in science. Yet, as things have turned out, much of our lives now turn on such states. They are at the very core of quantum mechanics, the foundation of contemporary information technology.

Descartes prescribed the steps needed to determine the truth of a proposition. His method precluded any subjective input such as intuition. He called for total objectivity. That can only exist when the data produced by an investigation is always the same regardless of who conducts it. And therein lies the reason I wanted to bring up the Wired article.

The prohibition against nonobjective activities in classic science is so strong that when data in an experiment varies from what the scientist expected he is typically disposed to repeat the experiment multiple times while expecting each time the outcome will conform to his original expectations.  Finally, 50 to 75 percent of the “surprise” data is abandoned according to Kevin Dunbar who studies how scientists study things.  

Dunbar said, “It wasn’t uncommon for someone to spend a month on a project and then discard all their data because the data didn’t make sense. “  

The Wired article goes on to talk about how “psychologists have dismantled the myth of objectivity. The fact is, we edit our reality, searching for evidence that confirms what we already believe. Although we pretend we’re empiricists – our views dictated by nothing but the facts – we’re actually blinkered, especially when it comes to information that contradicts our theories.”

Dunbar has fingered the part of the brain that functions as an anomaly detector. Neuroscientists often refer to this as part of the “Oh shit” circuit. For the neuroscientists reading this it’s the anterior cingulated cortex.  When the ACG has been engaged a person looks for the reason for sudden discomfort with an outcome. “Perhaps it’s the method,” they might say. Or they may blame the unexpected results on a machine malfunction.

The absence of an “Oh shit” response by people who don’t already have a mental model of what should happen is why so many breakthroughs in science have been by people working outside their field. For instance, Watson and Crick, the reputed discoverers of DNA were not biologists. It’s a matter of not knowing enough to know what is supposed to happen or having a fear of taking the wrong steps in light of previous experience.

Brain scientists have figured out that the analytical left brain bears a lot of responsibility for rejecting data that doesn’t conform to expectations. So much for left brain objectivity! On the other hand, the emotional (and curious) right brain welcomes anomalous data. It seems that subjective mindedness has a larger role in science than Descartes imagined.

So, the next time you have differences with another person on choosing a course of action try to determine whether your position (or that of your adversary) has originated in the status quo-seeking left brain or in the more adventuresome right brain.

P.S. Be sure to read the Wired article that inspired this post.

 

 

 

A Neurological Reason for Injecting More Right Brain into Our Worldview

Reader and brand manager par excellence Tony Kirton was moved by yesterday's post about a whole brain approach to viewing the world to send me the URL to an awesome article on the topic that appeared in the January 2, 2010 issue of the Wall Street Journal: http://tinyurl.com/yhfly5z Consider it a must read!

Avoiding the Half Brain Syndrome in Marketing Research

Have you seen the TED video of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist who had a massive hemorrhagic stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain?

Taylor is a neuroanatomist. This gave her unique insight into her stroke as it unfolded.

A hemorrhagic stroke is heavy duty trauma. In Taylor’s case it shut down her left cortical hemisphere, the side associated with speaking, reasoning and analytical activities.  She was left with just the right hemisphere to view and interpret events coming within the reach of her consciousness. It rendered the world far differently from the one she experienced before the stroke. She lost all sense of any boundaries between where she began and ended. She felt part of a splendid whole that infused her with an eerie euphoria. At first it didn’t matter that the stroke had silenced the verbal centers of her left brain. As the stroke continued unfolding she became vividly aware that the right brain and left brain are of two different minds, neither of which is capable by itself of giving an accurate read on reality.

Dr. Taylor’s story bears an important metaphorical caveat for economists, investment analysts, marketers and others who try to foretell the future base on mathematical reductions of reality. It takes both sides of the brain to come up with an accurate picture  of reality. The analytical left brain for all its powers of logic and reasoning cannot do it on its own. Einstein knew that. He famously observed, “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”

Wall Street “quants” – those analysts who live by numbers – have come in for some sharp criticism in the wake of the 2008 Financial Crash. Macroeconomists have also taken in on the chin because none of any prominence saw the Crash coming. In fact, the party line well into 2008 is that the year would experience modest growth.

A dozen years ago I wrote an article for American Demographics about huge shortcomings in quantitative market research. It produced by far the largest number of reader responses in the magazine’s history. I don’t know how many ended up on the editor’s desk but I received over 400 emails, many expressing the thanks for letting them know why market research so often misses the mark.

Market research is a more than $6 billion industry. The fact that some 90 percent of new products and product line extensions fail suggests that much of that $6 billion dollars is needlessly wasted. At the core of the problem is the dearth of understanding of human behavior among researchers.  

 

A number of prominent entrepreneurs have a deep distrust of statistically grounded research, particularly in consumer research. These include Phil Knight (Nike), Steve Jobs (Apple), Howard Schultz (Starbucks) and Scott Cook (Intuit). Scott Bedbury, who helped Phil Knight turn Nike into an international brand had this to say about traditional consumer market research:

 

The greatest problem with relying on traditional methodologies … is that they provide management with reams of statistical data, which may tempt those lacking in confidence to go against their common sense and gut intuition.. That, to put it mildly, is not the Nike way. In fact, prior to my first interview with Phil Knight, I had been specifically advised to avoid mentioning the words “marketing” or “research” in speaking with him. Apparently, he regarded both words as symbolic of what is wrong with most businesses.

 

After helping Knight turn Nike into one of the world’s best-known brands, Bedbury hired on with Howard Schultz to do much the same for Starbuck’s. Again, he found himself working for an entrepreneur with a strong bias against quantitative consumer research.

 Intuit founder Scott Cook puts great faith in anthropological, aka ethnological research. Cook sent employees into stores to “pick up” customers who had just bought an Intuit product. They were to accompany customers home to see how they integrated their Intuit purchase into their lives. Cook wanted to give customers accounting products that reflected their way of doing business.

Cook’s choice of anecdotal research over statistical research played a major role in making Intuit the leader in domestic and small business accounting software.  Unable to compete effectively, Bill Gates made a move to buy Intuit. However the SEC scotched the proposed marriage and Intuit went on to become even more dominant in its market niche.

I’ll close with another Einsteinian bit of wisdom:  Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.  All the entrepreneurs I just cited obviously buy into that wisdom. I wonder how many of my readers do.

P.S Be sure to watch Jill Bolte Taylor's incredible story.