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How Advice Gets Ruined by Cognitive Biases

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When it comes to giving and receiving good advice, your brain may be getting in the way.

Daniel Kahneman, author of the blockbuster book, Thinking, Fast & Slow, is famous for his work on the psychology of decision-making. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. An enormous body of research from Kahneman and his colleagues over decades suggests the following:

  • You’re not as rational as you think.
  • Emotions, automatic responses, and mental shortcuts are much bigger drivers of our decisions than you might think.
  • Facts matter much less than you might think when you’re making decisions.

Kahneman and his long-time colleague, Amos Tversky, report that humans are prone to “severe and systematic errors” in their thinking because of the way their brains work. Much of that flows from cognitive biases, which are systematic errors in thinking that influence (and degrade) your decisions. Unfortunately, these cognitive biases can degrade or even ruin both the giving and receiving of advice. We address each of those in turn below.

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How Cognitive Biases Can Affect GIVING Advice

Here are several examples of how cognitive biases can degrade the thinking of advice givers and thus the quality and helpfulness of their advice:

Overconfidence Bias (when your confidence in your own knowledge or abilities exceeds the actual accuracy or skill you possess). You’re likely overestimating the probability your advice will work while also downplaying the potential difficulties. For example, if you’ve had some successful investments in the stock market, you might become overconfident in your ability to pick stocks or predict market trends. You might suggest risky investments without fully accounting for the risks and complexities involved. Big pain may follow for your friend.

Anchoring (when you rely too heavily on the first piece of information you encounter—the “anchor”—when making decisions, even if that information is irrelevant or incorrect). People tend to weight information more heavily when it appears early in a series, even when order isn’t important. For example, you might advise a colleague to accept a job offer based on the salary figure mentioned, which is higher than their current salary. Your colleague may end up overlooking other important factors like benefits, job security, flextime, and career growth opportunities.

Illusion of Control (overestimating your ability to control events). When giving advice, you’re likely forgetting many of the things that helped you address a similar situation. You may focus on your approach while downplaying the role of other key factors, such as other helpers and mentors, outside events, or even blind luck. Maybe you have navigated a few personal conflicts in your own marriage or with your team, and you start to believe you have a special knack for resolving relationship issues. You might give advice to friends experiencing relationship troubles, recommending specific approaches that worked for you. However, overestimating your ability to control and influence relationship dynamics can lead to poor advice, as each relationship is unique and influenced by complex factors that may not be addressed by the advice.

Framing (reacting to a choice differently depending on how it’s presented, whether as a loss or as a gain). For example, perhaps a business mentor advises a colleague to accept a job offer because it includes a significant annual bonus. Meanwhile, that framing is focused solely on the bonus without considering that it’s conditional on meeting challenging or even unrealistic performance targets—or that the base salary is lower than industry standards. Because of the framing, the mentee might overlook other less favorable aspects of the offer, resulting in a decision that doesn’t fully align with their current context and career goals.

Selective Recall (when you more accurately remember information or messages that are closer to your interests, values, and beliefs than those that contrast with them). You might recall more recent instances when taking an aggressive approach with your boss resulted in a big pay increase, forgetting about less successful times. Or you might be reminiscing about how a broad job search strategy worked well for you. As an investor, you might better recall the times when your stock picks were successful, conveniently forgetting the duds.

Curse of Knowledge (when you assume others also know what you know about a subject). If you have expertise in a field, you may struggle to simplify complex information for others who lack that specialized knowledge. It’s likely that you’ve known some things for so long that you forgot what it was like not to know them and thus have a hard time remembering that not everyone else knows them as well. For example, you might advise a junior employee to quit a job because you’re confident  they can quickly find a better position. Perhaps you’ve been through multiple resignations and firings. Meanwhile, you’re taking for granted your own extensive network and industry knowledge. You may be overlooking the junior employee’s less extensive network and their limited experience and job market understanding. Not to mention how overwhelmed or even terrified they may be feeling about the changes.

“Skillful performance and skillful teaching are not always the same thing,
so we shouldn’t expect the best performers to necessarily be the best teachers as well.”
-David Levari

“Hammers and Nails” (if you’re good with a tool, you may want to use it more often than is warranted). Example: If you’ve analyzed a problem in depth, you can end up exaggerating the importance of that problem. Recall that no one tool is good for everything. If your favorite tool is a hammer, look for colleagues with screwdrivers and wrenches. As a CEO, maybe you’ve used drastic cost-cutting in the past and now over-rely on that as a strategy. Or as a manager, maybe conflict-resolution training has worked well for you in the past but isn’t appropriate in the current context. As a founder, maybe you believe your inspirational speeches in front of the whole company are more impactful than they really are. (Source for the “hammer and nails” term and concept: Hans Rosling, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About The World–And Why Things Are Better Than You Think.)

“We are skeptical that advisers can rid themselves of the cognitive and motivational biases that skew advice.” -Jason Dana and Daylian Cain, “Advice Versus Choice”, Current Opinion in Psychology, Volume 6, December 2015

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How Cognitive Biases Can Affect RECEIVING Advice

Unfortunately, cognitive biases can also downgrade or corrupt the thinking of the person receiving advice, compounding the problem even further. Here are examples:

Confirmation bias (your tendency to favor information that confirms your pre-existing beliefs and to ignore information that contradicts them). The person receiving your advice is likely not getting the message you’re trying to send. Instead, they’re subconsciously hyping the things you’re saying that fit with their existing beliefs while downplaying or even ignoring the ones that go against their beliefs. Common career beliefs that might bias their thinking include:

  • changing careers is a sign of instability or failure
  • a successful career must follow a straightforward, linear progression
  • advanced degrees or prestigious educational institutions automatically lead to better job opportunities and faster career progression

“Confirmation bias is probably the single biggest problem in business, because even the most sophisticated people get it wrong. People go out and they’re collecting the data, and they don’t realize they’re cooking the books.” -Dan Lovallo, decision-making researcher and professor

Halo Effect (when your overall positive impression of someone influences your judgments about their specific traits or advice). For example, you might get advice from a respected professor with an engaging teaching style but who has expertise in a different field. Because you admire the professor, you might follow her advice on career choices or thesis research methods that are outside her area of expertise. Meanwhile, you might be downplaying your own goals or not letting your core values guide you.

Positive Illusion (when you have unrealistically favorable attitudes about yourself or your future.) Did you know that the vast majority of us consider ourselves above average when it comes to leading, driving, getting along with others, and, yes, giving out helpful advice? Example: as an entrepreneur, you might believe that your new startup is destined for success despite numerous warning signs and market challenges. Your overconfidence can lead you to ignore critical feedback or warnings, ultimately jeopardizing your venture’s success.

Mere Exposure Effect (the tendency to develop a preference for things simply because they’re familiar). As a hiring manager, maybe you’ve repeatedly heard the name of a candidate from colleagues or advisors. This repeated exposure can lead you to favor (perhaps subconsciously) this candidate over others, even if other applicants are more qualified.

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How Cognitive Biases Can Affect BOTH GIVING & RECEIVING Advice

Sometimes, the problem with cognitive biases and advice works in both directions—degrading the thinking of both the advice giver and receiver. A few examples:

Planning Fallacy (the tendency to underestimate the time, costs, and risks of future actions and to overestimate their benefits). For example, you might advise someone to set an ambitious deadline for a new project, underestimating the time required for research, development, and testing. Meanwhile, they’re overestimating the benefits of the work while downplaying the challenges. Ouch.

WYSIATI (“What You See Is All There Is”—the tendency to ignore the possibility that there’s missing information in a scenario). Here you might not consider that your current knowledge might be incomplete and that missing information could significantly impact your decisions. For example, if you traveled somewhere years ago, you might recommend that place based on your positive experience there, overlooking potential issues like crime, safety, seasonal weather differences, or new political problems. The person hearing about it may assume they don’t need to do their own checking based on your effusive recommendation.

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Conclusion

Clearly, advice comes with many challenges due to the way our minds work. You’re wise to be mindful of those challenges when giving and receiving advice—noting that many of these factors can be at work in a single advice session. Why not consider other ways of giving and receiving help that don’t have these pitfalls?

(This article is third in a three-part series on advice. Check out the other articles: “The Hazards of Advice” and “Don’t Give Advice. Do This Instead.”)

 

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Appendix: Quantity vs. Quality of Advice

Another problem comes with the quantity of advice given. Assistant Professor David Levari of Brown University and his colleagues found, across several studies, that top performers give more advance than others, but don’t give better advice.

“In our experiments, people given advice by top performers thought that it helped them more, even though it usually didn’t…. Top performers didn’t write more helpful advice, but they did write more of it, and people in our experiments mistook quantity for quality.”
-David Levari

In a 2022 Psychological Science article, the researchers concluded the following: “People seem to mistake quantity for quality. Our studies suggest that in at least in some instances, people may overvalue advice from top performers.” (Source: David E. Levari, Daniel T. Gilbert, Timothy D. Wilson. Tips From the Top: Do the Best Performers Really Give the Best Advice? Psychological Science, 2022; 33 (5).)

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, and TEDx speaker on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

How to Be More Decisive in Your Life and Leadership

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“Should I stay or should I go?”
-the Clash

We make many decisions every day. Many are trivial, but some are consequential and taxing. Which career to pursue (or transition into). When to make a big move. Who to live with, work with, or hire. Whether to start a new venture.

To live and lead well, we must get good at making decisions.

On the leadership front, do we want leaders who wallow and waffle? Or leaders who move forward despite uncertainty; home in quickly on the key issues; actively gather input before deciding; involve others in decisions; invoke their experience, judgment, wisdom, and gut instinct; and remain calm under pressure?

There’s a lot at work with making good decisions. The neurological mechanics of decision-making are breathtaking. When we make decisions, we’re using the brain’s prefrontal cortex for what’s called “executive function.” We’re drawing upon an array of cognitive processes, including: attentional control; cognitive inhibition; working memory; cognitive flexibility; reasoning; problem-solving; differentiation between conflicting thoughts; value determinations (good, bad, better, best, worse, worst); prediction of outcomes; and more.

No wonder so many people sometimes struggle with indecisiveness—wavering between different courses of action and having trouble deciding and moving on—and its related problem of “analysis paralysis.”

Truth be told, getting good at decision-making isn’t easy. This isn’t a new challenge. Even Aristotle mused about the absurdity of the idea that “a man, being just as hungry as thirsty, and placed in between food and drink, must necessarily remain where he is and starve to death.” Indecisiveness indeed.

The challenge can be even more complex with making decisions in organizations. As expected, there’s much room for improvement here as well. According to a McKinsey Global Survey, only 20 percent of respondents say their organizations excel at decision making. What’s more, a majority report that much of the time they devote to decision making is used ineffectively.

Clearly, we have work to do.

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The Problem with Indecisiveness

“Indecision may or may not be my problem.”
-Jimmy Buffett

Indecisiveness has many drawbacks—and sometimes costly and painful consequences. For example, indecisiveness can:

  • make an already difficult situation worse
  • create delays that have spillover effects, impeding important progress
  • cause frustration
  • reduce productivity, effectiveness, and credibility
  • inhibit innovation
  • bring about stress
  • lead to team and organizational stagnation, breakdowns, and failures
  • prevent us from realizing new opportunities
“Indecision is the greatest thief of opportunity.”
-Jim Rohn

When making decisions, we can experience “choice anxiety”: feeling distressed because we can’t seem to determine what’s right, with the fear of making the wrong decision shutting us down.

Psychologist Barry Schwartz talks about the “paradox of choice” and claims that the freedom to choose, while sounding nice, is actually one of the main roots of unhappiness today, in part because we live in such abundance. Choice overload leads to anxiety. We fear making the wrong choice or fear missing out on the “right” choice.

Schwartz cites an intriguing “jam study” in which a store gave one set of shoppers a range of six jams to consider, and another set of shoppers a range of 24 jams. In the end, shoppers were ten times more likely to purchase jam from a range of six jams than from the much larger set. 10x.

Choice overload can easily lead to not making a choice. We simply walk away. (See my article, “Choice Overload and Career Transitions.”)

Another big problem is second guessing—when we keep revisiting previous decisions and agonizing over whether we should change them. An unproductive and frustrating doom loop.

 

Causes of Indecisiveness

There are many causes of indecisiveness. Here are eleven of the leading causes:

  1. personality (e.g., our levels of neuroticism and anxiety)
  2. fear of making the wrong choice: we’d rather not decide than risk making the wrong decision, due to loss aversion
  3. fears of failure or of rejection or loss of social status
  4. lack of confidence
  5. excessive risk aversion
  6. lack of clarity about what we want or where we’re going
  7. conflicts between our own preferences and the expectations of others
  8. decision fatigue (a state of mental overload and depletion from making many decisions)
  9. family or cultural conditioning (such as excessive punishment for making mistakes)
  10. lack of accountability for indecisiveness
  11. a history of perfectionism

 

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How to Be More Decisive

Thankfully, there are many things we can do to become more decisive. Note that decisiveness doesn’t mean making hasty, impulsive, or rash decisions. It means making decisions quickly, firmly, and effectively. Here are 22 tips and techniques for developing our decisiveness:

  1. recognize that decisiveness isn’t a set trait, and that decision-making is a skill that can be practiced and developed
  2. acknowledge that indecisiveness is a form of self-sabotage, only making things harder for ourselves and others
  3. become clearer about what we want—including clarity about our personal purpose, core values, and vision of the good life
  4. build our confidence (the good kind, which is earned through hard work and disciplined attention to growth and development), since this is a key factor in decisiveness
  5. develop systems to make as many decisions as possible habitual, routine, or automatic—such as having a regular reading or workout routine at a certain time on certain days (this helps us avoid decision fatigue and frees up cognitive resources for other decisions)
  6. increase our self-awareness so we know under what conditions we work and decide best (and worst)
  7. recall that most decisions involve uncertainty, which tends to come with anxiety, and learn to expect and account for that
  8. develop mechanisms for coping with anxiety and stress, since these contribute to indecisiveness
  9. recognize the difference between fear and actual danger, noting that our fears are often exaggerated versus the actual dangers we face
  10. recognize that being decisive isn’t about always being right (instead, it’s about being able to make clear decisions—even tough ones—quickly, firmly, and confidently despite uncertainty)
  11. distinguish between irreversible and reversible decisions (Jeff Bezos wrote about this in his 2015 letter to shareholders with the distinction between one-way doors, where there’s no going back, and two-way doors in which you can simply “reopen the door and go back through.” He lamented that too many big companies use one-size-fits-all decision making, treating all decisions like one-way doors and in the process slowing everything down.)
  12. get curious and investigate why we avoid making decisions
  13. build our decisiveness and decision-making courage by working to make decisions more quickly and more boldly—and then take stock of how things turn out
  14. start small and make less consequential decisions more quickly at first, building from there to bigger decisions
  15. divide bigger decisions into smaller ones (or a series of steps) that are less intimidating and more manageable
  16. summon more urgency into our lives, since time is precious and wasted time is a common regret
  17. set deadlines for making decisions
  18. “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” as the expression goes. Look for the point where we have enough information to make a reasonable decision instead of waiting until we have nearly all possible information, variables, and scenarios accounted for. Focus on pursuing learning and growth instead of perfection when making decisions.
  19. recognize that we can’t control our future and that we can’t make perfect decisions
  20. use the “only option test”: imagine that only one of the two options were possible and then see how it feels; then imagine that the other option was the only possible one and see how it feels; then consider whether we have two good options, and it doesn’t really matter so much which one is chosen*
  21. focus only on the most important things and don’t get caught up in the rest, thereby reducing the total number of decisions to make
  22. pray on or sleep on important decisions, summoning deeper wisdom and grace
“If you were omniscient and had a time machine, you would know everything you need to know about the [the results of your decision], but the problem is that we don’t have either of those things, so we don’t have perfect information when we’re making a decision.”
-Annie Duke

The key isn’t just decisiveness. What we really want is skills in making good decisions. It’s about both decision-making quality and decisiveness. Surely it’s easier to be more decisive when we know we have a good decision-making process. So what does that look like?

 

How to Get Better at Making Decisions

A good decision flows from a good process for deciding. Here are several ways we can get better at making decisions:

  • look into whether there’s more information readily available that would be important for making a good decision—or not—and gauge whether we have enough of the right kind of information to decide
  • get input on decisions from trusted friends and colleagues
  • evaluate the likely impact of a decision before making it
  • invoke our intuitive sense (gut instincts) as well as our reason and logic when making important decisions
  • distance ourselves from the situation (e.g., project forward decades into the future and think about which choice will serve us the best over time)
  • view the issue from a different perspective (e.g., ask ourselves what we’d advise our best friend to do in the situation at hand)
  • look for innovation solutions such as creative combinations or trials* (example: when I was in graduate school, I did two different summer internships to get a feel for both opportunities—and learned that neither was a good fit for me)
  • get feedback and coaching or mentoring on decision-making

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Final Thoughts

One of the keys to decision-making and decisiveness is learning to trust ourselves more. Without self-trust, all of this can fall apart quickly. We don’t need to be perfect. We just need to apply ourselves consistently at getting better.

Once we make a decision, it’s important not to dwell and not to agonize. We must let go of the myth of the one perfect decision and focus more on making the best of the decisions we’ve made. Focus more on developing and using a good decision-making process instead of on whether any decision is “right” or “wrong,” and then trust in that process to serve us well over time.

Refuse to live in a state of regret: take full responsibility for our choices and move on. Make changes when needed. Give ourselves credit for doing our best.

Finally, consider this: If we can get good at making decisions and being decisive, it will help us with everything we do. There’s incredible leverage that comes from improving this. Wishing you well with it.

-Gregg

 

Reflection Questions

  1. To what extent is indecisiveness causing you problems (and in which areas)?
  2. What can you do to improve your decision-making process?
  3. What will you do, starting today, to become better at making good decisions with urgency and resolve—at becoming more decisive?

 

Tools for You

 

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Resources on Decision-Making

 

Postscript: Quotations on Decisiveness and Decision-Making

  • “Indecisiveness is the number one reason for failure. Lack of ability to make a decision in a timely manner causes most people to fail with their projects and plans. Identify this challenge and decide to no longer let it be a setback from your success.” -Farshad Asl
  • “Be decisive. A wrong decision is generally less disastrous than indecision.” -Bernhard Langer
  • “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” -Theodore Roosevelt
  • “Ambivalence is like carbon monoxide—undetectable yet deadly.” -Cherie Carter-Scott
  • “A person’s greatest limitations are not genetic, but imposed by self-doubt, insecurities, indecision, and timidity.” -Kilroy J. Oldster
  • “What is fear after all? It is indecision. You seek some way to resist, escape. There is none.” -Anne Rice
  • “It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.” -Tony Robbins
  • “When you make the best decision you can at a particular time, it’s never worth looking back. Getting stuck in ‘I should have’ or ‘I could have’ is only a waste of precious time and energy.” -Dr. Carla Marie Manly
  • “A real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken a new action. If there’s no action, you haven’t truly decided.” -Tony Robbins

* Source: Erin Bunch, “Decisiveness Is a Learned Trait—Here Are 11 Tips To Master the Art of Decision-Making,” Well and Good, March 22, 2021.

** Featured image: photo by Jon Taylor on Unsplash.

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, TEDx speaker, and coach on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!