One of the most interesting things about prejudgments is what it does when it comes to data, and I call this the data fallacy. We think that when we have data to support a point of view, or a decision we're on strong ground. Well, we are, but that's mostly because managers sell them actually kick the tires on the data they're presented with. In other instances, managers specifically seek out the data that will support their preferred course of action. If you want to call it good, this is one of the good way to see a prejudgment in action, like an early warning sign for a prejudgment. The decision-maker will seek out or commission data that supports their prejudgment and will disregard or denigrate data that doesn't support them. For example, Motorola and the cell phone business having amazing data on what their direct competitors were doing quarter to quarter in terms of selling digital phones, but regardless of having that data available to them, they decided to commission an internal forecasting algorithm that ended up with the result they really wanted. That result was to show that digital was not here. Eventually it's coming, but we should stick with analog. They had real market data and about competitors sales, and hence the growth of the market, but in fact, they decided to bypass that and make up other data. You know what you can do about this, you could ask what data or information was not considered. Like somebody in your team that say is presenting to you or did some analysis for you, and there's going to be some backup, there's going to be some data collected or reviewed, but what is the data? Why was it used? This is a hard question to ask because it's asking the negative, what data did you choose directly or indirectly not to use or not to share with us as you made this presentation? Imagine asking that type of question. Because people will handpick the data that will support what it is they want. That's what this point about data fallacy is, and that's yet another statement about the power of a prejudgment. But if we could just ask, maybe kick the tires a little bit more on what have you relied on? What kind of data you're looking at and what data did you choose not to pay attention to? Fans of baseball will easily see the connection of Moneyball that Michael Lewis book that introduced wide audience to the huge discrepancies between accepted wisdom among baseball scouts and what the data actually said worked. For example, there's no such thing as how a baseball player should look. Broad shoulders, a square jaw scored points with traditional baseball scouts for years, but it doesn't make any difference for success, but there are a bunch of specific performance oriented metrics you can look at and that will indicate potential. The same thing can hold for attachments and even self-interest as well. Whatever the emotional tag or the biases are that we have, when we don't recognize this, when we're not alert to how we can so easily fool ourselves into believing we're right when we're really wrong, there's a very human, there's a very natural tendency to look for data, sometimes subjective arguments and points, but data that will support what are bias or emotional tag is, regardless of what the right thing to do is. You see this all the time. Consider this little scenario. We want to have dinner at a friend's restaurant, but your partner doesn't. We might give in. Do we care that much? But we might just as easily explain how the food is better, it's great. We haven't been there in a long time, it's easier to find parking. All of these points may be valid ones, but the real reason we want to go there is because it's a friend's restaurant and we have an attachment to this chef, to her. All these other reasons, let's face it, it's plenty easy to come up with all kinds of rational sounding reasons, are really window-dressing, even excuses. We may not even be aware of that, but we're doing it. It's all about trying to decide to do what we really want to do, and we come up with all kinds of justifications for it. The real reason is because we have a positive emotional tag, and that's what's driving our behavior. By the way, I'm completely okay with this. As long as you know that your decision is being driven, in this instance, by an emotional attachment to a friend. Let's be honest with ourselves, if this is what you want to do and you know why you want to do it, who am I to tell you it's a bad idea? Go ahead and do it, but don't fool yourself. Don't pretend that you want to go to this restaurant because you read something about it, or it's easy to park there, or who knows what, when the real reason is because your friend's restaurant. Just tell the truth, it's okay. Tell the truth most of all to yourself. One last example. A while ago, I wrote a column for the BBC that was distributed around the world. I used to be a columnist for the BBC, and it was about the paleo diet. Here's a little bit about what I wrote, "The paleo diet is taking the world by storm. A virtual industry of books, Paleo Slow Cooker, magazines, Paleo, and blogs, podcasts and retreats, every day paleo have been popularizing the idea that eating what cavemen ate, lots of meat, fish and plants, and no grains, no sugar, no dairy products is the path to weight loss and better health." While the research behind these recommendations is subject to considerable dispute, the one thing we do know for sure is that most cavemen actually died by the age of 25. It's true that high infant mortality was a dramatic contributor to this pattern, but the fact remains a few made it anywhere close to the modern day life expectancy of 75-80 in Western countries. I wrote, "Do we really want to eat like people who died when most of us are just graduating from university nowadays?" Well, I could tell you after I wrote that the reaction was intense. I call them the paleo police. They were writing and complaining about how wrong I was, how stupid I was. The paleo police took great offense with missives sent to me via Twitter, personal email, blog posts, one letter writer even told me he was embarrassed to count me as a professor at the university from which he graduated. What was going on? They had a story they believed in and that belief was not going to go away regardless of any other fact, argument, or data point. I happen to be one of these data points and they couldn't stomach, pardon the pun, they couldn't stomach a different point of view from someone like me. In more extreme cases, people who bring up a counterpoint or data that is inconsistent with someone's prejudgment, they could face tremendous push-back, including denigrating the person in front of others, which by the way, when you can't win an argument on its merits, you attack the person making the argument. Sometimes in some cases, people have gotten fired because they've come up with data or points of view that somebody powerful didn't like it. It's hard to go up against someone with a fixed and strong prejudgment, so let's do everything we can to not be that person.
