Behavioral Traps

Behavior means actions or reactions of a person or animal in response to external or internal stimuli. It is the mind that sends signal to different parts of the body to act or react to any exteral or internal reason for such an action. Normatively speaking everybody is rational unless otherwise proved. By being rational, we tend to behave rationally, means behaving logically, based on reason. That is where the danger lies.

Our minds set up many traps for us. Unless we're aware of them, these traps can seriously hinder our ability to think rationally, leading us to bad reasoning and making stupid decisions. Features of our minds that are meant to help us may, eventually, get us into trouble.

Here is a list of 10 such traps.

1. The Anchoring Trap: Over-Relying on First Thoughts - Your starting point can heavily bias your thinking: initial impressions, ideas, estimates or data "anchor" subsequent thoughts.
2. The Status Quo Trap: Keeping on Keeping On - We tend to repeat established behaviors, unless we are given the right incentives to entice us to change them. The status quo automatically has an advantage over every other alternative.
3. The Sunk Cost Trap: Protecting Earlier Choices - You pre-ordered a non-refundable ticket to a basketball game. On the night of the game, you're tired and there's a blizzard raging outside. You regret the fact that you bought the ticket because, frankly, you would prefer to stay at home, light up your fireplace and comfortably watch the game on TV. What would you do?

It may be hard to admit, but staying at home is the best choice here. The money for the ticket is already gone regardless of the alternative you choose: it's a sunk cost, and it shouldn't influence your decision.

4. The Confirmation Trap: Seeing What You Want to See - You feel the stock market will be going down and that now may be a good time to sell your stock. Just to be reassured of your hunch, you call a friend that has just sold all her stock to find out her reasons.

Congratulations, you have just fallen into the Confirmation Trap: looking for information that will most likely support your initial point of view - while conveniently avoiding information that challenges it.

This confirmation bias affects not only where you go to collect evidence, but also how you interpret the data: we are much less critical of arguments that support our initial ideas and much more resistant to arguments against them.

No matter how neutral we think we are when first tackling a decision, our brains always decide - intuitively - on an alternative right away, making us subject to this trap virtually at all times.

5. The Incomplete Information Trap: Review Your Assumptions - We keep mental images - simplifications of reality - that make we jump to conclusions before questioning assumptions or checking whether we have enough information.
6. The Conformity Trap: Everybody Else is Doing It - This "herd instinct" exists - to different degrees - in all of us. Even if we hate to admit it, other people's actions do heavily influence ours. We fear looking dumb: failing along with many people is frequently not considered a big deal, but when we fail alone we must take all the heat ourselves. There's always peer pressure to adopt the behaviors of the groups we're in.

7. The Illusion of Control Trap: Shooting in the Dark - Even in situations we clearly can't control, we still tend to irrationally believe that we can somehow influence results. We just love to feel in control.

8. The Coincidence Trap: We Suck at Probabilities - This means that the "miracle" is not only possible but - given enough attempts - its likelihood increases to a point of becoming almost inevitable.

9. The Recall Trap: Not All Memories Are Created Equal - What happens is we analyze information based on experience, on what we can remember from it. Because of that, we're overly influenced by events that stand out from others, such as those with highly dramatic impact or very recent ones. The more "special" an event is, the greater the potential to distort our thinking.

10. The Superiority Trap: The Average is Above Average - With few exceptions, people have much inflated views of themselves. They overestimate their skills and capabilities, leading to many errors in judgment.