The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home

by Dan Ariely

  Taken together, these results tell a sad story. When we’re led to care about individuals, we take action, but when many people are involved, we don’t. A cold calculation does not increase our concern for large problems; instead, it suppresses our compassion. So, while more rational thinking sounds like good advice for improving our decisions, thinking more like Mr. Spock can make us less altruistic and caring. As Albert Szent-Györgi, the famous physician and researcher, put it, “I am deeply moved if I see one man suffering and would risk my life for him. Then I talk impersonally about the possible pulverization of our big cities, with a hundred million dead. I am unable to multiply one man’s suffering by a hundred million.”18

  Where Should the Money Go?

  These experiments might make it seem that the best course of action is to think less and use only our feelings as a guide when making decisions about helping others. Unfortunately, life is not that simple. Though we sometimes don’t step in to help when we should, at other times we act on behalf of the suffering when it’s irrational (or at least inappropriate) to do so.

  For example, a few years ago a two-year-old white terrier named Forgea spent three weeks alone aboard a tanker drifting in the Pacific after its crew abandoned ship. I’m sure Forgea was adorable and didn’t deserve to die, but one can ask whether, in the grand scheme of things, saving her was worth a twenty-five-day rescue mission that cost $48,000 of taxpayers’ money—an amount that might have been better spent caring for desperately needy humans. In a similar vein, consider the disastrous oil spill from the wrecked Exxon Valdez. The estimates for cleaning and rehabilitating a single bird were about $32,000 and for each otter about $80,000.19 Of course, it’s very hard to see a suffering dog, bird, or otter. But does it really make sense to spend so much money on an animal when doing so takes away resources from other things such as immunization, education, and health care? Just because we care more about vivid examples of misery doesn’t mean that this tendency always helps us to make better decisions—even when we want to help.

  Think again about the American Cancer Society. I have nothing against the good work of the ACS, and if it were a business, I would congratulate it on its resourcefulness, its understanding of human nature, and its success. But in the nonprofit world, there is some bitterness against the ACS for having been “overly successful” in capturing the enthusiastic support of the public and leaving other equally important causes wanting. (The ACS is so successful that there are several organized efforts to ban donations to what is called “the world’s wealthiest nonprofit.”20) In a way, if people who give to the ACS don’t give as much to other non-cancer charities, the other causes become victims of the ACS’s success.

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  Mismatching money and need: The number of people (in millions) affected by different tragedies and the amount of money (in millions of dollars) directed toward these tragedies

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  TO THINK ABOUT the problem of misallocation of resources in more general terms, consider the graph on the previous page.21 It depicts the amount of money donated to help victims across a variety of catastrophes (Hurricane Katrina, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the tsunami in Asia, tuberculosis, AIDS, and malaria) and the number of people these tragedies affected directly.

  The graph clearly shows that in these cases, as the number of sufferers increased, the amount of money donated decreased. We can also see that more money went to U.S.-based tragedies (Hurricane Katrina and the terrorist attacks of 9/11) than to non-U.S. ones, such as the tsunami. Perhaps more disturbingly, we also see that prevention of diseases such as tuberculosis, AIDS, and malaria received very little funding relative to the magnitude of those problems. That is probably because prevention is directed at saving people who are not yet sick. Saving hypothetical people from potential future disease is too abstract and distant a goal for our emotions to take hold and motivate us to open our wallets.

  Consider another large problem: CO2 emissions and global warming. Regardless of your personal beliefs on this matter, this type of problem is the toughest kind to get people to care about. In fact, if we tried to manufacture an exemplary problem that would inspire general indifference, it would probably be this. First of all, the effects of climate change are not yet close to those living in the Western world: rising sea levels and pollution may affect people in Bangladesh, but not yet those living in the heartland of America or Europe. Second, the problem is not vivid or even observable—we generally cannot see the CO2 emissions around us or feel that the temperature is changing (except, perhaps, for those coughing in L.A. smog). Third, the relatively slow, undramatic changes wrought by global warming make it hard for us to see or feel the problem. Fourth, any negative outcome from climate change is not going to be immediate; it will arrive at most people’s doorsteps in the very distant future (or, as climate-change skeptics think, never). All of these reasons are why Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth relied so heavily on images of drowning polar bears and other vivid imagery; they were his way of tapping into our emotions.

  Of course, global warming is the poster child for the drop-in-the-bucket effect. We can cut back on driving and change all our lightbulbs to highly efficient ones, but any action taken by any one of us is far too small to have a meaningful influence on the problem—even if we realize that a great number of people making small changes can have a substantial effect. With all these psychological forces working against our tendency to act, is it any surprise that there are so many huge and growing problems around us—problems that, by their very nature, do not evoke our emotion or motivation?

  How Can We Solve the Statistical Victim Problem?

  When I ask my students what they think will inspire people to get out of their chairs, take some action, donate, and protest, they tend to answer that “lots of information” about the magnitude and severity of the situation is most likely the best way to inspire action. But the experiments described above show that this isn’t the case. Sadly, our intuitions about the forces that motivate human behavior seem to be flawed. If we were to follow my students’ advice and describe tragedies as large problems affecting many people, action would most likely not happen. In fact, we might achieve the opposite and suppress a compassionate response.

  This raises an important question: if we are called to action only by individual, personalized suffering and are numbed when a crisis outgrows our ability to imagine it, what hope do we have of getting ourselves (or our politicians) to solve large-scale humanitarian problems? Clearly, we cannot simply trust that we will all do the right thing when the next disaster inevitably takes place.

  It would be nice (and I realize that that the word “nice” here isn’t really appropriate) if the next catastrophe were immediately accompanied by graphic photos of individuals suffering—maybe a dying kid that can be saved or a drowning polar bear. If such images were available, they would incite our emotions and propel us into action. But all too often, images of disaster are too slow to appear (as was the case in Rwanda) or they depict a large statistical rather than identifiable suffering (think, for example, about Darfur). And when these emotion-evoking images finally appear on the public stage, action may be too late in coming. Given all our human barriers to solving the significant problems we face, how can we shake off our feelings of despair, helplessness, and apathy in the face of great misery?

  ONE APPROACH IS to follow the advice given to addicts: that the first step in overcoming any addiction is recognizing the problem. If we realize that the sheer size of a crisis causes us to care less rather than more, we can try to change the way we think and approach human problems. For example, the next time a huge earthquake flattens a city and you hear about thousands of people killed, try to think specifically about helping one suffering person—a little girl who dreams of becoming a doctor, a graceful teenage boy with a big smile and a talent for soccer, or a hardworking grandmother struggling to raise her deceased daughter’s child. Once we imagine the problem this way, our e
motions are activated, and then we can decide what steps to take. (This is one reason why Anne Frank’s diary is so moving—it’s a portrayal of a single life lost among millions.) Similarly, you can also try to counteract the drop-in-the-bucket effect by reframing the magnitude of the crisis in your mind. Instead of thinking about the problem of massive poverty, for example, think about feeding five people.

  We can also try to change our ways of thinking, taking the approach that has made the American Cancer Society so successful in fund-raising. Our emotional biases that favor nearby, singular, vivid events can stir us to action in a broader sense. Take the psychological feeling of closeness, for example. If someone in our family develops cancer or multiple sclerosis, we may be inspired to raise money for research on that particular disease. Even an admired person who is personally unknown to us can inspire a feeling of closeness. For example, since being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1991, Michael J. Fox has lobbied for research funding and worked to educate the public about the disease. People who loved Family Ties and Back to the Future associate his face with his cause, and they come to care about it. When Michael J. Fox asks donors to support his foundation, it can sound a little self-serving—but actually it’s quite effective in raising money to help Parkinson’s sufferers.

  ANOTHER APPROACH IS to come up with rules to guide our behavior. If we can’t trust our hearts to always drive us to do the right thing, we might benefit from creating rules that will direct us to take the right course of action, even when our emotions are not aroused. For example, in the Jewish tradition there is a “rule” that is designed to fight the drop-in-the-bucket effect. According to the Talmud, “whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.”22 With such a guideline at hand, religious Jews might be able to overcome the natural tendency not to act when all we can do is solve a small part of the problem. On top of that, the way the rule is defined (“as if he saved an entire world”) makes it easier to imagine that, by saving even just one person, we can actually do something complete and enormous.

  The same approach of creating clear moral principles can work in cases where clear humanitarian principles apply. Consider again what happened in the Rwanda massacre. The United Nations was too slow to react and stop it, even when doing so might not have required a large intervention. (The UN general in the region, Roméo Dallaire, did in fact, ask for 5,000 troops in order to stop the impending slaughter, but his request was denied.) Year after year, we hear about massacres and genocides around the globe, and often help comes too late. But imagine that the United Nations were to enact a law stating that every time the lives of a certain number of people were in danger (in the judgment of a leader close to the situation, such as General Dallaire), it would immediately send an observing force to the area and call a meeting of the Security Council with a requirement that a decision about next steps be taken within forty-eight hours.* Through such a commitment to rapid action, many lives could be saved.

  This is also how governments and not-for-profit organizations should look at their mission. It is politically easier for such organizations to help causes that the general population is interested in, but those causes often already receive some funding. It is causes that are not personally, socially, or politically appealing that usually don’t receive the investments they deserve. Preventative health care is perhaps the best example of this. Saving people who are not yet sick, or who aren’t even born, isn’t as inspiring as saving a single polar bear or orphaned child, because future suffering is intangible. By stepping in where our emotions don’t compel us to act, governments and NGOs can make a real difference in fixing the helping imbalance and hopefully reduce or eliminate some of our problems.

  IN MANY WAYS, it is very sad that the only effective way to get people to respond to suffering is through an emotional appeal, rather than through an objective reading of massive need. The upside is that when our emotions are awakened, we can be tremendously caring. Once we attach an individual face to suffering, we’re much more willing to help, and we go far beyond what economists would expect from rational, selfish, maximizing agents. Given this mixed blessing, we should realize that we are simply not designed to care about events that are large in magnitude, take place far away, or involve many people we don’t know. By understanding that our emotions are fickle and how our compassion biases work, perhaps we can start making more reasonable decisions and help not only those who are trapped in a well.

  Chapter 10

  The Long-Term Effects of Short-Term Emotions

  Why We Shouldn’t Act on Our Negative Feelings

  For better or worse, emotions are fleeting. A traffic jam may annoy, a gift may please, and a stubbed toe will send us into a bout of cursing, but we don’t stay annoyed, happy, or upset for very long. However, if we react impulsively in response to what we’re feeling, we can live to regret our behavior for a long time. If we send a furious e-mail to the boss, say something awful to someone we love, or buy something we know we can’t afford, we may regret what we’ve done as soon as the impulse wears off. (This is why common wisdom tells us to “sleep on it,” “count to ten,” and “wait till you’ve cooled off” before making a decision.) When an emotion—especially anger—gets the best of us, we “wake up,” smack our foreheads, and ask ourselves, “What was I thinking?” In that moment of clarity, reflection, and regret, we often try to comfort ourselves with the idea that at least we won’t do that again.

  But can we truly steer clear of repeating the actions we took in the heat of the moment?

  HERE’S A STORY of a time when I lost my own temper. During my second year as a lowly assistant professor at MIT, I taught a graduate class on decision making. The course was part of the Systems Designs and Management Program, which was a joint degree between the Sloan School of Management and the School of Engineering. The students were curious (in many ways), and I enjoyed teaching them. But one day, about halfway through the semester, seven of them came to talk to me about a schedule conflict.

  The students happened to be taking a class in finance. The professor—I’ll call him Paul—had canceled several of his regular class meetings and, to compensate, had scheduled a few makeup sessions. Unfortunately, the sessions happened to overlap with the last half of my three-hour class. The students told me that they had politely informed Paul about the conflict but that he had dismissively told them to get their priorities in order. After all, he reportedly said, a course in finance was clearly more important than some esoteric course on the psychology of decision making.

  I was annoyed, of course. I had never met Paul, but I knew he was a very distinguished professor and a former dean at the school. Since I ranked very low on the academic totem pole, I didn’t have a lot of leverage and didn’t know what to do. Wanting to be as helpful to my students as possible, I decided that they could leave my class after the first hour and a half in order to make it to the finance class and that I would teach them the part they had missed on the following morning.

  The first week, the seven students got up and left the room halfway through my class, as we had discussed. We met the next day in my office and went over the material. I wasn’t happy about the disruption or the extra work, but I knew it was not the students’ fault; I also knew that this was a finite arrangement. During the third week, after the group left to attend the finance class’s makeup session, I gave my class a short break. I remember feeling irritated by the disruption as I was walking toward the bathroom. At that moment, I saw my conscripted students through an open door. I peeped into the class and saw the finance professor, who was in the middle of making some point with his hand poised demonstratively in the air.

  Suddenly, I felt spectacularly annoyed. This inconsiderate guy had disrespected my time and that of my students and, thanks to his obvious disregard, I had to spend extra time running my own makeup sessions for classes I didn’t even cancel.

  What did I do? Well, compelled by my indignation, I walked right up to h
im in front of all the students and said, “Paul, I’m very upset that you scheduled your makeup session on top of my class.”

  He looked baffled. He clearly did not know who I was or what I was talking about.

  “I’m in the middle of a lecture,” he said huffily.

  “I know,” I retorted. “But I want you to realize that scheduling your makeup sessions on top of my class time was not the right thing to do.”

  I paused. He still seemed to be trying to figure out who I was.

  “That’s all I wanted to say,” I continued. “And now that I’ve told you how I feel about it, we can just put it behind us and not mention it again.” With that gracious conclusion, I turned around and left the room.

  As soon as I left his class, I realized that I’d done something I probably shouldn’t have, but I felt much better.

  That night I got a call from Dražen Prelec, a senior faculty member in my department and one of the main reasons I joined MIT. Dražen told me that the dean of the school, Dick Schmalensee, had called him to tell him about the episode. The dean asked whether there was any chance that I would apologize publicly in front of the whole school. “I told him it was not very likely,” Dražen told me, “but you should expect a call from the dean.” Suddenly, memories of being summoned to the school principal’s office when I was a kid came flooding back.