Suppose you’re evaluating a job candidate to lead a new office in a different country. On paper this is by far the most qualified person you’ve seen. Her responses to your interview questions are flawless. She has impeccable social skills. Still, something doesn’t feel right. You can’t put your finger on what—you just have a sense. How do you decide whether to hire her?
假设你正在评估一个在不同国家领导一个新办公室的求职者。从理论上讲，这是你见过的最有资格的人。她对你面试问题的回答无懈可击。她的社交技巧无可挑剔。但还是感觉有些不对劲。你不能把你的手指放在什么-你只是有感觉。你如何决定是否雇用她？
You might trust your intuition, which has guided you well in the past, and send her on her way. That’s what most executives say they’d do when we pose this scenario in our classes on managerial decision making. The problem is, unless you occasionally go against your gut, you haven’t put your intuition to the test. You can’t really know it’s helping you make good choices if you’ve never seen what happens when you ignore it.
你可以相信你的直觉，它在过去指引着你，并送她上路。当我们在管理决策的课堂上提出这种情况时，大多数高管都会这么说。问题是，除非你偶尔违背你的直觉，否则你就没有把你的直觉付诸实践。如果你从来没有见过当你忽视它时会发生什么，你就不能真正知道它在帮助你做出正确的选择。
FURTHER READING
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The Five Traps of High-Stakes Decision Making高风险决策的五个陷阱
Magazine Article- Michael C. Mankins
Bet on process rather than luck or inspiration.
押注于过程，而不是运气或灵感。
It can be dangerous to rely too heavily on what experts call System 1 thinking—automatic judgments that stem from associations stored in memory—instead of logically working through the information that’s available. No doubt, System 1 is critical to survival. It’s what makes you swerve to avoid a car accident. But as the psychologist Daniel Kahneman has shown, it’s also a common source of bias that can result in poor decision making, because our intuitions frequently lead us astray. Other sources of bias involve flawed System 2 thinking—essentially, deliberate reasoning gone awry. Cognitive limitations or laziness, for example, might cause people to focus intently on the wrong things or fail to seek out relevant information.
过于依赖专家们所说的系统1思维--源于存储在记忆中的联想的自动判断--而不是逻辑地处理可用的信息，这可能是危险的。毫无疑问，系统1对生存至关重要。它让你为了避免车祸而转向。但正如心理学家丹尼尔Kahneman）所指出的，这也是导致决策失误的偏见的一个常见来源，因为我们的直觉经常会把我们引入歧途。 偏见的其他来源包括有缺陷的系统2思维-本质上，故意推理出错。例如，认知限制或懒惰可能会导致人们专注于错误的事情，或无法寻找相关信息。
We are all susceptible to such biases, especially when we’re fatigued, stressed, or multitasking. Just think of a CEO who’s negotiating a merger while also under pressure from lawyers to decide on a plant closing and from colleagues to manage layoffs. In situations like this, we’re far from decision-ready—we’re mentally, emotionally, and physically spent. We cope by relying even more heavily on intuitive, System 1 judgments and less on careful reasoning. Decision making becomes faster and simpler, but quality often suffers.
我们都容易受到这种偏见的影响，尤其是当我们感到疲劳、压力大或同时处理多项任务时。试想一下，一位首席执行官正在谈判合并事宜，同时还面临着来自律师的压力，要求他决定关闭一家工厂，以及来自同事的压力，要求他管理裁员。在这样的情况下，我们还远远没有做好决定的准备--我们在精神上、情感上和身体上都消耗了精力。我们更依赖直觉的系统1判断，而不是仔细的推理。决策变得更快更简单，但质量往往受到影响。
Most of us tend to be overconfident in our estimates. It’s important to allow for uncertainty.
我们大多数人往往对自己的估计过于自信。重要的是要考虑到不确定性。
One solution is to delegate and to fight bias at the organizational level, using choice architecture to modify the environment in which decisions are made. (See “Leaders as Decision Architects,” in this issue.) Much of the time, though, delegation isn’t appropriate, and it’s all on you, the manager, to decide. When that’s the case, you can outsmart your own biases. You start by understanding where they’re coming from: excessive reliance on intuition, defective reasoning, or both. In this article, we describe some of the most stubborn biases out there: tunnel vision about future scenarios, about objectives, and about options. But awareness alone isn’t enough, as Kahneman, reflecting on his own experiences, has pointed out. So we also provide strategies for overcoming biases, gleaned from the latest research on the psychology of judgment and decision making.
一个解决方案是在组织层面授权和对抗偏见，使用选择架构来修改决策环境。(See“作为决策架构师的领导者”，在这个问题上。）然而，很多时候，授权并不合适，这完全取决于你，经理，来决定。如果是这样的话，你就可以战胜自己的偏见。你首先要了解它们的来源：过度依赖直觉，有缺陷的推理，或两者兼而有之。在这篇文章中，我们描述了一些最顽固的偏见：对未来情景、目标和选择的狭隘看法。但是仅仅意识是不够的，正如卡尼曼在反思自己的经历时指出的那样。因此，我们还提供了克服偏见的策略，这些策略是从最新的关于判断和决策心理学的研究中收集的。
First, though, let’s return to that candidate you’re considering. Perhaps your misgivings aren’t really about her but about bigger issues you haven’t yet articulated. What if the business environment in the new region isn’t as promising as forecast? What if employees have problems collaborating across borders or coordinating with the main office? Answers to such questions will shape decisions to scale back or manage continued growth, depending on how the future unfolds. So you should think through contingencies now, when deciding whom to hire.
首先，让我们回到您正在考虑的候选人。也许你的疑虑并不是真的关于她，而是关于你还没有阐明的更大的问题。如果新区域的营商环境不如预测的那么有希望怎么办？如果员工在跨境协作或与总部协调时遇到问题，该怎么办？这些问题的答案将决定缩减规模或管理持续增长，这取决于未来如何展开。所以你现在应该想清楚，当你决定雇佣谁的时候。
But asking those bigger, tougher questions does not come naturally. We’re cognitive misers—we don’t like to spend our mental energy entertaining uncertainties. It’s easier to seek closure, so we do. This hems in our thinking, leading us to focus on one possible future (in this case, an office that performs as projected), one objective (hiring someone who can manage it under those circumstances), and one option in isolation (the candidate in front of us). When this narrow thinking weaves a compelling story, System 1 kicks in: Intuition tells us, prematurely, that we’re ready to decide, and we venture forth with great, unfounded confidence. To “debias” our decisions, it’s essential to broaden our perspective on all three fronts.
但问那些更大、更难回答的问题并不是自然而然的。我们是认知上的守财奴我们不喜欢把精力花在娱乐不确定性上。寻求结束更容易，所以我们这样做。这就影响了我们的思维，导致我们专注于一个可能的未来（在这种情况下，一个办公室的表现符合预期），一个目标（雇用一个能够在这种情况下管理它的人），以及一个孤立的选择（我们面前的候选人）。当这种狭隘的思维编织出一个引人注目的故事时，系统1就开始发挥作用：直觉过早地告诉我们，我们已经准备好做出决定了，我们带着巨大的、毫无根据的信心冒险前进。为了“消除偏见”我们的决定，有必要在这三个方面拓宽我们的视野。
TEST YOURSELF
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Are You Being Tricked by Intuition?你被直觉骗了吗？
Quiz- John Beshears, Shane Frederick, and Francesca Gino
约翰·贝希尔，谢恩·弗雷德里克，弗朗西丝卡·吉诺
Answer three questions to see what your “default” mode is for judgments and decisions.
回答三个问题，看看你的判断和决定模式是什么。 - John Beshears, Shane Frederick, and Francesca Gino
Thinking About the Future 思考未来
Nearly everyone thinks too narrowly about possible outcomes. Some people make one best guess and stop there (“If we build this factory, we will sell 100,000 more cars a year”). Others at least try to hedge their bets (“There is an 80% chance we will sell between 90,000 and 110,000 more cars”).
几乎每个人都对可能的结果考虑得过于狭隘。有些人做了一个最好的猜测，然后停在那里（“如果我们建了这家工厂，我们每年将多卖10万辆汽车”）。其他人至少试图对冲他们的赌注（“我们有80%的可能性将销售90，000到110，000辆汽车”）。
Unfortunately, most hedging is woefully inadequate. When researchers asked hundreds of chief financial officers from a variety of industries to forecast yearly returns for the S&P 500 over a nine-year horizon, their 80% ranges were right only one-third of the time. That’s a terribly low rate of accuracy for a group of executives with presumably vast knowledge of the U.S. economy. Projections are even further off the mark when people assess their own plans, partly because their desire to succeed skews their interpretation of the data. (As former Goldman Sachs CFO David Viniar once put it, “The lesson you always learn is that your definition of extreme is not extreme enough.”)
不幸的是，大多数对冲都远远不够。当研究人员要求来自不同行业的数百名首席财务官预测标准普尔500指数在九年内的年回报率时，他们80%的范围只有三分之一的时间是正确的。对于一群想必对美国经济有着广泛了解的高管来说，这是一个非常低的准确率。美国经济。当人们评估自己的计划时，预测甚至更离谱，部分原因是他们对成功的渴望扭曲了他们对数据的解释。(As高盛前首席财务官大卫·维尼亚曾经说过：“你总是学到的教训是，你对极端的定义还不够极端。“）
Because most of us tend to be highly overconfident in our estimates, it’s important to “nudge” ourselves to allow for risk and uncertainty. The following methods are especially useful.
因为我们大多数人往往对自己的估计过于自信，所以“推动”自己以允许风险和不确定性是很重要的。以下方法特别有用。
Make three estimates. 做三个估计。
What will be the price of crude oil in January 2017? How many new homes will be built in the United States next year? How many memory chips will your customers order next month? Such forecasts shape decisions about whether to enter a new market, how many people to hire, and how many units to produce. To improve your accuracy, work up at least three estimates—low, medium, and high—instead of just stating a range. People give wider ranges when they think about their low and high estimates separately, and coming up with three numbers prompts you to do that.
2017年1月原油价格会是多少？明年美国将建造多少新住宅？下个月你们的客户会订购多少内存芯片？这些预测决定了是否进入一个新市场，雇佣多少人，生产多少单位。为了提高你的准确性，至少要做三个估计--低、中、高--而不是仅仅给出一个范围。当人们分别考虑他们的最低和最高估计时，他们会给予更大的范围，并且提出三个数字会促使你这样做。
Your low and high guesses should be unlikely but still within the realm of possibility. For example, on the low end, you might say, “There’s a 10% chance that we’ll sell fewer than 10,000 memory chips next month.” And on the high end, you might foresee a 10% chance that sales will exceed 50,000. With this approach, you’re less likely to get blindsided by events at either extreme—and you can plan for them. (How will you ramp up production if demand is much higher than anticipated? If it’s lower, how will you deal with excess inventory and keep the cash flowing?) Chances are, your middle estimate will bring you closer to reality than a two-number range would.
你的低猜测和高猜测应该是不可能的，但仍然在可能的范围内。例如，在低端，你可能会说，“下个月我们有10%的机会销售不到10，000个内存芯片。”在高端，你可能会预见到10%的机会，销售额将超过50000。有了这种方法，你就不太可能被任何一个极端的事件弄得措手不及，而且你可以为它们做好计划。(How如果需求比预期的高很多，你会提高产量吗？如果它更低，你将如何处理过剩的库存和保持现金流动？）很有可能，你的中间估计会比两个数字的范围更接近现实。
Think twice.
A related exercise is to make two forecasts and take the average. For instance, participants in one study made their best guesses about dates in history, such as the year the cotton gin was invented. Then, asked to assume that their first answer was wrong, they guessed again. Although one guess was generally no closer than the other, people could harness the “wisdom of the inner crowd” by averaging their guesses; this strategy was more accurate than relying on either estimate alone. Research also shows that when people think more than once about a problem, they often come at it with a different perspective, adding valuable information. So tap your own inner crowd and allow time for reconsideration: Project an outcome, take a break (sleep on it if you can), and then come back and project another. Don’t refer to your previous estimate—you’ll only anchor yourself and limit your ability to achieve new insights. If you can’t avoid thinking about your previous estimate, then assume it was wrong and consider reasons that support a different guess.
一个相关的练习是做两个预测并取平均值。例如，在一项研究中，参与者对历史上的日期做出了最佳猜测，例如发明轧棉机的年份。然后，让他们假设第一个答案是错误的，他们又猜了一遍。虽然一种猜测通常并不比另一种接近，但人们可以通过平均自己的猜测来利用“内心群体的智慧”;该策略比单独依赖任一估计更为准确。研究还表明，当人们不止一次地思考一个问题时，他们往往会从不同的角度来看待这个问题，从而增加有价值的信息。所以，挖掘你内心的人群，给自己时间重新考虑：预测一个结果，休息一下（如果可以的话，睡一觉），然后回来预测另一个结果。不要参考你以前的估计你只会锚自己，限制你获得新见解的能力。 如果你不能避免思考你之前的估计，那么假设它是错误的，并考虑支持不同猜测的原因。
FURTHER READING
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Before You Make That Big Decision…在你做出这个重大决定之前。..
Magazine Article- Daniel Kahneman, Dan Lovallo, and Olivier Sibony
丹尼尔Kahneman，Dan Lovallo，和Olivier Sibony
Unearth and neutralize problems in your teams’ thinking.
发掘并消除团队思维中的问题。 - Daniel Kahneman, Dan Lovallo, and Olivier Sibony
Use premortems.
In a postmortem, the task is typically to understand the cause of a past failure. In a premortem, you imagine a future failure and then explain the cause. This technique, also called prospective hindsight, helps you identify potential problems that ordinary foresight won’t bring to mind. If you’re a manager at an international retailer, you might say: “Let’s assume it’s 2025, and our Chinese outlets have lost money every year since 2015. Why has that happened?”
在事后分析中，任务通常是了解过去失败的原因。在事前分析中，你想象未来的失败，然后解释原因。这种技术，也被称为前瞻性后见之明，可以帮助你识别普通预见不会想到的潜在问题。如果你是一家国际零售商的经理，你可能会说：“让我们假设现在是2025年，从2015年开始，我们在中国的门店每年都在亏损。为什么会这样呢？”
Thinking in this way has several benefits. First, it tempers optimism, encouraging a more realistic assessment of risk. Second, it helps you prepare backup plans and exit strategies. Third, it can highlight factors that will influence success or failure, which may increase your ability to control the results.
以这种方式思考有几个好处。首先，它缓和了乐观情绪，鼓励对风险进行更现实的评估。其次，它可以帮助你准备备份计划和退出策略。第三，它可以突出影响成功或失败的因素，这可能会增加你控制结果的能力。
Perhaps Home Depot would have benefited from a premortem before deciding to enter China. By some accounts, the company was forced to close up shop there because it learned too late that China isn’t a do-it-yourself market. Apparently, given how cheap labor is, middle-class Chinese consumers prefer to contract out their repairs. Imagining low demand in advance might have led to additional market research (asking Chinese consumers how they solve their home-repair problems) and a shift from do-it-yourself products to services.
也许家得宝在决定进入中国之前，会从预先分析中受益。据一些人说，该公司被迫关闭了在中国的业务，因为它意识到中国不是一个自己动手的市场为时已晚。显然，考虑到劳动力的廉价，中国中产阶级消费者更愿意将维修工作外包出去。提前设想需求低迷可能会导致额外的市场调查（询问中国消费者如何解决房屋维修问题），并从自己动手的产品转向服务。
Take an outside view. 从外面看。
Now let’s say you’re in charge of a new-product development team. You’ve carefully devised a six-month plan—about which you are very confident—for initial design, consumer testing, and prototyping. And you’ve carefully worked out what you’ll need to manage the team optimally and why you expect to succeed. This is what Dan Lovallo and Daniel Kahneman call taking an “inside view” of the project, which typically results in excessive optimism. You need to complement this perspective with an outside view—one that considers what’s happened with similar ventures and what advice you’d give someone else if you weren’t involved in the endeavor. Analysis might show, for instance, that only 30% of new products in your industry have turned a profit within five years. Would you advise a colleague or a friend to accept a 70% chance of failure? If not, don’t proceed unless you’ve got evidence that your chances of success are substantially better than everyone else’s.
现在假设你负责一个新产品开发团队。你已经仔细地设计了一个为期六个月的计划--你对这个计划非常有信心--用于初始设计、消费者测试和原型制作。你已经仔细地弄清楚了你需要什么来最佳地管理团队，以及为什么你期望成功。这就是Dan Lovallo和丹尼尔Kahneman所说的对项目采取“内部观点”，这通常会导致过度乐观。你需要用一个外部的视角来补充这个观点，一个考虑到类似企业发生了什么的视角，以及如果你没有参与这项奋进，你会给予别人什么建议的视角。例如，分析可能会显示，在你的行业中，只有30%的新产品在五年内实现了盈利。你会建议同事或朋友接受70%的失败几率吗？如果没有，不要继续，除非你有证据表明你成功的机会比其他人大得多。
An outside view also prevents the “planning fallacy”—spinning a narrative of total success and managing for that, even though your odds of failure are actually pretty high. If you take a cold, hard look at the costs and the time required to develop new products in your market, you might see that they far outstrip your optimistic forecast, which in turn might lead you to change or scrap your plan.
外部的观点也可以防止“计划谬误”--编造一个完全成功的故事并为此进行管理，即使你失败的几率实际上相当高。如果你冷静地审视一下在你的市场上开发新产品所需的成本和时间，你可能会发现它们远远超出了你的乐观预测，这反过来可能会导致你改变或放弃你的计划。
Thinking About Objectives 思考目标
It’s important to have an expansive mindset about your objectives, too. This will help you focus when it’s time to pick your most suitable options. Most people unwittingly limit themselves by allowing only a subset of worthy goals to guide them, simply because they’re unaware of the full range of possibilities.
对你的目标有一个广阔的心态也很重要。这将帮助你在选择最合适的选项时集中注意力。大多数人不自觉地限制自己，只允许一部分有价值的目标来指导他们，仅仅是因为他们没有意识到所有的可能性。
That’s a trap the senior management team at Seagate Technology sought to avoid in the early 1990s, when the company was the world’s largest manufacturer of disk drives. After acquiring a number of firms, Seagate approached the decision analyst Ralph Keeney for help in figuring out how to integrate them into a single organization. Keeney conducted individual interviews with 12 of Seagate’s top executives, including the CEO, to elicit the firm’s goals. By synthesizing their responses, he identified eight general objectives (such as creating the best software organization and providing value to customers) and 39 specific ones (such as developing better product standards and reducing customer costs). Tellingly, each executive named, on average, only about a third of the specific objectives, and only one person cited more than half. But with all the objectives mapped out, senior managers had a more comprehensive view and a shared framework for deciding which opportunities to pursue. If they hadn’t systematically reflected on their goals, some of those prospects might have gone undetected.
上世纪90年代初，希捷科技（Seagate Technology）是全球最大的磁盘驱动器制造商，当时该公司的高级管理团队试图避免这种情况。在收购了多家公司之后，希捷找到了决策分析师拉尔夫·基尼（Ralph Keeney），寻求帮助，以找出如何将这些公司整合到一个单一的组织中。Keeney对Seagate的12位高管（包括首席执行官）进行了个别访谈，以了解公司的目标。通过综合他们的回答，他确定了8个总体目标（如创建最佳软件组织和为客户提供价值）和39个具体目标（如开发更好的产品标准和降低客户成本）。很能说明问题的是，平均每个高管只列出了大约三分之一的具体目标，只有一个人提到了一半以上的目标。但是，随着所有目标的制定，高级管理人员有了一个更全面的观点和一个共同的框架来决定追求哪些机会。 如果他们没有系统地反思他们的目标，其中一些前景可能会被忽视。
Early in the decision-making process, you want to generate many objectives. Later you can sort out which ones matter most. Seagate, for example, placed a high priority on improving products because that would lead to more satisfied customers, more sales, and ultimately greater profits. Of course, there are other paths to greater profits, such as developing a leaner, more efficient workforce. Articulating, documenting, and organizing your goals helps you see those paths clearly so that you can choose the one that makes the most sense in light of probable outcomes.
在决策过程的早期，您希望生成许多目标。稍后你可以找出哪些最重要。例如，希捷将改进产品放在了最优先的位置，因为这将带来更满意的客户，更多的销售额，并最终带来更大的利润。当然，还有其他途径可以获得更大的利润，比如培养一支更精简、更高效的员工队伍。清晰地表达、记录和组织你的目标可以帮助你清楚地看到这些路径，这样你就可以根据可能的结果选择最有意义的路径。
Take these steps to ensure that you’re reaching high—and far—enough with your objectives.
采取以下步骤，确保你的目标够高够远。
Seek advice.
Round out your perspective by looking to others for ideas. In one study, researchers asked MBA students to list all their objectives for an internship. Most mentioned seven or eight things, such as “improve my attractiveness for full-time job offers” and “develop my leadership skills.” Then they were shown a master list of everyone’s objectives and asked which ones they considered personally relevant. Their own lists doubled in size as a result—and when participants ranked their goals afterward, those generated by others scored as high as those they had come up with themselves.
通过向别人寻求想法来完善你的观点。在一项研究中，研究人员要求MBA学生列出他们实习的所有目标。大多数人提到了七八件事，比如“提高我对全职工作的吸引力”和“培养我的领导能力”。”然后，研究人员向他们展示了一份每个人的目标清单，并询问他们认为哪些目标与个人相关。结果他们自己的目标列表增加了一倍，当参与者随后对他们的目标进行排名时，其他人提出的目标得分与他们自己提出的目标一样高。
Outline objectives on your own before seeking advice so that you don’t get “anchored” by what others say. And don’t anchor your advisers by leading with what you already believe (“I think our new CFO needs to have experience with acquisitions—what do you think?”). If you are making a decision jointly with others, have people list their goals independently and then combine the lists, as Keeney did at Seagate.
在寻求建议之前，先列出你自己的目标，这样你就不会被别人的话所“锚定”。不要用你已经相信的东西来锚你的顾问（“我认为我们的新首席财务官需要有收购的经验，你觉得呢？”“）.如果您与其他人共同做出决定，请让人们独立列出他们的目标，然后将列表合并，就像Keeney在Seagate所做的那样。
Cycle through your objectives. 循环完成你的目标。
Drawing on his consulting work and lab experiments, Keeney has found that looking at objectives one by one rather than all at once helps people come up with more alternatives. Seeking a solution that checks off every single box is too difficult—it paralyzes the decision maker.
根据他的咨询工作和实验室实验，Keeney发现，一个一个地看目标，而不是一次看所有的目标，可以帮助人们想出更多的选择。寻找一个解决方案，检查过每一个盒子太难了，它瘫痪了决策者。
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So, when considering your goals for, say, an off-site retreat, tackle one at a time. If you want people to exchange lessons from the past year, develop certain leadership skills, and deepen their understanding of strategic priorities, thinking about these aims separately can help you achieve them more effectively. You might envision multiple sessions or even different events, from having expert facilitators lead brainstorming sessions to attending a leadership seminar at a top business school. Next, move on to combinations of objectives. To develop leadership skills and entertain accompanying family members, you might consider an Outward Bound–type experience. Even if you don’t initially like an idea, write it down—it may spark additional ideas that satisfy even more objectives.
所以，当你考虑你的目标时，比如说，一次解决一个。如果你想让人们交流过去一年的经验教训，培养一定的领导技能，加深对战略优先事项的理解，那么分开思考这些目标可以帮助你更有效地实现这些目标。你可以设想多个会议，甚至不同的活动，从专家主持人领导头脑风暴会议到参加顶级商学院的领导力研讨会。接下来，我们来看看目标的组合。为了培养领导能力和娱乐陪同的家庭成员，你可以考虑一个拓展型的经验。即使你最初不喜欢一个想法，也要把它写下来它可能会激发出更多的想法，从而满足更多的目标。
Thinking About Options 思考选项
Although you need a critical mass of options to make sound decisions, you also need to find strong contenders—at least two but ideally three to five. Of course, it’s easy to give in to the tug of System 1 thinking and generate a false choice to rationalize your intuitively favorite option (like a parent who asks an energetic toddler, “Would you like one nap or two today?”). But then you’re just duping yourself. A decision can be no better than the best option under consideration. Even System 2 thinking is often too narrow. Analyzing the pros and cons of several options won’t do you any good if you’ve failed to identify the best ones.
虽然你需要大量的选择来做出正确的决定，但你也需要找到强有力的竞争者至少两个，最好是三到五个。当然，我们很容易给予于系统1的思维，并产生一个错误的选择来合理化你直觉上最喜欢的选择（就像一个父母问一个精力充沛的孩子，“你今天想睡一两个午觉吗？”“）.但你只是在自欺欺人。一个决定不可能比正在考虑的最佳选择更好。即使是系统2的思维也往往过于狭隘。如果你没能找出最好的选择，那么分析几个选择的利弊对你没有任何好处。
Unfortunately, people rarely consider more than one at a time. Managers tend to frame decisions as yes-or-no questions instead of generating alternatives. They might ask, for instance, “Should we expand our retail furniture business into Brazil?” without questioning whether expansion is even a good idea and whether Brazil is the best place to go.
不幸的是，人们很少一次考虑一个以上。管理者倾向于将决策框定为是或否的问题，而不是提出替代方案。例如，他们可能会问：“我们是否应该将家具零售业务扩展到巴西？”而不去质疑扩张是否是一个好主意，巴西是否是最好的选择。
Yes-no framing is just one way we narrow our options. Others include focusing on one type of solution to a problem (what psychologists call functional fixedness) and being constrained by our assumptions about what works and what doesn’t. All these are signs of cognitive rigidity, which gets amplified when we feel threatened by time pressure, negative emotions, exhaustion, and other stressors. We devote mental energy to figuring out how to avoid a loss rather than developing new possibilities to explore.
是-否框架只是我们缩小选择范围的一种方式。其他包括专注于解决问题的一种类型（心理学家称之为功能固定性），并受制于我们关于什么有效，什么无效的假设。所有这些都是认知僵化的迹象，当我们感到受到时间压力、负面情绪、疲惫和其他压力源的威胁时，这种情况就会被放大。我们把精力花在如何避免损失上，而不是开发新的可能性去探索。
Use joint evaluation. 使用联合评估。
The problem with evaluating options in isolation is that you can’t ensure the best outcomes. Take this scenario from a well-known study: A company is looking for a software engineer to write programs in a new computer language. There are two applicants, recent graduates of the same esteemed university. One has written 70 programs in the new language and has a 3.0 (out of 5.0) grade point average. The other has written 10 programs and has a 4.9 GPA. Who gets the higher offer?
孤立地评估选项的问题在于，您无法确保最佳结果。从一个著名的研究中可以看到这个场景：一家公司正在招聘一名软件工程师来用一种新的计算机语言编写程序。有两个申请者，同一所受尊敬的大学的应届毕业生。一个人用新语言写了70个程序，有3个。0（满分5分。0）平均成绩。另一个写了10个程序，有4个。9 GPA。谁得到更高的报价？
The answer will probably depend on whether you look at both candidates side by side or just one. In the study, most people who considered the two programmers at the same time—in joint evaluation mode—wanted to pay more money to the more prolific recruit, despite his lower GPA. However, when other groups of people were asked about only one programmer each, proposed salaries were higher for the one with the better GPA. It is hard to know whether 70 programs is a lot or a little when you have no point of comparison. In separate evaluation mode, people pay attention to what they can easily evaluate—in this case, academic success—and ignore what they can’t. They make a decision without considering all the relevant facts.
答案可能取决于你是把两个候选人放在一起看，还是只看一个。在这项研究中，大多数同时考虑这两个程序员的人-在联合评估模式下-希望支付更多的钱给更多产的新兵，尽管他的GPA较低。然而，当其他组的人被问到每人只有一个程序员时，GPA更好的人的建议薪水会更高。当你没有比较点的时候，很难知道70个节目是多还是少。在分开的评价模式中，人们关注的是他们可以容易评价的东西，在这种情况下，学术成功，而忽略了他们不能评价的东西。他们在没有考虑所有相关事实的情况下作出决定。
A proven way to snap into joint evaluation mode is to consider what you’ll be missing if you make a certain choice. That forces you to search for other possibilities. In a study at Yale, 75% of respondents said yes when asked, “Would you buy a copy of an entertaining movie for $14.99?” But only 55% said yes when explicitly told they could either buy the movie or keep the money for other purchases. That simple shift to joint evaluation highlights what economists call the opportunity cost—what you give up when you pursue something else.
一个行之有效的方法来管理到联合评估模式是考虑你会错过什么，如果你作出一定的选择。这迫使你去寻找其他的可能性。在耶鲁大学的一项研究中，当被问及“你会花14美元买一部娱乐电影吗？”九十九？”但只有55%的人在明确告知他们可以购买这部电影或保留钱用于其他购买时表示“是”。这种向联合评估的简单转变凸显了经济学家所谓的机会成本当你追求其他东西时你给予了什么。
Try the “vanishing options” test.
试试“消失选项”测试。
Once people have a solid option, they usually want to move on, so they fail to explore alternatives that may be superior. To address this problem, the decision experts Chip Heath and Dan Heath recommend a mental trick: Assume you can’t choose any of the options you’re weighing and ask, “What else could I do?” This question will trigger an exploration of alternatives. You could use it to open up your thinking about expanding your furniture business to Brazil: “What if we couldn’t invest in South America? What else could we do with our resources?” That might prompt you to consider investing in another region instead, making improvements in your current location, or giving the online store a major upgrade. If more than one idea looked promising, you might split the difference: for instance, test the waters in Brazil by leasing stores instead of building them, and use the surplus for improvements at home.
一旦人们有了一个可靠的选择，他们通常想继续前进，所以他们没有探索可能上级的替代品。为了解决这个问题，决策专家奇普·希思（Chip Heath）和丹·希思（Dan Heath）推荐了一个心理技巧：假设你不能选择你正在权衡的任何选项，并问：“我还能做什么？””这个问题将引发对替代方案的探索。你可以用它来打开你的想法，扩大你的家具业务到巴西：“如果我们不能在南美投资呢？我们还能用我们的资源做什么？”这可能会促使你考虑在另一个地区投资，改善你目前的位置，或者给网上商店一个重大升级。如果不止一个想法看起来很有前途，你可以折中一下：例如，在巴西沃茨，租赁商店而不是建造商店，并将盈余用于国内的改善。
Fighting Motivated Bias ❗ 🔄
All these cognitive biases—narrow thinking about the future, about objectives, and about options—are said to be “motivated” when driven by an intense psychological need, such as a strong emotional attachment or investment. Motivated biases are especially difficult to overcome. You know this if you’ve ever poured countless hours and resources into developing an idea, only to discover months later that someone has beaten you to it. You should move on, but your desire to avoid a loss is so great that it distorts your perception of benefits and risks. And so you feel an overwhelming urge to forge ahead—to prove that your idea is somehow bigger or better. ❗ 🔄
Our misguided faith in our own judgment makes matters worse. We’re overconfident for two reasons: We give the information we do have too much weight (see the sidebar “How to Prevent Misweighting”). And because we don’t know what we can’t see, we have trouble imagining other ways of framing the problem or working toward a solution.
我们对自己判断的错误信念使事情变得更糟。我们过于自信有两个原因：我们给予的信息我们确实有太多的权重（请参阅侧栏“如何防止错误加权”）。因为我们不知道什么是我们看不到的，我们很难想象其他方式来构建问题或解决方案。
But we can preempt some motivated biases, such as the tendency to doggedly pursue a course of action we desperately want to take, by using a “trip wire” to redirect ourselves to a more logical path. That’s what many expedition guides do when leading clients up Mount Everest: They announce a deadline in advance. If the group fails to reach the summit by then, it must head back to camp—and depending on weather conditions, it may have to give up on the expedition entirely. From a rational perspective, the months of training and preparation amount to sunk costs and should be disregarded. When removed from the situation, nearly everyone would agree that ignoring the turnaround time would put lives at stake and be too risky. However, loss aversion is a powerful psychological force. Without a trip wire, many climbers do push ahead, unwilling to give up their dream of conquering the mountain. Their tendency to act on emotion is even stronger because System 2 thinking is incapacitated by low oxygen levels at high altitudes. As they climb higher, they become less decision-ready—and in greater need of a trip wire.
但我们可以预先阻止一些有动机的偏见，例如固执地追求我们迫切想要采取的行动的倾向，通过使用“绊网”将自己重新定向到更合乎逻辑的道路上。这是许多探险导游在带领客户登上珠峰峰时所做的事情：他们提前宣布了最后期限。如果到那时探险队还没到达山顶，他们就必须返回营地，而且根据天气情况，他们可能不得不完全给予这次探险。从理性的角度来看，几个月的培训和准备相当于沉没成本，应该不予考虑。当脱离这种情况时，几乎每个人都会同意，忽视周转时间将危及生命，风险太大。然而，损失厌恶是一种强大的心理力量。没有绊索，许多登山者确实向前推进，不愿给予征服这座山的梦想。 他们根据情绪采取行动的倾向甚至更强，因为系统2思维在高海拔地区的低氧水平下丧失了能力。当他们爬得更高时，他们的决策准备变得更少，更需要一个绊线。
In business, trip wires can make people less vulnerable to “present bias”—the tendency to focus on immediate preferences and ignore long-term aims and consequences. For instance, if you publicly say when you’ll seek the coaching that your boss wants you to get (and that you’ve been putting off even though you know it’s good for you), you’ll be more apt to follow through. Make your trip wire precise (name a date) so that you’ll find it harder to disregard later, and share it with people who will hold you accountable.
在商业上，绊网可以使人们不那么容易受到“当前偏见”的影响，即专注于眼前的偏好而忽视长期目标和后果的倾向。例如，如果你公开说你什么时候会寻求老板希望你得到的指导（尽管你知道这对你有好处，但你一直在拖延），你会更容易坚持到底。让你的绊网精确（说出一个日期），这样你以后会发现它更难忽视，并与那些会让你负责的人分享。
Cognitive rigidity gets amplified by time pressure, negative emotions, exhaustion, and other stressors.
时间压力、负面情绪、疲惫和其他压力因素会放大认知僵化。
Another important use of trip wires is in competitive bidding situations, where the time and effort already invested in a negotiation may feel like a loss if no deal is reached. Executives often try to avoid that loss by escalating their commitment, overpaying by millions or even billions of dollars. The thing is, preferences often change over the course of a negotiation (for example, new information that comes to light may justify paying a higher price). So in this sort of situation, consider setting a decision point—a kind of trip wire that’s less binding because it triggers thinking instead of a certain action. If the deal price escalates beyond your trigger value, take a break and reassess your objectives and options. Decision points provide greater flexibility than “hard” trip wires, but because they allow for multiple courses of action, they also increase your risk of making short-term, emotion-based decisions.
绊网的另一个重要用途是在竞争性投标的情况下，如果没有达成协议，已经投入在谈判中的时间和精力可能会感觉像是损失。高管们经常试图通过提高他们的承诺，多支付数百万甚至数十亿美元来避免这种损失。问题是，在谈判过程中，偏好往往会发生变化（例如，出现的新信息可能会证明支付更高的价格是合理的）。所以在这种情况下，考虑设置一个决定点-一种绊网，约束力较小，因为它触发的是思考而不是某个特定的行动。如果交易价格上升到超出了你的触发值，休息一下，重新评估你的目标和选择。决策点提供了比“硬”绊网更大的灵活性，但因为它们允许多种行动方案，它们也增加了你做出短期，基于情感的决定的风险。
Although narrow thinking can plague us at any time, we’re especially susceptible to it when faced with one-off decisions, because we can’t learn from experience. So tactics that broaden our perspective on possible futures, objectives, and options are particularly valuable in these situations. Some tools, such as checklists and algorithms, can improve decision readiness by reducing the burden on our memory or attention; others, such as trip wires, ensure our focus on a critical event when it happens.
尽管狭隘的思维随时都会困扰我们，但当我们面对一次性的决定时，我们尤其容易受到它的影响，因为我们无法从经验中学习。因此，在这些情况下，拓宽我们对可能的未来、目标和选择的视角的策略特别有价值。一些工具，如检查表和算法，可以通过减轻我们记忆或注意力的负担来提高决策准备;其他的，如绊网，确保我们在关键事件发生时关注它。
As a rule of thumb, it’s good to anticipate three possible futures, establish three key objectives, and generate three viable options for each decision scenario. We can always do more, of course, but this general approach will keep us from feeling overwhelmed by endless possibilities—which can be every bit as debilitating as seeing too few.
根据经验，预测三种可能的未来，建立三个关键目标，并为每个决策场景生成三个可行的选项是很好的。当然，我们总是可以做得更多，但这种通用的方法将使我们不会感到被无穷无尽的可能性所压倒-这可能与看到太少一样令人衰弱。
Even the smartest people exhibit biases in their judgments and choices. It’s foolhardy to think we can overcome them through sheer will. But we can anticipate and outsmart them by nudging ourselves in the right direction when it’s time to make a call.
即使是最聪明的人在判断和选择时也会表现出偏见。认为我们可以通过纯粹的意志克服它们是愚蠢的。但我们可以预测并智取他们，通过推动自己在正确的方向上，当它的时候打电话。
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