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strenghia · 2 years

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Så meget skal du træne for at se resultater

I denne artikel: "Så meget skal du træne for at se resultater" kigger vi på, hvor meget man skal træne for at se resultater. Det afhænger nemlig af flere ting, som fx er: - Hvor gammel du er - Om du har trænet før (muscle memory) - Din kropstype og responsevne til træning - Hvilken sportsgren du ønsker resultater i (løb, styrketræning, bodybuilding osv.) - Dit nuværende træningsniveau - Måden du træner på - Din evne til at lægge dine træninger, når du er superkompenseret (se senere) - Alt det ved siden af træningen - diæt, søvn, restitution

Så meget skal man generelt træne for at se resultater

Om lidt kigger vi nærmere på de mange faktorer, der spiller ind på, hvor meget man skal træne for at se resultater. Det er nemlig helt individuelt. 2 personer kan fx træne præcist lige meget, og alligevel vil den ene af dem opnå resultater hurtigere end den anden. Men selvom der er mange faktorer i spil i forhold til, hvor hurtigt man ser resultater som følge af sin træning, så er der alligevel nogle "generelle retningslinjer" for, hvor meget man behøver at træne for at se resultater. Dem gennemgår vi nu.

En utrænet person kan nøjes med at træne 2 gange om ugen for at se resultater En utrænet person der begynder at træne, - om det så er løb, styrketræning, bodybuilding eller noget helt fjerde, så vil langt de fleste begynde at se resultater efter ca. 8-10 uger, hvis de træner 2 gange om ugen. Men som sagt så vil der være stor forskel på, hvilke resultater man ser efter de 8-10 uger afhængigt af, hvem man er, og hvor godt man responderer på sin træning. Vi kommer ind på det senere, men man kan fx være non-responser på bodybuilding men superresponser på løb og omvendt. Gener responderer på træning Husk på at træning er noget i miljøet, som ens gener skal respondere på. Nogle har gode gener (god respons) i forhold til løb, cykling, roning og udholdenhedsdiscipliner, men har fx meget svært ved at opbygge muskelmasse til trods for en masse vægttræning. Men hvis man tager et gennemsnit, hvor man fx tager en gruppe på 100 utrænede personer, som begynder at træne, så vil langt de fleste kunne se resultater på en hvilken som helst disciplin i løbet af 8-10 uger, hvis bare de træner 2 gange om ugen. Der vil så være et fåtal, som får meget lille effekt af træningen (non-responsers), og et fåtal der får super god effekt (superresponsers) og et flertal, der får en forventet/gennemsnitlig effekt af træningen. En moderat trænet person bør træne min. 3 gange om ugen for at forbedre sig/se resultater De fleste utrænede personer får hurtigt resultater, selvom de kun træner et par gange om ugen. Men desto bedre form man kommer i, desto mere træning skal der til, før at man forbedrer sig yderligere. Hvis man derfor er moderat trænet - dvs. at man fx har trænet 8-10 uger et par gange om ugen - så begynder det at blive sværere at se resultater, hvis ikke man øger frekvensen af sine træninger. Altså kan det blive nødvendigt at træne oftere, og det er derfor almindeligt, at man går op på 3 gange om ugen eller mere, hvis man er en moderat trænet person, som ønsker yderligere resultater. Kan man ikke bare øge intensiteten i stedet for frekvensen og så stadigvæk få fremgang? Og så kan man så stille spørgsmålet, om man ikke bare kan træne hårdere to gange om ugen i stedet for at tilføje en træningsdag mere. Det kan man godt, men man vil nå et plateau, hvor det kan blive meget svært at forbedre sig, når man kun træner et par gange om ugen. Det skyldes fx teknik. Teknik trænes bedst under lavere intensiteter, men til gengæld så ofte som muligt. Og teknik gælder inden for alle sportsdiscipliner. Løb, styrketræning, boldspil og også bodybuilding. En veltrænet person bør træne 4 gange om ugen eller mere Veltrænede person har svært ved at forbedre sig yderligere, hvis ikke de træner min. 4 gange om ugen. Og det handler igen mest om teknik. Veltrænede crossfit-udøvere bliver nødt til at lave øvelserne om og om igen, så de fintuner deres såkaldte neuromuskulære kontrol og fyring til netop denne bevægelse. Det samme gælder for styrkeatleter. Kan du huske første gang du skulle bænkpresse, squatte eller dødløfte? Da du fik styr på teknikken kunne du måske lige pludselig tage 10-20 kg mere... hvorfor? Teknik! Og det gælder inden for alle discipliner. En løber der vil forbedre sin tid gør også klogt i at komme op på minimum 4 dages træning om ugen for at forbedre sin løbeteknik. Løbeteknik kan skære meget af tiden. Man kan have to løbere, som er meget lig hinanden i forhold til kropsbygning og kondital, men ham der har den bedste løbeteknik vinder stort over den anden. Det er bl.a. derfor, at du kan se eksempler på ældre personer, som løber i fantastiske tider. Fx 43 min. på en 10 km. Det er der nogle 60-70 årige, der kan, og det skyldes bl.a., at de har løbet hele deres liv og deres løbeteknik er derfor langt bedre end en ung 20 årig. Faktorerne der spiller ind på hvor meget du skal træne for se resultater Hvor gammel du er Din alder spiller en rolle i forhold til, hvor meget du skal træne for at se resultater. Alderen spiller dog mest ind, hvis du er utrænet i den disciplin, som du vil se resultater i. Sort på hvidt - En ung mand på 20 år, der pludseligt vil i gang med at løbe, men aldrig har løbet før (utrænet) vil opnå hurtigere resultater, end hvis han startede med løbe som 70 årig. På den måde spiller alderen ind. Om du har trænet før (muscle memory) Men man må ikke glemme begrebet muscle memory, som betyder, at musklerne og kroppen husker en disciplin. Hvis du fx har lært at cykle og så helt stopper med at cykle, så vil du stadigvæk kunne cykle om 50 år. Det er muscle memory. Men muscle memory gælder inden for alle aktiviteter. Hvis du fx starter med at styrketræne, og du træner i et par år for så at stoppe helt, så vil du selv 50 år efter nemmere kunne udføre øvelserne i forhold til en på din egen alder, der starter med at styrketræne. Og det derfor, at muscle memory også indgår i beregningen, når man taler om, hvor meget træning der skal til før, at man ser resultater. For hvis man har trænet disciplinen før, om det så er år tilbage, så vil man langt hurtigere kunne se resultater i forhold til, hvis man er helt ny i disciplinen (umodnet). Det er også derfor, at alt aktivitet betaler sig. Din krop husker aktiviteten, og den glemmer aldrig aktiviteten igen - ligesom da du lærte at cykle. Din kropstype og responsevne til træning Der findes forskellige kropstyper (læs evt.: Se de forskellige kropstyper her). Nogle kropstyper er stærkere end andre, og de responderer næsten altid godt på vægttræning men ikke nødvendigvis godt på udholdenhedstræning. Der er også kropstyper, som aldrig har været fysisk stærke, men til gengæld kan løbe hele tiden at blive træt. Så når man skal besvare spørgsmålet om, hvor meget træning der skal til for at se resultater, så skal man også lige huske på, hvilken kropstype man er. Hvilken sportsgren du ønsker resultater på (løb, styrketræning, bodybuilding osv.) Hvor hurtigt man ser resultater afhænger også af, hvilken sportsgren man ønsker at se resultater på - altså lidt i forlængelse af, hvilken kropstype man er. En spinkel og letvægtig krop har generelt bedre forudsætninger for at blive en god langdistanceløber, end en kropstype der har mere fedt på kroppen. Og omvendt, hvis det handler om styrketræning. Derfor har man altid en disciplin, som passer bedre til en end en anden disciplin, og hvis man vil se bedst resultater, så bør man identificere sin kropstype og afprøve forskellige discipliner for at få en fornemmelse af, hvilken en der passer bedst til en. Man lærer meget som barn. Måske gik du til fodbold og var en af dem, der kunne løbe hele tiden, men som til gengæld ikke kunne løbe ret hurtigt eller omvendt. Det kan også være, at du naturligt var den stærkeste i klassen - i så fald vil du naturligt respondere godt på vægttræning. Dit nuværende træningsniveau Dit nuværende træningsniveau spiller også ind på, hvor hurtigt du ser resultater. For som vi var inde på, så skal der mere til at se resultater, hvis man i forvejen har et højt træningsniveau. Måden du træner på En anden væsentlig faktor er måden du træner på. Eller med andre ord - forstår du at træne rigtigt? Hvis man fx vil forbedre sin kondition, så skal man træne med 80-90 % af sin makspuls for at få størst mulig konditionseffekt (læs. evt.: Sådan forbedrer du din kondition). Og der er også stor forskel på, hvordan man skal træne, hvis man træner styrketræning eller bodybuilding (Styrketræning vs bodybuilding). Alt for mange går bare i gang uden først at have sat sig ind i, hvordan de træner mest effektivt. Det er nemlig ikke kun et spørgsmål om træningstid (kvantitet). Det er i høj grad også et spørgsmål om kvaliteten i den træning, man udfører. Din evne til at lægge dine træninger, når du er superkompenseret (se senere) Det er meget vigtigt, at man kender til superkompensationsprincippet, i det at du helst skal lægge dine hårde træninger her. Du kan læse om princippet i artiklen: Fysisk træning, men kort sagt så handler det om at træne hårdt, når man er fuldt restitueret. Og undlade eller træne let, når man ikke helt er restitueret endnu. På den måde opnår man hurtigere resultater, fordi man kan præstere mere under sine hårde træninger. At træne hårdt når man er superkompenseret betyder også, at man forstår at balancere restitution med hård træning. Nogle træner for let, og andre går så meget til den, at de aldrig når at restituere helt, hvorfor resultaterne bliver dårligere, end personen der kan balancere sin træning og sit behov for hvile. Alt det ved siden af træningen - diæt, søvn, restitution Og så er der alt det ved siden af træningen. Vi har været inde på restitution, som primært sker, når man ikke træner eller trænet let. Søvnen spiller en stor rolle i forhold til restitution (læs evt.: Restitution og vigtigheden af søvn). Du kan fx købe dig et pulsur, som kan give dig objektive målinger på din restitutionsstatus og søvnkvalitet, som du kan sammenholde med, hvordan du føler dig i kroppen. Og så kommer man ikke udenom, at diæten spiller en væsentlig rolle i forhold til fremgang. Det er især vigtigt, hvis din plan er at opbygge muskelmasse. Her skal man nemlig helst være i et kalorieoverskud og have et rimeligt indtag af proteiner (læs evt.: Hvordan opbygger man muskler?). Hvis du konditionstræner, så spiller diæten også en rolle. Men en generel sund diæt er fin. Her behøver du ikke tænke så meget på, om du er i kalorieoverskud eller underskud. Bare spis almindeligt. Relateret indhold Dette indlæg: "Så meget skal du træne for at se resultater" har gennemgået netop dette. Andre artikler der måske vil interessere dig er: - Sådan forbedrer du din kondition - Vægttab og muskelopbygning - Styrketræning vs bodybuilding - Sådan bliver du hurtigere til at løbe - Udstrækningsøvelser Her på sitet kan du også finde et Komplet øvelsesbibliotek med videoer over styrketræningsøvelser. Og så er der træningsprogrammer med onlinesupport i shoppen. Read the full article

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alertreadingquotes · 6 years

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The Psychology of Human Misjudgment

“ I was aware that man was a "social animal," greatly and automatically influenced by behavior he observed in men around him. I also knew that man lived, like barnyard animals and monkeys, in limited size dominance hierarchies, wherein he tended to respect authority and to like and cooperate with his own hierarchy members while displaying considerable distrust and dislike for competing men nor in his own hierarchy.“

“ First, I had long looked for insight by inversion in the intense manner counseled by the great algebraist, Jacobi: "Invert, always invert." I sought good judgment mostly by collecting instances of bad judgment, then pondering ways to avoid such outcomes“

“ And I was dubious of any approach that, when two things were inextricably intertwined and interconnected, would try and think about one thing but not the other. I was afraid, if I tried any such restricted approach, that I would end up, in the immortal words of John L. Lewis, "with no brain at all, just a neck that had haired over.“

“ Psychological tendencies tend to be both numerous and inseparably intertwined, now and forever, as they interplay in life“

“ And Harvard's great E.O. Wilson performed one of the best psychology experiments ever done when he painted dead-ant pheromone on a live ant. Quite naturally, the other ants dragged this useful live ant out of the hive even though it kicked and otherwise protested throughout the entire process. Such is the brain of the ant. It has a simple program of responses that generally work out all right, but which are imprudently used by rote in many cases. Another type of ant demonstrates that the limited brain of ants can be misled by circumstances as well as by clever manipulation from other creatures. The brain of this ant contains a simple behavioral program that directs the ant, when walking, to follow the ant ahead. And when these ants stumble into walking in a big circle, they sometimes walk round and round until they perish. It seems obvious. to me at least. that the human brain must often operate counterproductively just like the ant's, from unavoidable oversimplicity in its mental process, albeit usually in trying to solve problems more difficult than those faced by ants that don't have to design airplanes. The perception system of man clearly demonstrates just such an unfortunate outcome. Man is easily fooled, either by the cleverly thought out manipulation of man, by circumstances occurring by accident, or by very effective manipulation practices that man has stumbled into during "practice evolution" and kept in place because they work so well. One such outcome is caused by a quantum effect in human perception. If stimulus is kept below a certain level, it does not get through.“

“And even when perception does get through to man's brain, it is often misweighted, because what is registered in perception is in shockingness of apparent contrast, not the standard scientific units that make possible science and good engineering.” “Some psychology professors like to demonstrate the inadequacy of contrast-based perception by having students put one hand in a bucker of hot water and one hand in a bucket of cold warer. They are then suddenly asked to remove both hands and place them in a single bucket of room temperature water. Now, with both hands in the same water, one hand feels as if it has just been put in cold water and the other hand feels as if it has just been placed in hot water. When one thus sees perception so easily fooled by mere contrast, where a simple temperature gauge would make no error, and realizes that cognition mimics perception in being misled by mere contrast, he is well on the way toward understanding, not only how magicians fool one, but also how life will fool one.“

“The natural consequence of this profusion of tendencies is the grand general principle of social psychology: cognition is ordinarily situation-dependent so that different situations often cause different conclusions, even when the same person is thinking in the same general subject area.“

---

One: Reward and Punishment Superresponse Tendency

“Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.“

“ He demonstrated again and again a great recurring, generalized behavioral algorithm in nature: "Repeat behavior that works." He also demonstrated that prompt rewards worked much better than delayed rewards in changing and maintaining behavior. And, once his rats and pigeons had conditioned reflexes, caused by food rewards, he found what withdrawal pattern of rewards kept the reflexive behavior longest in place: random distribution“

“One of the most important consequences of incentive superpower is what I call "incentive caused bias." A man has an acculturated nature making him a pretty decent fellow, and yet, driven both consciously and subconsciously by incentives, he drifts into immoral behavior in order to get what he wants, a result he facilitates by rationalizing his bad behavior, like the salesmen at Xerox who harmed customers in order to maximize their sales commissions. “

“Widespread incentive-caused bias requires that one should often distrust, or take with a grain of salt, the advice of one's professional advisor, even if he is an engineer. The general antidotes here are: (1) especially fear professional advice when it is especially good for the advisor; (2)learn and use the basic elements of your advisor's trade as you deal with your advisor; and (3) double check, disbelieve, or replace much of what you're told, to the degree that seems appropriate after objective thought.“

“ One implication is that people who create things like cash registers, which make dishonest behavior hard to accomplish, are some of the effective saints of our civilization because, as Skinner so well knew, bad behavior is intensely habit-forming when it is rewarded“

“'The strong tendency of employees to rationalize bad conduct in order to get rewards requires many antidotes in addition to the good cash control promoted by Patterson. Perhaps the most important of these antidotes is use of sound accounting theory and practice“

“ For instance, economists, speaking from the employer's point of view, have long had a name for the natural results of incentive-caused bias: "agency cost." As the name implies, the economists have typically known that, just as grain is always lost to rats, employers always lose to employees who improperly think of themselves first. Employer installed antidotes include tough internal audit systems and severe public punishment for identified miscreants, as well as misbehavior-preventing routines and such machines as cash registers“

“The inevitable ubiquity of incentive-caused bias has vast, generalized consequences. For instance, a sales force living only on commissions will be much harder to keep moral than one under less pressure from the compensation arrangement. On the other hand, a purely commissioned salesforce may well be more efficient per dollar spent. Therefore, difficult decisions involving trade-offs are common in creating compensation arrangements in the sales function.“

“Another generalized consequence of incentive caused bias is that man tends to "game" all human systems, often displaying great ingenuity in wrongly serving himself at the expense of others. Anti gaming features, therefore, constitute a huge and necessary part of almost all system design. Also needed in system design is an admonition: Dread, and avoid as much you can, rewarding people for what can be easily faked“

“Of course, money is now the main reward that drives habits. A monkey can be trained to seek and work for an intrinsically worthless token, as if it were a banana, if the token is routinely exchangeable for a banana“

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Two: Liking/Loving Tendency

“One very practical consequence of Liking/ Loving Tendency is that it acts as a conditioning device that makes the liker or lover tend (1) to ignore faults of and comply with wishes of, the object of his affection, (2) to favor people, products, and actions merely associated with the object of his affection (as we shall see when we get to "Influence-from-Mere Association Tendency," and (3) to distort other facts to facilitate love. The phenomenon of liking and loving causing admiration also works in reverse. Admiration also causes or intensifies liking or love. With this "feedback mode" in place, the consequences are often extreme, sometimes even causing deliberate self-destruction to help what is loved.“

“There are large social policy implications in the amazingly good consequences that ordinarily come from people likely to trigger extremes of love and admiration boosting each other in a feedback mode. F or instance, it is obviously desirable ro attracr a lot of lovable, admirable people into the reaching profession. “

---

Three: Disliking/HatingTendency

“In a pattern obverse to Liking/Loving Tendency, the newly arrived human is also "born to dislike and hate" as triggered by normal and abnormal triggering forces in its life“ “Disliking/Hating Tendency also acts as a conditioning device that makes the dislike /hater tend to (1) ignore virtues in the object of dislike, (2) dislike people, products, and actions merely associated with the object of his dislike, and (3) distort other facts to facilitate hatred.““Such factual distortions often make mediation between opponents locked in hatred either difficult or impossible“ ---

Four: Doubt-Avoidance Tendency “The brain of man is programmed with a tendency to quickly remove doubt by reaching some decision“

“ what usually triggers Doubt-Avoidance Tendency is some combination of (1) puzzlement and (2) stress. And both of these factors naturally occur in facing religious issues. Thus, the natural state of most men is in some form of religion. And this is what we observe.“

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Five: Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency

“The brain of man conserves programming space by being reluctant to change, which is a form of inconsistency avoidance. We see this in all human habits, constructive and destructive”

“Also tending to be maintained in place by the anti-change tendency of the brain are one's previous conclusions, human loyalties, reputational identity, commitments, accepted role in a civilization, etc. It is not entirely clear why evolution would program into man's brain an anti-change mode alongside his tendency to quickly remove doubt“

“ Similarly, other modern decision makers will often force groups to consider skillful counterarguments before making decisions. And proper education is one long exercise in augmentation of high cognition so that our wisdom becomes strong enough to destroy wrong thinking maintained by resistance to change“

“One of the most successful users of an antidote to first conclusion bias was Charles Darwin. He trained himself, early, to intensively consider any evidence tending to disconfirm any hypothesis of his, more so if he thought his hypothesis was a particularly good one. The opposite of what Darwin did is now called confirmation bias, a term of opprobrium“

“Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency has many good effects in civilization. For instance, rather than act inconsistently with public commitments, new or old public identities, etc., most people are more loyal in their roles in life as priests, physicians, citizens, soldiers, spouses, teachers, employees, etc.

One corollary of Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency is that a person making big sacrifices in the course of assuming a new identity will intensify his devotion to the new identity. After all, it would be quite inconsistent behavior to make a large sacrifice for something that was no good“

“Moreover, the tendency will often make man a "patsy" of manipulative "compliance-practitioners," who gain advantage from triggering his subconscious Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency“

For example, Ben Franklin raised subconscious regard of himself in the ranks of great men by first getting them to lend him a book. Triggering inconsistency in action with disregarding him.

“ When one is maneuvered into deliberately hurting some other person, one will tend to disapprove or even hate that person. This effect, from Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency, accounts for the insight implicit in the saying: "A man never forgets where he has buried the hatchet.”

“While Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency, with its "status quo bias," immensely harms sound education. it also causes much benefit. For instance, a near-ultimate inconsistency would be to teach something to others that one did not believe true.... Of course, the power of teaching to influence the cognition of the teacher is not always a benefit to society. When such power flows into political and cult evangelism, there are often bad consequences.“

--- Six: Curiosity Tendency

Man’s innate curiosity greatly enhances the ability to advance knowledge.

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Seven: Kantian Fairness Tendency

“Kant was famous for his "categorical imperative," a sort of a "golden rule" that required humans to follow those behavior patterns that, if followed by all others, would make the surrounding human system work best for everybody. And it is not too much to say that modern acculturated man displays, and expects from others, a lot of fairness as thus defined by Kant.”

“Also, strangers often voluntarily share equally in unexpected, unearned good and bad fortune. And, as an obverse consequence of such "fair-sharing" conduct, much reactive hostility occurs when fair sharing is expected yet not provided.“

--- Eight: Envy/Jealousy Tendency

“Envy/jealousy is extreme in myth, religion, and literature wherein, in account after account, it triggers hatred and injury. It was regarded as so pernicious by the Jews of the civilization that preceded Christ that it was forbidden, by phrase after phrase, in the laws of Moses“

“Non discussion of envy/jealousy is not a phenomenon confined to psychology texts. When did any of you last engage in any large group discussion of some issue wherein adult envy/jealousy was identified as the cause of someone's argument? There seems to be a general taboo against any such claim. If so, what accounts for the taboo? My guess is that people widely and generally sense that labeling some position as driven by envy/ jealousy will be regarded as extremely insulting to the position taker, possibly more so when the diagnosis is correct than when it is wrong.”

--- Nine: Reciprocation Tendency

“The automatic tendency of humans to reciprocate both favors and disfavors has long been noticed as extreme, as it is in apes, monkeys, dogs, and many less cognitively gifted animals. The tendency clearly facilitates group cooperation for the benefit of members. In this respect, it mimics much genetic programming of the social insects.“

“The standard antidote to one's overactive hostility is to train oneself to defer reaction. As my smart friend Tom Murphy so frequently says, "You can always tell the man off tomorrow if it is such a good idea.“

“ reciprocate-favor tendency operates to a very considerable degree at a subconscious level. This helps make the tendency a strong force that can sometimes be used by some men to mislead others, which happens all the time“

“Wise employers, therefore, try to oppose reciprocate-favor tendencies of employees engaged in purchasing. The simplest antidote works best: Don't let them accept any favors from vendors“

“And the very best part of human life probably lies in relationships of affection wherein parties are more interested in pleasing than being pleased-a not uncommon outcome in display of reciprocate favor tendency.

… Before we leave reciprocate-favor tendency, the final phenomenon we will consider is widespread human misery from feelings of guilt. To the extent the feeling of guilt has an evolutionary base, I believe the most plausible cause is the mental conflict triggered in one direction by reciprocate favor tendency and in the opposite direction by reward superresponse tendency pushing one to enjoy one hundred percent of some good thing“

---

Ten: Influence-from-Mere-Association Tendency

“Some of the most important miscalculations come from what is accidentally associated with one's past success, or one's liking and loving, or one's disliking and hating, which includes a natural hatred for bad news.”

“The proper antidotes to being made such a patsy by past success are (1) to carefully examine each past success, looking for accidental, non causative factors associated with such success that will tend to mislead as one appraises odds implicit in a proposed new undertaking and (2) to look for dangerous aspects of the new undertaking that were not present when past success occurred.“

“People disagree about how much blindness should accompany the association called love. In Poor Richard's Almanack Franklin counseled: "Keep your eyes wide open before marriage and half shut thereafter." Perhaps this "eyes-half-shut" solution is about right, but I favor a tougher prescription: "See it like it is and love anyway.“

“Hating and disliking also cause miscalculation triggered by mere association. In business, I commonly see people underappraise both the competency and morals of competitors they dislike. This is a dangerous practice, usually disguised because it occurs on a subconscious basis. Another common bad effect from the mere association of a person and a hated outcome is displayed in "Persian Messenger Syndrome.“

“It is actually dangerous in many careers to be a carrier of unwelcome news“

“The proper antidote to creating Persian Messenger Syndrome and its bad effects, like those at CBS, is to develop, through exercise of will, a habit of welcoming bad news. At Berkshire, there is a common injunction: "Always tell us the bad news promptly. It is only the good news that can wait." It also helps to be so wise and informed that people fear not telling you bad news because you are so likely to get it elsewhere.“

“Influence-from-Mere-Association Tendency often has a shocking effect that helps swamp the normal tendency to return favor for favor. Sometimes, when one receives a favor, his condition is unpleasant, due to poverty, sickness, subjugation, or something else. In addition, the favor may trigger an envy-driven dislike for the person who was in so favorable a state that he could easily be a favor giver. Under such circumstances, the favor receiver, prompted partly by mere association of the favor giver with past pain, will not only dislike the man who helped him but also try to injure him.“

“A final serious clump of bad thinking caused by mere association lies in the common use of classification stereotypes“

“ Pete's antidote is not to believe that, on average, ninety-year-olds think as well as forty year-olds or that there are as many females as males among Ph. D.'s in math. Instead, just as he must learn that trend does not always correctly predict“

“destiny, he must learn that the average dimension in some group will not reliably guide him to the dimension of some specific item . Otherwise Pete will make many errors, like that of the fellow who drowned in a river that averaged out only eighteen inches deep.”

---

Eleven: Simple, Pain-Avoiding Psychological Denial

“That's Simple, Pain-Avoiding Psychological Denial. The reality is too painful to bear, so one distorts the facts until they become bearable. We all do that to some extent, often causing terrible problems. The tendency's most extreme outcomes are usually mixed up with love, death, and chemical dependency.“

“ some people hope to leave life hewing to the iron prescription, "It is not necessary to hope in order to persevere." And there is something admirable in anyone able to do this.“

“.One should stay far away from any conduct at all likely to drift into chemical dependency. Even a small chance of suffering so great a damage should be avoided.”

--- Twelve: Excessive Self-Regard Tendency

“There is a name in psychology for this overappraise-your-own-possessions phenomenon: the "endowment effect." And all man's decisions are suddenly regarded by him as better than would have been the case just before he made them. Man's excess of self-regard typically makes him strongly prefer people like himself“

“Given this quality in psychological nature, cliquish groups of similar persons will always be a very influential part of human culture, even after we wisely try to dampen the worst effects. ”

“Intensify man's love of his own conclusions by adding the possessory wallop from the "endowment effect," and you will find that a man who has already bought a pork-belly future on a commodity exchange now foolishly believes, even more strongly than before, in the merits of his speculative bet.“

“More counterproductive yet are man's appraisals, typically excessive, of the quality of the future service he is to provide to his business. His overappraisal of these prospective contributions will frequently cause disaster. Excesses of self-regard often cause bad hiring decisions because employers grossly overappraise the worth of their own conclusions that rely on impressions in face-to-face contact. The correct antidote to this sort of folly is to underweigh face to-face impressions and overweigh the applicant's past record.“

“On the personal level a man should try to face the two simple facts: (1) fixable but unfixed bad performance is bad character and tends to create more of itself, causing more damage to the excuse giver with each tolerated instance, and (2) in demanding places, like athletic teams and General Electric, you are almost sure to be discarded in due course if you keep giving excuses instead of behaving as you should. The main institutional antidotes to this part of the "Tolstoy effect" are (1) a fair, meritocratic, demanding culture plus personnel handling methods that build up morale and (2) severance of the worst offenders. “

“The best antidote to folly from an excess of self-regard is to force yourself to be more objective when you are thinking about yourself, your family and friends, your property, and the value of your past and future activity. This sn't easy to do well and won't work perfectly, but it will work much better than simply letting psychological nature take its normal course.“

“Of all forms of useful pride, perhaps the most desirable is a justified pride in being trustworthy. Moreover, the trustworthy man, even after allowing for the inconveniences of his chosen course, ordinarily has a life that averages our better than he would have if he provided less reliability.“

--- Thirteen: Overoptimism Tendency

“Demosthenes, the most famous Greek orator, said. "What a man wishes, that also will he believe.“

“One standard antidote to foolish optimism is trained, habitual use of the simple probability rnath of Fermat and Pascal, taught in my youth to high school sophomores“

---

Fourteen: Deprival-Superreaction Tendency

“That is, the loss seems to hurt much more than the gain seems to help. Moreover, if a man almost gets something he greatly wants and has it jerked away from him at the last moment, he will react much as if he had long owned the reward and had it jerked away. I include the natural human reactions to both kinds of loss experience-the loss of the possessed reward and the loss of the almost-possessed reward-under one description, Deprival-Superreaction Tendency. In displaying Deprival-Superreaction Tendency, man frequently incurs disadvantage by misframing his problems. He will often compare what is near instead of what really matters“

“It is almost everywhere the case that extremes of ideology are maintained with great intensity and with great antipathy to non-believers, causing extremes of cognitive dysfunction. This happens, I believe, because two psychological tendencies are usually acting concurrently toward this same sad result: ( 1 ) Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency, plus (2) Deprival-Superreaction Tendency.

One antidote to intense, deliberate maintenance of groupthink is an extreme culture of courtesy, kept in place despite ideological differences, like the behavior of the justices now serving on the U.S. Supreme Court. Another antidote is to deliberately bring in able and articulate disbelievers of incumbent groupthink“

“Deprival-Superreaction Tendency and Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency often join to cause one form of business failure. In this form of ruin, a man gradually uses up all his good assets in a fruitless attempt to rescue a big venture going bad. One of the best antidotes to this folly is good poker skill learned young. The teaching value of poker demonstrates that not all effective teaching occurs on a standard academic path.“

“Some people may question my defining Deprival-Superreaction Tendency to include reaction to profit barely missed, as in the well documented responses of slot machine players. However, I believe that I haven't defined the tendency as broadly as I should. My reason for suggesting an even broader definition is that many Berkshire Hathaway shareholders I know never sell or give away a single share after immense gains in market value have occurred. Some of this reaction is caused by rational calculation, and some is, no doubt, attributable to some combination of (1) reward super response, (2) "status quo bias" from Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency, and (3) "the endowment effect" from Excessive Self-Regard Tendency. But I believe the single strongest irrational explanation is a form of Deprival-Superreaction Tendency. “

---

Fifteen: Social-Proof Tendency

“For some such reason, man's evolution left him with Social-Proof Tendency, an automatic tendency to think and act as he sees others around him thinking and acting.“

“When will Social-Proof Tendency be most easily triggered? Here the answer is clear from many experiments: Triggering most readily occurs in the presence of puzzlement or stress, and particularly when both exist.“

“Because both bad and good behavior are made contagious by Social-Proof Tendency, it is highly important that human societies (1) stop any bad behavior before it spreads and (2) foster and display all good behavior.“

“In social proof, it is not only action by others that misleads but also their inaction. In the presence of doubt, inaction by others becomes social proof that inaction is the right course“

“Social-Proof Tendency often interacts in a perverse way with Envy/Jealousy and Deprival Superreaction Tendency“

“If only one lesson is to be chosen from a package of lessons involving Social-Proof Tendency, and used in self improvement, my favorite would be: Learn how to ignore the examples from others when they are wrong, because few skills are more worth having.“

--- Sixteen: Contrast-Misreaction Tendency

“the contrast in what is seen is registered. And as in sight, so does it go, largely, in the other senses. Moreover, as perception goes, so goes cognition. The result is man's Contrast Misreaction Tendency“

“" Large- scale damages often ruin lives, as when a wonderful woman having terrible parents marries a man who would be judged satisfactory only in comparison to her parents. Or as when a man takes wife number two who would be appraised as all right only in comparison to wife number one."

“Contrast-Misreaction Tendency is routinely used to cause disadvantage for customers buying merchandise and services. To make an ordinary price seem low, the vendor will very frequently create a highly artificial price that is much higher than the price always sought, then advertise his standard price as a big reduction from his phony price. Even when people know that this sort of customer manipulation is being attempted, it will often work to trigger buying“

“Cognition, misled by tiny changes involving low contrast, will often miss a trend that is destiny. One of Ben Franklin's best-remembered and most useful aphorisms is "A small leak will sink a great ship."

--- Seventeen: Stress-Influence Tendency

“ For instance, most people know that an "acute stress depression" makes thinking dysfunctional because it causes an extreme of pessimism, often extended in length and usually accompanied by activity stopping fatigue. Fortunately, as most people also know, such a depression is one of mankind's more reversible ailments. Even before modern drugs were available, many people afflicted by depression, such as Winston Churchill and Samuel Johnson, gained great achievement in life.“

“ But not many scientists would have done what Pavlov next did. And that was to spend the rest of his long life giving stress-induced nervous breakdowns to dogs, after which he would try to reverse the breakdowns, all the while keeping careful experimental records. He found (1) that he could classify dogs so as to predict how easily a particular dog would breakdown (2) that the dogs hardest to break down were also the hardest to return to their pre breakdown state; (3) that any dog could be broken down; and (4) that he couldn't reverse a breakdown except by reimposing stress.“

---

Eighteen: Availability-Misweighing Tendency

“One consequence of this tendency is that extra vivid evidence, being so memorable and thus more available in cognition, should often consciously be underweighed while less vivid evidence should be overweighed. Still, the special strength of extra-vivid images in influencing the mind can be constructively used (1) in persuading someone else to reach a correct conclusion or (2) as a device for improving one's own memory by attaching vivid images, one after the other, to many items one doesn't want to forget“

“The great algorithm to remember in dealing with this tendency is simple: An idea or a fact is nor worth more merely because it is easily available to you.“

--- Nineteen: Use-It-or-Lose-It Tendency

“All skills attenuate with disuse“

“Throughout his life, a wise man engages in practice of all his useful, rarely used skills, many of them outside his discipline, as a sort of duty to his better self. If he reduces the number of skills he practices and, therefore, the number of skills he retains, he will naturally drift into error from man with a hammer tendency. His learning capacity will also shrink as he creates gaps in the latticework of theory he needs as a framework for understanding new experience. It is also essential for a thinking man to assemble his skills into a checklist that he routinely uses. Any other mode of operation will cause him to miss much that is important. Skills of a very high order can be maintained only with daily practice.“

“The hard rule of Use-It-or-Lose-It Tendency tempers its harshness for the diligent. If a skill is raised to fluency, instead of merely being crammed in briefly to enable one to pass some test, then the skill (1) will be lost more slowly and (2) will come back faster when refreshed with new learning. These are not minor advantages, and a wise man engaged in learning some important skill will not stop until he is really fluent in it.“

--- Twenty: Drug-Misinfluence Tendency

--- Twenty-One: Senescence-Misinfluence Tendency

“With advanced age, there comes a natural cognitive decay, differing among individuals in the earliness of its arrival and the speed of its progression“

“Continuous thinking and learning, done with joy can somewhat help delay what is inevitable.“

---

Twenty-Two: Authority-Misinfluence Tendency

“Living in dominance hierarchies as he does, like all his ancestors before him, man was born mostly to follow leaders, with only a few people doing the leading. And so, human society is formally organized into dominance hierarchies, with their culture augmenting the natural follow-the-leader tendency of man.

But automatic as most human reactions are, with the tendency to follow leaders being no exception, man is often destined to suffer greatly when the leader is wrong or when his leader's ideas don't get through properly in the bustle of life and are misunderstood. “

“So strong is undue respect for authority that this CEO, and many even worse examples, have actually been allowed to remain in control of important business institutions for long periods after it was clear they should be removed. The obvious implication: Be careful whom you appoint to power because a dominant authority figure will often be hard to remove, aided as he will be by Authority Misinfluence Tendency.“

---

Twenty-Three: Twaddle Tendency

“And it's a very important part of wise administration to keep prattling people, pouring our twaddle, far away from the serious work. A rightly famous Caltech engineering professor, exhibiting more insight than tact, once expressed his version of this idea as follows: "The principal job of an academic administration is to keep the people who don't matter from interfering with the work of the people that do.“

---

Twenty-Four: Reason-Respecting Tendency

“. It makes man especially prone to learn well when a would-be teacher gives correct reasons for what is taught, instead of simply laying out the desired belief ex cathedra with no reasons given. Few practices, therefore, are wiser than not only thinking through reasons before giving orders but also communicating these reasons to the recipient of the order.“

“In general, learning is most easily assimilated and used when, life long, people consistently hang their experience, actual and vicarious, on a lattice work of theory answering the question: Why? Indeed, the question "Why?" is a sort of Rosetta stone opening up the major potentiality of mental life. Unfortunately, Reason-Respecting Tendency is so strong that even a person's giving of meaningless or incorrect reasons will increase compliance with his orders and requests“

---

Twenty-Five: Lollapalooza Tendency-The Tendency to Get Extreme consequences from confluences of psychological Tendencies Acting in Favor of a Particular outcome

---

“Tendency is not always destiny, and knowing the tendencies and their antidotes can often help prevent trouble that would otherwise occur.“

#mungerism #poorcharliesalmanack #CharlieMunger #misjudgment #inversion #psychology

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teshknowledgenotes · 3 years

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The Revised Psychology of Human Misjudgment, by Charlie Munger - Notes

“Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Systematically you get ahead, but not necessarily in fast spurts. Nevertheless, you build discipline by preparing for fast spurts. Slug it out one inch at a time day by day. At the end of the day – if you live long enough – most people get what they deserve”

Munger has drawn heavily from the study of psychology, economics, physics, biology and history, among other disciplines, in developing his system of “multiple mental models” to cut through difficult problems in complex social systems. It is a system like no other.

As a result his insights on business and life are unique, rare, and correct with unusual consistency. Adopting the “Munger” approach to thinking is difficult, as is imitating any genius. When asked his secret to success, Munger once answered simply “I’m rational.”

The Revised Psychology of Human Misjudgment, by Charlie Munger

This talk features Charlie’s original concept of “behavioural finance”.

Charlie addresses the importance of recognizing patterns to determine how humans behave, both rationally and irrationally. He shares with us his checklist of twenty-five standard causes of human misjudgment, which contains observations that are ingenious, counter intuitive and important. He also emphasizes the “lollapalooza” power of psychological misjudgments in combination.

I have long been very interested in standard thinking errors. However I was educated in an era wherein the contributions of non-patient-treating psychology to any understanding of misjudgment met little approval from members of the mainstream elite. Instead, interest in psychology was pretty well confined to a group of professors who talked and publish mostly for themselves.

Right after my time at Caltech and Harvard Law School, I possessed a vast ignorance of psychology. Those institutions failed to require knowledge of the subject. And of course they couldn’t integrate psychology with their other subject matter when they didn’t know psychology. The institutions were proud of their wilful avoidance of “fuzzy” psychology and “fuzzy” psychology professors. Soon after leaving Harvard, I began a long struggle to get rid of the most dysfunctional part of my psychological ignorance.

When I started law practice, I had respect for the power of genetic evolution and appreciation of man’s many evolution-based resemblances to less cognitively-gifted animals and insects. I was aware that man was a “social animal”, greatly and automatically influence by behaviour he observed in men around him. I also knew that man lived, like barnyard animals and monkeys, in limited-size dominance hierarchies, wherein he tended to respect authority and to like and cooperate with his own hierarchy members while displaying considerable distrust and dislike for competing men not in his own hierarchy.

But this generalized, evolution-based theory structure was inadequate to enable me to cope properly with the cognition I encountered. I was soon surrounded by much extreme irrationality, displayed in patters and sub patterns. So surround, I could see that I was not going to cope as well as I wished with life unless I could acquire a better theory structure on which to hang my observations and experiences. By then my craving for more theory had a long history. Partly, I had always loved theory as an aid in puzzle solving and as a means of satisfying my monkey-like curiosity.

I also got curious about social insects. It fascinated me that both the fertile female honeybee and the fertile female harvester ant could multiply their quite different normal life expectancy by exactly twenty by engaging in one gangbang in the sky. The extreme success of the ants also fascinated me, how a few behavioural algorithms caused such extreme evolutionary success grounded in extremes of cooperation within the breeding colony and almost always extremes of lethal hostility toward ants outside the breeding colony, even ants of the same species.

I will start my summary with a general observation that helps explain what follows. This observation is grounded in what we know about social insects. The limitations inherent in evolution’s development of the nervous-system cells that control behaviour are beautifully demonstrated by these insects, which often have a mere 100,000 or so cells in their entire nervous systems, compared to man’s multiple billions of cells in his brain alone.

Each ant, like each human, is composed of a living physical structure plus behavioural algorithms in its nerve cells. In the ant’s case, the behavioural algorithms are few in number and almost entirely genetic in origin. The an learns a little behaviour from experiences, but mostly it merely responds to ten or so stimuli with a few simple responses programmed into its nervous system by its genes.

Naturally the simple ant behaviour system has extreme limitations because of its limited nerve system repertoire. For instance, one type of ant, when it smells a pheromone give off by a dead ant’s body in the hive, immediately responds by cooperating with other ants in carrying the dead body out of the hive. And Harvard’s great E.O. Wilson performed on of the best psychology experiments ever done when he painted dead-ant pheromone on a live ant. Quite naturally, the other ants dragged this useful live ant out of the give even though it kicked and otherwise pheromone on a live ant. Quite naturally, the other ants dragged this useful live ant out of the hive even though it kicked and otherwise protested throughout the entire process. Such is the brain of the ant. It has a simple program of responses that generally work out all right, but which are imprudently used by rote in many cases.

Man is often wrong but generally useful, psychological tendencies are quite numerous and quite different. The natural consequence of this profusion of tendencies is the grand general principle of social psychology: cognition is ordinarily situation-dependent so that different situations often cause different conclusions, even when the same person is thinking in the same general subject area.

“Of what use is a philosopher who never offends anybody? - Diogenes

These are a list of psychology based tendencies that while generally useful often mislead.

1)Reward and Punishment Superresponse Tendency

One of my favourite cases about the power of incentives is the Federal Express case. The integrity of the Federal Express system requires that all packages be shifted rapidly among airplanes in one central airport each night. And the system has no integrity for the customers if the night work shift can’t accomplish its assignment fast. And Federal Express had one hell of a time getting the night shift to do the right thing. They tried moral suasion. They tried everything in the world without luck. And finally somebody got the happy thought that it was foolish to pay the night shift by the hour when what the employer wanted was not maximized billable hours of employee service but fault-free, rapid performance of a particular task. Maybe this person though if they paid the employees per and shift and let all night shift employees go home when all the planes were loaded, the system would work better. And behold that situation worked.

Money is the main incentive/reward that drives habits. A monkey can be trained to seek and work for an intrinsically worthless token, as if it were a banana, if the token is routinely exchangeable for a banana. So it is also with humans working for money only more so, because human money i exchangeable for many desired things in addition to food, and on ordinarily gains status from either holding or spending it. Moreover, a rich person will often through habit, work on connive energetically for money money long after he has almost no real need for more. Averaged out, money is a mainspring of modern civilization, having little precedent in the behaviour of nonhuman animals. Money rewards are also intertwined with other forms of reward. For instance, some people use money to buy status and others use status to get money, while still others sort of do both things at the same time.

Although money is the main driver among rewards, it is not the only reward that works. People also change their behaviour and cognition for sex, friendship, companionship, advancement in status and other non-monetary items.

2)Liking/Loving Tendency

A newly hatched baby goose is programmed, through the economy of its genetic program, to “love” and follow the first creature that is nice to it, which is almost always its mother. But, if the mother goose is not present right after the hatching, and a man is there instead, the gosling will “love” and follow the man, who becomes a sort of substitute mother.

Somewhat similarly a newly arrived human is “born to like and love” under the normal and abnormal triggering outcomes for its kind. Perhaps the strongest inborn tendency to love, ready to be triggered is that the human mother for its child. On the other hand, the similar “child-loving” behaviour of a mouse can be eliminated by the deletion of a single gene, which suggests that there is some sort of triggering gene in a mother mouse as well as in a gosling.

Each child like a gosling, will almost surely come to like and love, not only as driven by its sexual nature, but also in social groups not limited to its genetic or adoptive “family”. Current extremes of romantic love almost surely did not occur in man’s remote past. Our early human ancestors were surely more like apes triggered into mating in a pretty mundane fashion.

And what will a man naturally come to like and love, apart from his parent, spouse and child? Well he will like and love being liked and loved. And so many a courtship competition will be won by a person displaying exceptional devotion, and man will generally strive, lifelong, for the affection and approval of many people not related to him.

The phenomenon of liking and loving causing admiration also works in reverse. Admiration also causes or intensifies liking or love. With this “feedback mode” in place, the consequences are often extreme, sometimes even causing deliberate self-destruction to help what is loved.

Liking or love, intertwined with admiration in a feedback mode, often has vast practical consequences in areas far removed from sexual attachments. For instance, a man who is so constructed that he loves admirable persons and ideas with a special intensity has a huge advantage in life. This blessing came to both Buffett and myself in large measure, sometimes from the same persons and ideas. One common, beneficial example for us both was Warren’s uncle Fred Buffett, who cheerfully did the endless grocery store work that Warren and I ended up admiring from a safe distance. Even now, after I have known so many other people. I doubt if it is possible to be a nicer man than Fred Buffett was, and he changed me for the better.

There are large social policy implications in the amazingly good consequences that ordinarily come from people likely to trigger extremes of love and admiration boosting each other in a feedback mode. For instance, it is obviously desirable to attract a lot of lovable, admirable people into the teaching profession.

3)Disliking/Hating Tendency

In a pattern obverse to Liking/Loving Tendency, the newly arrived human is also “born to dislike and hate” as triggered by normal and abnormal triggering forces in it’s life. It is the same with most apes and monkeys.

As a result the long history of man contains almost continuous war. For instance, most American Indian tribes warred incessantly and some tribes would occasionally bring captives home to women so that all could join in the fun of torturing captives to death. Even with the spread of religion, and the advent of advanced civilization much modern war remains pretty savage. But we also get what we observe in present day Switzerland and the United States, wherein the clever political arrangements of man “channel” the hatreds and disliking of individuals and groups into nonlethal patterns including elections.

Disliking/Hating Tendency also acts as a conditioning device that makes the disliker/hater tend to 1) ignore virtues in the object of dislike, 2) dislike people, products, and actions merely associated with the object of his dislike, and 3) distort the other facts to facilitate hatred.

Distortion of that kind is often so extreme that miscongnition is shockingly large. When the World Trade Centre was destroyed, many Pakistanis immediately concluded that the Hindus did it, while many Muslims concluded that the Jews did it. Such factual distortions often make mediation between opponents locked in hatred either difficult or impossible.

4)Doubt-Avoidance Tendency

The brain of a man is programmed with a tendency to quickly remove doubt by reaching some decision.

It is easy to see how evolution would make animals, over the eons, drift toward such quick elimination of doubt. After all, the one thing that is surely counterproductive for a prey animal that is threatened by a predator is to take a long time in deciding what to do. And so man’s doubt-avoidance tendency is quite consistent with the history of his ancient, nonhuman ancestors.

So pronounced is the tendency in man to quickly remove doubt by reaching some decision that behaviour to counter the tendency is required from judges and jurors. Here, delay before decision making is forced. And one is required to so comfort himself, prior to conclusion time, so that he is wearing a “mask” of objectivity. And the “mask” works to help real objectivity along.

Of course, once one has recognized that man has a string doubt-avoidance tendency, it is logical to believe that at least some leaps of religious faith are greatly boosted by this tendency. Even if one is satisfied that his own faith comes from revelation, one still must account for the inconsistent faiths of others.

What triggers doubt-avoidance tendency? Well an unthreatened man, thinking of nothing in particular, is not being prompted to remove doubt through rushing to some decision. Doubt-Avoidance tendency is some combination of 1) puzzlement and 2) stress. And both of these factors naturally occur in facing religious issues.

Thus, the natural state of most men is in some form of religion. And this is what we observe.

5) Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency

The brain of a man conserves programming space by being reluctant to change, which is a form of inconsistency avoidance. We see this in all human habits, constructive and destructive. Few people can list a lot of bad habits that they have eliminated, and some people cannot identify even one of these. Instead, practically everyone has a great many bad habits he has long maintained despite their being known as bad. Given this situation, it is not too much in many cases to appraise early-formed habits as destiny. When Marley’s miserable ghost says, “I wear the chains I forged in life”, he is taking about chains of habit that were too light to be felt before they became too strong to be broken.

It is easy to see that a quickly reached conclusion, triggered by doubt-avoidance, when combined with a tendency to resists any change in that conclusion, will naturally cause a lot of errors in cognition for modern man. And so it observably works out. We all deal much with others whom we correctly diagnose as imprisoned in poor conclusions that are maintained by mental habits they formed early and will carry to their graves.

So great is the bad decision problem caused by inconsistency avoidance tendency that our courts have adopted important strategies against it. For instance before making decisions, judges and juries are required to hear long and skillful presentations of evidence and argument from the side they will not naturally favour, given their ideas in place. And this helps prevent considerable bad thinking from “first conclusion bias”. Similarly other modern decision makers will often force groups to consider skillful counterarguments before making decisions. So people tend to accumulate large mental holdings of fixed conclusions and attitudes that are not often reexamined or changed, even though there is plenty of good evidence that they are wrong.

Inconsistency-Avoidance tendency has many good effects in civilization. For instance, rather than act inconsistently with public commitments, new or old public identities etc. Most people are more loyal in their roles in life as priests, physicians, citizens, soldiers, spouses, teachers, employees, etc.

One corollary of Inconsistency-Avoidance tendency is that a person making big sacrifices in the course of assuming a new identity will intensify his devotion to the new identity. After all, it would be quite inconsistent behaviour to make a large sacrifice for something that was no good. And thus civilization has invented many tough and solemn initiation ceremonies, often public in nature, that intensify new commitments made.

Tough initiation ceremonies can intensify bad contact as well as good. The loyalty of the new “made-man” mafia member, or of the military officer making the required “blood oath” of loyalty to Hitler, was boosted through the triggering of inconsistency-avoidance tendency.

Moreover, the tendency will often make a man a “patsy” of manipulative “compliance-practitioners” who gain advantage from triggering his subconscious Inconsistency-Avoidance tendency.

For instance modern education often does much damage when young students are taught dubious political notions and then enthusiastically push these notions on the rest of us. The pushing seldom convinces others. But as students pound into their mental habits what they are pushing out, the students are often permanently damaged. Educational Institutions that create a climate where much of this goes on are, I think irresponsible. It is important not to thus put one’s brain in chains before on has come anywhere near his full potentiality as a rational person.

6) Curiosity Tendency

There is a lot of innate curiosity in mammals, but its nonhuman version is highest among apes and monkeys. Man’s curiosity, in turn, is much stronger than that of his simian relatives. In advanced human civilization, culture greatly increases the effectiveness of curiosity in advancing knowledge. For instance, Athens developed much math and science out of pure curiosity while the Romans made almost no contribution to either math or science. They instead concentrated their attention on the ‘practical’ engineering of mines, roads, aqueducts, etc. Curiosity enhanced by the best of modern education much helps man to prevent or reduce bad consequences arising from other psychological tendencies. The curious are also provided with much fun and wisdom long after formal education has ended.

7) Kantian Fairness Tendency

Kant was famous for his “categorical imperative”, a sort of a “golden rule” that required humans to follow those behaviour patterns that, if followed by all others, would make the surrounding human system work best for everybody. And it is not too much to say that modern acculturated many displays, and expects from others, a lot of fairness as thus defined by Kant.

In a small community having a one-way bridge or tunnel for autos, it is the norm in the United States to see a lot of reciprocal courtesy, despite the absence of signs or signals. And many freeway drivers, including myself, will often let other drivers come on front of them, in lane changes or the like, because that is the courtesy they desire when roles are reversed. Moreover there is in modern human culture a lot of courteous lining up by strangers so that all are served on a “first-come-first-served” basis.

Also, strangers often voluntarily share equally in unexpected, unearned good and bad fortune. And, as an obverse consequence of such “fair-sharing” conduct, much reactive hostility occurs when fair-sharing is expected yet not provided.

8) Envy/Jealously Tendency

A member of a species designed through evolutionary process to want often-scarce food is going to be driven strongly toward getting food when it first sees food. And this is going to occur often and tend to create some conflict when the food is seen in the possession of another member of the same species. This is probably the evolutionary origin of the envy/jealousy tendency that lies so deep in human nature.

Envy/jealousy is extreme in myth, religion and literature wherein, in account after account, it triggers hatred and injury. It was regarded as so pernicious by the Jews of the civilization that preceded Christ that it was forbidden, by phrase after phrase, in the laws of Moses. You were even warned by the Prophet not to covet your neighbour’s donkey.

And envy/jealousy is also extreme in modern life. For instance, university communities often go bananas when some university employee in money management, or some professor in surgery, gets annual compensation in multiples of the standard professional salary and in modern investment banks, law firms etc. The envy/jealousy effects are usually more extreme than they are in university faculties. Many big law firms, fearing disorder from envy/jealousy have long treated all senior partners alike in compensation, no matter how different their contributions to firm welfare. As I have shared the observation of life with Warren Buffet over decades, I have heard him wisely say on several occasions: “It is not greed that drives the world, but envy”

9) Reciprocation Tendency

The automatic tendency of humans to reciprocate both favours and disfavours has long been noticed as extreme, as it is in apes, monkeys, dogs, and many less cognitively gifted animals. The tendency clearly facilitates group cooperation for the benefit of members. In this respect, it mimics such genetic programming of the social insects.

We see the extreme power of the tendency to reciprocate disfavours in some wars, wherein it increases hatred to a level causing very brutal conduct. For long stretches in many wars, no prisoners were take, the only acceptable enemy being a dead one. And sometimes that was not enough, as in the case of Genghis Khan, who was not satisfied with corpses. He insisted on their being hacked into pieces.

Reciprocation tendency does cause good results, doesn’t join forces only with the superpower of incentives. It also joins Inconsistency-Avoidance tendency in helping cause 1) The fulfillment of promises made as part of a bargain, including loyalty promises in marriage ceremonies and 2) correct behaviour expected from persons serving as priests, shoemakers, physicians and all else.

And the very best part of human life probably lies in relationships of affection wherein parties are more interested in pleasing than being pleased a not uncommon outcome in display of reciprocate tendency.

The final phenomenon we will consider is wide spread human misery from feelings of guilt. To the extent the feeling of guilt has an evolutionary base, I believe the most plausible cause is the mental conflict triggered in one direction by reciprocate favour tendency and in the opposite direction by reward super response tendency pushing one to enjoy one hundred percent some good thing. Of course, human culture has often greatly boosted the genetic tendency to suffer from feelings of guilt. Most especially religious culture has imposed hard to follow ethical and devotional demands on people. There is a charming Irish Catholic priest in my neighbourhood who, with rough accuracy, often says “The old Jews may have invented guilt, with but we Catholics perfected it” And if you like me and this priest, believe that averaged out, feelings of guild do more good than harm, you may join in my special gratitude for reciprocate favour tendency, no matter how unpleasant you find feelings of guilt.

10) Influence-from-Mere-Association Tendency

In the standard conditioned reflexes studied by Skinner and most common in the world, responsive behaviour, creating a new habit, is directly triggered by rewards previously bestowed. For instance, a man buys a can of branded shoe polish, has a good experience with it when shining his shoes, and because of this “reward,” buys the same shoe polish when he needs another can.

But there is another type of conditioned reflex wherein mere association triggers a response. For instance, consider the case of many men who have been trained by their previous experience in life to believe that when several similar items are presented for purchase, the one with the highest price will have the highest quality. Knowing this, some seller of an ordinary industrial product will often change his product’s trade dress and raise its price significantly hoping that quality seeking buyers hoping that quality seeking buyers will be tricked into becoming purchasers by mere association of his product and its high price. This industrial practice frequently is effective in driving up sales and even more so in driving up profits. For instance, it worked wonderfully with high-priced power tools for a long time. And it would work better yet with high-priced pumps at the bottom of oil wells. With luxury goods, the process works with a special boost because buyers who pay high prices often gain extra status from thus demonstration both their good taste and their ability to pay.

Even association that appears to be trivial, if carefully planned, can have extreme and peculiar effects on purchasers of products. The target purchaser of shoe polish may like pretty girls. And so he chooses the polish with the pretty girl on the can or the one with the pretty girl in the last ad for shoe polish that he saw.

Advertisers know about the power of mere association. You won’t see coke advertised alongside some account of the death of a child. Instead Coke ads picture life as happier than reality.

Similarly it is not from mere chance that military bands play such impressive music. That kind of music appearing in mere association with military service, helps to attract soldiers and keep them in the army. Most armies have learned to use mere association in this successful way.

However the most damaging miscalculations from mere association do not ordinarily come from advertisers and music providers.

Some of the most important miscalculations come from what is accidentally associated with one’s past success or one’s liking and loving or one’s disliking and hating, which includes a natural hatred for bad news.

To avoid being misled by the mere association of some fact with past success, use this memory clue. Think of Napolean and Hitler when they invaded Russia after using their armies with much success elsewhere. And there are plenty of mundane examples of results like those of Napoleon and Hitler. For instance a man foolishly gambles the in a casino and yet wins. This unlikely correlation causes him to try the casino again, or again and again, to his horrid detriment. Or a man gets lucky in an odds against venture headed by an untalented friend. So influenced he tries again what worked before with terrible results.

The proper antidotes to being made such a patsy by past success are 1) to carefully examine each past success, looking for accidental, non-causative factors associated with such success that will tend to mislead as one appraises odds implicit in a proposed new undertaking and 2) to look for dangerous aspects of the new undertaking that were not present when past success occurred.

11) Simple, Pain-Avoiding Psychological Denial

This phenomenon first me had in World War II when the super athlete, super student son of a family friend flew off over the Atlantic Ocean and never came back. His mother, who was a very sane woman, then refused to believe he was dead. That’s simple pain-avoiding psychological denial. The reality is too painful to bear, so one distorts the facts until they become bearable. We all do that to some extent, often causing terrible problems. The tendency’s most extreme outcomes are usually mixed up with love, death, and chemical dependency.

Where denial is used to make dying easier, the conduct meets almost no criticism. Who would begrudge a fellow man such help at such a time? But some people hope to leave life hewing to the iron prescription, “It is not necessary to hope in order to persevere” And there is something admirable in anyone able to do this.

12)Excessive Self-Regard Tendency

We all commonly observe the excessive self-regard of man. He mostly misappraises himself on the high side, like the ninety percent of Swedish drivers that judge themselves to be above average.

Man’s excess of self-regard typically makes him strongly prefer people like himself.

Excesses of self-regard often cause bad hiring decisions because employers grossly over appraise the worth of their own conclusions that rely on imporessions in face to face contact. The correct antidote to this sort of folly is to underweight face to face impressions and over weigh the applicant’s past record.

13) Overoptimism Tendency

About three centuries before the birth of Christ, Demosthenes, the most famous Greek orator, said “What a man wish, that also will he believe”. Demosthenes parsed out, was thus saying that man displays an excess of optimism even when he is already doing well.

14) Deprival-Superreaction Tendency

The quantity of man’s pleasure from a ten dollar gain does not exactly match the quantity of displeasure from a ten dollar loss. That is, the loss seems to hurt much more than the gain seems to help. If a man almost gets something he greatly wants and has it jerked away from him at the last moment, he will react much as if he had long owned the reward and had it jerked away. I include the natural human reactions to both kinds of loss experience, the loss of the possessed reward and the loss of the almost possessed reward. Man frequently incurs disadvantage by misframing his problems. He will often compare what is near instead of what really matters. For instance, a man with $10 million in his brokerage account will often be extremely irritated by the accidental loss of $100 out of the $300 in his wallet.

A man ordinarily reacts with irrational intensity to even a small loss or threatened loss of property, love, friendship, dominated territory, opportunity, status, or any other valued thing.

15) Social-Proof Tendency

The otherwise complex behaviour of man is much simplified when he automatically thinks and does what he observes to be thought and done around him. Such following often works fine. For instance, what simpler way could there be to find out how to walk to a big football game in a strange city than by following the flow of the crowd. For some such reason, man’s evolution left him with Social-Proof tendency to think and act as he sees others around him thinking and acting.

In social proof, it is not only action by others that misleads but also their inaction. In the presence of doubt, inaction by others becomes social proof that inaction is the right course.

16) Contrast-Misreaction Tendency

Because the nervous system of a man does not naturally measure in absolute scientific units, it must instead rely on something simpler. The eyes have a solution that limits their programming needs, the contrast in what is seen is registered. And as in sight, so does it go largely, in other senses. As a perception goes so goes cognition.

Contrast misreaction tendency is routinely used to cause disadvantage for customers buying merchandise and services. To make an ordinary price seem low, the vendor will very frequently create a highly artificial price that is much higher than the price always sought, then advertise his standard price as a big reduction from his phony price. Even when people know that this sort of customer manipulation is being attempted, it will often work to trigger buying. This phenomenon accounts in part for much advertising in newspapers. It also demonstrates that being aware of psychological ploys is not a perfect defence.

17) Stress-Influence Tendency

Everyone recognizes that sudden stress for instance from a threat, will cause a rush of adrenaline in the human body, prompting faster and more extreme reaction. In a phenomenon less well recognized but still widely known, light stress can lightly improve performance say, in examinations whereas heavy stress causes dysfunction.

18) Availability-Misweighing Tendency

This mental tendency echoes the words of the song: “When I’m not near the girl I love, I love the girl I’m near” Man’s imperfect, limited-capacity brain easily drifts into working with what’s easily available to it. And the brain can’t use what it can’ remember or what it is blocked from recognizing because it is heavily influenced by one or more psychological tendencies bearing strongly on it, as the fellow is influenced by the nearby girl in the song. And so the mind overweighs what is easily available.

Still, the special strength of extra-vivid images in influencing the mind can be constructively used 1) in persuading someone else to reach a correct conclusion or 2) as a device for improving one’s own memory by attaching vivid images, on after the other, to many items one doesn’t want to forget. Indeed such use of vivid images as memory boosters is what enabled the great orators of classical Greece and Rome to give such long, organized speeches without using notes.

The great algorithm to remember in dealing with this tendency is simple: An idea or a fact is not worth more merely because it is easily available to you.

19) Use-It-or-Lose-It Tendency

All skills attenuate with disuse. I was a whiz at calculus until age twenty, after which the skill was soon obliterated by total non use. The right antidote to such a loss is to make use of the functional equivalent of the aircraft simulator employed in pilot training. This allows a pilot to continuously practice all of the rarely used skills that he can’t afford to lose.

Throughout his life, a wise man engages in practice of all his useful, rarely used skills, many of them outside his discipline, as a sort of duty to his better self. If he reduces the number of skills he practices and therefore the number of skills he retains, he will naturally drift into error from man with a hammer tendency. His learning capacity will also shrink as he creates gaps, in the latticework of theory he needs a framework for understanding new experience. It is also man engages in practice of all his useful, rarely used skills, many of them outside his discipline, as sort of duty to his better self. If he reduces the number of skills he practices and therefore the number of skills he retains, he will naturally drift into error from man with a hammer tendency. His learning capacity will also shrink as he creates gaps in the latticework of theory he needs as a framework for understanding new experience. It is also essential for a thinking man to assemble his skills into a checklist that he routinely uses. Any other mode of operation will cause him to miss much that is important.

Skills for a very high order can be maintained only with daily practice. The pianist Paderewski once said that if he failed to practice for a single day, he could notice his performance deterioration and that, after a week’s gap in practice, the audience could notice it as well.

If a skills is raised to fluency, instead of merely being crammed in briefly to enable one to pass some test, then the skill 1) will be lost more slowly and 2) will come back faster when refreshed with new learning. These are not minor advantages, and a wise man engaged in learning some important skill will not stop until he is really fluent in it.

20) Drug-Misinfluence Tendency

This tendency’s destructive power is so widely known to be intense, with frequent tragic consequences for cognition and the outcome of life, that it needs no discussion here to supplement.

21) Senescence-Misinfluence Tendency

With advanced age there comes a natural cognitive decay, differing among individuals in the earliness of its arrival and the speed of its progression. Practically no one is good at learning complex new skills when very old. But some people remain pretty good in maintaining intensely practice old skills until late in life. Old people like me get pretty skilled without working at it, at disguising age related deterioration because social convention, like clothing, hides much decline.

Continuous thinking and learning, done with joy, can somewhat help delay what is inevitable.

22) Authority-Misinfluence Tendency

Living in dominance hierarchies as he does, like all his ancestors before him, man was born mostly to follow leaders, with only a few people doing the leading. And so, human society is formally organized into dominance hierarchies with their culture augmenting the natural follow the leader tendency of a man.

But automatic as most human reactions are, with the tendency to follow leaders being no exception, man is often destine to suffer greatly when the leader is wrong or when his leader’s ideas don’t get through properly in the bustle of life and are misunderstood.

Other versions of confused instructions from authority figures are tragic. In World War II, a new pilot for a general, who sat beside him in the co-pilot’s seat, was so anxious to please his boss that he misinterpreted some minor shift in the general’s position as a direction to do some foolish thing. The pilot crashed the plane and became a paraplegic.

When I once finished in the Rio Colorado in Costa Rica, my guide in a state of shock told me a story about an angler who’d earlier come to the river without ever having fished for a tarpon. A fishing guide like the one I had runs the boat and gives fishing advice, establishing himself in this context as the ultimate authority figure. In the case of this guide, his native language was Spanish, while the angler’s native language was English. The angler got a big tarpon on and began submitting to many directions from this authority figure called a guide: tip up, tip down, reel in, etc. Finally when it was necessary to put more pressure on the fish by causing more bending of the angler’s rod, the guide said in English: “Give him the rod, give him the rod”.

Well, the angler threw his expensive rod at the fist, and when last seen, it was going down the Rio Colorado toward the ocean. This example shows how power is the tendency to go along with an authority figure and how it can turn one’s brain into mush.

So strong is undue respect for authority that this CEO, and many even worse examples, have actually been allowed to remain in control of important business institutions for long periods after it was clear they should be removed. The obvious implication: Be careful whom you appoint to power because a dominant authority figure will often be hard to remove.

23) Twaddle Tendency

Man as a social animal who has the gift of language, is born to prattle and to pour out twaddle that does much damage when serious work is being attempted. Some people produce copious amounts of twaddle and others very little.

24) Reason-Respecting Tendency

There is in man, particularly one in an advanced culture, a natural love of accurate cognition and a joy in its exercise. This accounts for the widespread popularity of crossword puzzles, other puzzles, and bridge and chess columns, as well as all games requiring mental skill.

This tendency has an obvious implication. It makes man especially prone to learn well when a would be teacher gives correct reasons for what is taught, instead of simply laying out the desired belief ex cathedra with no reasons given. Few practices, there are wiser than not only thinking through reasons before giving orders but also communicating these reasons to the recipient of the order.

No one knew this better than Carl Braun, who designed oil refineries with spectacular skill and integrity. He had a very simple rule, one of many in his large, Teutonic company. You had to tell Who was to do What, Where, When, and Why. And if you wrote a communication leaving out your explanation of why the addressee was to do what was ordered, Braun was likely to fire you because Braun well knew that ideas got through best when reasons for the ideas were meticulously laid out.

In general, learning is most easily assimilated and used when, life long, people consistently hang their experience actually and vicarious, on a lattice work of theory answering their questions: Why? Indeed, the question “Why?” is a sort of Rosetta stone opening up the major potentiality of mental life.

Unfortunately Reason-Respecting tendency is so strong that even a person’s giving of meaningless or incorrect reasons will increase compliance with his orders and requests. This has been demonstrated in psychology experiments wherein “compliance practitioners” successfully jump to the head of the lines in front of copying machines by explaining their reason: “I have to make some copies” This sort of unfortunate by product of Reason-Respecting tendency is a conditioned reflex, based on a widespread appreciation of the importance of reasons. And, naturally the practice of laying out various claptrap reasons is much used by commercial and cult “compliance practitioners” to help them get what they don’t deserve.

25) Lollapalooza Tendency—The Tendency to Get Extreme Consequences from Confluences of Psychology Tendencies Acting in Favor of a Particular Outcome

This tendency was not in any of the psychology texts I once examined, at least in any coherent fashion, yet it dominates life. It accounts for the extreme result in the Milgram experiment and the extreme success of some cults that have stumbled through practice evolution into bringing pressure from many psychological tendencies to bear at the same time on conversion targets. The targets vary in susceptibility, like the dogs Pavlov worked with in his old age, but some of the minds that are targeted simply snap into zombie mode under cult pressure. Indeed that is one cult’s name for the conversion phenomenon: snapping.

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