Self Fulfilling Prophecies II: Behind Luck

Warning: This blog is in the ‘long’ category.

It’s also in the ‘stories’, ‘interesting’ and ‘helpful’ categories. So get committed. :-)

My commute to work is about half an hour which gives me nearly an hour of commute time each weekday. Like anyone else, I spend some of the time critiquing other drivers (can you believe the number of people still talking on their cell phones while driving?!), but most of the time I spend listening to audio CDs of good books that I pick up at the local public library. Currently, I’m listening to a book called Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell.

Gladwell is making the case for the efficiency of our human intuition. He argues that its superior ability to quickly analyze and produce decisions should be trusted and favored in many cases over labored data gathering and conscious analysis. He also argues that our intuition can lead us into big social faux pas which he calls the ‘Warren Harding Error’. ;-) I’ll have to get back to you on how we should know when our intuition is playing the prankster and when the wise owl.

Getting on to my subject, Gladwell, at one point, discusses research into a physiological process called ‘priming’ that has shown that even slight suggestions of a result given just before a task strongly influence a person’s performance. For example, words associated with age imbedded in a test of scrambled sentences results in the subjects walking slower after the test. Groups of students asked to imagine what it’s like to be a professor prior to being given an aptitude test perform far better than identical groups of students asked to imagine being soccer hooligans. And minorities asked to indicate their race prior to a test perform far worse than identical groups of minorities not asked for their race which brings me to my point.

We’ve all heard and likely believe the old adages that we make our own luck, but do we understand the mechanics behind how this works beyond the idea of some mystical power of positive thinking? I don’t think I have. Probably still don’t entirely, but something about it has been itching at the back of my mind and this book has helped me put my finger on it.

Think of the ‘priming’ examples given above. We probably all put ourselves into the shoes of the research subjects when we read those. Now put yourself into the shoes of the researchers. Consider that you are broadcasting ‘priming’ messages to those you come in contact with (your subjects) throughout your day.

Gladwell provides an example. He gives a nice illustration of a black person in a job interview where the white interviewer is consciously accepting and friendly to blacks. However, he is continuously exposed to suggestions that blacks may be inferior via the popular culture. (Other research has revealed that the majority of Americans, regardless of race, are intuitively biased to the superiority of whites. See here. [click ‘proceed’ and then take the Race IAT]) Beyond that, he has little contact with the black community and so, regardless of conscious effort, is naturally slightly uncomfortable in the black interviewee’s presence.

This unconscious bias and discomfort are unavoidably revealed to the interviewee through body language (closed and distant body posture, less eye contact, slight hesitancy in speech etc.) which the interviewee interprets as the interviewer’s low opinion of him. The interviewee is very likely to perform as he perceives that the interviewer expects him to. Badly.

That example is laced with social and political associations that could distract from the point here and so here are a few stories of my own that I think illustrate the point equally well. I’m in the subject’s role in these stories, but keep in mind the priming broadcaster’s angle.

Story 1...
When I was a teenager, I worked at my father’s diesel mechanics shop rebuilding fuel injectors. I became pretty good at it - to the point that I used to imagine my friends coming in one day and being impressed at my skill and speed. One day a customer came in with some fuel injectors that needed to be tested. I was at the front desk at the time. Dad handed me the injectors and asked me to do the testing. I caught a disapproving glance from the customer just before he asked if he could come observe the testing.

Dad let him back where he silently watched. In my mind, the customer distrusted me because of my age and did not believe that I could perform such a specialized task. Despite my long experience, skill and confidence, I was nervous, slow and inaccurate and even ended up dropping one injector on the floor where its expensive tip shattered into several pieces.

Story 2…
During college I worked for a while at a small software solutions business. I had worked for a couple of years just prior to that doing similar work at another company where I had excelled. It was a contact at that first job that got me the opportunity at the second.

Unfortunately, the owner of the second company seemed to quickly develop a low opinion of my work. He never said it outright, but to my mind, in his mind I was under performing. Despite my years of experience, acquired skill and confidence, I was surprised to find that I started to under perform in even my judgment. I quit a year later unhappy, uncomfortable and discouraged. I now enjoy a very successful career in software development.

Story 3…
You may recall one of my early blogs with a similar title in which I describe fulfilling what I perceived to be my wife’s expectations of my driving abilities as I routinely took odd routes and missed exits.

I’m not trying to make excuses for my poor performance in these examples. We’re all responsible for resisting the priming effects of others in our own lives. The point is that we can’t make the mistake of causing the effect in others because we can’t be responsible for their awareness of the effect nor for their ability to resist it.

The unconscious intuition centers of the brains of those around us are actively evaluating our expectations of them. Regardless of accuracy and truth, even their slight perceptions that we think of them as incompetent, having low potential or being inferior have powerful effects.

Hey, when it’s true, it’s true - right? Need I mention American Idol? Sometimes there are truths to our biases and sometimes people need to be made aware of them. But when it’s an unproven, untrue, unintended or otherwise misguided ‘priming’ communication it’s as much a problem for us as it is for them because other people’s actions affect us. Their actions are in a big way, our luck.

Could we be priming our neighbors into obnoxiousness? Could we be priming our coworkers into ineptness? Could we be priming doctors, mechanics, mailpersons, food servers, fellow drivers etc, etc into mistakes? Could we be priming our children into disobedience? Could we be priming our spouses into … missing exits? Could we even be priming ourselves into some failure?

We hope that those around us are performing to the best of their abilities. Let’s, in the positive sense of the word, expect it of them. Anything less will only decrease the odds.