PREDICTABLE IRRATIONALITY IN THE DIGITAL AGE

Presented By

Vitalis I Nujimem

Heidegger once said, "Technology is human activity instrumental to achieving human

purposes because technology is poiesis, that is, a making, or bringing forth, or drawing out of

something that was not present before into 'presencing' itself." Social psychologists believe that

constant decision-making makes us irrational because people are overwhelmed with too many

choices, which reduces their willpower. Additionally, cognitive scientists have discovered that

the use of system dynamics, intelligent tutoring system, expert system, heuristics, fuzzy logic,

neural networks, and knowledge-based system could help increase people's ability to act with

reason or make rational decisions. While these IT systems might not be perfect in humans,

scientists believe they enhance our ability to query the systems, see logical ways of delving into

problems, analyze nebulous situations, and learn patterns that are complex.

Although there are so many reasons why decision fatigue is pervasive, the one I found

most important is that of its power to stiffen our ability to act with reason or make rational

decisions. It is also important in today's society due to the unique roles it plays in our lives as

well as the lives of others surrounding us. Decision fatigue is also pervasive in the sense that as

humans, we are flooded with billions of pieces of information, which often require our ability to

reason and make decisive decisions. However, on the one hand, as biological beings, decision

fatigue is very hard to ignore due to the role it plays in our activities and deliberations with

others. For example, decision fatigue tells us why some individuals find it difficult to resist

offers, eat junk foods, and finally, why they often get angry with their colleagues, families, and

friends. It also tells us why storeowners place fatty foods close to the register, why people eat

during their grocery shopping, and finally, why some people walk into supermarket with the

intension to buy something, yet exit empty-handed.

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In spite of their roles in our lives, decision fatigue and ego depletion look like general

terms, but researchers and social psychologists did warn that both terms play numerous roles in

our daily decision-making. According to one author, ego depletion and decision fatigue

deteriorate our willpower and self-control, which leads us to impulse decision making. In short,

allowing us to make a shortcut decision that hurts the lives of others. In an article "Do You Suffer

from Decision Fatigue", Tierney mentioned that an impulse decision could occur due to complex

decision making throughout the day. In that particular article, Tierney also described how a

depleted parole judge, who put prisoners on parole, takes the easy way and the prisoners keep

doing time in jail. Tierney suggest that ego depletion and decision fatigue could lead decision

makers to a state of decision paralysis (Ultimate Energy Saver). That is, a state in which decision

makers will not make any decisions because their ability to decide between choices becomes

uncertain as the need for too much decision-making absorbs mental energy.

In one experiment done by Roy F. Baumeister and his colleagues, they observe that the

most common ego-depleting desires were the urges to eat and sleep, follow by the urge for

leisure. For instance, taking a break from work in order to do puzzle, play game, watch

television, or even use the Web. In addition, another ego-depleting desire in the phone or

"Preprogrammed BlackBerrys Experiment" is sexual urge; plus, the urges for other kinds of

interactions such as checking Facebook. In an article "Do You Suffer from Decision Fatigue",

Tierney wrote, "The result according to the study suggests that people spend between three and

four hours a day resisting desire." Tierney also said that, people tend to use different strategies to

ward off temptations, and the most prominent is to look for a distraction or to undertake a new

activity. Moreover, other research suggests that cutting down the number of decisions a person

has to make throughout the day might strengthen his or her willpower to ward of temptation.

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Researchers also suggest that the reward system of the brain also helped in suppressing

naughtiness to ward off temptation. That is, gifts, sugar water, an interesting task, enough sleep,

break time at work, and finally, not making decisions on empty stomach.

According to psychologists, after people achieve power they become impulsive, reckless,

and rude. They see themselves as power, authority, command, and control - all in the name of

"Money". What psychologists have discovered is that, money gives power; power makes people

less sympathetic to one another. This I attribute to as being cruel, hubris, foolish, hypocrites,

didactic, ignorant, and heartless. When people accumulate too much power, they tend to

development a certain kind of ego, feeling, and status quo - "The Myopia of Power". For

instance, they would say that road sign is not for me to follow. The instruction is not for me to

obey. Even that signup sheet is not for me either; they are for you, you, and you. Power makes

people so important, unique, and special to themselves that they tend to refute all social norms

and moral code. As a study suggest, when two groups were told to draw the letter E on their

foreheads, the high power participants draw the letter E backwards, claiming that they are in

charge. For them, they draw the letter E backwards because they do not care about the viewpoint

of others. We are in charge. We do as we see fit and we do not care what you think. For me,

power destroys our human emotions and vanish it into the wilderness.

Applied to the context of society, we propose that one major way the environment exerts

control over our behavior is its influence. From a psychologist perspective, whether one decide

to be honest or dishonest in his or her dealings, can be view internally or externally. However,

psychologists have observed, that as part of socialization people internalize the norms and values

of their society, which service as internal benchmark against which a person compares his or her

behavior (Mazar, Amir, and Ariely). Today, our society has implement different forms of

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controlling dishonesty both in larger and small-scale transactions. We have codes of ethics, we

have small courts, and we have police stations. However, the introduction of money as a medium

of exchange plays a huge role in controlling dishonesty. Ariely said, what we technically

observed in our studies is that, when money was use as a means of payment cheating did not

increase, but when tokens was offer cheating increased not just by a little bit. Introducing tokens

as the medium of immediate exchange further increased the magnitude of dishonesty.

In the article, "Why We Lie" by Dan Ariely, Ariely explicitly mentioned that the behavior

of almost everyone is driven by two opposing motivations. The first motivation, according to

Ariely is that, "We want to benefit from cheating and get as much money and glory as possible.

The second, he wrote, "We want to view ourselves as honest, honorable people." For me, I

totally agree with Ariely point of view and notion on these claims since I myself had come

across such kind of irrationality. Take, for instance, an anecdote from my own personal

experience. During the 1993 period in Nigeria, the two-decade president known as Sani Abacha

secured the presidency sit through electoral cheating. After his inauguration into office, he began

stealing the nation's wealth, cooking the books, and sending money overseas. Nonetheless, when

he addressed the nation, for one reason or the other, he wanted the people of Nigeria to believe

he was the most honest and honorable president that had ever served the country.

Despite the fact that irrational behaviors are seen as threat to society, as showcased by the

former president, Ariely believed that the kind of cheating that is most corrosive to society are

mostly small-scale mass cheating. In Ariely's "Matrix Task Experiment", which he and some of

his colleagues used in many of their studies, Ariely discovered that the students in the "Shredder

Condition" outstood those in the "Control Condition." Now this raises a question. Why is it that

the students in the shredder condition did far better on the matrix task than the students in the

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control condition? Ariely did have an answer to this question. In the study, as he observed, when

students were offered the chance to cheat just a little bit, cheating skyrocketed and flew over the

ceiling. For Ariely, this kind of cheating is very dangerous. Ariely said, "Fortunately, we did not

encounter many of these people, and because they seemed to be the exception and not the rule,

we lost a few hundred dollars to these big cheaters. At the same time, we had thousands and

thousands of participants who cheated by "just" a few matrices, but because there were so many

of them, we lost thousands of dollars to them." As a final point, small-scale cheaters need careful

attention as they cause greater damage than that of their counterparts.

When people notice a cheater in their mist, the outcome of cheating rises because

cheating is an infectious disease said Dan Ariely. In brief, that is, when one part is affected, the

remaining part will eventually contaminate its affection because it is infectious. As said earlier,

Dan Ariely and his colleagues did several of the matrix task experiments. However, to show in

one of the variations how observable cheating affects population, Ariely placed an acting student

named David in the midst of both honest and dishonest students. Just a minute after the study

commenced, David, the pretender, stood up, claiming that he had solved all the matrix problems.

The other students in the room with David were astonished. Then they began to stand up saying

that they had also finished solving the matrix problem. As Ariely said, "Watching this mini-

Madoff clearly cheat - and waltz away with a wad of cash - the remaining students claimed they

had solved double the number of matrices as the control group.” Another cheating that has a

huge effect upon a population or group is when someone thinks that their teammates would gain,

if someone or member of the group cheats.

The fallibility of our behavior as well as the counterfeiting of merchandise has alarmed

not only economists but also psychologists. According to Lee's article "The Moral Cost of

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Counterfeiting", a person's use of counterfeit may result to loss of revenue, lost of government

tax, lost of jobs, and even influence their behavior. A study done by a Duke professor revealed

that 60% of the students who were putting on fake sunglasses cheated on a math test. However,

the other group of students who were putting on real sunglasses only cheated 20%. For Ariely,

he believes that counterfeit merchandise moves people to cheat all the time. In another one of his

studies, Ariely notice that people are more likely to purchase counterfeit goods if their peers are

buying counterfeits. Subsequently, he concluded that having counterfeit merchandise as a

behavioral influencer has to do mostly with "Internal Feeling" and not "External Projection." He

wrote, "Because if one does not know he or she is wearing fake merchandise, it should not affect

them. If you think it is real, from the psychology perspective, it's real."

After performing a tremendous amount of research, I notice that IT offers more than just

a contextualized solution to our irrational behaviors. In Dumas's book, "Diving into the Bitstream

- Information technology meets society in a digital world", he wrote that fuzzy logic comprises

procedures for computer analysis of nebulous situations. He also mentioned that, neural networks

imitate the biological circuitry and logic of the brain to capture the essence of the way humans'

process information for understanding, reasoning, and learning (Dumas 189). Although,

Professor Duma did not describe these systems explicitly as a lie detector, my rigorous search

shows that fuzzy logic and neural networks can form a hybrid called a Neuro-Fuzzy system. This

combined system can be use as a lie detector to spot deceptions. Thus, in "How to Sport a Liar",

Pamela Meyer said that specialized eye trackers, infrared brain scans, and MRI's that can decode

bodily signals can also detect deceptions.

To conclude, decision fatigue can cloud our judgment leading us to make either a poor

choice or a bad decision. Nevertheless, since we face such kinds of temptations, the use of

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technology can be instrumental in helping us become better decision makers. These IT-based

solutions can help those undesirable behaviors like losing focus on dealers, getting angry with

colleagues, being impulsive or making irrational decisions. For example, system dynamics and

knowledge-based system can help us understand and solve complex problems. Intelligent

tutoring system and heuristics can help simulate and emulate learning to exceed expectation.

Expert systems can make decisions in well-formulated situations. Neural networks, on the one

hand, can help capture the essence of the way we process information for understanding,

reasoning, and learning (Dumas 189). On the one hand, technology such as MRI's, eye trackers,

infrared brain scan, and neuro-fuzzy system are the modern resolution for cheating, lying, and

deception. Thus, if there is a take-away from the assigned paper, I now know that decision

fatigue plays an important role in our lives and the lives of those we interact and deal with in the

environment. I also learned how to replenish willpower and most importantly how to conserve it

for crucial moments.

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Annotated Bibliography

Ariely, Dan. "Why We Lie." Www.WSJ.com. The Wall Street Journal, 26 May 2012. Web. 24

Feb. 2015.

In the article, author Dan Ariely talked about the two opposing motivations that repelled

almost every behavior. He also emphasized the kind of cheating that is most corrosive to

society, which he attributes as small-scale mass cheating. The performed experiment used

as stated by the author is the "Matrix Task Experiment."

Iyare, Otasowie. "A Neuro-Fuzzy System for Deception Detection during Interrogation in Law

Enforcement Agency." Annals. Computer Science Series 1st ser. XI.2013 (n.d.): n. pag.

2013. Web. 25 Feb. 2015.

This article details the combination of both "Neural Network" and "Fuzzy Logic". The

author talked about deceptions, fabrications, and omissions; and how a Neuro-Fuzzy

system can help spot a suspect during interrogation.

Lee, Jennifer. "The Moral Costs of Counterfeiting." City Room The Moral Costs of

Counterfeiting Comments. N.p., 16 Mar. 2009. Web. 25 Feb. 2015.

The author believes that counterfeiting is not only bad for our financial system; it is also

bad for our behavior. In the article, many of the cited experiments show how counterfeit

goods affect behavior.

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Lehrer, Jonah. "How Power Corrupts | WIRED." Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, 5 May 2011.

Web. 25 Feb. 2015.

This is a straightforward, easy, and clear article. The main thesis is that when people

accumulate power they act reckless and impulsive. With the different varieties of studies

conducted, the author was able to show that power corrupts completely

McRaney, David. "Ego Depletion." You Are Not So Smart. N.p., 17 Apr. 2012. Web. 25 Feb.

2015.

This is a very interesting article on the subject of ego depletion. In the beginning, the

author describes how ego depletion deteriorates our willpower. He also uses research

done by Roy F. Baumeister to convey his point and idea. In the conclusion, he offers

strategies to help conserve willpower in the future.

Tierney, John. "Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?" The New York Times. The New York

Times, 20 Aug. 2011. Web. 21 Feb. 2015. 

The above article presents a complete analytical view of ego depletion and decision

fatigue. It uses real-world examples, experiments, and findings to show how ego

depletion and decision fatigue affects us negatively. At the end, the author gave critical

solutions to help reduce both ego depletion and decision fatigue that deteriorate the

ability of our willpower to make quality decisions.

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