3. Naïve realism—We tend to believe that we perceive the world objectively, as it is, and that people who disagree with us are uninformed, irrational, or biased.
4. Illusion of knowledge—We think we know what other people are thinking.
5. Fundamental attribution error—We attribute others’ mistakes and failings to their identity, but when we screw up, we conveniently blame it on circumstances and bad luck.
6. Self-consistency bias—We tend to think that our attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors are always stable, when in fact they change.
7. Projection bias—We think others tend to share our preferences, beliefs, and behavior more than they actually do.
8. Authority bias—We like ideas better when voiced by someone powerful or prestigious.
9. Stereotyping bias—When we observe a tendency in one member of a group, we assume that some or all fellow group members share it.
10. Bias blind spot—We think we can easily spot biases in others even as we fail to recognize our own.
If biases abound, if they skew and imprison our thinking, we’re pretty much doomed to stupidity, right? Not necessarily. A tribe of heroic bias bashers live among us. They’re called non-conformists. Bring in someone like Elizabeth Jennings who thinks differently and isn’t afraid to let you know it, and we’ll better see our own biases and correct for them. We’ll become more curious about the world instead of remaining locked in and intellectually sterile.
Dr. Stefan Schulz-Hardt conducted an experiment exploring how best to obliterate cognitive biases in German business managers. Schulz-Hardt homed in on confirmation bias (defined in the sidebar above). He created small groups and tasked them with choosing between investment opportunities in one of two countries. To make their selections, groups had to weigh fourteen different factors, including country tax levels, economic growth, environmental legislation, and the like. Groups could access up to a dozen articles written by economic experts familiar with both countries. Half of these articles pointed to one of the countries as an ideal investment, while half argued the opposite.
Do groups seek out information that confirms their initial investment choice and ignore the rest? What happens to deliberations after seeding groups with dissenters, as opposed to a bunch of like-minded? Schulz-Hardt found that groups of managers seeded with dissenting views were twice as likely to request articles that conflicted with the group’s initial decision than homogeneous, ideologically similar groups were. If you want to override the tendency to think in more extremely polarized or prejudiced ways, inject a little good old-fashioned dissent.
Of course, dissent in a group setting doesn’t come without cost. Groups with dissenters experienced twice as much controversy in their conversations (batting around alternative viewpoints) compared with homogeneous groups. Positivity, cohesion, and decision-making all took a hit. In the absence of dissent, homogeneous groups fell prey to strong confirmation biases, primarily seeking information that justified their premature conclusions while ignoring highly useful information that conflicted with group momentum. Although the homogeneous, dissent-free groups sought only half of the available information to make investing decisions, they felt an alarmingly high level of confidence compared to the broader thinking, questioning attitude of groups with dissenters. Studies of hospitals, courts of law, Broadway musical productions, and social movements observed similar findings. Inject dissent, and you find that confidence decreases and the number of arguments increase—a relatively small price to pay for improved group problem-solving and creativity.
THE BIG IDEA
Something special happens when you have even one dissenter in your midst. You don’t robotically default to assuming the dissenter is right. Instead, you feel motivated to contemplate an issue carefully and consider that the dissenter might have good reason for upholding a contrary position.
Exposed to a dissenter’s viewpoint, you become more apt to review information that supports positions contrary to your own. You open yourself to testing reality and raise questions about your own positions. Instead of remaining beholden to motivated reasoning and confidence, you become more critical minded and balanced. You start thinking less like a partisan and more like a disinterested scientist pursuing the truth. Overall, the presence of a dissenter prompts group members to abandon low-effort mental shortcuts and switch to elaborate, deep information processing. The Big Three categories of cognitive bias are toast.
Reason 2: Principled Insubordination Boosts Creativity
Here’s a question: what factor best predicts whether elementary school children will receive recognition as innovative creators fifty years later? It’s not whether they like to build weird things out of Play-Doh. It’s not their levels of curiosity or intelligence. It’s whether they’re “comfortable being a ‘minority of one.’ ” In research published by Dr. Mark Runco and colleagues at the University of Georgia, sixty-year-old adults achieved more lifetime creative accomplishments if as kids they expressed comfort being a minority voice. They published books and plays, built profitable businesses, earned public acclaim, and exerted a greater influence on others. True, these young insubordinates suffered emotionally from their tendency to challenge the status quo, experiencing broken friendships, persecution, and so on. But as a group, they blossomed into creative trendsetters far more than their conformist peers.
Other research has found that exposure to principled insubordination enhances creative decision-making by stimulating divergent thinking. In one study, researchers took certain work teams and randomly selected one person for training in principled insubordination. Over a ten-week period, the group engaged in a variety of creative tasks, such as creating new products and navigating morally questionable business situations. Colleagues in these teams produced more original product ideas (as objectively rated by outside experts) than did members of other teams that lacked a trained insubordinate. Conversations in these teams were contentious at times, with some of the rebels feeling isolated and under strain. “It wasn’t easy,” one rebel reported. Another said, “Much of the time another group member and I were at each other’s throats.” But team members ultimately acknowledged the rebels’ contributions. Rebels received higher performance ratings from peers than others. Initially, they slowed down the group and interfered with group cohesion. Over time, the presence of principled insubordinates helped clarify each person’s role and thus amplified performance and creativity.
Many of us think of ourselves as tolerant people who appreciate the value of difference, dissent, and deviance. Throw a rebel or two in the mix, however, and we become irritated as tension erupts and group cohesion frays. For our own good, we need to push through that irritation and embrace insubordination.
THE BIG IDEA
Creativity isn’t an innate gift. It’s a way of thinking. Regularly interacting with those who hold non-conformist views pulls us into a creative mindset. With rebels openly airing alternate and unpopular views, groups become better than the sum of their parts.
Reason 3: Insubordination Breeds Even More Insubordination
As we saw in chapter 2, the pressures for conformity are wicked strong. But principled insubordination holds some persuasive power of its own. Drop a rebel into a group, go away for a period of time, and you’re liable to find more rebels than you started with. We know this because of one of my favorite pieces of research, an experiment led by Dr. Charlan Nemeth. Wondering what made some people defy authority and group pressure, Dr. Nemeth and her colleagues instructed study participants to view twenty blue-tinted slides and state aloud the color. Tested alone, participants judged 100 percent of slides to be blue. Researchers then tested participants in groups of four, with each grouping seeded by an actor whose role was simple: dissent from the majority. When it was their turn, the actor stated quite confidently that the blue slides were green. Faced with the objective reality that blue slides were clearly blue, and the dissenter was obviously mistaken, participants ignored the dissenter and judged a full 100 percent of the slides to be blue.
Here’s where it gets interesting. The experimenter brought each person to a private room as part of a new four-person group. You couldn’t see the three new members, but there was a microphone for group communications. Participants received another set of slides to view, all of which were red. Now, when asked what color they saw, for each slide the three other group members spoke the same word into the microphone: “Orange.” The conditions were ripe for conformity. The researchers wanted to know, what would participants do? Participants who did not witness any dissent in the first part of the study showed a reluctance to challenge error-filled judgments by the majority. Only 29.6 percent of the time would they timidly eek out the word “Red?” However, participants witnessing an actor’s dissent in the first part of the study were transformed—bravely blurting the correct answer, “Red, obviously!,” 76.1 percent of the time. And get this: The transformation occurred even though in the first part of the study the majority was right and the dissenters gave wrong-headed answers. Even though participants didn’t publicly agree with the dissenters in the first part of the study. Think about that. Acts of insubordinates influenced people who initially ignored them. Somehow, exposure to an act of insubordination altered people’s way of seeing the world.
THE BIG IDEA
Acts of insubordination don’t usually win over members of the majority right away. Instead, they sow seeds of doubt, and these mature over time into new perspectives.
Dr. Robert Cialdini, one of the world’s foremost experts on persuasion, found that opponents of the status quo often initially fail to change other people’s attitudes and perceptions. Follow up weeks and months later, however, and you witness modifications in how others think and behave. Initially shocking, insubordination over time ultimately has a much more profound impact, changing how people regard themselves, others, and the world.
MAKE OPENNESS YOUR DEFAULT
In presenting this research on the benefits of insubordination, I hope to inspire you in two ways. First, I want you to behave more rebelliously. To think differently. To speak up. To take action. I also want to inspire you to look upon deviants you encounter with a more open mind, especially when you disagree with them. As I like to say after a whiskey or two, insubordination is a portal to the adjacent possible. It allows us access to new possibilities that, because of biases, inexperience, or a lack of wisdom, we wouldn’t cultivate on our own. As we’ve seen, principled insubordination enables social changes both large and small. You don’t have to agree with every non-conformist out there. Just hear them out. Instead of sticking with your existing opinions when confronted with a novel perspective, do something radical and make openness your default.
The openness of non-rebels matters because, as scientists have documented, lone rebels don’t get very far on their own. Researchers wanted to see what it would take to get a group of people to change an established social norm. They set up an experiment in which they assigned 194 participants to groups of twenty to thirty people, showed groups the headshot of a stranger, and had groups decide on what name to give that stranger. Researchers fostered conversations within the groups about the name choice. Unbeknownst to participants, a certain number of them were rebels assigned the task of overturning whatever name the group was on the verge of agreeing on by offering alternate suggestions. The researchers discovered that if more than 25 percent of a group were rebels, the group eventually decided on the alternate name. If fewer than 20 percent of a group were rebels, this minority had no impact on the final selection. One or two brave rebels like Elizabeth Jennings might trigger a change in a particular policy, but it takes a solid block of about a quarter of a population espousing a minority position to transform a group’s beliefs or behavior.
I’ll show later how you can shine as part of that 25 percent by becoming more receptive to non-conformists around you and making the most of their wacky ideas. But first, let’s examine how you rebels out there can win over more people so you break clear of that 25 percent threshold and effect change. A good part of it comes down to how you talk. You can have the best, most earth-shattering ideas out there, but if you don’t know what you’re doing as a communicator, you won’t get far. Scientists have produced intriguing insights into how underdogs can best present their ideas to win over doubters. If you have an unpopular idea you think might serve the cause of progress, please do me a favor. Hit pause on that YouTube video, stop checking your Instagram, and pay close attention. The world needs you.
RECIPE STEPS
1. Bring dissenters into your teams. Exposed to a dissenter’s viewpoint, you open yourself to testing reality and raising questions about your own viewpoints. With a single rebel airing alternate and unpopular views, a group reduces its confirmation bias and motivated reasoning and increases its creative output.
2. Be patient. Principled insubordinates often initially fail to change other people’s attitudes. But over time insubordination ultimately has a much more profound impact, changing how people regard themselves, others, and the world.
3. Make openness your default. You don’t have to agree with every non-conformist out there. Just hear them out instead of sticking with your existing opinions.
PART IITHE NON-CONFORMIST’S COOKBOOK
CHAPTER 4
Talk Persuasively
How to win over an audience of skeptical conformists
What I’d like you to pay close attention to is a little something called Fugazi. Fuga—what? No, it’s not a $150,000 Italian sports car brand, nor is it a curse word levied by a fist-shaking Italian grandma. It is, according to Urban Dictionary, a slang word originating among military veterans for a “fucked up” situation, so I guess an Italian grandma could use it. But the Fugazi you need to know about is a four-man punk rock band, probably the most influential musical artist of the past thirty years.
