104
healthcare plan to enroll our family in, for example, requires System 2 thinking to
take over. System 2 engages when reaching a conclusion requires analytical processes (Kahneman 2013). Material decisions based in patient and technically
detailed life cycle assessment activities reside primarily in the System 2 domain.
Sometimes the perceived importance of the decision and the weight of making
the correct decision are so great that we freeze. We fall victim to the “paralysis of
analysis.” Out of the fear of making the wrong choice, we get stuck in an endless
loop of comparing the relative costs and benefits of each option. As the number of
options rises, or the decision-making process identifies conflicting criteria, the time
spent trying to decide also increases.
At some point we might conclude that making no decision is a choice and either
walk away from the weighty responsibility or arbitrarily pick one option from an
array of choices. Complicated choices, however, do not make up the majority of
daily decision-making. Most of the choices we make every day seem relatively trivial, but taken together, the effects can add up. What we feel is risky behavior can
have a lot to do with how we perceive it will impact our lives and, perhaps most
importantly, when the effects will manifest.
6.1.1 Sustainable Choices
Behavioral economists study the way people make decisions. By observing people’s
habits and the outcomes of their decisions in multiple settings, they collect and
interpret data in order to more accurately predict the odds that most people will
make one choice over another. The insights they uncover about our natural inclinations are based on observations of subjects in controlled experiments or pointed
surveys that measure not the way we ought to behave but how we actually do behave
when given the chance to decide between two or more options. Studies have shown
that what we want is dependent on how close to now we are going to get it. We tend
to make choices that conform to what we have been told is good for us. The healthy
choice, the one that promises to bring about a state of well-being and long-term
benefits, is what we tend to choose when we are planning for the future. The farther
off “the future” is, the more likely we are to choose the rational, the healthy, and the
“good” options, when focused on that which directly affects our own well-being.
Our natural inclinations are focused primarily on what is closest to us in time and
space. Anything that might indirectly affect us is on the perceptual back burner.
Harvard behavioral economist, David Laibson, speaks about “intertemporal
choice” and how our actions or purchasing decisions can positively or negatively
affect us in the future:
There’s a fundamental tension, in humans and other animals, between seizing available
rewards in the present, and being patient for rewards in the future,” he says. “It’s radically
important. People very robustly want instant gratification right now, and want to be patient
in the future. If you ask people, ‘Which do you want right now, fruit or chocolate?’ they say,
‘Chocolate!’ But if you ask, ‘Which one a week from now?’ they will say, ‘Fruit.’ Now we
6 Addressing Resistance to a Fact-Based Approach
healthcare plan to enroll our family in, for example, requires System 2 thinking to
take over. System 2 engages when reaching a conclusion requires analytical processes (Kahneman 2013). Material decisions based in patient and technically
detailed life cycle assessment activities reside primarily in the System 2 domain.
Sometimes the perceived importance of the decision and the weight of making
the correct decision are so great that we freeze. We fall victim to the “paralysis of
analysis.” Out of the fear of making the wrong choice, we get stuck in an endless
loop of comparing the relative costs and benefits of each option. As the number of
options rises, or the decision-making process identifies conflicting criteria, the time
spent trying to decide also increases.
At some point we might conclude that making no decision is a choice and either
walk away from the weighty responsibility or arbitrarily pick one option from an
array of choices. Complicated choices, however, do not make up the majority of
daily decision-making. Most of the choices we make every day seem relatively trivial, but taken together, the effects can add up. What we feel is risky behavior can
have a lot to do with how we perceive it will impact our lives and, perhaps most
importantly, when the effects will manifest.
6.1.1 Sustainable Choices
Behavioral economists study the way people make decisions. By observing people’s
habits and the outcomes of their decisions in multiple settings, they collect and
interpret data in order to more accurately predict the odds that most people will
make one choice over another. The insights they uncover about our natural inclinations are based on observations of subjects in controlled experiments or pointed
surveys that measure not the way we ought to behave but how we actually do behave
when given the chance to decide between two or more options. Studies have shown
that what we want is dependent on how close to now we are going to get it. We tend
to make choices that conform to what we have been told is good for us. The healthy
choice, the one that promises to bring about a state of well-being and long-term
benefits, is what we tend to choose when we are planning for the future. The farther
off “the future” is, the more likely we are to choose the rational, the healthy, and the
“good” options, when focused on that which directly affects our own well-being.
Our natural inclinations are focused primarily on what is closest to us in time and
space. Anything that might indirectly affect us is on the perceptual back burner.
Harvard behavioral economist, David Laibson, speaks about “intertemporal
choice” and how our actions or purchasing decisions can positively or negatively
affect us in the future:
There’s a fundamental tension, in humans and other animals, between seizing available
rewards in the present, and being patient for rewards in the future,” he says. “It’s radically
important. People very robustly want instant gratification right now, and want to be patient
in the future. If you ask people, ‘Which do you want right now, fruit or chocolate?’ they say,
‘Chocolate!’ But if you ask, ‘Which one a week from now?’ they will say, ‘Fruit.’ Now we
6 Addressing Resistance to a Fact-Based Approach