marginally subversive

Decisions, data, and interpretations

 

As always, Seth Godin has got me thinking in his latest post - when data and decisions collide.

These are just a few of the millions of examples of counter-intuitive data-driven findings. It took Galileo decades to persuade people the light objects fell as fast as heavy ones... even though he was busy dropping them off buildings for all to see. I wonder how long it will take us to get our arms around this avalanche of insight. Probably longer than most of us think, and marketers that jump too quickly to data are going to be disappointed (while lifehackers that use the data are going to continue to have a huge advantage).

via sethgodin.typepad.com

He cites the masters of old on how long it took Galileo to convince the world of his beliefs - and I would add, Copernicus.  Or how long Semmelweis who advocated antiseptic and hygienic procedures inside operating rooms could save lives of mothers and infants. 

When marketeers - or anybody else - are confronted with data or results from analyzing the data, the first reaction is almost always to doubt and question the data or the analyses results.  Which is probably prudent - and something that I would advocate. 

Whilst a data-man myself - and perhaps, to a certain extent, a data-manager and a data-freak - I think it's prudent to question the data.

My view is simple:  Data are amoral.  They are mere measures of things, of phenomena, of what's going on (or what's not).  And how you use them is what really matters - and what needs to be scrutinized more deeply.

But how about when data/interpretations collide - what do we do?

Cognitive dissonance - it seems - occurs.

We all have preconceived notions.  We may believe that apples are red - and only red.  We are confident and comfortable in that.  Once provided with a different evidence that shows apples are not always red, our sense of confidence and comfort are shattered.  Dissonance between two things - our preconceived notion that apples are always red and never something else, and the new data that prove otherwise - occurs.

The tendency is to seek a new balance:  either we accommodate the new information into our system - by accepting it as part of the possibilities that we face thereby reworking our framework, or we reject it altogether.

Which one is harder work?  Reworking our framework.

The path of lesser resistance is to reject the new data/interpretations.

But what of those who text and drive?

Can cognitive dissonance help explain this?  Hmmm.

I think what's at play is what can be called "Superman/Superwoman Complex" - the belief that "I have been texting and driving, and I am still alive... - and therefore it will remain that way."

Conscious or unconscious, I don't know.

It's the same as "it cannot happen to me" or "I have been doing this forever".

Which if you look at more closely is also some form of 'managing' cognitive dissonance.

What's our way out?

Problem and data presentation.  This could be a way out.

Kahneman - a Nobel Laureate - has shown that presentation of problems has an impact on how people process information.  Changing the how the problem is presented without changing the parameters could help.

Data visualization and presentation could also help.  There are a number of studies that show that data visualizations help people grasp otherwise complicated information - and accept it.  Data presentation also helps - how evidence is presented has an impact.

Now if only I could get this right with my clients.  And with my writings.  :D

late-bloomers and prodigies

Malcolm Gladwell writes about late-bloomers and prodigies in this New Yorker article.  He has an interesting take on how culture has shaped us to somehow be surprised by child prodigies - geniuses who seem to have an inborn talent to do something remarkably - and not so much by people who 'bloom into their newly-found geniuses within them later' in life.

I consider myself a late-bloomer in a lot of aspects.  I was forced at 15 to make a choice on what to take on at the Ateneo de Manila.  I was torn - what did I know about medicine, or being an engineer, or being an architect or a biologist? - and I was supposed to do this at 15?

That was how the educational system in the Philippines worked: at 15 - whilst in your senior (or junior) year in high school, you'd be required to declare what you wanted to study in the university.

Isn't it a bit too young?

Anyway, I ended up with computing sciences - then psychology - then a few more pre-med units.  But I guess the point really is "you're asking a 15year-old me to make a life-changing decision?"

Reading this article about late-bloomers, I can relate: it's only later in life (well, now...) that I have rediscovered my passion for for painting and sketching and doodling.  I remember that I used to draw a lot when I was in grade school - I drew at the back of my notebooks during long, boring lectures.  I even tried to do my own superhero comic-book.  In high school, I did pretty well in drafting class - and did pretty good in all those "draw this electrical circuit with this bulb and make sure that you have measured them correctly".

Then university came.

And there were books.  Lots of books.  Lots of readings.  Lots of numbers.  Lots of questions.

And doddling and sketching and painting became a luxury.

Until today.

I have just started painting.  I bought myself a 200-dollar oil painting kit - with two brushes, linseed oil, and turpentine.  I bought two canvasses - and ended up doing a pretty good start on one of them last night.

But there was this nagging feeling - someting at the back of my mind: "Am I really going to finish this?  Will the drawing really be good?  Will it be something worth hanging on the wall - or will it end up, like most of my other projects, in the bin?"

Then Malcolm Gladwell offers this snippet from a researcher, David Galenson from the University of Chicago:

But late bloomers, Galenson says, tend to work the other way around. Their approach is experimental (as opposed to young geniuses, who tend to be conceptual). “Their goals are imprecise, so their procedure is tentative and incremental,” Galenson writes in “Old Masters and Young Geniuses,” and he goes on:

The imprecision of their goals means that these artists rarely feel they have succeeded, and their careers are consequently often dominated by the pursuit of a single objective. These artists repeat themselves, painting the same subject many times, and gradually changing its treatment in an experimental process of trial and error. Each work leads to the next, and none is generally privileged over others, so experimental painters rarely make specific preparatory sketches or plans for a painting. They consider the production of a painting as a process of searching, in which they aim to discover the image in the course of making it; they typically believe that learning is a more important goal than making finished paintings. Experimental artists build their skills gradually over the course of their careers, improving their work slowly over long periods. These artists are perfectionists and are typically plagued by frustration at their inability to achieve their goal. 

Where Picasso wanted to find, not search, Cézanne said the opposite: “I seek in painting.”

(Emphases mine.)

It sounded really... hmm, familiar.

But I guess that's how it works: tainted by pre-judgments - directly or indirectly said, or influenced by existing notions of what a good job and future is and what is not by others around us, late-bloomers (and I am not calling myself a late-bloomer just yet...) tend to build things slowly - and look at things critically.

With tainted, prejudging eyes.

Uncertainties within one's self exist - and questions abound: "What if I discover that I am not good enough in painting - and that my dad or my mom was right: had I chosen to do painting in college, I would have ended up penniless?"

Hmm.

As I pick up my brushes, the pallette, a tube of white, and of red (I still don't know if it is called red, indeed), I really don't care.

Perhaps, I was not meant to paint - and make a living out of painting.  And that is fine.  The questions and the uncertainties that I have learned throughout the years of dealing with sharks (and dolphins and fishes and crabs and shrimps) in the corporate world will still surely be there.  But what the heck. 

It's for me this time 'round.

I am painting for me.

Not to earn money.  Not to earn a living.

But to try it out.  And as Galenson said - to experiment.  And experience.

Besides, as Gladwell points out,

Late bloomers’ stories are invariably love stories, and this may be why we have such difficulty with them.

Irrational Exuberance - and Depression...

The stock market does not interest me a lot, to be honest.  I don't own that many stocks.  I don't follow my portfolio as much as my friends think I should.  I don't interact with my broker that much - and my broker's recommendations are usually left as that: recommendations.  I still decide on which to invest in - and when to bail out - which is almost 'never'.

My portfolio is full of, well, boring stocks.  I guess if you were to rate the "excitement" level of the stocks that I own on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the max score and 1 being the minimum score, mine would be in the -1 to -2 region.

I guess it's all part of the strategy:  Let time run its course.

I know I'd be really down if I did monitor my stocks on a regular basis, I would be torturing myself for every downward change in my portfolio - and I know that I don't handle these pretty well.  So why torture myself?

Anyway.  I digress.

My thoughts about all these?  I am no expert - but let me weigh in some thoughts:  If there is such a thing as irrational exuberance, consider the possibility of irrational depression or gloom.

Finance theories assume that markets are efficient - and that their efficiencies are derived by the availability of information.  I would go a little further and say, it's not so much the availability of information that matters - it's the response of people towards the morass of information that they - collectively and individually - receive that matters more. 

The dot-com bust (well, it's the only one I really am familiar with - not that I was burned) taught us irrational exuberance.  The things that are happening now could well be irrational gloom or irrational depression.

And the funny thing is, we find ways to rationalize why we are in "depression".  (Pretty much similar with the psychological, "clinical" depression - we rationalize why we are depressed!)  Hindsight bias - hindsight is always 20/20.

Am I immune?  Of course not.  Is anyone immune?  I doubt so. 

It is human nature.  We are "wired" to think this way.

The best we could do:  Let it run its course.  And wait.

Fear, Hope, Love - and the greatest of this is Love

(With apologies to the author of the famous 1 Corinthians 13 discourse on what love is)

Seth Godin writes about the three 'roots' of the people's motivations - fear, hope, and love.  Interestingly, when I was a student of Psychology and Philosophy in the university, these three themes also emerged - though in different contexts -

According to one of my professors, "fear" and "love" are the most basic of emotions.  We either act in fear or in love.  And sometimes, the two intersect - and when they intersect, that is when humans become more impassioned resulting to either 'good' results or 'bad' results.

A mother who fears for the life of her child will gladly offer her life to protect her child in times of dangers:  that's an amalgam of love and fear - strengthening the mother, powering her up (so to speak) to rise up to the occasion.

At the same time, a thief running away from the cops after having stolen diamonds is acting also in the same amalgam of love and fear:  running away because of fear - and of love for the wealth she has amassed.

Fear and love are the most basic of emotions - and when they combine, I think they're a strong motivation.  In medical ads - specially those anti-AIDS campaign or anti-VD campaigns - I think are all about playing on the idea of syncing love with fear - or vice versa to achieve a shift in behaviors.  The cigarette packs in Singapore and in Thailand - which now sport dessicated lungs, gangrenes, and photos of babies of supposed smokers - are also playing on fear and love.  At first glance, you would think that they were all about fear - but in instilling fear, there is a secondary message of "loving yourself by stopping yourself from getting lung cancer".

Whether it works or not, it's still anybody's guess.

Anyway, I also read about Hope in philosophy.  According to Gabriel Marcel, hope is what keeps us human and centered and connected with others.  In his expression - "I hope in Thee for us" - is at the same an acknowledgement of the presence of an "I" and "not-I", who are nonetheless connected by a hope towards something bigger - something beyond - something that is Love itself and Hope itself.

I've always thought of advertising as supposedly identifying human truths - and translating and expressing them into a creative expression that would make people sit up, think, and consider their thoughts and actions and behaviors.

And indeed, it is the marriage of the three that somehow makes people reconsider.

Fear is a strong emotion - but with fear comes love.  Fear hopes to bring about love.  And fear on its own could generate response.  (Recall the SARS days in Singapore when everybody went all-out to buy face masks or when there was the rush to buy Tamiflu because it apparently helps in stemming the epidemic.)  But underneath that fear is self-love - and perhaps love for those people around you.

Underneath that - and perhaps even deeper - is hope.  People bought gas masks because of the fear - driven by their self-love and love of others dear to them - and the hope that these will work against the spectre of doom called SARS.

Could fear, hope, and love build a brand?

I think so.  Fashion fads, digital tech gadget trends, and laundry detergents are all based on some form of fear or another.  And advertisers and creative agencies - consciously or unconsciously - create the fear amongst their consumers:  "If I don't buy an Abercrombie&Fitch shirt, I'd be out..."  "If I didn't have the latest iPhone or iTouch, I'd be seen as too outmoded..."  "If I didn't have the right detergent, my kids' white uniforms won't be as good as others'..."

So does fear work as a brandbuilding tool?

Hmmm.  I think it does.

Is it the right thing to do?  I don't know.  A part of me wants to say "yes" because it could be effective - and whether we like it or not, people are motivated by fear and the eradication of fear.  A part of me wants to say "no" because it's unethical playing on people's fears.

And still another question - can we offer hope and eventually graduate to love without first 'resonating' with the "fear" within consumers' minds?

Seth Godin - you got me thinking again - and that's good.