Psychological Paths of Least Resistance
MAR 9, 2023 by Morgan Housel@morganhousel
When faced with a problem, rarely do people ask, “What is the best, perfect, answer to this question?”
The more efficient question is often, “What answer to this question can I obtain with the least amount of effort, sacrifice, and mental discomfort?”
The psychological path of least resistance.
Most of the time that’s fine. You use a little intuition and common sense and find a practical answer that doesn’t rack your brain or bog you down with details. Other times the easy answers lead you down a nasty path of misunderstanding, ignorance, and blindness toward risk.
A few paths of least resistances that everyone is susceptible to at some point:
- The quick elimination of doubt and uncertainty.
Most people could not get out of bed in the morning if they were honest about how much of their future is unknown, hangs by a thread, or can be pushed in another direction by the slightest breeze. The solution is to eliminate doubt and uncertainty the moment they enter your head.
Uncertainty feels awful. So it’s comforting to have strong opinions even if you have no idea what you’re talking about, because shrugging your shoulders feels reckless when the stakes are high.
Life is complex, complex things are always uncertain, uncertainty feels dangerous, and having an answer makes danger feel reduced. It’s an easy path of least resistance.
If you were an adult in 2000 you probably had at least some vision of what the future would look like. Maybe even a vague vision of the next 20 years. But everyone was blind to 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis, and Covid-19 – the three risks that were both massive and unpredictable.
Then when those events happened people quickly moved to eliminate the uncertainty they brought.
Terrorist attack just happened? It’s definitely going to happen again, soon.
Recession coming? It won’t affect my industry and will be over by Q4 and interest rates will bottom at 3.42%.
Pandemic arrived? Two weeks to slow the spread.
No matter how wrong these answers might be, they feel better than saying, “I have no idea what’s going to happen next.”
- Single-cause explanations for complex events.
To continue reading, please go to the original article here:
https://collabfund.com/blog/psychological-paths-of-least-resistance/
