3 Takeaways
Your Brain’s Being Hijacked: The Hidden Psychology Behind Everyday Decisions (#247)
Tue, 29 Apr 2025
Ever wondered why we sometimes act irrationally, even when it’s not in our best interest? Ori Brafman has, and his answers are enlightening. Here, he talks about the hidden forces and human emotions that make us act irrationally, how pre-dispositions and labeling people can lead to irrationality, how we can become more rational, and more.
Chapter 1: Who are the speakers and what is the episode about?
Although most of us think of ourselves as rational, we're much more prone to irrational behavior than we realize. My guest today has some stunning examples of irrationality. One of the most shocking to me is why the head of flight safety for a major airline, an experienced pilot with thousands and thousands of hours of flight experience,
took off at a busy airport without getting clearance from airport traffic control? What psychological forces make us act in irrational ways and when are we most vulnerable to them? Hi, everyone. I'm Lynn Thoman, and this is Three Takeaways. On Three Takeaways, I talk with some of the world's best thinkers, business leaders, writers, politicians, newsmakers, and scientists.
Each episode ends with three key takeaways to help us understand the world and maybe even ourselves a little better. Today, I'm excited to be with Ori Brafman. Ori is a distinguished teaching fellow at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and a New York Times bestselling author.
His most recent books include The Starfish and the Spider and Sway, which is about the irresistible pull of irrational behavior. Today, I'm excited to talk to him about the hidden forces that make us act irrationally. Welcome, Ori, and thanks so much for joining Three Takeaways today.
Thank you, Lynn. It's great to be here.
It is my pleasure. Let's start with some stories. Tell us about the pilot who took off without requesting clearance from air traffic control.
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Chapter 2: Why did an experienced pilot take off without clearance?
So this is Captain Jacob Van Zanten. And Van Zanten was literally the poster child for KLM Airlines. He was in charge of safety and he was also known as getting people there on time. Van Zanten just finished running a course about safety in the cockpit when he was behind the cockpit of a 747. He was heading from Holland to the Canary Islands.
And when he was still mid-flight, the destination airport radioed in saying that they had a terrorist threat and that his flight would be diverted to a much smaller airport in Tenerife. He lands there and immediately what he starts thinking about is that he's been in the air for so long that if he's on the ground for too long, his crew would have to be replaced or get some rest.
And that would mean that all the passengers would have to deplane, they'd have to stay overnight, and they wouldn't get there on time. So he does everything he can to try to hurry things along. But this is a small airport. The tower was a little busy. They were distracted because they were watching a soccer game.
And he tries everything to get, come on, let's get back in, let's get back in, let's get back in. And finally, the terrorist threat in the destination airport is lifted. And they're able to get going. And he's just like, come on, come on, come on, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go. But by the time that he leaves the gate, a thick fog descended upon the airport.
And that's when Jacob Van Zanten does the unthinkable. He starts taking off without clearance. And unfortunately, there was a Pan Am plane that was blocking the runway. He couldn't see the plane as it was careening down. He tries to lift up, but it's too late. And he slams into the Pan Am flight. And this is the biggest loss of life in aviation history in terms of an accident.
And what's interesting is KLM, one of the first people they called in order to investigate the accident was Van Zanten, the head of safety, not knowing that he was the one who actually caused the crash. And you think about it, why would the head of safety for the airlines take off without clearance? And I wrote this book with my brother, who's a psychologist.
And we looked at specific elements that create irrational behavior. And with Van Zanten, there's a couple of elements. The first is the escalation of commitment. The idea that he just needs to go, he needs to go, and he starts being stressed out about it.
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Chapter 3: What psychological forces contributed to the Tenerife airport crash?
And think about in your life, how many times you're like, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I've already committed, I'm running, I'm running, I'm running. And the second is this hugely powerful force of loss aversion. We feel the pain of the potential for loss, much more than the happiness we get from a gain. He was so afraid of being late.
He's so afraid of the passengers having to spend more time at this tiny airport. that his vision became single-focused on getting out and avoiding that loss, as opposed to what was far more important, which is keeping the safety of the passengers. And we see this over and over and over again in terms of trying to avoid a loss.
It's so interesting to me that we have these irrational behaviors that essentially blind us to the objective world around us. Can you tell us about your example of the NBA draft and what happens if an NBA player is a low draft pick? What happens if he actually plays his or her heart out?
We all know that the draft is, it's not pure science here. It's a very good educated guess. But still, if someone is a low draft pick, even if they play their heart out, and even if they're a very accomplished player, they're going to get less playing time. That's because of a force we call value attribution.
That the value that you instill in something from when you first encounter it is going to stick to that person or object for far longer because we just devalue based on our first impression. And the same happens with high value attribution. You're going to be viewing a job candidate as incredibly accomplished.
And just because they have that huge high value attribution, you're not going to be looking at their performance as much as they should be because of that value attribution.
So shocking to me. Ori, can you share the example of the substitute professor? What happened?
Yeah, this one's wild. So you have a college class and you have a professor who is introduced as just a substance professor. All the people get a description of the professor, and they don't know that half the people are getting one description, half the people are getting one description.
And half the people randomly get a description of him as being very thoughtful and very caring and very able and just a great guy. And the other half get a description of him also being very capable, but also being more aloof and more distant and more kind of hard to get to know. The professor comes in, gives the exact same lecture, and everyone's in the same class.
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Chapter 4: How does value attribution affect NBA players and job candidates?
Your examples to me are so eye-opening. Can you share the example of the Israeli soldiers and the officers?
Very similar. So here you have commanding officers. They're getting a fresh batch of soldiers. And a couple of the recruits were randomly kind of assigned to be described to the officers as very high potential and just these great finds. And lo and behold, the officers after the training thought that those recruits were actually much more capable. But here is where it gets interesting.
The soldiers themselves actually performed better in the trainings. And when the officers were told, hey, this was just randomly assigned, like it has nothing to do, they disagreed. They said, no, no, no, no, no, you don't recognize it. There is something special about that person.
So once you have that initial inception, if you will, of how do you diagnose someone in your mind, it stays with you forever. throughout the process and you start dismissing any evidence to the contrary.
And the soldiers themselves, because they were being treated as higher command potential, they actually did perform better. Is that right also?
Exactly. So the soldiers themselves performed better and the officers viewed them in different perceptions.
So when we form an initial impression of people or when we're given an initial impression from somebody else, the people then take on the characteristics of our expectation. Is that what happens?
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Chapter 5: What happened with the substitute professor and how does labeling affect perception?
People take on the characteristics that we imbue upon them. If we diagnose someone as being a genius, lo and behold, they'll actually rise to that challenge. If we diagnose someone as being aloof, lo and behold, they'll probably rise to that challenge as well.
Because we essentially treat them differently. We treat them more favorably and they respond to that.
Without even knowing, we treat them differently. We go through life labeling people constantly, but we don't really recognize the enormous amount of implications that that has.
So for the person who's labeling some other person, whether it's the Israeli officers that are labeling the recruits, do we essentially become blind to all evidence that contradicts the initial assessment?
We start being much more myopic in our view. We start disregarding evidence that is contrary to our diagnosis.
we need to remember is that we are all subject to these irrational forces and because we're all subject to them we need to take measures to counteract those forces so one of the examples we'll look at is interviews and interviews job interviews are very weak indicators of actual performance What is actually a good indicator are two things. One is looking at someone's actual experience.
And two is conducting interviews within a structured environment and with a group of people. Because you're able to take away each individual's bias more. And all the candidates get the same question. They are put through the structure. And then the committee decides on their viability as a candidate. And I've been talking about this for years with folks, with hiring managers.
I can't tell you how many times I've had people come to me and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. But actually, I'm really good at interviewing. Actually, I'm like, no, we're all subject to this. And we need to be cognizant of that. We give ourselves a pass when we think that we're rational and everyone else around us is not.
So what you're saying is that essentially our expectations change the way we see the world. I mean, essentially a rose by any other name doesn't actually smell as sweet.
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Chapter 6: How do first impressions influence learning and evaluation?
And we are blind to anything that does not meet our expectation. We simply see things or wait things more than meet our expectation. Yes. So interesting. And how do we unblind ourselves so that we see reality more objectively?
We need to first recognize that we're all subject to these forces. And the second element is that we can also rely on the power of those around us. Whether it's on the job or even we look at dating, and lo and behold, people around us are better predictors of who's going to be a better match for our dating than our first impressions of individuals.
And that we think about also, whether it's kids or students or people who work for us, that our perceptions really, really matter. And how do you form then positive perceptions of folks? And how do you start thinking about it from a perception of, hey, we're all going to be subject to these forces. It's up to us to try to identify what they are, not to say like, no, we're immune.
And you use the critical word positive. How do we make our expectations more positive?
It never hurts to gush over people. When I talk to, whether it's a student, whether it's a person working for us, whether it's a kid, it never hurts to gush. And my gosh, those positive elements make such a powerful and long lasting impact on people.
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Chapter 7: What is the example involving Israeli soldiers and officers?
I love that. Ori, what are the three takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with today?
The first takeaway is I don't care who you are. We are all subject to irrational forces that affect our psychology. The second is we need to recognize that we are all emotional beings and that decisions fundamentally have an emotional component. The third takeaway is that the lie that we tell ourselves and others is how do you perform under pressure?
Under pressure, we are going to start being irrational. And the way to overcome that is to have very lifelike simulations. And I've been really interested in virtual reality and how it's impacting our abilities to put people into very realistic situations of leadership and how they perform in those stressful environments.
Thank you, Ori. This has really been wonderful.
Thank you so much.
If you're enjoying the podcast, and I really hope you are, please review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps get the word out. If you're interested, you can also sign up for the 3 Takeaways newsletter at 3takeaways.com, where you can also listen to previous episodes. You can also follow us on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and Facebook.
I'm Lynn Thoman, and this is Three Takeaways. Thanks for listening.
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