We make bad decisions and feel completely reasonable while we’re making them — because reason often isn’t the decision-maker at all. It’s the spokesperson.
This is 1 of 52 biases in my book “Convenient Truths: The Stories You Tell Yourself” — free on Kindle Unlimited: https://the3minutementor.com/books/ | Weekly essays: nigeldessau.substack.com
Intelligence doesn’t protect you. It often makes things worse by handing you more sophisticated ways to defend what you already wanted to do.
In this episode: why loss aversion makes us fund failing projects rather than admit a loss — so that yesterday’s mistake recruits today’s resources; how a temporary feeling disguises itself as a permanent truth; why we protect identities rather than interests, which is why facts alone so rarely change minds; and how our environments are engineered to exploit our preference for rewards now over benefits later.
Plus six guardrails: delay decisions while emotions run high, decide in advance what evidence would change your mind, ask what you’d tell a friend in the same spot, ignore what’s already spent, invite disagreement before you commit, and name the real objective.
#LossAversion #DecisionMaking #BehaviouralEconomics