Are Government Officials Trying To Make Too Many Decisions?

This is a follow up to last week’s post about people in positions of power whose decisions are flawed because of that powerful position.

Almost
every President relishes his image as a decision maker.  In the current
election, there’s also much talk about temperament, with both major
candidates claiming how good they are at making judgments and decisions.

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But
there’s little discussion about whether – out of ego, ambition, policy
concerns or whatever – they end up trying to make too many decisions.
Huh?  Isn’t that what the job is all about?

That’s what you would
believe if you listened to candidates and President.  It’s almost as if
they are like baseball players toting up how many hits they’ve had this
season – why I made 1,000 important decisions last year!

Many academics also focus on Presidential decision-making.  Here’s a statement for students:

“Can
you imagine being the president of the United States?  Think about all
the important decisions that must be made.  A president must exercise
wise decision-making skills.  Decision making is simply the thought
process of selecting a logical choice from the available options.  For
the president, the available options must seem endless!”

John Dean, famously, formerly on the staff of President Nixon, writing just a few years ago about President Obama, stated:

“Nothing
is more important in the American presidency than decision-making.  It
is, in fact, the very essence of the job.  Presidential decisions can
and do shape our history, for better or worse.  Rarely, though, does the
decision-making style of presidential candidates receive much attention
during a campaign.”

Well, on top of the flaws in each individual decision, things only get worse when someone is making too many decisions.

When I originally wrote about this in 2011, one of the most popular articles on the New York Times website was John Tierney’s “Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?”.  (It’s still one of the top hits when you search the subject.)

He
pointed out how the quality of decisions declines as too many are made,
in part because the decision makers have not conserved their willpower
for the tough decisions.  He cited a now frequently cited study of
parole decisions:

“[A]s researchers discovered by analyzing more
than 1,100 decisions over the course of a year, Judges, who would hear
the prisoners’ appeals and then get advice from the other members of the
board, approved parole in about a third of the cases, but the
probability of being paroled fluctuated wildly throughout the day.  
Prisoners who appeared early in the morning received parole about 70
percent of the time, while those who appeared late in the day were
paroled less than 10 percent of the time.”

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This pattern is a reflection of decision fatigue,
trying to make too many decisions.  It is tied to the general limit on
each person’s ability to sustain will power (and, for that matter,
rationality) over the more natural emotional instincts as the day goes
on.

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The American Psychological Association has a website
devoted to will-power – the ability to make decisions that are based on
long-term, rational goals rather than immediate gratification.  While
elaborating on the various ways that having stronger will-power leads to
lives that are more successful, they also note the numerous studies
that show it is a limited resource which can be depleted after a series
of difficult decisions.

You can find all sorts of self-help
articles about how to boost your will power, including eating more to
overcome low glucose periods of the day.  FastCompany magazine even credited President Obama with reducing his decision fatigue by wearing the same suit every day.

Notwithstanding
the best efforts of even President Obama, the demands on public
officials – Presidents/governors/mayors, even legislative bodies – to
make all kinds of decisions explains a lot of some of the otherwise
inexplicable decisions we’ve observed. 

Are they too suffering from
decision fatigue?

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© 2016 Norman Jacknis, All Rights Reserved

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A Fundamental Decision Making Flaw in Public Officials?

Are our public leaders flawed because they were selected as public leaders? 

The answer would seem to be yes, according a paper by four academic researchers on organizational behavior, which I came across recently (although it was published last November).  Its title and subtitle make the point: “The Decision-Making Flaw in Powerful People: Overflowing with confidence, many leaders turn away from good advice.

Some of their key findings:

“this paper finds a link between having a sense of power and having a propensity to give short shrift to a crucial part of the decision-making process: listening to advice. Power increases confidence, the paper’s authors say, which can lead to an excessive belief in one’s own judgment and ultimately to flawed decisions. …

"In addition to confirming the previous experiments’ finding that more powerful people were less likely to take advice and were more likely to have high confidence in their answers, this final experiment showed that high-power participants were less accurate in their answers than low-power participants. …

"For one thing, organizations could formally include advice gathering at the earliest stages of the decision-making process, before powerful individuals have a chance to form their own opinions. Encouraging leaders to refrain from commenting on decisions publicly could also keep them from feeling wedded to a particular point of view.”

Whether or not you might find this research conforms to your own experience, the last point – gathering in lots of information before the public leaders decide – is certainly not an unrealistic suggestion to improve decision making in many cases.  Today, the Internet and the collaborative discussion tools it offers can make this happen fairly easily. 

© 2012 Norman Jacknis

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