Article archive / January 1, 2015
Originally published: . Volume 6, No. 1. Source pages: 2.
I recently finished one of Phillip Tetlock’s books on human judgment, this one an early report of his expert political judgment experiments. Tetlock took one of the most complex areas imaginable, world politics, gathered high level experts into a large pool for forecasting, and measured their accuracy in predicting events. From post-Communist Russia to the Japanese stock market to the future of Canada, he designed a complex method for figuring out who can predict geopolitical events better.
Tetlock found that it’s not a person’s years of experience, gender, or political affiliation that matters. It’s not being an academic, or having a PhD, or past training that matters.
It’s cognitive style, our style of reasoning. What experts are thinking matters much less, than how they are thinking. When it comes to judgment, what matters is whether the person is a fox or a hedgehog.
Tetlock uses Isaiah Berlin’s prototypical hedgehog at one end of the cognitive style continuum and the prototypical fox at the other. Hedgehogs are confident in their views, “know one big thing,” and push determinedly to apply this idea. Foxes on the other hand, “know a lot of little things,” they cover more ground, are flexible improvisers, with a dubious, self-critical style of reasoning. While foxes are moving from one idea to the next, hedgehogs are digging in and pulling the dirt in on top of themselves. The deeper they dig the more they risk becoming trapped in their own ideas, uncovering more reasons why their initial view is “right.”
Tetlock points out the paradox that the media and the public prefer the confidence and simplicity of hedgehogs. He also notes that hedgehog’s “formulaic solutions to ill-defined problems” is a quality prized in scientists. Something to think about.
But he also warns to keep in mind that foxes themselves aren’t all that amazing, being consistently outperformed by statistical models. Even foxes need training to do well. However, hedgehogs, bless their hearts, are roughly equal to dart-throwing chimpanzees.
The popularity of insight into human judgment, advanced in large part by Daniel Kahneman, psychology’s Nobel Prize winner (Thinking, Fast and Slow), is making its way into the collective. A refreshing example is Scott Lilienfeld’s 2014 article, “Why Ineffective Psychotherapies Appear to Work,” with his list of hedgehog type cognitive distortions that therapists apply. But this type of meta-cognition, thinking about thinking, especially in group dynamics, seems slow to catch on.
So you might understand my surreal experience when I found myself at the psychology board’s recent planning meeting defending one of my most cherished hedgehog ideas, free speech. The board says it needs more authority to govern licensees’ behavior––not just to govern their practice of psychology––but to discipline overall “professionalism,” and this includes speech.
I found myself fumbling around in a discussion over free speech with Dr. Comaty, muddying up my concepts and doing a terribly poor job of making my point, which would of course make no real difference even if I would have somehow come up with the brilliant ideas that I only thought of later when I was obsessing over what I did say and wishing I hadn’t said it.
Nevertheless, my lifelong affection for Freedom of Information is one of my hedgehog views. As any good hedgehog, I’ve spent decades acquiring evidence to support my ideas, from organizational, humanistic, and evolutionary psychology. I’ve filtered everything else out that doesn’t fit.
And of course, also like any good hedgehog, I’m not about to change my mind. My belief-defending behaviors include the Times, which is now going on 6+ years. I’m trying to encourage freedom of information, free expression, and open conflict resolution in the community. Of course I don’t see any need for more control by government over free speech. I see the complete opposite: We need more entrepreneurial freedoms, more outspoken visionary leadership, more open debate of differences, and less covert political gamesmanship.
But Tetlock is elegantly convincing. So, with my one exception about individual freedom, I’m going to try and be much less of a hedgehog in 2015.
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.