July 5, 2023
On June 3, 1995, American conflict resolution expert Jeffrey Z. Rubin died trying to climb a mountain in Maine, USA. Rubin was 54 years old.
Located in upstate Baxter State Park, the mountain is part of a 100peak loop trail popular with mountaineers. A lover of the sport and quite experienced, Rubin was about to complete this challenge: he had already climbed the other 99 peaks.
The last person Jeffrey Rubin saw alive was a college student he was climbing with, says psychologist Annie Duke, author of Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away. boat”)
“As they ascended, very dense fog descended and visibility dropped to virtually zero. Jeffrey’s student said, “I don’t think it’s safe to go any further, we’d better not go up.” Rubin denied the student’s requests. The student decided not to continue, but Jeffrey did. His body was found two days later.”
The great irony of this story is that it serves as an illustration of a theory that Rubin himself pioneered, explains Duke.
This is the theory of imprisonment, according to which we humans tend to get trapped in situations or projects, even when there are clear indications that it will not be beneficial for us to continue towards them insistence.
In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s The Spark, Annie Duke gives examples of how we are trapped in misty mountains, at work, in relationships or, in a broader context, in great unwinnable wars.
Duke also teaches us to spot flaws in our logical thinking that keep us from giving up on hopeless goals.
Contrary to common sense
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Annie Duke explains how people get into bad situations or projects and offers strategies to overcome the problem
Annie Duke begins her interview by describing an experiment Rubin conducted in the 1970s that served as the basis for the entrapment theory.
He asked participants to solve a crossword puzzle with eight answers, some of which were quite difficult.
Each volunteer received $8 regardless of how many words they got right. Rubin would also pay a $2 bonus for each correct answer.
To help solve the most difficult questions, the researcher offered participants the opportunity to consult a crossword dictionary.
However, there was only one dictionary and anyone who wanted to use it had to wait in line.
However, one important condition was built into the experiment: the participants had a limited amount of time to solve the crossword puzzle.
After a period of time, if they continued to try to answer (instead of returning the sheet), they began to lose the accumulated money. After the deadline, the participants lost everything including the $8.
The question was: would they wait for the dictionary, even at the risk of losing the $8?
“At the end of the experiment, he found that the participants preferred to wait for the dictionary,” says Duke.
“I think that’s a good example that once we get involved in a project, we don’t give it up. Even if it is very clear that it is bad for us.
death on the mountain
In her book, Annie Duke explains that knowing we’re doing this doesn’t help us make better decisions. It didn’t help Rubin, for example.
“He had devoted his career to the study of incarceration and the escalation of retention in lost cases,” says the psychologist.
“If anyone could understand this problem and our phenomenal ability to ignore the signals we’re getting that we shouldn’t proceed, it was Jeffrey Rubin.”
Credit: Gregory Rec/Portland Portland Press Herald via Getty Images
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Rubin, a pioneer in researching the phenomenon of entrapment and escalation in lost cases, decided to head to a mountaintop in thick fog. His body was found two days later.
However, there are a few ways we can protect ourselves from these pitfalls, explains Annie Duke. According to the researchers’ observations, the person must be emotionally involved in the situation for detention to occur.
For example, if Rubin had been at the base of the mountain and the fog suddenly cleared, it’s entirely possible he wouldn’t have climbed it, she says.
“But he was in the middle of climbing and wanted to do the loop of a hundred mountains. That’s how it went on.”
So the key would be to put safeguards in place before engaging in projects or specific situations.
Later we will learn some of the mechanisms available, including a rule to protect climbers climbing Everest, the highest mountain in the world.
An irrational desire to “fix” the past?
After the phenomenon of entrapment was identified, experts wondered what mental processes would be behind it. And they found logical flaws in our thinking that hinder our decisionmaking.
One is a “cognitive trap” that economists call the “sunk cost fallacy.”
Sunk costs are funds that have already been spent and are nonrefundable. Cognitive failure occurs when we use a decreased amount as an excuse to spend more, explains Duke.
According to her, this kind of thinking can influence our decisions in different situations far beyond the financial world.
For example, when we’re deciding if it would be better to give up the snake that isn’t moving, or when we’re wondering whether to stay in a job or relationship that isn’t going well.
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The socalled sunkcost fallacy is one of the “cognitive traps” behind the lockin phenomenon
“We thought if I stopped now I wasted the time I’ve already put in,” he explains.
“But actually that time is long gone. The question is: will you continue to spend more to recoup, justify, or not waste the time you’ve already expended?”
In other words: Waste is an issue that needs to be put into perspective, says Duke how do you avoid waste in the future?
But by falling into the sunkcost fallacy, we’re looking in the wrong direction — hindsight, at costs that have already been incurred. It affects our decisions.
Duke shows how this type of reasoning is used by people who are unhappy in their relationships.
“You’re in a really bad relationship that’s not healthy for you and people ask you why don’t you get out of that relationship?”
They reply, “I’ve put so much of myself into this relationship, I don’t want to have wasted all the time I’ve put into the relationship.”
“So the problem is, in the future, you’re wasting more time in an unhealthy relationship than going out there and trying to find something that’s more fulfilling.”
“We see that at work,” he continues.
“People stay in the job because they don’t want to admit they didn’t work out and because they don’t want to waste the training they’ve had. They stay in that situation, even though if they had just started, they wouldn’t have stayed in that job.”
Irrecoverable money and life
Wars are a classic example of how the cognitive phenomenon of capture can hold some of the world’s most powerful men hostage.
“I think there are two reasons it’s so hard to get out of a war,” says Duke.
The first has to do with the nature of sunk costs, he explains.
“Now we’re not just talking about billions of dollars spent. Now lives have been lost.”
Duke quotes the testimony of US General Tony Thomas, former commander of the US Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan.
Thomas reportedly spoke of having a hard time hearing a dead soldier’s father say, “Don’t let my son die in vain.” Go ahead, end this and win this war.”
“This is the most extreme version of the sunk cost problem,” she says. “It is heartbreaking that a human life was lost in war. But the question is: is it worth risking your next life?”
“We weren’t programmed to think that way. And from a political point of view it gets even more complicated because even if the politician can say: ‘It is tragic that lives have been lost, but I will not sacrifice any more lives in a war that I know we are fighting betting the game.” If he loses, he will be judged by the public.”
For the psychologist, fear of the voter’s opinion is the second reason why leaders find it difficult to give up failed struggles.
“Let’s remember that the politician is there on behalf of the public. This drives him to continue the war until there is no other choice but to retreat.”
Omission, status quo and loss aversion
The sunk cost fallacy is just one of the mental processes that lead to lockin, Duke continues.
According to her, we are cognitively programmed with multiple prejudices that won’t let us give up. To put these prejudices into practice, she cites a case described in her book.
A doctor went to see a psychologist and told her that she wasn’t happy at work but couldn’t decide whether to leave her job or stay.
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Duke explains that we are cognitively programmed with several biases that keep us from giving up
Annie Duke asked the doctor what the chances were that she would be happy in this job within a year. And what were the chances that she would be happy if she quit her job?
The doctor replied that there was a 0% chance of being happy in this job within a year.
“Suddenly the option (quitting the job) no longer seemed like a risk,” comments the psychologist.
But the doctor couldn’t see the problem that way because she was influenced by prejudices that unconsciously urge us to persevere.
For example, the status quo bias, according to Duke, causes “we choose what we’re already doing over options that might be better for us.”
Our decisions are also influenced by omission bias, says Duke.
“We treat an omission differently than an action.”
A classic example of this bias is the car problem, he explains.
A car drives down a track and approaches five people. There is a parallel lane, and when you pull a lever, the car deflects into the other lane and hits a person.
Given this problem, most people would rather let someone die than actively kill someone.
“We think it’s morally wrong to pull the lever even if, from a utilitarian point of view, one person would die instead of five.” We believe bad results from an action are worse than bad results from doing nothing.”
“It means we’re going to be a lot more tolerant of a job we hate because we’re afraid of bad results if we change. A job change would pull the lever. Staying at work would mean the car could continue on that route.”
“The doctor said she was scared of going into a new job and hated it,” says Duke.
Another bias that Duke mentions in his interview (and which, by the way, is commonly used in the financial world by those trying to persuade investors to spend their money on risky trades) is the loss aversion bias.
It can be defined as the tendency to be more affected by losses than gains. That is, our satisfaction when we gain value is less than our suffering when we lose equivalent value.
Monkeys or pedestals?
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what do i do first Should I teach the monkey to juggle or build the pedestal? A logic exercise that serves as a “mental model for problem solving”.
After showing how our prejudices keep us from realizing when to let go of situations that hurt us, Duke shares some of the advice he provides in his book and consultations.
“We want to make sure you get the answer to whether it’s worth quitting as soon as possible,” he suggests.
“The quicker you decide, the lower the cost of an exit when you’re already deeply involved in the problem.”
To illustrate her thinking, she describes the following scenario:
You have decided to teach monkeys to juggle flaming torches on a pedestal. If you can do that, you will make a lot of money. To achieve your goal you need to train the monkey and build the pedestal. Which do you do first?
“The answer is: not the base,” says the psychologist.
“Because if you can’t train the monkey, you don’t need the pedestal.”
He also continues: “You already know that you are capable of building the pedestal. So when you build the pedestal you will feel like you are making progress on your project, but that is false progress.”
Duke explores this idea further on its website. And comes to the conclusion:
“Monkeys and Pedestals teaches us to tackle the hardest problem first, because if we can’t solve it, there’s no point working on others.”
Mentor, equal weights and list
The monkey and pedestal challenge—what the psychologist calls the “mental problemsolving model”—is more easily applied in the early stages of a project, before we reach “the icy mountain after the 99th peak.”
“At this point, our decisionmaking will be very tenuous, even if the fog has already lifted.”
“Like Jeffrey Rubin, we end up doing things we shouldn’t be doing. So a big part of the solution to improving our ability to get out is to get out of this moment, to get out of ourselves,” advises Duke.
A good way to do this is to find what is called a “quit coach,” she says.
That said, seek advice from someone unfamiliar with the problem who can help you look at it from a distance.
However, she points out that this analysis must be done from a neutral position.
“I’m not suggesting that projects be abandoned, I’m suggesting that abandonment be considered on an equal footing with continuation.”
However, we tend to make a point of moving on, she says.
“It has to do with our idea of character building. We think we shouldn’t give anything up because it shows a character flaw that we’re cowards or ‘losers’.”
For them, it’s about rebalancing. And let’s consider both possibilities equally. “What’s the point of going on? And what’s the point of giving up?” he suggests.
Well, as we have already seen, there are situations where none of the above solutions can save you from getting involved in a dangerous endeavor.
Live or die on Everest?
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On summer days, at Everest Camp 4, the designated time for climbers to return to base is 1:00 p.m. “No matter where you are on the mountain, you have to turn back at 1 p.m.,” says Duke
Sometimes you have to form an opinion before engaging in a situation.
“We have the basic idea that once we get the signals that we should stop, we’re going to pay attention, but that’s not true.”
What is true, says the psychologist, is that if we imagine in advance what these signs will look like, if we make a list of criteria for termination (of the project) based on these signs and commit ourselves according to these criteria to act, the chances of spotting the signs and being able to withdraw are much greater.
To further illustrate this point, Annie Duke takes us back to an icy mountain, this time Mount Everest in the Himalayas of Nepal.
“If you have a summer day at Camp 4 on Everest, there is a specific time to return. Return time is 1:00 p.m. No matter where you are on the mountain, you have to be back by 1pm,” explains Duke.
“This return point was set because they don’t want you to be left in the dark. Eight times more people die on the way down (than on the way up). They’re trying to protect you from the dangers of the descent, and one of those dangers is the darkness.”
“There are people who come back on time. We don’t hear about it, but we should. Because we should like them.”
Giving up, “an act of heroism”
Duke concludes his interview with the dramatic story of a 1996 Everest expedition led by New Zealand climber Rob Hall.
“Eight men died that day,” says Duke.
The story is told in a book, a documentary, and the 2015 film Everest.
“We know from Rob Hall who reached the summit at 2pm. We know he was waiting for Doug Hansen (an American who was part of the expedition), who arrived at 4 p.m., collapsed and tragically died.”
“By this point, after waiting so long at the top of the mountain, Rob Hall was out of oxygen. He too died tragically on the mountain.”
“(Hall and Hansen) are the heroes of this film, but there were three people taking part in the expedition, they felt they were going up very slowly and they knew the turning point was 1pm. During the climb, they saw Rob Hall and asked him how long it would take them to reach the summit. Hall replied: “three hours”. And it kept going up.”
The film shows how one of the three men Stuart Hutchison prevents the other two companions from moving on. He says it is 11:30 a.m. and argues that at this slow pace, they wouldn’t be able to reach the summit until 2:30 p.m.
“We don’t remember those three dropouts who played by the rules and survived to tell the story. They returned to base, climbed other mountains, died old, but it’s not an exciting tale.”
“Part of the problem with quitting is that we don’t see quitting as a heroic decision,” Duke continues.
“I want you to imagine that you are on Everest,” she invites.
“I think they paid $75,000 to join the expedition, trained for nine months, and were less than 100 meters from the summit.”
But they decided to come back, he says.
“They decided to return knowing that others would carry on and they would have to live with the pain of knowing that the others had made it to the top.”
“I think that’s an act of heroism to face whatever forces push you to the top and have the willpower to turn back because it’s the right thing to do.”