More on Cognitive Bias - Ten Troublesome Human Instincts or Cognitive Misconceptions cont. 8

8. Size instinct (it involves 2 tendencies, ie

i) getting things out of proportion

ii) mis-judging the size of things

These 2 and the negativity instincts encourage us to systematically underestimate the progress that has been made and overestimate individual suffering; our interpretations are more dramatic than the reality. An example of this is health status in developing countries. There is a greater impact on the population's health by preventative measures, with people becoming

- literate, ie read and write (people able to read instructions on medications, etc)

- nurse education (learning basic nutrition and hygiene including importance of clean drinking water, midwifery, vaccination, etc and then teaching the general population)

- increasing agricultural productivity (people are better fed and thus less likely to be impacted by preventable diseases)

- improved transportation (so that medical people can get to isolated villages and sick villagers can get to medical centres)

- improved infrastructure like electricity (allowing food, medicines, etc to be stored under refrigeration, students to complete their home at night, recharging mobile phones, etc), etc

These are more important and effective than building hospitals.

Controlling the size instinct by getting things in proportion:

- compare the numbers (always compare numbers to give it relativity, otherwise can be perceptively larger and misleading, eg 4.2 million babies died in 2016. Even though this figure sounds horrifying, it is a great improvement on the 1950s when it was 14.4 million!!!)

- 80/20 rule (it is a way of prioritising based on degree of importance, ie 80% of your sales come 20% of your clients; 80% of your staff problems come from 20% of your staff, etc; helps to understand the big picture)

- divide the numbers (this gives you rates, percentages, etc; rates are more meaningful when comparing between different sized-groups; using the baby death example, the mortality rate is calculated by dividing the number of babies dying by the numbers born in 1950 and 2016 (in 1950 mortality rate was 15% while in 2016 it was 3% - a great improvement)

NB Need to understand both the statistics and the stories behind the statistics, ie understand the reality behind the numbers, ie
"...Though we absolutely need numbers to understand the world, we should be highly sceptical about conclusions derived purely from number crunching..."
Hans Rosling et al, 2018

Some metrics are easier to measure by numbers like economic growth, health issues, etc. Others parameters, like human progress, individual freedom, culture, values, etc are difficult to capture with numbers; numbers will never tell the full story.)