Commonality between Climate Change and Pension System Collapse ② (English)

When I was working for a Japanese company in Tokyo, my boss always scolded me saying "You always leave the office at 6pm. What are you thinking about? When I was young, I always stayed in the office till midnight and worked so hard. I worked hard and succeeded in my career. You should do that too."

(as you guys may know, Japanese business people work like a hell.....hahaha!!! Of course, I cannot generalize though!!)

My answer was always like this.

"Ok, so please show me the evidence that supports your argument. There are people who work hard and succeed but at the same time, there are quite a lot of people who work too hard, get depressed and even commit a suicide. Where is the evidence that I am the former type of person? Can you be responsible if I work hard and get depressed?"

Such a guy,,,,,,you know, you are not supposed to question your boss in Japanese culture...haha!!

(Again, I dont wanna generalize Japanese culture. This is just an anecdote, hahaha)

(Here, Im not gonna mention about the difference between working hard and working long hours. Obviously, there should be a difference between these two. But the point of today's article is not that. So, let me simplify it.)

Surely, Im not saying that effort is meaningless. But here, Im questioning the fact that he believes that his success story applies to me too. I still believe that it is wrong.

Why?

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Again, Kahneman (2011) gives us an important psychological lesson.

He said "people (and scientists, quite often) seek data that are likely to be compatible with the beliefs that they currently hold" (p.81) and reinforce their beliefs.

Thinking, Fast and Slow

In the case above, my boss sought data (his experience = empirical data) that are likely to be compatible with the belief that he currently hold (= working long hour contributes to career success) and reinforced his belief.

This might not be correct because his experience does not necessarily apply to me.

(again, Im not criticizing my boss. Teaching things based on his experience was part of his job. He can't say such a thing as "hnnnnn, you don't have to work that hard because Im not sure if you can be happy even if you work hard"....haha!!! such a nice boss...)

This is called Confirmation Bias.

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This phenomenon is observed in many places.

For example, right after big earthquake happens, a number of people who subscribe to earthquake insurance dramatically increases.

But the thing is that the probability of earthquake does not change before and after the earthquake. (We can even say the probability lowers because big earthquake emits lots of energy and it is unlikely that the same kind of huge earthquake happens again in the next decades.)

In this case too, the belief (;it is better to invest on earthquake insurance) is reinforced by experience (:actually experiencing big earthquake).

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The other day, I wrote that our "loss-averse" nature might be contributing to the difficulty of tackling the problem of both pension system renovation and climate change prevention.

Confirmation Bias is contributing to it too.

How?

Key point is that in case of pension system and climate change, Confirmation Bias does NOT happen.

People all know that something should be done with pension system and climate change.

In other words, people have the belief that we need to take action to resolve the problem.

However, it does not appear as a real experience.

People rarely experience the actual negative effect of pension system collapse and climate change.

(The negative effect of climate change is gradually appearing especially in developing countries. However, it is not appearing in a obvious manner especially in developed countries: the biggest polluters.)

Therefore, they do NOT reinforce their belief and consequently, does not bring about action.

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Knowing this psychological function may help us tackle the problem.

Since we are systematically biased to ignore the problems that we cannot actually experience, we need to intentionally focus on those kind of problems.

Experience is important. But being able to imagine things that we cannot experience is also an important ability.

Towards the end of this year, there will be an international conference about Climate Change in Paris.

Hope the world will take concrete action before it becomes too late.