So, another fixing scandal hits Cricket and IPL comes in to news for the wrong reasons, once again. A lot of questions are being asked. We will be told about the declining ethical and moral values. That we are hypocrites or that its in our culture. That this is because of greed and that this is an isolated incident. May be all these explanations are true or they may be other factors at play.

One question on most people’s mind though is ‘What were these guys thinking? In today’s day and age, didn’t they know they would be caught ? Surely, this is not the first time! So many players have been caught and paid dearly. There is enough news in the open and not just in Cricket on how people are getting caught. They have no career beyond cricket and they have seen what happened to the likes of Cronje.

So, the question is, How come these players believed that they’ll get away. Are they stupid ? They may be an exception in terms of getting involved in fixing, but they are not an exception when it comes to this thinking that they’ll not get caught.

One of the fundamental bias most of us have is ‘Overconfidence’ or differently put ‘Private Optimism’ Most smokers think that other smokers will get cancer, but not them. We think we are better than other drivers on the road. And not just that, many claim that they drive better when they’re drunk. We think we have a higher chance of success than others. In so many cases, we underestimate the time and cost of projects, yet we make the same mistakes in the next project.

This is hardwired over thousands of years of evolution. Overconfidence is important for survival. It helps us get out of the cave, reach the moon, start many new businesses, take big bets and innovate. But, it has a flip side, it hurts us big at times. We get in to accidents, make rash investments, smoke, drink, not eat healthy, over spend…

It can be argued that this is the same Private Optimism that makes these players believe that they will not get caught. They, in this case probably the players knew that there is surveillance and that the price they pay for getting caught is pretty steep and that it would practically end their career. But, they also believed that they are an exception. That they are less likely to get caught. That they’ll get away. They valued a small but certain and immediate gain over a big loss, because that loss is in the future and the probability of that loss is vague. We are all susceptible to these biases, it appears that these players were a little bit more susceptible. One way to solve this problem is to ensure swift and certain punishment rather than dragging the case. The more the uncertainty, more the chances of some other player repeating it.

Fixing isn’t the norm, overconfidence is. So, what is that you’ve been overconfident about lately ?

Boston Bombing – Channel Your Emotions

The recent bomb blast has again triggered the menace of terrorism in the minds of the public. The casualties that people have suffered, the images on TV and the internet and the stories that are being shared are certain to illicit a variety of emotions – fear, anger, sadness, disbelief, contempt…

It was noted in this Atlantic article that we should “keep calm and carry on.” That we should “refuse to be terrorized.” That in allowing our fears to run rampant we risk unintended consequences such as making poor choices regarding our public policies and laws, making our country less open and therefore allowing a victory to the terrorists “even if their attacks fail.” This perspective, in a nutshell, is a fear of fear – and its consequences. It is an invitation to repress our natural response.

Our emotions are not a conscious response and they are not a biological dynamic that we can deliberately control. Fear is a natural response to any sign of threat and it has done well for us evolutionarily. When we experience fear, we focus on the incident in a lot more detail, our associated memories become much stronger. Together, this helps to ensure that we anticipate signs of threat much earlier and are, therefore, better prepared to cope in the future.

We know some of the action tendencies of fear are to retreat, to wall off, to exclude, to discriminate, to “close our minds.” We know that a world of fear is not the world we want to live in. Yet, this should not mean that we repress all emotion; that just because we recognize the dangers of our emotions we should somehow abolish them.

We experience anger towards the perpetrators because we want justice. One of the natural action tendencies of anger is the motivation towards action. We want the criminals to be apprehended, exposed and punished. We want our security agencies to learn from the event so as to prevent it next time.

However, there is an emotional cost that comes with a heightened negative state. Physiologically, it consumes a lot of bodily resources – weakening our systems. It results in lower executive control – making us more vulnerable to rumor mongering and panic.

More than fear, maybe then, it is panic and the associated feeling of helplessness that terrorists are interested in inducing. But, instead of arguing that we should “stay calm” (which is a physiological impossibility) the question, and strategy, should be: “How best to channel our emotions?” We know what we’re experiencing. We can, in accordance with Emotion Appraisal Theory, delineate the producers of our emotions. And we can predict the probable action tendencies associated with each emotion.

I would argue that we not, keep calm and carry on, but that we feel what we are going to feel – to recognize and experience our emotions, understand the consequences, and leverage those emotions that are going to most effectively lead us to the experiences that we most desire when we are feeling our best.

Often we come across new findings in brain research from fairly credible sources that explain how humans think and make decisions. Our usual reaction is to generalize these findings as fundamental human traits which equally affect all of us irrespective of the context we are living in.

Context, however is critical. Context could be the physical environment in which we are living in or other forces such as culture or religion that influence our day to day behavior. Thus, explanation of human behavior is complete only when we have included the influence of the contextual elements that surround us.

While some of the human traits such as “Fight or flight” may be fundamental, there are number of other behaviors that can vary significantly between different regions, different ethnicities or even within different demographics within the same ethnic group.

This paper published by professors from University of British Columbia refers to the variation in the behaviors of people from different regions in multiple domains such as visual perception, spatial reasoning, moral reasoning etc. The variations are not only interesting but also questions rules around fundamental human interactions.

For example, Fairness experiment conducted using the Ultimatum Game revealed a dramatically different behavior (and probably more rational) between the indigenous people living in Machiguenga, Peru as compared to their American counter parts. Turns out our perception of Fairness, which is usually considered one of the fundamental human instincts, differs based on our life experiences. Social norms around fairness vary based on the degree of market integration and the community size.

The paper also mentions an interesting statistic – as per the review of the top six psychology journals, about 96 percent of human subjects in the studies covered in these journals come from countries that represent only 12 percent of the world’s population.

Such a poor representation of the world’s population is a clear warning that we need to be very careful before applying insights from these studies. The implications are many – right from the academic studies to their applications in real life.

So, how do we conduct behavioral studies to observe and explain human behavior? Any behavioral study is conducted in a setting that is in the true context or in a true-like context. We tend to stay away from conducting focus group / lab studies since these are done in closed rooms where participants are completely isolated from real life context.

However while ethnographic studies provide for great observations, they may not always explain the complete behavior. A controlled ethnographic setting that drives the optimal balance between ethnography and controlled lab provides a perfect environment to both observe and explain human behavior. In addition, it also provides the opportunity to identify the levers that could be used to influence this behavior.

Thus, key to explaining human behavior is to also understand the context that this behavior is exhibited in.

Image Source: Here

Our work to reduce trespassing fatalities on Mumbai’s suburban railway system has been reported many times. Based on its success, Western Railways approached us with a problem definition that was slightly different. Apart from the trespassing along the line, they also wanted us to deal with trespassing at Jogeshwari and Kandivali stations in Mumbai. There was a lot of crossing close to the stations and there was a lot of incidence of people jumping the fence between two railway tracks in the stations.

In addition to the solutions that were proven successful at Wadala and other areas in Central Railways, they are also actively considering a new fence design that makes jumping nearly impossible. There are more interventions pending approvals and should be implemented soon. For now, it is encouraging to see Western Railways taking up the implementation. Read more here

A recent news article talks about pedestrians and bikers being the most vulnerable on Mumbai roads. 57% of the deaths on Mumbai roads constitute pedestrians alone. Another 31% is made up of bikers. Together, they contribute to 88% of road fatalities. Strangely absent from the fray, is the top contender for road occupancy – considering there are so many four-wheelers on the road, they constitute less than 15% of the fatalities. However, cars cause 35% of the fatalities. And the more powerful the cars are, the more cause there is for concern. Taxis, surprisingly, cause the least number of accidents.

What explains this poor correlation between the number and the kind of vehicles causing accidents, considering powerful cars and SUVs are lesser in number on Mumbai roads as compared to the innumerable taxis and other smaller cars we see everyday.

Consider John Adams’ take on individual risk management – the ‘Risk Thermostat’. According to him, each individual has a specific level of risk-taking with which they are comfortable. If their sense of safety is increased, say by protective gear like seatbelts, or systemic changes like ABS, their behaviour becomes riskier – they compensate for this increase in safety till the set-level is reached again. The safer we feel, therefore, the more risky our behaviour. Consider the effect this could have on pedestrians and cyclists/bikers. The safer drivers of cars feel, whether it is thanks to seatbelts or their more expensive, powerful cars with fancy safety features, the more dangerously they drive. And the brunt of this increased risk is being borne by the more vulnerable pedestrians and bikers. We all know that the taxis and auto-rickshaws of Mumbai are infamous for both their age and absence of seat-belts. They are small cars, most of them with a broken down appearance. It is fitting, therefore, that they cause the least number of accidents. Adams also observed a troubling increase in both pedestrian and cyclist deaths immediately following the UK seatbelt law. Delhi enforced the seatbelt rule in February 2002. An exercise performed by Professor Dinesh Mohan, at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi to see the effectiveness of the seatbelt law concluded that it may have saved at most 11-15 lives per year in Delhi out of almost 2000 fatalities of drivers or front-seat passengers – less than 1% of the total (Chapter 3 of Indianomix)

We’ve noticed this trend not just on roads, but also on the project we carried out to make unmanned level crossings in India safer. The number of cases of the train colliding with bigger cars and SUVs were much higher than for smaller cars and tractors. As people perceive themselves as safer or better equipped against a danger (to navigate to the other side before the train comes in), they are more likely to take more risks. Also, there were fewer accidents at level-crossings where visibility was limited as opposed to when there was clear visibility.

How do we then make our roads safer? The answer does not lie in making cars safer but to redesign traditional traffic safety engineering and legislation, taking into account the vagaries of human behaviour, so that the roads are a safer place to pedestrians, cyclists and bikers as well.

- With inputs from Ram Prasad

Image Source: http://funnyasduck.net/post/12350

Our CEO, Biju Dominic recently spoke on ‘Innovation Infanticide’ at TEDxXIMB. $1.4 Trillion was spent on R&D in 2012. 1,300,000 research papers are written every year. Why then do we have so little to show when it comes to Innovation? Why is Apple the only name that pops instinctively in or heads when we talk about Innovation? Watch this video to find out.

Warning: The video quality is poor due to bad lighting. However, the audio more than makes up for it

TIE and Omidyar Network recently organised the ‘Affordable Healthcare Summit’ in Delhi. Our co-founder, Ram Prasad was on the Panel,  discussing on how to bridge the Product-Market gap in the affordable healthcare segment with respect to Medical Technology products. He illustrates weakness of the current awareness-heavy models  and shares case studies demonstrating effective and interesting alternatives. Watch the discussion here

The news is abound with the shocking narration by the friend of the Delhi rape victim as regards the efficiency of the Delhi Police. According to his report, the police spent more than half an hour arguing about jurisdiction after arriving at the scene of the event, tragically delaying reaching both the victim and her friend to a hospital. The police, however, has issued a counter statement with the following details:

The information regarding the incident was received by Police Control Room operator at 10.21pm through a phone call received on 100. Two PCR vans reached the spot at 10.27pm and 10.29pm respectively. The victims were taken in the second PCR van, which was assigned the call at 10.24pm and left the spot at 10.39pm for Safdarjung Hospital, 10 minutes after they reached the spot. According to the earlier police report, however, where the time was manually recorded, the van left the spot at 10:31pm, 2 minutes after reaching the spot. The correction to 10:39pm was made after checking the computerized log sheets.

Why this massive difference between the reports of the victim’s friend, the police officer and the actual time?

One possible explanation is that mind warps how we perceive and recollect the passage of time. Clock time and Mind time aren’t always aligned. Our perception of time is affected by factors like the emotions we’re experiencing, context we’re in, tiredness, even small factors like eye-movements and age. Take for instance, how life threatening situations alter our recollections of the passage of time – we remember the time as longer because we record more of the experience. This richer encoding of memory as a result of increased attention causes threatening events to appear, retrospectively, as though they lasted longer. Also, the emotions we experience directly affect our perception of the passage of time, and not just the recollection of it. Negative emotions make the passage of time seem longer than it is. This is a function of the brain’s most basic survival mechanism- our attention and all our mental and bodily efforts are geared towards helping us survive. The more information we record, the more equipped we are to deal with the situation the next time. We could hypothesize that the victim’s brain was recording a lot of information that could explain why it seemed so long from his perspective.

This explains the entirely natural recollection of the victim’s friend’s about length of the conversation, shrouded in a life-threatening situation of intensely high-stress. And the reverse could be hypothesized for the policemen, who, as a result of their heated discussion probably felt that time had passed much quicker than it actually had. This is not to say that the police hadn’t committed their share of follies – in not immediately using the first van that reached the spot and not reaching them to the nearest hospital, but the one designated for medico-legal cases though it was farther away.

It is important to keep in mind, however,  that in the case of high-stress incidents, eye-witnesses’ and by-standers’ perceptions and memories are fallible. This is not limited to the just the sense of time but also information in most other modalities like visual, auditory, etc as they are prone to being coloured by various factors, most important of all, emotions.

The solution, however, in the case of the Delhi Police, would not be to circulate more accurate reports about the turn-around time, but to actually minimize the response time – in a situation like this, 10 minutes is simply way too expensive -it could mean the difference between life-and-death.

In a recently aired interview, the friend of Delhi rape victim narrated the heart wrenching story. One of the aspect that comes across as shocking is the apathy of people who watched, went by but didn’t help. Its easy to come to a conclusion that we are as a culture cold-hearted, lack empathy, apathetic… Does this explain us in totality ? Are we always like this ?

However gruesome and shameful the events are, we should hold back before we declare ourselves inhuman.

We see so many acts of kindness and goodness in the world. Hardcore capitalists are giving away all their wealth, there are people taking care of strays, so many of us voluntarily donate blood, people opened their doors to strangers during Mumbai deluge, People have spent entire lives in helping others, by some estimates the Mumbai beggars collect in excess of 100 crores a year, so many people have put themselves in harm’s way to protect total strangers and in some cases people have shown extraordinary courage in saving animals.

How can we be both ?

On March 13, 1964 Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death near her home in New York. An estimated 12-38 people watched her, but did nothing. More recently during Hurricane Sandy there was an equally heart wrenching incident. Glenda Moore, a 39 year old mother of 2 children(aged 2 & 4) was stuck in the storm. She knocked on many doors desperately seeking shelter as water rose around them. Apparently, no one helped. Eventually the children were torn away from her arms. Their bodies were discovered few days later.

Some attribute this to the social psychological phenomenon of ‘bystander effect’ and diffusion of responsibility. ‘May be someone else will help, there are so many people watching’

This explains only part of the problem and at best a half decent hypothesis. It appears that in the Kitty Genovese case, someone indeed had called 911 and shouted at the attacker. Even in the Delhi incident a recent article by WSJ shows that the bystander effect is not the whole truth. Read more here.  As is the case with such incidents, it is hard to arrive at a definitive explanation, forcing us to resort to cliches like ‘Its a complex and wicked problem’

In the Delhi incident, it is likely that other factors compounded the problem. One is Uncertainty. When we are uncertain of the outcome, we tend to exhibit avoidance / procrastination behaviour. It would be safe to assume that the thought of helping the victims crossed everyone’s mind. But equally likely are conflicting voices. ‘What happens if I help, What will Police ask me to do ? Will I get in to trouble ? Will I be detained, May be I will spend a lot of time around courts because of this. The number of counter-factuals on account of this uncertainty are high. In such situations, avoidance is a natural reaction. To a much much lesser degree, this can be seen when we have to fill a complex form or buy complicated technology or a complex financial instrument.

So, what can we do ? If you are the victim, single out individuals from the group when seeking help. Identify people through their features or the color of the shirt and ask help from a specific person. ‘You with the blue shirt, help me’. Experiments with this approach have shown some positive results.

There are bigger corrections needed both from the authorities and society. In their fascinating book Indianomix, Rupa Subramanya and Vivek Dehejia present a useful analysis on this subject. Save Life Foundation of Piyush Tewari illustrated in their book is a particularly useful model on how reducing uncertainties and improving incentives can improve the situation. Read Rupa Subramanya’s article on this issue here

For starters, Police should communicate and demonstrate with clarity on what happens to people who help. Reduce the uncertainty. Currently the belief is strong that anything thats got to do with the Police is troublesome. If we have to avoid such behaviour in future, Police will have to go on an overdrive in persuading people to help, primarily by reducing this uncertainty.

And how do we make help rewarding. Usually, Charity, Help is rewarding enough. In this case the reward is uncertain, both in terms of possibility and the nature of it. May be we could start by popularizing stories of people who helped and reward them socially and emotionally rather than monetarily. A public recognition, an award for good samaritans, like a name and shame register, a name and reward register.

Notwithstanding all the explanations, be it be from Psychology or Economics or Behavioural Science, this incident hurts us making it difficult to absolve ourselves totally. We will for sometime continue to blame ourselves at times and at times blame it on some phenomenon. Some will see it as ‘India only’ phenomenon, some as a Delhi phenomenon. The fact is there are similar incidents across countries. And all societies react the same way. Invariably there’s a feeling of shame and disbelief. This feeling, all said and done is momentary. What is required to make a lasting change is reducing uncertainty and improving social and emotional rewards for those who help.

Delhi Protests . (Source Reuters/Mansi Thapliyal)

The recent horrific rape and the subsequent protests have led to many emotional outbursts. Anger, Fear, Disappointment, Frustration, Anxiety, Hope..its been a wild ride of emotions. As expected, many have appealed for calm and a need for a ‘Rational’ and ‘Deliberate’ debate. And that we should not let emotions rule our decisions. The underlying belief is that we are rational, intelligent people who will analyze pros and cons and take decisions that can satisfy all stakeholders.

We think emotions lead to bad decisions and that we are capable of wishing them away.  The only problem with this intelligent sounding argument is that it is largely flawed, on various counts.

Evidence from Neuroscience and Behavioural Sciences suggests that our decision making is largely a non-conscious process. And that Emotions play a much bigger role than we think. Scientists say people with damaged emotional circuits in their brains cannot even take simple decisions, decisions like what time to meet and where to meet, leave alone life altering decisions.

Emotions, apparently are particularly useful when making tough decisions. Like choosing a life partner. There is no checklist or a deliberate analysis. We are guided by our emotions.

Moreover, Emotions lead to action where statistics struggle to. Look at the fund raising campaigns of successful charities. They do not present facts but narrate stories of individuals. These stories are personal and emotional. They lead to higher donations.

Emotions enhance learning as they strengthen associated memories. Neuroscientists say that the emotions are so intelligent that they’ve managed to turn mistakes in to educational events and that these capture the wisdom of experience.

And finally, Emotions are things that happen to us rather than those we wish to occur. Not that every emotion moderated decision is a good one, but what choice do we have ? We are wired to rely on emotions lot more than on objective analysis.

Therefore, a rational debate is unlikely to lead to any action because the complex nature of the problem will seem unsolvable. And those taking the final decisions are biased by their own emotions and beliefs. Two people can look at same piece of data and have differing interpretations. So, we cannot have a perfectly objective and rational decision in spite of best of our intentions.

So, I say, lets get emotional and stay emotional. Thats a scientific way to action.

Are people not aware that over-consumption of resources such as underground water could lead to issues in the future? When living in a highly uncertain environment, it is very difficult for most people to think about the long term. As a result we tend to discount our future benefits heavily.

This theme of discounting the future benefits explains our problems when dealing with many Common Pool Resources (CPR) problems. Elinor Ostrom, a Nobel Prize political economist,  defines CPR as a natural or man-made resource from which it is difficult to exclude or limit users once the resource is provided. For example, an irrigation system or a fishing ground that provides resources such as water or fish for future consumption.

A CPR consists of a Resource System like a Fishing ground and a Resource Unit which in this case is the fish. Problem occurs when the rate of appropriation of the resource unit is much higher than its rate of replenishment. As explained by most rational economic theories, individuals voluntary act in order to pursue their own interests without trying to look out for their common or group interests. So, most fisherman will try to maximize their catch of the day and as a result the fishing ground will not be able survive beyond a time period.

But how do we still manage to get our food? While some may argue that “mother earth” is still able to sustain the selfish interests of the humans, we know that there are communities that have been able to maintain their resources systems rather well. In her book, Governing the Commons, Ostrom has given a number of examples of such communities around the world (e.g. Alanya in Turkey). These examples have proven that individuals are capable of thinking long-term. When people start to think beyond their immediate interests, their discount rates that they apply to future benefits tend to change and hence they would value their future much more.

One way to do this is by increasing the vividness of the future. If people can have a better sense of the result of their current actions, then they may act in ways that could lead to a brighter future. Now, we know that the brain always tries to predict what will happen next. In fact “Nexting” is an ingrained propensity of people and it may have developed evolutionarily as a survival mechanism. We applied this principle in a recent project on  preventing vehicle collisions at unmanned level crossings. By using a series of photographs, we showed that the vehicle will be hit if the driver does not stop now and let the train go by.  This solution has been covered by Forbes India in their recent issue. Here is the link

Thus, by aiding the brain’s propensity to predict, we can change the current decisions.  By making the future outcome of the current actions more salient, may be we could nudge people make better decisions.

Image Link: Here

Back on the success of our work to reduce fatalities due to trespassing, North Western Railways approached us with a more wide spread problem. There are more than 13000 unmanned level crossings across the country. Many drivers assume right of way and get in to a collision with the oncoming train. This leads to many kind of losses, most importantly, lives are lost. Additionally, trains get delayed, property losses occur and line utilization drops, leading to operational losses. Accidents at level crossings is not just an India problem, it is a wicked problem across the developed and developing nations. One that is yet to be solved.

While manning them is a long term solution, it is very expensive and time consuming. Our work was to reduce collisions through behavioral science based interventions.  The cost of such interventions should be minimal and they should be scalable and feasible within the organizational constraints. The interventions were tested in different locations and were shown to reduce the speed of the motorists significantly, thereby giving them crucial additional seconds to react. Forbes India featured the project in their latest issue. Read more here