In the week when the UK Government failed to secure the
agreement
of Parliament to take military action against the use of chemical
weapons in
Syria, I read about an interesting phenomenon which might help
explain this failure,
and which should worry President Obama who remarkably has gone for
the same
high-risk strategy, in his case asking Congress before taking
military action.
The phenomenon is called ‘Omission Bias’, and was quoted
by
Daniel Finklestein in an op-ed piece he wrote for the London Times
on August 28th.
He illustrated it with the following example: imagine there is an
epidemic of a
children’s disease. The disease causes fatalities - 10 children
die out of each
10,000 who catch it. Then someone comes up with a vaccine against
this disease.
But the vaccine has a known side effect which leads to the death
of 5 children
of each 10,000 who are vaccinated. Would
you vaccinate your child?
Omission Bias suggests that many people will refuse to
vaccinate their child, because they feel that not doing something
(even though
they are guaranteeing that there will be a tragedy as a result) is
better than
doing something and feeling that they have actively participated
in a tragedy,
albeit on a smaller scale.
So, amongst the abundance of explanations politicians gave
as their reason for not wanting the UK to get militarily involved
in Syria, it is
probable that Omission Bias played its part. Not doing
anything might produce a disaster
scenario, they said, but at least our hands are clean, whereas if
we
participate and then there is a disaster, we might be perceived,
or perceive
ourselves, as culpable.
In fact, Omission Bias is a subset of an ethical dilemma
called the Trolley Problem. In this scenario there is a trolley on
a railway line
hurtling towards 5 people who are tied to the tracks. If the
trolley gets to
them, they will die. But you are standing next to a lever which,
if you pull
it, will divert the trolley onto another track. Unfortunately,
there is one
person tied to that track, who will die if you divert the train.
Do you pull
the lever?
Again the issue is perceived culpability. Inaction leads
to
5 deaths, but they are not of your making – they were predestined.
Your action pulling
the lever leads to only one death, but you were involved. Will you
be able to
live with the guilt?
Many negotiators suffer from Omission Bias. It might
happen
at the end of a tough negotiation, where every concession has been
fought over,
and every move made reluctantly. But eventually the parties close
the gaps
between them, and an agreement is made. Then one of the parties
recognises that
their back office people have made a terrible mistake in their
calculations,
the result of which is that their margin is decimated. The obvious
thing to do?
Admit the mistake, and restart the negotiation. But they
don’t! They walk away with the
rubbish deal, very miserable. Why their
reticence to speak up? Probably at least in part it is Omission
Bias. Taking
action and reopening the negotiation might produce a disaster –
the whole deal could
fall apart. So they keep quiet and live with what is probably a
much bigger
disaster – a profitless deal - but one
that was not their fault. Crazy!
Maybe this is where the expression ‘off your trolley’
originates. (Non-UK readers might like to look
here).