Circumstantial Evidence

You're sitting in a meeting with 10 other executives. You are reviewing a proposal to approve a bold and potentially risky investment. There are consultants and other managers in the room. After some reflection, the Managing Director, a middle-aged strongly-built man rallies the room in a powerful voice: "let's do it!".

A positive, risk-taking character you think? Well, you might need to pay attention to other circumstantial evidence before you rush your judgement.

Firstly, have you just come out of a good meal? A happy belly, says a paper by Shai Danzigerof the Ben-Gurion University, has a significant effect on our inclination to make positive decisions. Danzinger looked at "the sequential parole decisions made by experienced judges, recording the judges’ two daily food breaks". As depicted below (graph from The Economist), the researchers found that the percentage of favorable rulings dropped "gradually from ≈65% to nearly zero within each decision session, returning abruptly to ≈65% after a break" (more here and here).

Secondly, is there a woman of ravishing beauty in the room? Lei Chang, Hui Jing Lu and Tong Li of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Hongli Li of the Hebei University, China delivered quite an insight on the effects female allures have on men. In their study participants (men) were shown photographs of attractive women ("attractive faces or legs of young women") and the researchers then measured their attitudes towards war and their cognitive processes related to war. Those that saw the pictures were significantly more likely to endorse war-supporting statements and significantly faster in responding to images or words of war. The researchers suggest these attitudes could have the same seductive value as antlers and horns (additional commentary here).

So the Managing Director in the example above could have been inclined to make a positive decision on the proposal because he'd just ravaged a very rich buffet. Also he could have tried to impress the pretty dame in the room by taking an aggressive stance in front of her and the group.

Observers will inevitably take these to be personal attributes of the MD (positive, decisive, courageous) rather than environmental influences. But behold, we probably fall in the same traps ourselves - when defining who we are.