Dan Erwin

Arthur Caplan on Health Reform

--Health reform is in the ethics. It will only occur if those who favor it can win the fight to recognize a right to health care. If health care is recognized as a right, then the details of how to achieve affordable health insurance reform will follow. If it is not, then efforts to move reform forward will simply die under the weight of nitpicking, fear-mongering, sloganeering, and the invocation of details as obstructions to change.

--Arthur L. Caplan,  Professor of Bioethics and director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania

Caplan is a distinguished bioethicist, exceptionally readable and one of the most insightful in the entire field.  His post on health care reform will be found here.  He is one of those persons who is fully human and a sheer delight to engage.  A frequent guest and commentator on media outlets, he is among the most prolific writers and often cited scientist in the world.  And, there's not a stuffy bone in his body.

Quotation of the Week: Timothy Geithner

The simple proposition should be that you don't want people being paid for taking too much risk, and you want to make sure that their compensation is tied to long-term performance.

- TIMOTHY F. GEITHNER, the Treasury secretary

Geithner's comment arose as a result of the Federal Reserve's plans for putting new rules in place to curb excessive risk taking of bank employees and officers.  Such rules would apply to those who might be able to take risks that would imperil an institution.

Can You Trust Reason?

Dan and Chip Heath report on a fascinating series of experiments conducted by Chen-Bo Zhong of the University of Toronto in the July/August Fast Company.  Zhong, an org behavior prof at the Rotman Business School, realizing the emphasis of business culture on reason and rationality, wanted to know whether it could be trusted, or whether, instead, unethical behavior is actually spurred on by reason.

FYI:  Business, well under control of Greek thinking and quite certain of the superiority of reason over emotion, of logic over pathos, teaches us that reason is the ultimate good.  When making decisions, you're told, set your feelings aside.  Those of us in rhetoric know that's nonsense, but still, it's conventional wisdom.  Rhetoricians--and even psychologists, today--understand that you can't usually separate the two, but contemporary decision processes attempt to wean people from feelings, and with some success. 

As the Heaths describe the study, the test subjects were put into interactions with anonymous partners and told to either lie or treat their partners fairly.  Lying meant gain, but at the expense of the partners.

Before making the decision to cheat or be fair, the test subjects were given some guidance.  Some were encouraged to think rationally about the situation and ignore their emotions.  Equipped with this advice, the great majority (69%) analyzed the situation and concluded that they should screw their partners.  Others were primed to "make decisions based on gut feelings."  Their guts were pretty trustworthy: only 27% lied. 

However, even though the research showed that you'd be more fairly treated by people who trust their feelings, there's reason to be suspicious.  When asked to choose between interacting with a rational decision maker or a "gut-trusting" one, 75% took the rational partner. 

Zhong concluded that "deliberative processes can license morally questionable behaviors by focusing on tangible monetary outcomes and reducing emotional influence." 

The Heaths show that the recent financial debacle was often a case of traders being set up to lie.  Here's the reasoning from a Morgan Stanley trader:  Something about that (no income, no asset mortgages) feels very wrong.  It felt wrong way back then, and I wish we had never done it.  Unfortunately, what happened. . . we did it because everyone else was doing it.   

Ignore your feelings, and rationalizing ethical lapses can become standard operating procedure:  I did it because he did it. 

That's not the only study illuminating the compulsion to cover your ass with reasoning.  In their books, Russo and Schoemaker of decision-making fame, show that our penchant for rationalizing conspires against learning.  Our personal defense systems including the need to feel competent, consistent and in control, can set boundaries around our capacity to learn from failure.  As they say, experience is inevitable; learning is not.  Our ability to rationalize in order to look good is often the culprit.

Russo and Schoemaker emphasize the need to define success with clear criteria and milestones before we act on our decisions, otherwise we'll be tempted to fudge and rationalize our failures to look good.

Can you trust reason?  It all depends.

When it comes to ethics, probably not.  Go with gut-feel.  A long history of internalizing right and wrong can serve you well.  If you don't have gut-feel, you're probably a socio-path and don't belong in business anyway.

When it comes to learning, most of us have a genius for underestimating our responsibility for failure.  You can't trust reason there, either.  Unambiguously define success before you execute, then measure it.

Neither approach is perfect, but they'll both significantly raise your batting average.

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