Latticework of Mental Models: Illusion Of Control
Every day, shortly before nine o'clock in the morning, a man with a red hat stands at a busy traffic light and begins to wave his cap frantically. After five minutes he disappears.
One day, a policeman comes up to him and asks: "Sir! May I ask what you are doing?"
"I'm keeping the giraffes away," replies the man.
The puzzled policeman looks around and tells him, "But there aren't any giraffes here."
"Well, I must be doing a good job, then." says the man proudly.
You would conclude that the man with the red hat wasn't in the pink of his mental health. However, is it just a case of misplaced understanding of causation vs correlation? Actually, there is more to it.
The man's belief, that absence of evidence (giraffes) is a proof of his prowess in controlling giraffe traffic, is the result of a behavioural bias called Illusion of Control. It's the tendency to believe that we can influence something over which we have absolutely no sway.
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