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Scientific Note (Edit)
The Post in 3 Sentences
3 Reasons Why I Share This With You
How Does WYSIATI Work?
What To Do With the Knowledge of WYSIATI
The Bright Side of WYSIATI
Sometimes Your Intuition Is Misleading You
Other Examples of WYSIATI
Five Key Points to Remember
Related Posts, Books and Discussions
Credit To Whom Credit Is Due
Scientific Note (Edit)
A good friend of mine pointed me to the current Replication Crisis in the domain of behavioral psychology. Some results of this article are based on studies that could not be replicated recently. This is especially true for the concept of indirect priming. Further information can be found here.
The concept of WYSIATI is not yet debunked and is not solely based on the idea of priming. That being said, enjoy the article.
The Post in 3 Sentences
What you see is all there is (WYSIATI).
We tend to be lazy and avoid thinking slow, which is why we jump to conclusions without proactively thinking about given information.
We can overcome this by knowing our laziness and making new experiences which actually extend our internal library of memories from which we can draw ‘what we see’.
3 Reasons Why I Share This With You
1. If you know and understand the concept of WYSIATI, you will understand your process of thinking and decision making better
2. You will be less prone to judge other people after considering WYSIATI
3. You will engage more with your surroundings and think more deeply about what people and especially media tells you
Add-On Reason: You are less prone to belief conspiracies (e.g. simple explanations for rather complex things).
How Does WYSIATI Work?
I will give you two alternatives to experience what WYSIATI is. The first one is a self-experiment. If you do have some time, get involved with that. If you are on a quick read, save the experiment for later and skip to the more immediate example.
A Self-Experiment
Let us do a little experiment. Think about 3 things, that make you genuinely happy. For me this would be spending time with my girlfriend, surfing and spending time in nature. It could also be simple things like a cup of coffee you’re having right now or a plant that you enjoy. Whatever it is for you, give yourself a moment and really visualize yourself in those moments and be grateful for it.
I will ask you a question now, and I want you to answer it as fast as possible. Note your answer on a piece of paper.
On a scale from 1 to 10, how happy are you with your life?
For me it’s an eight.
Now make a break from reading this post and come back later.
I really mean it. Do not read on. Go get a coffee or something and read on after like 20 to 30 minutes. See you then.
Had a nice walk outside? Nice, lets move on.
Imagine now the following; you had a really bad day, you slept in without noticing it, you were running late for work, your boss was screaming at you and you completely forgot a deadline that was due. But that’s not enough. You are coming home and you realize, your keys are not in your pocket where they used to be. You have locked yourself outside of your apartment. Now I want you to think about 3 things that you really hate or situations where you were really miserable. For me this would be the feeling of lacking behind or the feeling of not being good enough for a certain task and times when I am sick as hell. Give yourself a moment to really feel the emotions of those moments and visualize them. Again, I will ask you a question and again you should answer it as quick as possible and write down the answer.
On a scale from 1 to 10, how happy are you with your life?
For me it was between 5 and 6. What was it for you? Did you notice a shift in how you approached the question?
If you did, then you probably have a feeling now for what WYSIATI is. Asking the question about happiness after thinking about good events, I ranged a score of 80% happiness. Setting myself into the state of negativity this dropped to only 60%. I probably felt victim to the concept of WYSIATI.
You base your immediate decisions and actions on what information is available to you. What you see is all there is (WYSIATI).
Quick - Read Example
Did you see the title picture? Here it is again. Look at it. Which line is longer?
Most probably it is the bottom one with the fins attached on the sides, right? Now look at the second picture below.
The lines are actually equally long. So what happened here? Your mind makes you belief that the bottom line is longer than the top one. You did not grab a ruler and make the effort to actually measure it, instead you made your decision on what was readily available to your mind; namely the feeling that the bottom line is longer. Your quick-thinking mind deluded you and convinced you to belief a coherent story based on what you saw. In principle the idea of WYSIATI was at play.
The next time you see this picture though, you actually know, that the lines are of same length. Which means, that your mind can access this memory quickly and give the correct answer based on experience. You will still see the one line bigger than the other, which is a weird example of intuition vs. knowledge. You now know that you should not trust the length of a line if fins are attached to it. So the concept of WYSIATI is this;
You base your immediate decisions and actions on what information is available to you. What you see is all there is (WYSIATI).
The Idea of WYSIATI
Using the idea of WYSIATI we can explain why we changed our perception about our feeling of happiness (see A Self-Experiment). The idea of WYSIATI is, that we base our decisions on the immediate information around us. We do not investigate situations deeply in order to unravel the known unknowns, because we are lazy and try to avoid effort. Hence, we jump from the presented narrative to the easiest conclusion at hand or as the inventor of WYSIATI, Daniel Kahneman, would say
Information that is not retrieved (even unconsciously)
from memory might as well not exist.
Let this sink in. In every moment you will only act based on the information that is readily at hand. This is powerful knowledge!
From WYSIATI so many tools arise of how to manipulate your thoughts, your behavior, your decisions and much more. For instance, the tool I used during the experiment, is called Priming. This activates associations in your mind and guess what; if you have to answer a question or make a decision right after being primed, you will base your action on this association. Unfortunately, Priming is not the only weird thing that influences our decision making. There are also things like Framing, Anchoring, Halo-Effect, Availability Heuristic, Overconfidence Bias, Base Rate Neglect and the list goes on (I will publish articles about those later and link them here).
If you are not aware of the concept of WYSIATI,
you will be even more prone to manipulation
by media, saleswomen*, politics and even yourself.
This is true especially in todays world, were information’s been thrown at you 24/7. That being said, how can you now use this knowledge?
What To Do With the Knowledge of WYSIATI
WYSIATI is nourished by situations where you have just little information and have to decide quickly. Look at the example from Kahneman:
Steve is very shy and withdrawn, invariably helpful but with little interest in people or in the world of reality. A meek and tidy soul, he has a need for order and structure [as well as] a passion for detail.
Is Steve more likely to be a librarian or a farmer?
Avoid WYSIATI By Thinking Slow
You most probably would have envisioned Steve to be a librarian and not a farmer, right? Now go and check how many people in your country actually are librarians and how many are farmers.
In Germany, there are around 50.000 librarians (including people working at museums, so it’s probably even less than this number) but there are 5 to 6 times as much farms. So even if we assume that one farmer is enough to operate one farm, statistically it would be way more likely for Steve to be a farmer.
This shows, that due to WYSIATI we are very much prone to stereotyping as well. But this example also teaches us, how to tackle WYSIATI.
If we want to overcome the pitfalls of WYSIATI,
we need to slow down our thinking
Kahneman divides our thinking into two systems; the active and fast thinking System 1 and the lazy and slow thinking System 2. Every time when we need to make a decision or have to digest information, we try to avoid effort. This is why System 1 is guiding most of our decisions and why this is where the root of WYSIATI sits. So the next time when you feel like WYSIATI is at play and decisions are being rushed or information is to sparse, slow down. Take your time. Ask yourself the following questions
1. Should I base my decision / judgement of the situation on that information only?
2. What do I really need to know in order to come to a conclusion, to answer that question or to evaluate the moment?
Go Out of Your Comfort Zone
System 1 evaluates situations based on your experiences and your immediate memory, right? So another possibility to combat the pitfalls of WYSIATI is to go out of your comfort zone. If you learn new things and gather new experiences, you expand your library from which System 1 can draw immediate actions. So the next time when you are outside, keep an eye out for situations where WYSIATI was at play. Reflect those situations and memorize them. How did you react? Was the reaction justified or just based on WYSIATI? How can you recognize similar situations to not fall for quick conclusions again?
Now that being said, do not take this too seriously and get paranoid that WYSIATI is hunting you down and fooling you all the time. WYSIATI is not all bad.
The Bright Side of WYSIATI
If we would live without the concept of WYSIATI, our daily life would be super stressful. Just imagine you would evaluate every single situation thoroughly based on the workings of System 2; thinking slowly and critically, with a lot of investigation. It would even take me an hour to decide what to eat for breakfast.
Not only would it take a lot of time, but you would also need to focus a lot of energy on every single action. Since we only have a fixed energy budget per day, this would drain us very quickly and you would have to go to bed again before you even had lunch.
Just like a climate model simplifies the complexity of our world,
System 1 reduces the complexity of our life.
Sometimes Your Intuition Is Misleading You
What the concept of WYSIATI hopefully showed you is that we should not always trust our intuition. In many cases, we are just too lazy to think deeply about our actions and just base our judgments on the immediate context. If we fall for this too often, we tend to stereotype, be overconfident, indulge in conspiracy beliefs and much more. Especially when it is about the judgment of other people, think about WYSIATI. Maybe the person is not as bad as you imagined her in the first place. Maybe the context of the situation is way different than you think. Double check your information and always remember to know the unknowns.
Other Examples of WYSIATI
Storytelling and Stereotyping
The train you are commuting in stops at the next station. You see a very muscular guy outside in a black hoodie with black boots and a cap hiding his face partially. He’s entering the train and sits down on the opposite of you. Now you see, that he is carrying a gun. What do you feel?
After he sees your worry, he shows you his police officer batch. Now you still might have a weird feeling (at least my mind goes to crazy places if I sit close to someone armed, even if it is military or police) but you can rational way better and calm yourself down.
What Happened Here?
Look from left to right at the figure below
Notice how you read ‘B’ on the left hand side but ‘13’ on the right hand side even though they are of completely equivalent shape. This is because the immediate context are either letters or numbers. Additionally the middle box primed your System 1 to think about money and numbers.
Five Key Points To Remember
- You base your immediate decisions and actions on what information is available to you. What you see is all there is (WYSIATI).
- Information that is not retrieved (even unconsciously) from memory might as well not exist.
- Institutions, governments, corporations and other people can use the knowledge of WYSIATI to manipulate you.
- If we want to overcome the pitfalls of WYSIATI, we need to slow down our thinking.
- WYSIATI is not all bad. It simplifies the world around us, which leaves us with more available energy to focus on important tasks.
Related Posts, Books & Discussions
Articles in Progress
1. How framing is deluding your perception
2. How I use my energy to be more productive
3. The price of this article is 100$. Trust me, it’s worth it.
Related Books
Thinking Fast And Slow
This book, written by Daniel Kahneman, contains the concept of WYSIATI and way more about behavioral psychology. If you want to know more about it, click on the book to check out my book summary and read it yourself.
Thank You So Much for Staying Curious of All Marvels of the World!
I am so thankful for every single one of you for reading this post. If you have any questions or comments, please share them with me right now. Write me an Email or message me on Instagram. Let me know what you want read more of and make sure to share your best insights and quotes from this article with everyone who could be interested in it. Keep on exploring and remember;
Together we share #allmarvelsoftheworld
Credit to whom credit is due
Here you will find further resources I was using for this article: