Quick...who has more Google hits, Britney Spears or AG Lafley? Who has sold more books, Steven King or David Jeremiah? Who is richer, Bill Gates or Ingvar Kamprad?
Chances are, you answered all three questions correctly (and quickly), but not because you are so knowledgeable about popular culture, literature or global finance. Rather you quickly made the right picks because of your ignorance about these three subjects.
For instance, even though you chose Spears over Lafley, you probably didn't know that Lafley (former CEO of Procter and Gamble) is not far behind the pop diva in Google hits (63,100 vs. 75,200). Similarly, Steven King has penned many bestsellers, but Jeremiah is no slouch either with his latest, The coming economic Armageddon sitting atop the New York Times bestseller list for hardcover advice books. Finally, Ingvar Kamprad, founder of Ikea furniture, doesn't have Gates' $53 billion, but Kamprad's $23 billion net worth isn't chump change either.
According to Psychologists Daniel Goldstein and Gerd Gigerenzer of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, George Orwell's dictum in the book 1984, "Ignorance is strength", has some validity. Goldstein and Gigerenzer would argue that you correctly chose Spears, King and Gates because you had probably never heard of Lafley, Jeremiah or Kamprad, and you applied a simple decision-making rule that said, "the famous person is more likely to be the right choice than one I've never heard of."
In other words, you put your ignorance to work and your ignorance served you well.
Goldstein and Gigerenzer's research into "recognition heuristics" (rules for making choices based on recognizability) suggest that we all have a tendency to turn what is supposed to be a weakness-ignorance--into a strength. For example, when the researchers asked German citizens which American city, was larger, San Diego or San Antonio, 100% of the respondents supplied the correct answer precisely because many of the Germans had never heard of San Antonio. Goldstein and Gigerenzer reached this conclusion because only two thirds of Americans who were asked the same question got the answer right. In other words, the Americans (who did remember the Alamo and its host city) knew too much about American geography, and so were uncertain which well-recognized city was larger.
The rule, "pick the one you recognize" is, according to Gigerenzer, a "fast and frugal" decision making strategy that helps our brains make right choices-most of the time-without consuming a lot of time and energy. For our ancestors such decision making efficiency was a matter of life and death.
If your ancestors had dawdled over recognition decisions such as "is that thing in the forest something I can eat, or something that can eat me?", they would never have actually gotten to be your ancestors because they wouldn't have lived long enough to reproduce. Similarly, when the human brain works hard on solving a difficult problem, its calorie consumption-already 20% of the body's total energy consumption-doubles. Thus, if your ancestors, who constantly faced the threat of starvation, had made a habit of increasing their brain's energy consumption to ponder difficult choices, you wouldn't be hunched over your computer right now reading about the shortcuts that your brain has evolved to keep you alive.
So the dictum for elegant design in fashion, sculpture or architecture--that less is more--is also true for your brain...more or less.
Learn more about ancient neural scripts that drive modern behavior at http://www.longfusebigbang.com.
