Being cognizant of the mental paths that constrain us is crucial if our individual thinking is to be rigorous
In workplace groups, cognitive diversity usually trumps IQ; but not unconditionally. Research by complexity scientist Scott Page demonstrates that a team of diverse thinkers tackling a problem will outperform the smartest individual in a group. The cognitive biases and limitations of even the smartest individual are usually no match for a group of minds correcting and building on one another. But this impressive benefit of team thinking is completely lost if its members are unwilling to challenge each other.
The reluctance to express opposing views troubled psychologist Irving Janis 40 years ago. Janis coined the term ‘groupthink’ to describe the tendency for teams to move towards unanimous conclusions because of individual desires to conform. Groupthink is just one form of a broader obstacle to high-quality discussion: the pervasive and dominating phenomenon of path dependence.
Path dependence is the tendency for things—such as events, belief systems and personalities—to unfold in ways that are partially constrained by the parameters of their path, and it influences all aspects of our personal and collective lives. Simply put, the past determines the approximate boundaries of the path that the future takes.
The paradigmatic example of path dependence is the QWERTY typing keyboard. Designed in the late 19th century, it placed the letters used in common combinations, such as ‘el’ and ‘at’ far enough apart that the typewriter keys would not jam when the keys were hit in rapid succession. This keyboard layout remains the standard today, notwithstanding how difficult it is to learn and how inefficient it is compared to alternative key arrangements. The first typewriters established typing habits that became so ingrained they have been too difficult to overturn; they set a path we have not deviated from since.
The history of thought itself is path dependent, with each thinker reacting to or building upon the ideas of his predecessors. This is a clear trend in the history of Philosophy, from Plato’s influence on Aristotle to Hume’s influence on Kant, and it is equally apparent in religious evolution, from Hinduism’s influence on Buddhism to Judaism’s influence on Christianity and Christianity’s influence on Islam. Science is extremely path-dependent, because most research and discovery is related to previously undertaken observation and experimentation.
Our personal beliefs are also highly path-dependent: children brought up in atheist households don’t typically become religious fundamentalists; our perspective of romance is deeply influenced by our early romantic experiences and our parental interactions; and we are born into particular cultural milieus that direct our prejudices, preferences and perspectives onto paths we tend to stay on.
In short, much of what we choose to do is highly dependent upon our prior choices and experiences. Our careers have unpredictable turns and twists, but there is a great deal of path dependence in how they unfold: police officers rarely switch paths to become, say, Philosophy professors, and physicists rarely change course to become advertising executives. While the specificity of particular paths is not predictable at the outset, their influence on future events is clear in hindsight: paths direct the systems that they shape.
Path dependence reflects both random and non-random elements. A young boy witnesses the burglary of his grandfather’s store and later decides to become a police officer, eventually working his way up to chief of police. The random starting point of the burglary set the man on a path that was not pre-determined; his path would have been different if he had not witnessed the crime. What we typically think of as randomness cancels out over time (as in the ratio of heads to tails, which approaches 50 per cent after numerous coin flips). But this kind of linear randomness does not accurately describe the kind of pattern that arises from self-reinforcing behaviour (the rich get richer, the famous become more famous.) In these non-linear cases, events are fueled by positive feedback loops that reinforce rather than cancel out. These feedback loops amplify the influence of the starting point, and path dependence characterizes this reinforcing behaviour.
Path dependence is not necessarily a bad thing: it’s just a fact of life, an example of how things work when a random event evolves in a way that is not purely random. But path dependence can be problematic when it surreptitiously limits the options available to us, including, and especially, how we think.
If we are aware of the paths that we gravitate to, we are less captive to them. Being cognizant of the mental paths that constrain us is crucial if our individual thinking is to be rigorous, and it is no less important for productive group discussions. Path-dependent thinking in the individual realm can be even more problematic in the collective: path dependence permeates every conversation, including board meetings, executive team meetings, strategic off-sites, jury deliberations, political agendas, etc.
Without independent thinking, everyone can easily gravitate to the same error. The stock market is a good example: markets tend to reflect the collective wisdom of all participants, but stocks can overshoot on the upside (unwarranted optimism) and on the downside (excessive pessimism). Price bubbles and depressions are the result of investors being influenced by each other, generating reinforcing feedback that extends euphoric or depressive sentiment, until the loops are finally broken and the market reverses direction, gravitating back to intrinsic values. Unlike stock markets, team discussions usually terminate in conclusions, so a lack of independence has no opportunity to self-correct. The termination points can be just as extreme, though, as stock market bubbles.
[This article has been reprinted, with permission, from Rotman Management, the magazine of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management]