King Solomon is famous for issuing judgments from the pragmatism and the wisdom In fact, there is a biblical episode that tells how the good king managed to learn the truth in a case in which two mothers disputed over a child, each of them taking responsibility for the child’s motherhood. However, the Jewish king proved to be less than adept at administering Yahweh’s Law to preserve his kingdom.
Solomon ended up letting his own motivations and his desire for great luxuries degrade the kingdom of Israel, which ended up dividing under the reign of his son. This stage blurred the shape of the kingdom, but also served to show the negative influence that subjective impulses can have on problems that require the most rational analysis. It is from this dialectic between objectivity and subjectivity that a cognitive bias called Solomon’s Paradox
It is difficult to ridicule Solomon for his lack of judgment It is also normal for us to have the feeling that we are much better at giving advice than at making good decisions whose results affect us. It is as if, the moment a problem begins to affect us, we lose any ability to deal with it rationally. This phenomenon has nothing to do with karmaand we don’t have to look for esoteric explanations either.
It is just an indication that, for our brain, the resolution of problems in which something is at stake follows a different logic than the one we apply to problems that we perceive as unrelated… even if this makes us make worse decisions. This recently discovered bias is called Solomon’s Paradoxor Solomon’s Paradox, in reference to the (despite everything) wise Jewish king.
Science investigates Solomon’s Paradox
Igor Grossman and Ethan Kross, from the University of Waterloo and the University of Michigan respectively, have been responsible for bringing Solomon’s Paradox to light. These researchers have experimented with the process by which people are more rational when it comes to advising other people than when deciding for ourselves what to do about the problems that occur to us. To do this, a series of volunteers with a stable partner was used and they were asked to imagine one of two possible scenarios.
Some people had to imagine that their partner was unfaithful to them, while in the case of the other group the person who was unfaithful was their best friend’s partner. Then, both groups had to reflect on that situation and answer a series of questions related to the situation of the couple affected by the case of infidelity.
It is easier to think rationally about what does not concern us
These questions were designed to measure the extent to which the respondent’s way of thinking was pragmatic and focused on resolving the conflict in the best possible way. From these results it was possible to see how people belonging to the group that had to imagine infidelity on the part of their own partner obtained significantly lower scores than the other group. In short, these people were less able to predict possible outcomes, take into account the point of view of the unfaithful person, recognize the limits of their own knowledge and value the needs of the other. Likewise, it was confirmed that participants were better at thinking pragmatically when they were not directly involved in the situation.
Furthermore, Solomon’s Paradox was present to the same extent in both young adults (from 20 to 40 years) as in older adults (from 60 to 80 years), which means that it is a very persistent bias and that it is not corrected with age.
However, Grossmann and Kross thought of a way to correct this bias. What would happen if the people consulted tried to psychologically distance themselves from the problem? Was it possible to think of one’s own infidelity as if it were experienced by a third person? The truth is that yes, at least in an experimental context. People who imagined their partner’s infidelity from another person’s perspective were able to provide better answers during question time. This conclusion is the one that may interest us the most in our daily lives: To make wiser decisions, it is only necessary to put ourselves in the shoes of a relatively neutral “opinionator”
The external observer
In short, Grossmann and Kross have experimentally demonstrated that our beliefs about the importance of the “neutral observer” are based on something that exists: a predisposition to act in a less rational way when faced with social problems that affect us closely
Like King Solomon, we are capable of making the best judgments from a role characterized by aloofness, but when it is our turn to play our cards it is easy for us to lose that righteousness.
