Cognitive biases
A Decision-Making Checklist to Counter the Bandwagon Effect
Client makes choices based on what others are doing or what seems culturally expected, and wakes up realizing the choice was not actually theirs.
The bandwagon effect is the tendency to believe or do something because many other people do. Everyone is buying a house, so the client buys one. Everyone says they should go to grad school, so they apply. Everyone has children, so they start trying. This is how lives get built on autopilot.
This checklist forces the client to make a choice based on their own values, not the crowd’s.
A Decision-Making Checklist to Counter the Bandwagon Effect
Before you make a decision, use this checklist:
Does this choice align with my values or someone else’s values?
If everyone else chose differently, would I still want this?
Who am I trying to please with this choice? (Parents. My peer group. Society. My own fear of being different.)
What would it cost me not to do this? (Real cost, not imagined judgment.)
What would happen if I did this and hated it?
Am I choosing this because I want it, or because I am afraid of what people will think if I do not?
Do I have enough information, or am I rushing because it feels like I should already have decided?
Who can I talk to who made this choice and regretted it? Who made the opposite choice and was glad?
If the answer to most of these questions points in a different direction than the crowd, trust that direction. You will have to explain it, defend it, or live with people’s confusion. That is the cost of choosing yourself.
But the cost of not choosing yourself is higher. It is a life that belongs to someone else.
Make your decision. Then, for one week, notice every time someone mentions that you should have done something different. Notice how you feel. Then let it go.
Generated with Rapport7 — rapport7.com