Decision Evasion
Decision evasion (buck-passing, procrastination, obfuscation) occurs when decision makers are accountable to conflicting, mutually contemptuous audiences of equal power, especially when institutional norms permit avoidance. Experimental evidence shows that people will avoid decisions even when alternative options are unattractive.
THE IDEA
Decision Evasion
This account predicts that decision makers will resort to one of the trio of decision-evasion tactics – buck-passing, procrastination, and obfuscation – when they are accountable to audiences that not only hold conflicting views but also hold each other in contempt. Evasion is especially likely when each audience denies the legitimacy of the accountability demands of the other, thereby rendering the prospects of either a log rolling or an integratively complex solution hopeless. The audiences should also be approximately equal in power, thereby reducing the attractiveness for decision makers of aligning themselves with one or the other camp. There should also be widely accepted institutional precedents for engaging in decision evasion (that is, no Trumanesque “the-buck-stops-here” norm). Finally, decision makers should have weak personal convictions and be strongly motivated to maintain good relations with both of the affected parties.
Several experimental and field studies provide supportive evidence (Janis & Mann, 1977; Wilson, 1989). Consider the predicament that Tetlock and Boettger (1994) created in a laboratory simulation of Food and Drug Administration decision making on the acceptability of a controversial anti-clotting drug into the U.S. pharmaceuticals market – a drug that would benefit more patients than it would harm, sometimes by a massive margin, but would always harm a substantial number of people. The experimental manipulations included: (1) whether the drug was already on the market (so decision makers would have to take responsibility for removing it) or was not yet on the market (so decision makers would have to take responsibility for introducing it); (2) whether decision makers expected their recommendations to be anonymous or scrutinized by the affected constituencies; and (3) the benefit–cost ratio of the drug which ranged from 3:1 to 9:1 in favor of the drug. Confronted by pressures to take a stand one way or the other that was guaranteed to earn the enmity of an influential constituency, subjects, especially those in the off-the-market/accountability condition, sought options that allowed them to avoid taking any stand. This was true, moreover, even when the buck-passing and procrastination options had been rendered unattractive. Subjects still performed buck-passing when they thought that the agency to which they could refer the decision had no more information than they possessed, and they still procrastinated when there was virtually no prospect that additional useful evidence would materialize in the permissible delayed-action period. These decision-avoidant respondents also had remarkably loss-averse policy preferences even by the standards of prospect theory (requiring that the new drug have a much higher benefit–cost ratio, up to 9:1, to enter the market than the old drug had to have to remain in the market).
When to use it
A political leader facing equally powerful and hostile factions may avoid taking a clear stance on a divisive issue.
A corporate manager stuck between departments with opposing goals might delay a decision to avoid alienating either team.
A regulatory agency, like the FDA, under pressure from both industry and consumer advocates, may pass the decision to a higher authority or postpone it.
A team member in a cross-functional project with no clear norm of accountability may obfuscate their position to avoid conflict.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
FDA Drug Approval Simulation
In a laboratory experiment by Tetlock and Boettger (1994), participants acting as FDA decision makers faced pressure from conflicting constituencies regarding a controversial anti-clotting drug. Even when buck-passing and procrastination were made unattractive, subjects in the off-the-market/accountability condition still chose to avoid taking a stand, requiring a much higher benefit-cost ratio (up to 9:1) to approve the drug than to keep it on the market.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
Recall a time you observed decision evasion in a group or organization. What conflicting audiences and norms contributed?
Think of a personal decision you procrastinated on. Were you avoiding accountability to conflicting parties?
How might an institution redesign its decision-making processes to discourage buck-passing and procrastination?
Often confused with
References
- — Janis & Mann (1977)
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- Heuristics and Biases The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment (Thomas Gilovich, Dale Griffin, Daniel Kahneman)