Making decisions with experts

In yesterday's New York Times, economist Noreena Hertz writes about medical decision making, illustrating it with her personal experience. The piece is entitled “Why we make bad decisions” and focuses on the case where a lay person must make a decision about his or her health or finances in consultation with one or more experts. Physicians often make errors, and the more confident ones are more prone to error. Unfortunately the lay person usually defers to the expert.

How does a lay person evaluate expert opinion. or aggregate multiple, conflicting expert opinions? The author suggests that first, you have to educate yourself. Go into a conversation with the expert as knowledgeable as you can, with as much literacy in the jargon of the field as you can pick up. Be aware of your state of mind and your lack of objectivity. There are known biases and heuristics that might lead to irrational decisions; be aware of them and of your vulnerability to them. Her example is the optimistic bias many of us seem to have, well documented in studies of human behavior. We have a tendency to latch on to good news and tune out bad news.

I would add that often the expert is responding to a set of incentives that differ from yours. Thus, you need to be your own best advocate; do not rely on the expert to have your best interests at heart.

Over the years I've dipped into the literature on “judgment and decision making,” which is what this area of research is called in psychology, or “behavioral economics,” which is what economists call it. I hope to learn more about the field in the future.