Solomon's paradox: our wisdom is relative

He king solomon he is famous for making judgments from the pragmatism and the wisdom. In fact, there is a biblical episode in which it is narrated how the good king managed to find out the truth in a case in which two mothers dispute a child, each of them attributing the maternity of the same. However, the Jewish king proved not to be as adept at managing the Yahweh's law to preserve his kingdom.

Solomon ended up letting his own motivations and his greed for great luxuries degrade the kingdom of Israel, which ended up being divided under the reign of his son. This stage blurred the shape of the kingdom, but it also served to show the negative influence that subjective impulses can have on problems that require the most rational. It is from this dialectic between objectivity and subjectivity that a cognitive bias called Solomon's Paradox.

Let's see what it consists of.

Solomon is not alone in this

It is difficult to ridicule Solomon for his poor judgment. It is also normal for us to have the feeling that we are much better at giving advice than making good decisions whose outcome affects us. It is as if, the moment a problem affects us, we lose any ability to deal with it rationally. This phenomenon has nothing to do with the

karma, and we don't have to look for esoteric explanations either.

It is only an indication that, for our brain, the resolution of problems in which something is at stake follows a logic different from the one we apply to problems that we perceive as foreign... even if this makes us take worse decisions. This recently discovered bias is called Solomon's Paradox, or Paradox of Solomon, referring to the (despite everything) wise Jewish king.

Science investigates Solomon's Paradox

Igor Grossmann and ethan cross, from the University of Waterloo and the University of Michigan respectively, have been in charge of bringing to light the Paradox of Solomon. These researchers have subjected to experimentation the process by which people are more rational when advising other people that when deciding for us what to do in the problems that they happen. For this, a sample of volunteers with a stable partner was used and asked to imagine one of two possible scenarios.

Some people had to imagine that their partner was unfaithful, 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 to what extent the way of thinking of the person consulted was being pragmatic and focused on resolving the conflict in the best possible way. Based on these results, it was possible to verify how the people belonging to the group that had to imagining infidelity on the part of his own partner obtained significantly lower scores than the another 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 one's knowledge of her and value the needs of the other. Similarly, it was confirmed that the participants were better at thinking pragmatically when they were not directly involved in the situation.

Also, 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 for this bias. What happened if the people consulted tried to distance themselves psychologically from the problem? Was it possible to think of one's own infidelity as if it were lived 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 in question time. This conclusion is the one that can interest us the most in our day to day: to make wiser decisions, it is only necessary to put ourselves in the shoes of a relatively neutral "opinionator".

the outside observer

In short, Grossmann and Kross have experimentally shown 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 in the face of social problems that touch us closely.

Like King Solomon, we are capable of making the best judgments from a role characterized by his distancing, but when it is our turn to play our cards it is easy for us to lose that rectitude.