Imposing Mount Tantalus, standing between the Jensens and their next destination. Photo by John Flamank.
When I tell people that I work in behavioural insights (BI) or behavioural science with the B.C. Government, they usually say, “That sounds interesting…what is that?” I often like to begin by sharing an example or two of how BI is used all around us. My favourite example is the radar speed reader signs at the side of the road. These signs provide you with your speed, often along with a speed limit sign, and the newer versions of these signs will usually provide a dynamic response based on your speed. If you are speeding, you might see a red frowning face and/or “slow down” in all capitals; in contrast, if you’re at or below the limit, you might get a green smiling face.
Image from Trans Canada Traffic
Nina Mažar and Dilip Soman are spot on with the title of their new book, Behavioral Science in the Wild, as behavioural insights or BI literally exists all around us in our everyday lives. Lessons from BI also alert us to our vulnerabilities to biases, such as the planning fallacy, the tendency to underestimate the amount of time needed to complete a future task, due in part to the reliance on overly optimistic imagined scenarios. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky proposed this cognitive bias back in 1979, but I myself had a run-in with the planning fallacy quite recently!
It was time for our annual summer vacation, and my wife and I were excited about getting off Vancouver Island for the first time in over two years due to the pandemic! We mapped out a route that would take us to several BC Parks campgrounds with four driving days interspersed between our stays at the campgrounds. Looking at a map of B.C., the route seemed straightforward with easy trips from Victoria to Powell River; Powell River to Kamloops; Kamloops to Princeton; Princeton back to Victoria. We were confident that the distances between each destination were easily achievable within a day.
Photo by Carl Jensen
Two days prior to our departure from Powell River, I decided to look at the route we would be taking heading east towards Kamloops. It was at this point that I made a couple of worrisome discoveries. First, distances that appear small within the context of the whole province are quite large when you zoom in. Second, and even more concerning: there is no road from Powell River to Kamloops! Although it looks like they are in a straight line, it turns out that some large bodies of water and mountain ranges are in the way.
“What do you mean there’s no road?”, my wife, Dana, asked. I meekly replied, “It would appear that we need to head south down to Horseshoe Bay, where we then have the option of heading northeast through Whistler to Kamloops or southeast through the lower mainland and then north to Kamloops.” I then had to add, “It would appear that we also need to take not one, but TWO ferries on our route to Horseshoe Bay.”
It was then that the planning fallacy set in, when Dana asked me, “So, if we need to go down to Horseshoe Bay first and then over to Kamloops, how long is that supposed to take?” I estimated that the first leg of our journey to Horseshoe Bay would take five hours, including the two ferries, and then the drive to Kamloops would take another four hours. Oops, that wasn’t exactly the “leisurely” day of travel we had planned after packing up our campsite!
Luckily, I made this discovery about our newly-lengthened journey with enough time to adjust our plans. Rather than a marathon nine-hour travel day from Powell River to Kamloops, we decided to leave Powell River a day early and break the journey into two shorter, more manageable days with a night in beautiful Whistler.
Photo by Carl Jensen
Unfortunately, the planning fallacy wasn’t done with the Jensens just yet. My estimate of five hours from Powell River to Whistler turned out to be a tad conservative. The journey clocked in at an epic 11 hours and we didn’t roll into Whistler until 8pm! Fortunately, from there on out, the trip unfolded more or less according to plan. Still, it’s safe to say we’ll never look at a map of B.C. the same way again!
How might we learn from this experience to ensure that, the next time we plan a road trip, we don’t experience similar “speed bumps”? Research conducted by Wiese, Buehler, and Griffin (2016) confirmed a hypothesis that backward planning (as opposed to forward planning) helps to identify “situational factors that delay progress”. Thinking of a few ways a task or activity might take longer than planned results in a more accurate and comprehensive list of what is required. Next year, when the Jensens are planning our annual road trip, we will incorporate backwards planning in an effort to determine how long it will actually take us to get between destinations. You might consider doing the same!
Blog post author Carl Jensen, happy after having overcome the planning fallacy. Photo by Dana Jensen.
Learn more about planning fallacy:
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Intuitive prediction: Biases and corrective procedures. TIMS Studies in Management Science, 12, 313-327.
Wiese, J., Buehler, R., & Griffin, D. (2016). Backward planning: Effects of planning direction on predictions of task completion time. Judgment and Decision Making, 11(2), 147-167.