Over-confidence in one's own thinking

[Laura]

_http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130610113012.htm

People are overly confident in their own knowledge, despite errors

sciencedaily.com
Mon, 10 Jun 2013 11:44 CDT



Overprecision -- excessive confidence in the accuracy of our beliefs -- can have profound consequences, inflating investors' valuation of their investments, leading physicians to gravitate too quickly to a diagnosis, even making people intolerant of dissenting views. Now, new research confirms that overprecision is a common and robust form of overconfidence driven, at least in part, by excessive certainty in the accuracy of our judgments.

The research, conducted by researchers Albert Mannes of The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Don Moore of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, revealed that the more confident participants were about their estimates of an uncertain quantity, the less they adjusted their estimates in response to feedback about their accuracy and to the costs of being wrong.

"The findings suggest that people are too confident in what they know and underestimate what they don't know," says Mannes.

The new findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Research investigating overprecision typically involves asking people to come up with a 90% confidence interval around a numerical estimate -- such as the length of the Nile River -- but this doesn't always faithfully reflect the judgments we have to make in everyday life. We know, for example, that arriving 15 minutes late for a business meeting is not the same as arriving 15 minutes early, and that we ought to err on the side of arriving early.

Mannes and Moore designed three studies to account for the asymmetric nature of many everyday judgments. Participants estimated the local high temperature on randomly selected days and their accuracy was rewarded in the form of lottery tickets toward a prize. For some trials, they earned tickets if their estimates were correct or close to the actual temperature (above or below); in other trials, they earned tickets for correct guesses or overestimates; and in some trials they earned tickets for correct guesses or underestimates.

The results showed that participants adjusted their estimates in the direction of the anticipated payoff after receiving feedback about their accuracy, just as Mannes and Moore expected.

But they didn't adjust their estimates as much as they should have given their actual knowledge of local temperatures, suggesting that they were overly confident in their own powers of estimation.

Only when the researchers provided exaggerated feedback -- in which errors were inflated by 2.5 times -- were the researchers able to counteract participants' tendency towards overprecision.

The new findings, which show that overprecision is a common and robust phenomenon, urge caution:

"People frequently cut things too close -- arriving late, missing planes, bouncing checks, or falling off one of the many 'cliffs' that present themselves in daily life," observe Mannes and Moore.

"These studies tell us that you shouldn't be too certain about what's going to happen, especially when being wrong could be dangerous. You should plan to protect yourself in case you aren't as right as you think you are."

 

[sacriface]

Thus, calling things by their name, it is the good aul wishful thinking.

I just became an example of this today.

Yesterday evening I decided I want to sleep outside, in the forest at the beautiful finnish coast. I was waiting for the weather to be right but I didn't seem to get any better (I had no tent). I was getting a bit impatient about it as felt I need it. So finally, upon looking up the forecast, it suggested 40% chance for rain today and yesterday was lovely. So I moved out in the evening, didn't take any water resistant clothes or anything. "40% is less than a half, and (the wishful way here) I guess there is even less chance for it before I leave in the morning"

I ended up waking up at 8 am in a dense pourdown that got me soaked before i even managed to roll up my sleeping bag. More than that, it lasted 20 minutes and it hasn't rained again yet.
Oh, the universe. At least I had a great EE the night before, and I guess it contributed to being amused at the situation I woke up to rather than being disgruntled.

 

[griffin]

The philosopher Satchel Page once said, "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble, it's what you know that just ain't so."

 

[Laura]

The philosopher Satchel Page once said, "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble, it's what you know that just ain't so."

A Stoic, no doubt.

 

[Zadius Sky]

Very interesting, as I'm guilty of such bias myself - alot.

This reminds me of "The Illusion of Validity" chapter (20) in Thinking, Fast and Slow, where Kahneman called this one as "Fast Thinking" and how it's not prone to doubt.

System 1 is designed to jump to conclusions from little evidence - and it is not designed to know the size of its jumps. Because of WYSIATI, only the evidence at hand counts. Because of confidence by coherence, the subjective confidence we have in our opinions reflects the coherence of the story that System 1 and System 2 have constructed. The amount of evidence and its quality do not count for much, because poor evidence can make a very good story. For some of our most important beliefs we have no evidence at all, except that people we love and trust hold these beliefs. Considering how little we know, the confidence we have in our beliefs is preposterous - and it is also essential.

THE ILLUSION OF VALIDITY

Many decades ago I spent what seemed like a great deal of time under a scorching sun, watching groups of sweaty soldiers as they solved a problem. I was doing my national service in the Israeli Army at the time. I had completed an undergraduate degree in psychology, and after a year as an infantry officer, I was assigned to the army's Psychology Branch, where one of my occasional duties was to help evaluate candidates for officer training. We used methods that were developed by the British Army in World War II.

One test, called the "leaderless group challenge," was conducted on an obstacle field. Eight candidates, strangers to each other, with all insignia of rank removed and only numbered tags to identify them, were instructed to lift a long log from the ground and haul it to a wall about six feet high. There, they were told that the entire group had to get to the other side of the wall without the log touching either the ground or the wall, and without anyone touching the wall. If any of these things happened, they were to declare it and start again.

There was more than one way to solve the problem. A common solution was for the team to send several men to the other side by crawling over the pole as it was held at an angle, like a giant fishing rod, by other members of the group. Or else some soldiers would climb onto someone's shoulders and jump across. The last man would then have to jump up at the pole, held up at an angle by the rest of the group, shinny his way along its length as others kept him and the pole suspended in the air, and leap safely to the other side. Failure was common at this point, which required them to start all over again.

As a colleague and I monitored the exercise, we made note of who took charge, who tried to lead but was rebuffed, how much each soldier contributed to the group effort. We saw who seemed to be stubborn, submissive, arrogant, patient, hot-tempered, persistent or a quitter. We sometimes saw competitive spite when someone whose idea had been rejected by the group no longer worked very hard. And we saw reactions to crisis: who berated a comrade whose mistake caused the whole group to fail, who stepped forward to lead when the exhausted team had to start over. Under the stress of the event, we felt, each man’s true nature revealed itself in sharp relief. Our impression of each candidate's character was as direct and compelling as the color of the sky.

After watching the candidates make several attempts, we had to summarize our impressions of the soldiers’ leadership abilities with a grade and determine who would be eligible for officer training. We spent some time discussing each case and reviewing our impressions. The task was not difficult, because we had already seen each of these soldiers' leadership skills. Some of the men looked like strong leaders, others seemed like wimps or arrogant fools, others mediocre but not hopeless. Quite a few appeared to be so weak that we ruled them out as officer candidates. When our multiple observations of each candidate converged on a coherent picture, we were completely confident in our evaluations and believed that what we saw pointed directly to the future. The soldier who took over when the group was in trouble and led the team over the wall was a leader at that moment. The obvious best guess about how he would do in training, or in combat, was that he would be as effective as he had been at the wall. Any other prediction seemed inconsistent with the evidence before our eyes.

Because our impressions of how well each soldier performed were generally coherent and clear, our formal predictions were just as definite. We rarely experienced doubt or conflicting impressions. We were quite willing to declare: "This one will never make it," "That fellow is rather mediocre, but should do O.K." or "He will be a star." We felt no need to question our forecasts, moderate them or equivocate. If challenged, however, we were fully prepared to admit, "But of course anything could happen." We were willing to make that admission because, as it turned out, despite our certainty about the potential of individual candidates, our forecasts were largely useless.

The evidence that we could not forecast success accurately was overwhelming. Every few months we had a feedback session in which we could compare our evaluations of future cadets with the judgments of their commanders at the officer-training school. The story was always the same: our ability to predict performance at the school was negligible. Our forecasts were better than blind guesses, but not by much.

We were downcast for a while after receiving the discouraging news. But this was the army. Useful or not, there was a routine to be followed, and there were orders to be obeyed. Another batch of candidates would arrive the next day. We took them to the obstacle field, we faced them with the wall, they lifted the log and within a few minutes we saw their true natures revealed, as clearly as ever. The dismal truth about the quality of our predictions had no effect whatsoever on how we evaluated new candidates and very little effect on the confidence we felt in our judgments and predictions about individuals.

What happened was remarkable. The global evidence of our previous failure should have shaken our confidence in our judgments of particular candidates, but it did not. It should also have caused us to moderate our predictions, but it did not. We knew as a general fact that our predictions were little better than random guesses, but we continued to feel and act as if each particular prediction was valid. I was reminded of the Müller-Lyer illusion, in which we know the lines are of equal length yet still see them as being different. I was so struck by the analogy that I coined a term for our experience: the illusion of validity.

I had discovered my first cognitive illusion.

 

[obyvatel]

An older publication from Sloan Management review on this topic
pdf link

The authors of this paper state that along with domain knowledge (which experts are supposed to possess) one needs meta-knowledge which is an "appreciation of what we do know and what we do not know". Without meta-knowledge, overconfidence is far more likely. To develop better meta-knowledge, the authors propose two elements - feedback and accountability. The type of feedback which is useful for meta-knowledge development is referred to as performance feedback which helps calibrate one's judgement. When coupled with accountability where people are held responsible for their predictions, timely performance feedback has shown to improve judgement and lower problems associated with overconfidence in certain areas. Playing devil's advocate or providing counter-arguments also helps in reducing overconfidence by bringing other possibilities into awareness.

Some cognitive reasons for overconfidence are the availability bias , anchoring bias , confirmation bias , hindsight bias . Group collaboration, while usually useful to reduce overconfidence, can produce detrimental results if the response bias or in-group favoritism shows up at the cost of objectivity.

A physiological state of euphoria or enhanced positive affect has also shown to increase overconfidence.

The role of increased information about the subject on which judgments are being made - called environmental feedback by some researchers - is also interesting. While performance feedback helps with calibrating one's judgment and lowers overconfidence, environmental feedback helps with developing greater discrimination. I think in Kahneman's model, environmental feedback would be the factor used to decide how much the extra data warrants a deviation from the established "base rate" of a prediction. As shown in "Thinking: Fast and Slow", we often tend to overestimate the value and applicability of this extra information and tend to stray further from the average or base rate than the information actually warrants. One example in the context of the forum could be those occasions where we show a tendency to label people as psychopathic more than what the accepted base rates (6% for essential psychopathy) would warrant. More information, if it is not properly integrated and evaluated can lead to worse decision making and overconfidence.


Some researchers think that overconfidence is driven by the desire to obtain higher social status - and possibly power.
(http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120813130712.htm)

Why Are People Overconfident So Often? It's All About Social Status

Aug. 13, 2012 — Researchers have long known that people are very frequently overconfident -- that they tend to believe they are more physically talented, socially adept, and skilled at their job than they actually are. For example, 94% of college professors think they do above average work (which is nearly impossible, statistically speaking). But this overconfidence can also have detrimental effects on their performance and decision-making. So why, in light of these negative consequences, is overconfidence still so pervasive?

The lure of social status promotes overconfidence, explains Haas School Associate Professor Cameron Anderson. He co-authored a new study, "A Status-Enhancement Account of Overconfidence," with Sebastien Brion, assistant professor of managing people in organizations, IESE Business School, University of Navarra, Haas School colleagues Don Moore, associate professor of management, and Jessica A. Kennedy, now a post-doctoral fellow at the Wharton School of Business. The study will be published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (forthcoming).

"Our studies found that overconfidence helped people attain social status. People who believed they were better than others, even when they weren't, were given a higher place in the social ladder. And the motive to attain higher social status thus spurred overconfidence," says Anderson, the Lorraine Tyson Mitchell Chair in Leadership and Communication II at the Haas School.

Social status is the respect, prominence, and influence individuals enjoy in the eyes of others. Within work groups, for example, higher status individuals tend to be more admired, listened to, and have more sway over the group's discussions and decisions. These "alphas" of the group have more clout and prestige than other members. Anderson says these research findings are important because they help shed light on a longstanding puzzle: why overconfidence is so common, in spite of its risks. His findings suggest that falsely believing one is better than others has profound social benefits for the individual.

Moreover, these findings suggest one reason why in organizational settings, incompetent people are so often promoted over their more competent peers. "In organizations, people are very easily swayed by others' confidence even when that confidence is unjustified," says Anderson. "Displays of confidence are given an inordinate amount of weight."

The studies suggest that organizations would benefit from taking individuals' confidence with a grain of salt. Yes, confidence can be a sign of a person's actual abilities, but it is often not a very good sign. Many individuals are confident in their abilities even though they lack true skills or competence.

The authors conducted six experiments to measure why people become overconfident and how overconfidence equates to a rise in social stature. For example:

In Study 2, the researchers examined 242 MBA students in their project teams and asked them to look over a list of historical names, historical events, and books and poems, and then to identify which ones they knew or recognized. Terms included Maximilien Robespierre, Lusitania, Wounded Knee, Pygmalion, and Doctor Faustus. Unbeknownst to the participants, some of the names were made up. These so-called "foils" included Bonnie Prince Lorenzo, Queen Shaddock, Galileo Lovano, Murphy's Last Ride, and Windemere Wild. The researchers deemed those who picked the most foils the most overly confident because they believed they were more knowledgeable than they actually were. In a survey at the end of the semester, those same overly confident individuals (who said they had recognized the most foils) achieved the highest social status within their groups.

It is important to note that group members did not think of their high status peers as overconfident, but simply that they were terrific. "This overconfidence did not come across as narcissistic," explains Anderson. "The most overconfident people were considered the most beloved."

Study 4 sought to discover the types of behaviors that make overconfident people appear to be so wonderful (even when they were not). Behaviors such as body language, vocal tone, rates of participation were captured on video as groups worked together in a laboratory setting. These videos revealed that overconfident individuals spoke more often, spoke with a confident vocal tone, provided more information and answers, and acted calmly and relaxed as they worked with their peers. In fact, overconfident individuals were more convincing in their displays of ability than individuals who were actually highly competent.

"These big participators were not obnoxious, they didn't say, 'I'm really good at this.' Instead, their behavior was much more subtle. They simply participated more and exhibited more comfort with the task -- even though they were no more competent than anyone else," says Anderson.

Two final studies found that it is the "desire" for status that encourages people to be more overconfident. For example, in Study 6, participants read one of two stories and were asked to imagine themselves as the protagonist in the story. The first story was a simple, bland narrative of losing then finding one's keys. The second story asked the reader to imagine him/herself getting a new job with a prestigious company. The job had many opportunities to obtain higher status, including a promotion, a bonus, and a fast track to the top. Those participants who read the new job scenario rated their desire for status much higher than those who read the story of the lost keys.

After they were finished reading, participants were asked to rate themselves on a number of competencies such as critical thinking skills, intelligence, and the ability to work in teams. Those who had read the new job story (which stimulated their desire for status) rated their skills and talent much higher than did the first group. Their desire for status amplified their overconfidence.

De-emphasizing the natural tendency toward overconfidence may prove difficult but Prof. Anderson hopes this research will give people the incentive to look for more objective indices of ability and merit in others, instead of overvaluing unsubstantiated confidence.

This social status aspect is interesting to consider in light of some cross-cultural studies conducted on overconfidence. In their paper "Cross Cultural Variations in Probability Judgment Accuracy", ( pdf link ), Yeats and others found that the Taiwanese were relatively more overconfident while the Japanese were relatively less overconfident with US respondents in the middle. The authors offer some possibilities to explain the results. One aspect is that a memory intensive approach encouraged by a culture which puts stress on memorization of rules to approach cognitive problems along with a reduced emphasis on generating counter-arguments can lead to overconfidence in certain types of tasks. On the other hand, the culture of reflection, as well as deliberate thoroughness encouraged in Japanese culture could play a role in their relatively lower display of overconfidence according to the authors.

 

[Gimpy]

The subtle lie of "Trust your instincts" comes into play in this too.

When those instincts are skewed by a dysfunctional family life, what then 'feels right' isn't.

My 'instincts', which stood me in 'good stead' for the first half of my life, needed to be gone through and probed hard with the aide of a few tough minded therapists. In some instances those instincts were spot on, but where they were wrong? Dead wrong.

I know many damaged people who will cling to dysfunctional instincts for dear life than take the time to wrestle them. Why? Because it strikes at the foundation of who they think they are, and it 'feels' the same as being hurt all over again. Not everyone can do it, but it is worth doing in the long run, because once you learn that certain situations are not good, even when they feel good, you have an early warning system that can be relied on.

 

[Breton]

The philosopher Satchel Page once said, "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble, it's what you know that just ain't so."

A Stoic, no doubt.

Yeah sounds like it!

However, just a correction, this quote is actually attributed to Mark Twain, I found by just doing a google search. Although people quote Satchel Page (1906 – 1982), a baseball player, quite a bit too.

Excellent quote though.

 

[GqSoul]

Thanks for the article and discussion. It seems to corroborate, in the language of cognitive psychology, what is communicated in esoteric terms as regards seeing/perspicacity and the attainment of this state via a process that recognizes and disavows the lies we believe and repeat about our internal and external reality. I found it instructive to reflect on the incidence/prevalence of my own overconfident thinking as it relates to internal consideration and "splitting" (discussed in Laura's thread of a similar title). Could it be said accurately that overconfident thinking describes something of a default state that precipitates "splitting" and similar defense mechanisms? It seems that in our sleeping state, dissociated from true objective (cosmic) consciousness, we misperceive every facet of reality. The noted persistence of the "illusion of validity" that we maintain, and the vehemence with which we defend it, seems to depend on where we are on the spectrum of psychological health. In this way, the cleaner and more balanced the machine, the less exaggeration (shocks) necessary to align or calibrate the accuracy of our forecasts...

osit, wondering out loud.

 

[Laura]

Could it be said accurately that overconfident thinking describes something of a default state that precipitates "splitting" and similar defense mechanisms?

It seems that in our sleeping state, dissociated from true objective (cosmic) consciousness, we misperceive every facet of reality.

The noted persistence of the "illusion of validity" that we maintain, and the vehemence with which we defend it, seems to depend on where we are on the spectrum of psychological health.

In this way, the cleaner and more balanced the machine, the less exaggeration (shocks) necessary to align or calibrate the accuracy of our forecasts...

osit, wondering out loud.

I've bolded some of what you wrote which is cleanly and accurately put. Very useful, thanks.

That's pretty much the case as far as I can tell. The brain/mind does all kinds of interesting things. Obviously, how you are raised and what you experience as a child has a lot to do with how strong the persistence of your illusion is. If you are brought up in a harsh or punishing or frightening environment, getting free of your defensive illusions may be almost impossible.

BUT, it also seems that temperament can have something to do with it. A very delicate and sensitive temperament brought up in a relatively trauma free environment can still have a severe issue emanating from an overall controlling/over-protective environment.

What is interesting is that the people who are most insistent that this is NOT the case with them are usually the ones who are most controlled by their programs because the very idea of admitting that their own thoughts/opinions/views/perceptions cannot be trusted is so threatening that they just can't go there.

 

[GqSoul]

Thanks for the insight. Understanding this aspect of our own journey, and really owning up to it, helps me to live together with others with more Grace.

 

[Sunflower]

I think being able to admit you are wrong is a big step in realizing overconfidence. I know many people that always puts blame somewhere else when, in fact, it lies with them.

 

[mabar]

What is interesting is that the people who are most insistent that this is NOT the case with them are usually the ones who are most controlled by their programs because the very idea of admitting that their own thoughts/opinions/views/perceptions cannot be trusted is so threatening that they just can't go there.

I am one of those who insisist that is not my case (beign over confidence) because I am most controlled by my programs because is a fact that my own thoughts/opinions/views/perceptions cannot be trusted and yes, is threatening and I am already here and sometimes I just wish to get free from my defensive illusions. But no, there are not short cuts and wishing just attracts other illusions.

 

[Alchemie]

When I think back, I realize many things in a blind Over-confidence. The more I wake up, the more I realize my real existing boundaries. They were always there. But you can see it only, when you see your fear in the eye and tried to constructively deal with it; this fear can arise for various reasons eg --Poverty, violence, injustice, torture, exploitation, lack of love and care, etc..
I find the following sentence great, because it reflects what I'm going through the trauma-work with my daughter.

Our impression of each candidate's character was as direct and compelling as the color of the sky.

The more we (my husband and I) try to live our lives, and not our traumatized pattern or other people's programs (monopolize/demand by others), the more one exposes his fears.
One of my great enemy is the kindergarten/playschool. But I see now realistic that my daughter can go there, when and how often SHE wants. I do not have the right to transfer her my morbid fears. This I have did subconscious since her birth. Although I give effort to take these out, but due to emotional blindness I could not quite prevent it.
I've contradicted myself a bit, because I think often subconscious, that my child has no healthy trust / confidence. That's not my goal, just my trauma patterns that are leaked by the filtering.
I know about the dangers. This year, for example, a toddler in the neighboring village were kidnapped by organized, foreign criminals; the organs of the boy were surgically removed and then he was murdered.
But that does not mean, that I should not trust my child, to be capable to live in public life.
I give effort for a loving parent-child bond, enable my daughter to develop a healthy self-confidence and to be a smart, tough woman in future. I have to distinguish between life-threatening dangers and normal conflicts.


I know the last six months, that we can not offer home education/homeschooling our daughter. We have in neighbourhood just ordinary state schools and a Maria Montessori private school. We try to provide her the latter. If the MM-school does not offer High School, she will make her a level still in a "normal" school. But that also depends on our development as parents. We are now building our own lives only on the lags, so to speak 10 years afterwards.

-------------------------
--------------------------------------------
Wenn ich zurück denke, dann erkenne ich in vielen Sachen eine blinde Selbstüberschätzung. Umso mehr ich aufwache, desto mehr erkenne ich meine real existierenden Grenzen. Sie waren immer da. Aber man erkennt das erst, wenn man seine Angst ins Auge sieht und versucht mit ihr konstruktiv umzugehen; diese Angst kann aus verschiedenen Gründen entstehen --also z.B. Armut, Gewalt, Ungerechtigkeiten, Folter, Ausbeutung, mangenlde Liebe und Fürsorge, etc. .
Ich finde den folgenden Satz super, weil es das wiederspiegelt, was ich in der Trauma-Arbeit mit meiner Tochter durchmache.

Our impression of each candidate's character was as direct and compelling as the color of the sky.

Umso mehr wir (mein Mann und ich) versuchen, unser Leben zu leben, und nicht dass unser traumatisierter Muster oder die Programme anderer Menschen (sich von anderen vereinahmen zu lassen), desto mehr entblößt man seine Ängste.
Einer meiner großen Feinde ist der Kindergarten. Aber ich sehe jetzt realistisch, dass meine Tochter dorthin gehen kann, wann und wie oft SIE es möchte. Ich habe nicht das Recht, ihr meine krankhaften Ängste zu übertragen. Diese habe ich leider schon seit ihrer Geburt unterbewusst weitergegeben. Ich habe mir zwar Mühe gegeben, diese auszufiltern, aber aufgrund emotionaler Blindheit konnte ich das nicht ganz verhindern.
Ich habe mich etwas selbst widersprochen, weil ich meinem Kind kein gesundes Vertrauen/Selbstsicherheit zumute. Das ist nicht mein Ziel, nur meine Traumata-Muster, die durch die Filterung durchgesickert sind.
Ich weiß um die Gefahren. Dieses Jahr zum Beispiel ist ein Kleinkind im Nebenort von einer organisierten, ausländischen Bande entführt worden; von dem Jungen wurden Organe raus operiert und anschließend ist er ermordet worden.
Aber das heißt nicht, dass ich meinem Kind nicht zutrauen sollte, dass es im öffentlichen Leben selbst klar kommt.
Ich strebe eine liebevolle Eltern-Kind-Bindung an, ermögliche meiner Tochter, ein gesundes Selbstvertrauen zu entwickeln, um eine intelligente, taffe Frau zu werden. Ich muss lebensbedrohliche Gefahren und normale Konflikte unterscheiden können.


Ich weiß seit einem halben Jahr deutlich, dass wir unserer Tochter kein homeschooling/homeeducation bieten können.
Wir haben in unserer Nähe nur normale staatliche Schulen und eine Maria Montessori Privatschule. Wir versuchen, ihr letzteres zu ermöglichen. Wenn die MM-Schule später keine Abiturabgänge anbietet, dann wird sie ihr Abi trotzdem in einer "normalen" Schule machen. Aber das hängt auch von unserer Entwicklung als Eltern ab. Wir bauen jetzt erst unser eigenes Leben auf, das gewissermaßen 10 Jahre hinterher hinkt.

 

[Menna]

I find that life...Hurt, pain, disappointment and so on is an indicator that your way of thinking about specific situation then acting based on that thinking is wrong, needs refinement or different approach. Buffering makes it hard to truly see/feel the error of a situation, thus your part in it and the way you think so you cant change it if you cant see it...