If you're like most people, most people in your life agree with you. On a given day, you may have one or two disagreements, but the vast majority of your experiences in life you will find agreeable. This is generally true for everyone because we tend to move towards people who agree with us to reduce the cognitive dissonance of disagreement. In other words, it's uncomfortable when we have disagreements with other people. So there is a lot of agreement in our lives, whether that agreement is justified by some kind of evidence or not is not really the point. However, there's also a pervasive, in fact more than one pervasive illusion of disagreement. We're going to talk about two pervasive illusions of disagreement in today's episode. My name is Jonathan Cutreller, listening to Developer Tea. My goal on this show is to help driven developers like you find clarity, perspective, and purpose in their careers. The first pervasive illusion of agreement is based essentially on what we've already mentioned, the fact that usually people do agree with us. This kind of agreement is a very passive agreement. In other words, we live in harmony with the people around us. We don't typically have random conflict. We don't have issues in our day that cause significant conflict. Very often people are in cultural areas that they belong in. When I say belong, I mean they feel comfortable in those cultural norms. Because of all of this frictionless experience, we imagine that about a specific belief, we'll give some contrast here for a second. We imagine that the general frictionless experience translates to our specific beliefs. In other words, the fact that you can get along with people more generally, that you can drive on the same roads and walk through the same stores, that you can share a cultural experience with those people. You can have people that are close enough to you. They have things in common with you. This can help reinforce the picture of agreement that you have in your mind. This agreement that you have imagined is based on that seemingly pervasive experience of agreement that you have in your daily life. We naturally intuitively or implicitly carry that agreement. We assign that agreement to our individual beliefs. When we talk about specific individual beliefs, for example, differences on policy or maybe differences in taste even, things that are not necessarily black and white evidence-based judgment calls, for example, it's very likely that you're going to see differences in opinion between two people, even two people who have a lot of closeness, both relationally or experientially. In other words, two people who could be neighbors or even living in the same house may believe that they share some bit of cultural taste or some opinion about politics or some opinion about, we'll say programming languages. In fact, they don't share those things, even though they may share a lot of other things in common. The illusion of agreement, in this case, is the fact that we have a frictionless experience in our day-to-day lives. We imagine that that is only possible if we have agreement on specific individual beliefs. Of course, the truth of the matter is very different from that. We can absolutely get along, we can work in harmony, we can live our lives with a lot of differences in specific individual beliefs, but we need to have this sense of general agreement to be able to function together. Now, what do we do with this information? For this particular illusion of agreement, what we really need to do is be aware and don't make decisions based on the assumption of agreement. Don't make decisions based on the assumption of agreement. What this should practically look like is instead of making decisions on behalf of other people, ask them, ask more questions and ask for more feedback. This is probably the most kind of salient picture of a lack of assumption, particularly around differences in beliefs. We're going to take a quick sponsor break and then we're going to come back and talk about the second illusion, the second type of illusion of agreement. The Velpertee is grateful for the support of Compiler. We are a brand new podcast answering the hardest most complicated questions about the tech industry. And one of the most important things about a good podcast is that you have fun. Well, you do it. I had a chance to talk about exactly that with Brent and Angel. I asked them, what one of their most enjoyable moments was when recording this season. I think one of my favorite episodes and one of my favorite moments is we have this episode all about superstitions, tech superstitions, and trying to figure out what they are and if they actually work and then how they operate in our lives. Of course, we went to the people who encounter superstitions, probably the most, which is people who work in tech support. They actually end up becoming experts in the people we interview. And they tell all of these stories about the kind of like strange things that they themselves do. They have some busy other people do in order to try to get their machines to work. They get old. Just like I was particular angles in the sun. And you got to hit the side of it three times like this. Not four or two. That won't work. I just like I was just dying that entire episode. It is just so deeply deeply deeply funny to me. The huge thank you to compiler for their support of Developer Tea. You can find compiler wherever you find podcasts and the latest episode can superstitions solve technical problems is out now. Thanks again to compiler for their support. And today's episode we're talking about illusions of agreement. And there are a lot of these. We've already outlined the first one, which is kind of this implicit belief that as long as we don't have friction or constant conflict to us someone, as long as we get along with the people around us that we agree on not only the general way that we should treat each other, but also the very specific beliefs that each of us have. And this is kind of an implicit coercion if you will. This idea that everyone's belief falls in line with mine. But the next illusion is more specific and it arises out of a process. So let's imagine that you have a team of people that are trying to make a decision. And the first person speaks up and explains with good information the reasons why they want to go in a particular direction. Let's say you're choosing between A and B and the first person stands up and explains why A is the best choice and why B has particular drawbacks. Now once this information is laid out, let's say the second person may listen to the first person and they believe that they have good points. The second person may discard the positives that they have for option B. And instead may jump in line with the first person. Now let's say that the third person believes that neither option is good, that neither option A or B is very good at all. Well now that they've heard some evidence that A is better than B, they might start to believe that they were wrong and instead trust the two people that came before them. The premise of this meeting is that everyone is going to share their opinions. But what actually happens is an exercise in progressive persuasion. In other words, the first person's opinion, assuming that it has a high enough level of persuasion, is very likely to cascade into the second and the third. And it's particularly hard once you reach more than one level to stray from that path. You have mounting evidence that says that person A is better than person B. And to add to this, and this can happen either on top of this cascade or an absence of the cascade, there are social factors to consider. Let's say that seven people in the room are very excited and ready to go with person A. And you're the last person that's supposed to share your opinion. Maybe you don't have a very strong opinion or maybe you really believe that person B is a much better choice for the job. Now let's add on, for example, a little bit of time pressure. You're supposed to make this decision by the end of today. And so with both of these kind of social pressures and logistics pressures, you choose to lay aside your disagreement and instead artificially agree with the group. Now this artificial agreement is actually what has happened in kind of lower grades in the earlier cascade. This agreement that we're going to come into the room and share our opinions, but now it has become an exercise in persuasion. This is problematic because had someone else started first. And let's say that you as person number eight started first and you shared your concerns about person A and you shared the strengths of person B. It's very possible and perhaps even likely that the second person would choose to agree with you. And so the illusion of agreement in this case is actually a concealment of information. It's a concealment of information and it's a misunderstanding of the dynamics of that process. In other words, the process itself is changing whether or not we agree with each other. If we didn't have a process of sharing in a linear fashion, all of our concerns or all of our thoughts about a given person, let's say for example, and this is not the way that you would have to do it, but it is a way that you can mitigate this. You all decided to record video of yourself making your case for person A versus person B. And you share the videos and you share them in some random order. This can't eliminate all of the possible kind of contributing factors to the differences that you might have in order for example, but it would allow you to without hearing previous arguments make your argument. Now you could retain the important ability to respond to somebody else's argument by then having a discussion after the videos are shown. This immediately shatters the illusion of agreement that could keep you from making a better decision. Now what is particularly interesting in this case is that the teams who are doing this very well, very likely have good intentions. In other words, they believe they are gathering good feedback from the rest of the team. And by doing so, they are buying into this illusion. The only way to truly gather feedback from the rest of the team is to do it with some kind of blinders. In other words, to do it with a clean slate where no other influencing factors are coming in. It's impossible to have no influencing factors, but it's certainly possible to reduce some of those factors using techniques like what I already mentioned. Sometimes to be fair, the illusion of agreement is actually helpful. It might, for example, help you choose what restaurant to go to. When the stakes are particularly low, it's possible that the illusion of agreement helps us come to quicker decisions. And the quickness of that decision is actually more valuable than getting it perfectly right. Having everyone on the same page, even if the agreement is artificial, it may also have some positive effects. But if you are truly seeking for everyone's actual underlying opinion, then we want to find ways to reduce these illusions and instead seek authentic opinion sharing. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode of Developer Tea. I hope that you will start looking for these illusions of agreement in your own life, in your work, especially on your teams when you're making really important decisions. Pay attention to these illusions. Find ways to reduce them in areas that matter the most. Thank you again to today's sponsor, Compiler. You can find Compiler wherever you listen to podcasts, including on redhat.com. They have their most recent episode, episode number five of this first season. It's called Ken Superstitions Solve Technical Problems. It is very entertaining and also pretty informative. Go and check it out. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode of Developer Tea. And until next time, enjoy your tea.