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- Representativeness[1]<\/a><\/li>\n
- Availability[2]<\/a><\/li>\n
- Anchoring[3]<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- Looking for Kahneman\n
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- Nobel Prize \u2013 Kahneman\u2019s own words<\/li>\n
- 10 Questions for Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- C. S. Lewis \u2013 Dignity of Causality<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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B\u00fcd\u00f6s l\u00e1b or Stinky feet (in Magyarul or Hungarian) <\/strong><\/p>\n
Once upon a time, there was a missionary (me) preparing to wash the feet of a young orphan child in Miskolc, Hungary. My Hungarian translator Zoli was furious (unbeknownst to me).\u00a0 He felt that washing feet was a \u201csacrament\u201d and should not be done casually, especially on the feet of an orphan who had not accepted Christ.<\/p>\n
Unaware of his discomfort I began my washing and mid translation Zoli walked away.\u00a0 Because the Holy Spirit is in
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Feet-1-300x200.jpg\")
<\/a> charge of these situations, the Hungarian standing next to him immediately started to translate my words. \u00a0The surprising thing was that he (the new translator) wasn\u2019t really sure what I was doing.\u00a0 He and the audience were so focused on the act that no one noticed the disruption. They had never seen this done before. One hopes they saw my version of servant leadership.<\/p>\nI return to Eve Poole\u2019s book, Leadersmithing<\/em> and her description of Fight or Flight.\u00a0 She writes, \u201c\u2026Increased heart rate during the simulation was correlated with higher levels of learning, which remained high through the period of post-programme testing.\u201d [4]<\/a><\/p>\n
Certainly, I was ready to fight over this, and my blood pressure\/heart rate were at an extreme high. One thing is clear, the incident forever emblazoned the lesson of talking my game plan over with translators ahead of time.<\/em><\/p>\n
As I read Kahneman\u2019s System 1 and System 2 thinking, I wanted to template Kahneman\u2019s three heuristics against this particular incident: [5]<\/a><\/p>\n
Representativeness<\/u>:\u00a0 My mistake, I believed that Zoli was ready to translate anything I said.\u00a0 I presumed that like other translators he would follow my lead. I failed to realize Zoli\u2019s rigid spiritual background and his possible response to this internal conflict. My erroneous desire to link similar previous translator qualities to Zoli, may be an example of \u201crepresentativeness heuristic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Availability<\/u>: My easy recall of doing feet washing in the United States brought me to the wrong conclusion that feet washing represents the same thing to everyone. I overestimated the likelihood that Zoli\u2019s Hungarian Church would see foot washing as I did.<\/p>\n
Anchoring: <\/u>My first experience in reading about Jesus washing feet in the bible, was set in my mind as a strong example for servant leadership.\u00a0 Culturally, however, it was misplaced for this particular translator who was taught differently.<\/p>\n
Looking for Kahneman – Nobel Prize \u2013 Kahneman\u2019 own words<\/strong><\/p>\n
In his 1st<\/sup> person biography submitted for the Nobel Prize, Kahneman is a surprising gentleman of vast experience. He wrote, \u201cThe first essay, written before I turned eleven, was a discussion of faith. It approvingly quoted Pascal\u2019s saying \u201cFaith is God made perceptible to the heart.\u201d\u00a0 Raised in Vichy, France he went on to say,\u201d But I was discovering that I was more interested in what made people believe in God than I was in whether God existed, and I was more curious about the origins of people\u2019s peculiar convictions about right and wrong than I was about ethics.\u201d[6]<\/a><\/p>\n
Looking for Kahneman – 10 Questions for Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman (Time 2011) <\/strong><\/p>\n
Professor Kahneman radiates a peace\/shalom that makes you want to know more about him and his work. In his Time interview entitled, 10 Questions for Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman<\/em>, [7]<\/a>\u00a0 Almost immediately, his System 1 and 2 are applied beyond economics to describing President George W. Bush as a System 1 thinker and President Barrack Obama as a System 2 thinker.<\/p>\n
Dignity of Causality <\/strong><\/p>\n
In the C.S. Lewis Institute, April 2011 – Getting a Bigger View of Prayer, they state, \u201cGod,\u201d said Pascal, \u201cinstituted prayer in order to lend His creatures the dignity of causality<\/em>.\u201d But not only prayer; whenever we act at all He lends us that dignity. It is not really stranger, nor less strange, that my prayers should affect the course of events than that my other actions should do so. [8]<\/a><\/p>\n
This statement gave me a spiritual pause in evaluating the tensions between my System 1 knee jerk reactions and my System 2 slow paced analysis.\u00a0 Pray, unceasingly (1 Thessalonians 5:17) is Paul\u2019s reminder to bring every facet of our lives to Christ.\u00a0 Jennifer Vernam found the number 35,000 decisions are made by humans daily.\u00a0 While System 1 and 2 thinkers have strengths and weaknesses to contend with, imagine if we prayed continuously so that our decisions were guided by the Holy Spirit, all 35,000 of them.<\/p>\n
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[1]<\/a> Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow<\/em>, 1st ed (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), 151.<\/p>\n
[2]<\/a> Kahneman, 138.<\/p>\n
[3]<\/a> Kahneman. 127.<\/p>\n
[4]<\/a> Eve Poole, Leadersmithing: Revealing the Trade Secrets of Leadership<\/em> (London\u202f; New York, NY: Bloomsbury Business, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2017), 38.<\/p>\n
[5]<\/a> Kahneman and Tversky: How Heuristics Impact Our Judgment<\/em>, 2018, https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=3IjIVD-KYF4.<\/p>\n
[6]<\/a> \u201cThe Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2002,\u201d NobelPrize.org, accessed March 2, 2023, https:\/\/www.nobelprize.org\/prizes\/economic-sciences\/2002\/kahneman\/facts\/.<\/p>\n
- Availability[2]<\/a><\/li>\n