Abstract
Narratives provide simple rules about how we ought to live and what our priorities ought to be. They are especially appealing in times of high uncertainty. Using the uncertainty surrounding Covid-19 as an illustration, we show how a narrative to preserve life has become dominant, and we illustrate how it has been reinforced by several behavioural biases. We argue that being able to identify and critically evaluate the impact of dominant narratives is vital to ensuring optimal decision-making. To facilitate this, we offer five recommendations—the ABCDE of decision-making—that can help to reduce the “narrative trap” in decision-making in any uncertain environment.
Highlights
Paul Dolan and Amanda Henwood*Narratives provide simple rules about how we ought to live and what our priorities ought to be
THE POWER OF THE STORYDominant social narratives are stories told by society about the way things ought to be
There is good evidence that we become more reliant on simple rules of thumb when decision outcomes are uncertain (Mousavi and Gigerenzer, 2014) and social narratives provide us with simple guides to decisionmaking
Summary
Narratives provide simple rules about how we ought to live and what our priorities ought to be. We are not concerned with the variations here but rather with the general idea that, building upon an underlying set of values, certain stories become dominant social narratives adopted by society. There is good evidence that we become more reliant on simple rules of thumb when decision outcomes are uncertain (Mousavi and Gigerenzer, 2014) and social narratives provide us with simple guides to decisionmaking. These decision-making short cuts, known as heuristics, certainly help make decisions easier, but their effects on the consequences of those decisions is ambivalent. We provide examples of other decision-making contexts where social narratives may have a significant impact
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