[/caption]I just attended some corporate training on communication skills and learnt about the false dichotomy known as “Sucker’s Choice”.
What is Sucker’s Choice?
The concept of sucker’s choice is straightforward. In times when we are under pressure and stress, we are subject to physiological changes in our body (i.e. the flight or fight reflex) that raises our blood pressure and reduces flow of blood to the brain to our limbs to enable us to react to a perceived threat. This makes us think poorly because our brain is starved of oxygen from the reduced blood flow.
As a result, we tend to only think superficially that there are only one or two choices to solve the threat. The extreme example of sucker’s choice is how flight crew of a aircraft that crashed because the pilot was so distracted by a faulty error light that he didn’t realise the plane was running out of fuel and subsequently crashed. When the surviving crew members were asked why they didn’t tell the pilot about the fuel situation, they said that they didn’t want to disrespect the pilot by questioning his competence and telling him about the fuel situation.
This is the classic sucker’s choice, i.e. the crew member thought he couldn’t tell the pilot as it was a form of disrespect and so chose to endure silence and consequently put at risk the entire plane and its crew and passengers. Read more...[caption id="attachment_1867" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Photo by karynsig"][/caption]I just attended some corporate training on communication skills and learnt about the false dichotomy known as “Sucker’s Choice”.
What is Sucker’s Choice?
The concept of sucker’s choice is straightforward. In times when we are under pressure and stress, we are subject to physiological changes in our body (i.e. the flight or fight reflex) that raises our blood pressure and reduces flow of blood to the brain to our limbs to enable us to react to a perceived threat. This makes us think poorly because our brain is starved of oxygen from the reduced blood flow.
As a result, we tend to only think superficially that there are only one or two choices to solve the threat. The extreme example of sucker’s choice is how flight crew of a aircraft that crashed because the pilot was so distracted by a faulty error light that he didn’t realise the plane was running out of fuel and subsequently crashed. When the surviving crew members were asked why they didn’t tell the pilot about the fuel situation, they said that they didn’t want to disrespect the pilot by questioning his competence and telling him about the fuel situation.
This is the classic sucker’s choice, i.e. the crew member thought he couldn’t tell the pilot as it was a form of disrespect and so chose to endure silence and consequently put at risk the entire plane and its crew and passengers. Read more...
[/caption]I just attended some corporate training on communication skills and learnt about the false dichotomy known as “Sucker’s Choice”.
What is Sucker’s Choice?
The concept of sucker’s choice is straightforward. In times when we are under pressure and stress, we are subject to physiological changes in our body (i.e. the flight or fight reflex) that raises our blood pressure and reduces flow of blood to the brain to our limbs to enable us to react to a perceived threat. This makes us think poorly because our brain is starved of oxygen from the reduced blood flow.
As a result, we tend to only think superficially that there are only one or two choices to solve the threat. The extreme example of sucker’s choice is how flight crew of a aircraft that crashed because the pilot was so distracted by a faulty error light that he didn’t realise the plane was running out of fuel and subsequently crashed. When the surviving crew members were asked why they didn’t tell the pilot about the fuel situation, they said that they didn’t want to disrespect the pilot by questioning his competence and telling him about the fuel situation.
This is the classic sucker’s choice, i.e. the crew member thought he couldn’t tell the pilot as it was a form of disrespect and so chose to endure silence and consequently put at risk the entire plane and its crew and passengers. Read more...
