If rationality is our ability to apply reason, then most of the time we're irrational.

We say things that don't make sense, we do things that don't make sense...then we come up with a reason after we did or said the thing that didn't make sense and pretend like it was the driving factor.

In the early 1970s, Michael Gazzaniga and his colleagues were conducting studies on split brain patients. These were patients that had their Corpus Callosum severed as a treatment for severe epilepsy. The Corpus Callosum is a part of the brain that connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain. By studying these patients, researches learned that the different hemispheres can operate independently and are responsible for different functions.

The left is typically associated with language, logic and analytical thinking, while the right is usually associated with spatial awareness, creativity, and emotional processing.

In this series of split-brain studies, the researchers came across a strange phenomenon that's now known as the Interpreter Effect.

In one the the experiments, they showed an image of a chicken claw to the left hemisphere while showing a snowy seen to the right hemisphere. Each hemisphere could only "see" what was in its visual field.

When asked to pick related images, the patient's left hemisphere selected the a picture of a chicken (matching with the chicken claw), while the patient's right hemisphere selected the shovel (matching with the snowy scene).

When asked to explain this choice, the left hemisphere, without any access to the snowy scene, gave a reason that was logical but incorrect. It said the shovel was for cleaning the chicken coop.

The take away: Even when our brains lack complete information, the left hemisphere will make up reasons to justify actions or choices it did not fully understand. Our reasoning isn't always grounded in reality.

Now. Let's make this real.

Imagine you have a client who's in a particularly high stakes situation. One day, your client gives you a call and asks for your advice on a plan they put together. You're the expert, you know what you're doing, you've seen this situation a million times. You recognize this as an uninformed plan. You give your advice only to find out later that your client ignored your advice and went forward with their plan. This is the confirmation bias at work.

Let's continue with this example.

Your client, calls you again for your counsel. You're slightly annoyed because they ignored you the first time, but they're paying the bills, so you take the call. They tell you they made a mistake. They say they had a momentary lapse in judgement. They had to go forward with the plan because their partner made them. It wasn't their fault. This is the blame bias at work.

So what can we do to do to prevent our brains from irrational behavior? We can become aware and remember that even though we have the capacity to be rational, most of the time we're not. It's our nature.