When recruiting new staff an often used golden rule often is that past behaviour is an indication of future behaviour. Businesses rely on reference checks or even Google searches to find out as much as they can about their potential new staff. But, is past behaviour really a good proxy for predicting future behaviour?
Knowledge of the past is the foundation of all science and human knowledge. We try to predict the future by drawing from our experience of the past. Philosophers call this process inductive reasoning — drawing a general conclusion from a range of observations. But when you think deeply about this, we can actually never know for certain that our past observations can be used to predict the future. Scottish philosopher David Hume did precisely this more then 200 years ago when he found that it is actually not logical to think that past behaviour is an indication of future behaviour.
it is not logical to think that past behaviour is an indication of future behaviour
For millennia people in Europe thought that all swans are white. This little kernel of absolute knowledge was rudely destroyed when in 1697 Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh was the first European to see a black swan in what is now Western Australia. The silent part of the American magician’s duo Penn & Teller broke his usual silence and vow of secrecy when he explained a classical magic trick to a gathering of consciousness scholars. Teller showed that magicians can use the propensity of the human mind to seek patterns by skilfully changing the method during the routine. Teller beautifully illustrates what Hume philosophically argued: in human behaviour, the past is in no way a reliable approach to predicting the future.
We have to be careful when judging a person through second hand information gained from referees, Facebook searches and other forms of overt espionage. People are not billiard balls that operate in accordance with laws of physics. People have free will and can change their behaviour depending on the circumstances they find themselves in. Most importantly, we can learn from our mistakes and grow as people by learning from them. Not hiring somebody who has made a mistake in the past could mean that you miss out on hiring a person with a high level of maturity and an ability to adapt. Therefore, when judging a person, keep in mind the words of Roman poet Horace: Non sum quals eram — I am not who I once was
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I good interview includes discussions in the area of mistakes and learning. We are all the better for our mistakes, “learn to fail etc.” and we recruit those who demonstrate that they can evolve. But someone who has been poor at man management in the past and cannot describe their learning from the experience is likely to be poor in the future.
Conscious processes are at the service of unconscious processes. They lead not directly to behavior.
Source: Am. Psychological Association Roy Baumeister & promovendus E.J.Masicampo. July Psychological Review.
This knowledge tells me that unconsious processes lead directly to behavior. So if we can map the unconscious processes we have a key to see who we once were…