Why do our brains miss opportunities to improve through subtraction?

If, as the saying goes, less is more, why do our people overdo it so much?

In a new paper on the front page of Earth, University of Virginia researchers explain why people rarely look at a situation, object or idea that needs to be improved – in all kinds of contexts – and think of removing something as a solution. Instead, we almost always add an element, whether it helps or not.

The team’s findings point to a fundamental reason why people struggle with overwhelming schedules, that institutions fall into red tape, and of particular importance to researchers, that humanity is depleting the planet’s resources.

“It happens in engineering design, which is my biggest interest,” said Leidy Klotz, Copenhagen associate professor in the Department of Engineering Systems and Environment. “But it also happens in writing, cooking and everything else – just think of your own work and you will see it. The first thing we come up with is: what can we add to make it better. Our paper shows that we do it. “To our detriment, even if the only right answer is to pull it off. Even with financial incentive, we still do not think about taking it away.”

Klotz, whose research explores the overlap between engineering and behavioral science, worked with three colleagues from the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy on interdisciplinary research showing how addictive we are by nature. Batten public faculty policy and psychology, assistant professor Gabrielle Adams and associate professor Benjamin Converse, and former Batten postdoctoral fellow Andrew Hales, worked with Klotz on a series of observational studies and experiments to study the phenomenon.

When considering two broad possibilities as to why people systematically add up as addition – whether they generate ideas for both possibilities and throw away extractive solutions, or that they completely overlook the subtracting ideas – the researchers focus on the latter.

“Additive ideas come to us quickly and easily, but subtractive ideas require more cognitive effort,” Converse said. “Because people often move quickly and work with the first ideas that come to mind, they end up accepting add-on solutions without considering any deduction.”

The researchers think there may be a self-reinforcing effect.

“The more people rely on add-on strategies, the more cognitively accessible they become,” Adams said. “Over time, the habit of seeking additive ideas can grow stronger, and in the long run we end up missing out on many opportunities to improve the world by pulling off.”

Klotz has a book that takes the subject more broadly, Subtract: the untapped science of less, a week after the Earth paper. Although the timing is coincidental, the paper as well as the book are products of the interdisciplinary and collaborative research environment at UVA, he said.

“This is an incredibly interesting finding, and I think our research has tremendous implications in different contexts, but especially in engineering to improve the technology that benefits humanity,” Klotz said.