What we overlook when pursuing our goals and why it matters

A conversation with Cornell psychology Professor Tom Gilovich about the headwinds we notice and the tailwinds we don’t

My friends and family can attest that I’ve been whining a lot recently about several minor injuries that have made it difficult to get out on the tennis court — a strained shoulder, an achy wrist and a bum calf muscle. Clearly I’m solidly in my 40s.

What these experiences have made astonishingly clear (besides the fact that aging is not for wimps) is how much I took for granted what my body had happily done without complaint until 2026. And, of course, it’s not just our bodies that we take for granted until they put up a fight. In general, our minds are remarkably good at ignoring what’s working and homing in on what’s giving us trouble. While this asymmetry in what we notice likely has many benefits, it can also be a real problem, especially when we compare our performance to other people’s who may have faced a different set of constraints. This month’s Q&A with Cornell psychologist Tom Gilovich is about why we’re so much quicker to notice our disadvantages than our advantages.

But first, here are a few recommended listens and reads…

This Month’s Recommended Listens and Reads

• Building the Right Kind of Trust: Our season finale of Choiceology is on the importance of psychological safety and how to create it in your organization, featuring a conversation with Harvard Business School Professor and bestselling author Amy Edmondson.

• What’s the Deal with School Cell Phone Bans?: Economist Emily Oster offers thoughtful insights about what to make of new research suggesting school cell phone bans have not had the impact you might expect.

• A Little More Social: How Unexpected Choices Create Unexpected Happiness, Health and Connection from University of Chicago Booth Behavioral Science Professor Nicholas Epley is just out and will forever change how you see and reach out to other people.

• And here are a few other behavioral science books that are on my shelf at the moment, along with A Little More Social…

Q&A: The Headwinds-Tailwinds Asymmetry

This month’s Q&A from Choiceology is with Cornell psychology Professor Tom Gilovich, who shares insights from his research on the headwinds-tailwinds asymmetry and explains why what you notice when you’re pursuing a goal can matter so much.

Me: Tom, I’m excited to talk about your work on the headwinds-tailwinds asymmetry. Could you explain what you mean by “headwinds” and “tailwinds” and our asymmetry in noticing the two?

Tom: The easiest way to describe it is to think about exercise. When you’re cycling or running into the wind, you’re facing a headwind, and it usually registers as something that’s annoying. Like, “Ugh, the wind’s in my face. I can’t wait until the course changes and the wind’s at my back (so I’m facing a tailwind).” And when that happens, you feel good for a little bit, and then you quickly adapt to it, and it’s out of your mind. The headwind stays on your mind; the tailwind doesn’t.

Headwinds are the things you have to pay attention to — the barriers you face — in order to achieve your objective. Tailwinds are the things helping you get over that barrier. You don’t have to pay attention to those things. Life in general is a lot like being a runner. You’re aware of the barriers you have to overcome, and you’re not as aware of all the things that boost you along.

Me: Could you describe some of the other settings besides running where the asymmetry in how we notice headwinds versus tailwinds comes up and where you’ve studied it?

Tom: So, if you’re a person who had siblings and we asked you, “Were your parents harder on you or your sibling?”, people recognize parents tend to be harder on the first kid than the second kid, than the third, etc. But first-born kids believe that a lot more strongly than later-born kids do.

You see it in the sports world, too. A former student of mine, Ken Savitsky, did a study where he asked intercollegiate athletes how taxing their sport was in terms of their ability to have a social life, do their coursework, etc. They also answered that question for all other sports. On average, everybody thought their sport was harder, because the particular difficulties their sport brought about had to be front and center in their minds. The things that were relatively easy in their sport, they didn’t have to pay attention to.

For one of my favorite studies that I did, we had people complete two tasks. One was a little more annoying and time-consuming than the other, but both had several different trials. Afterwards, we asked, “What percentage of these things that we just asked you to do were the hard ones? What percentage were the easy ones?” And as we expected, people really registered the amount of time they spent doing annoying things, so they overestimated the percentage of harder, more time-consuming tasks.

Me: So, if I do a series of 10 tasks, and half are hard and half are easy, and then you ask, “What fraction were hard and what fraction were easy?” I’ll say six or seven out of 10 were hard, because I’m fixating on the extra time and effort that went into the hard ones, and I’m not thinking about the five easy ones that flew by?

Tom: Yes, exactly.

Me: Interesting. When do you think this asymmetry might matter the most in life?

Tom: It comes up most naturally when we think about what we have to be grateful for, and how it’s easy to lose sight of those things. We’re grateful from time to time, of course, but maybe not as much as we could be. Our tendency to notice the hard things more can easily feed resentment and entitlement. A lot of research has shown that it’s easier for us to get in touch with our best selves when we’re full of gratitude. It’s hard to get in touch with our best selves when we’re feeling resentful.

Me: What can people do better now that they’re aware of this headwinds-tailwinds asymmetry in noticing?

Tom: I think humans have a remarkable capacity to zoom in and out. And when a behavioral scientist asks you about the advantages and disadvantages you faced, you zoom in on all the details, and that’s going to give rise to this kind of bias. But if you zoom out and take stock of your life from an aerial view, it’s easier to see the tailwinds.

Think about the hidden ways you’ve had an advantage. We can summon those things that we have to be grateful for. And when we do, it’s easier for us to be that best self that we want to be.

Me: Tom, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

To learn more about Tom’s work, listen to the episode of Choiceology where we dig into his research on the headwinds-tailwinds asymmetry, or order a copy of one of Tom’s terrific books The Wisest One in the Room, Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes and How to Correct Them. and How We Know What Isn’t So.

Wishing you a happy end of June. See you in July!

Katy Milkman, PhD

Professor at Wharton, Host of Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, and International Bestselling Author of How to Change

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