…and, for that matter, that of following the ass in front of you.

Every evening, when I’m driving home from my job in Baldwin Park, there is a long line to get onto the 210E from the 605. The on-ramp is metered, so it takes forever and the line is very, very long. I need to go the same way, but I find that by simply getting on the next exit off the other direction and then heading East, I can avoid the congestion and get ahead of all those suckers. But the thing is, the next exit is no secret. In fact, you can see it from the 210 on-ramp and, pretty far into the line, still move one lane over to get in! So, why do people stay in the line? Because they’ve been in the line for 10 minutes by the time they realize how very long the line is, and at that point they’re “committed”. Ah, but what does that mean? There is still an opportunity to cut your losses and take the time-saving long-cut, yet people don’t because they are more loss-averse than anything else. This irrational behavior can be seen in the stock market, in management, and in Moby Dick (disclaimer: I’ve never read the book, but I think I get the gist of it).

Ah, there’s some more irrationality – that of following the ass in front of you. Since everyone else is staying in the line at all costs, it seems like an okay choice to do so yourself, but that would be a bad choice – you are instead wasting your time! When the 15 going up to the Cajon Pass is slow, you’ll notice that no one takes the exits to take the surface streets unless people are already doing so, in which case nearly everyone is doing it. In either case, going against the flow is to your advantage, but yet strongly against human nature.