Dog Poop and Cognitive Bias

This morning, Ollie and I went for a walk in Medellín. The air was crisp, the light soft, the park already alive.

And then, inevitable dog poop.

My immediate reaction was annoyance. My inner voice didn’t hesitate: People are so irresponsible.

It felt satisfying. Clean. Certain.

And then another question surfaced.

Are people irresponsible?

That stopped me.

What did I actually know?

I knew dog poop was left behind. That’s it.

I didn’t know who left it. I didn’t know whether they ran out of bags, were distracted, never saw it happen, or physically couldn’t bend down. I had one observable fact and built a character judgment on top of it in less than a second.

By the time I left the park, I felt lighter. I moved from “the world is irresponsible” to something far more grounded: I don’t actually know what happened.

That shift matters.

Because this same dynamic plays out at bargaining tables every single day.

A proposal comes in. A tone shifts. An email is delayed.

And instantly the mind assigns meaning:

They’re unreasonable. They’re stalling. They don’t care. They’re trying to gain leverage.

But what do we actually know?

The strongest negotiators understand the space between stimulus and reaction. They know interpretation arrives before evidence does. And they train themselves to pause.

This is a discipline I teach: The 3-Question Pause.

1. What are the observable facts?

2. What story am I adding to those facts?

3. What information would help me test that story?

Dog poop is a fact.

Ollie, my morning thought partner

“Irresponsible people” is a story.

Most conflict escalates not because of the data in front of us, but because of the narrative layered on top of it.

Critical thinking is not abstract. It lives in these micro-moments.

The second you ask, What do I actually know? you reclaim control of your response. You move from reaction to inquiry, from certainty to curiosity.

Sometimes that single breath of discipline can change the trajectory of an entire negotiation.

It can also make a morning walk a little lighter.