Unintended Consequences: Results Differ From The Plan

Unintended consequences are outcomes of a purposeful action that were not intended or foreseen. They come in three types: unexpected benefit (luck, serendipity, or a windfall), unexpected drawback, and perverse result (when an intended solution makes a problem worse). The main cause of unintended consequences are the world’s inherent complexity, human stupidity, and self-deception. Small, apparently insignificant changes often have far-reaching effects. It is impossible to anticipate everything. Immediate interests override long-term aims. Fears of particular consequences drive people to find solutions before problems even occur.

Obviously, we would love the first type to occur to us. Unexpected benefits sound awesome. And they are. The creation of “no-man’s lands” during the Cold War led to large natural habitats. The sinking of ships in shallow waters during wartime created many artificial coral reefs — in fact, retired ships have been sunk deliberately to replace coral reefs lost to global waring. In medicine, it is known that most drugs have unexpected drawbacks. So-called side effects. But some of these are beneficial. Aspirin, a pain reliever, is also an anticoagulant that can help prevent heart attacks. The drug Viagra now used to treat erectile dysfunction was developed to lower blood pressure.

But we don’t have control over unintended consequences, by definition. We can only tip the scale in our favor. One way to do this is to avoid actions that would lead to unexpected drawbacks by thinking in second-order effects. There are countless instances of this. Laws to wear helmets for cyclists resulted in a loss of net health benefits because people don’t find protective bicycle gear particularly fashionable. The war on drugs that intended to suppress the illegal drug trade instead increased the power of drug cartels since they became the primary source. The protection of the steel industry in the United States reduced the production of steel, thus increasing the costs to users and unemployment in the industry.

Perhaps the most interesting type of unintended consequences are perverse results. In 2003, Barbra Streisand sued a photographer for posting a picture of her mansion online. Before the lawsuit, 6 people had downloaded the file in total, two of them being Streisand’s attorneys. After the lawsuit, 420,000 people visited the site. Similarly, passenger-side airbags led to an increase in child fatalities because kids were being hit by airbags that deployed automatically during collisions. The solution was moving the child seat to the back of the vehicle. Well, that led to an increase in the number of children forgotten in cars, some of whom died under extreme temperature conditions.

Real-life examples of unintended consequences:

• Environmental Policy: a government implements a policy to subsidize renewable energy to reduce fossil fuel use. While the policy boosts renewable energy use, it also results in an increase in energy consumption overall. The net environmental benefit is negated. Well-intentioned interventions can sometimes undermine their own objectives if system dynamics aren’t considered.

• Urban Planning: a city introduces a congestion charge to reduce traffic in downtown areas. The measure just shifts traffic to surrounding areas and creates new congestion problems, impacting local businesses in those neighborhoods. Solutions targeting one part of a system can create pressure and imbalances in another.

• Healthcare Initiatives: hospitals adopt electronic health records to streamline patient care. While EHRs improve data accessibility, they also result in more administrative overhead and privacy concerns if not implemented carefully. Technological improvements can produce challenges that need to be addressed.

• Financial Regulations: after a financial crisis, regulators impose stricter capital requirements on banks. These measures reduce risky behavior. Yet they also limit the availability of credit, stifling the economy. Regulatory actions have complex trade-offs.

• Social Media: social media platforms design algorithms to maximize user engagement. This focus on engagement can result in the spread of sensationalist or polarizing content. The result is greater social division and the spread of misinformation. Innovations in user experience can have adverse societal effects if mismanaged.

How you can use unintended consequences as a mental model: (1) think in systems — when planning a project, map out the system to see interdependencies among its parts and to foresee potential ripple effects; (2) see it from all sides — gather input from others that might have a different viewpoint into the possible unintended consequences; (3) preserve your optionality — aim for things that allow you to adjust if new information emerges and you change your mind; (4) think in timelines — consider the long-term benefit and immediate rewards of any action; (5) document the unexpected — if unintended consequences dawn upon you, try to figure out why, both for beneficial (to replicate) and harmful (to avoid) outcomes.