Fear of testing

Dan Ariely is interviewed, and makes this observation:

As to my biggest frustration—it is people’s lack of desire to test anything. This occurs in the governments, companies, and even at individual levels. For example, when I visit companies I often try to push companies to test different compensation arrangements. Almost always I am met with avoidant responses—people would say, ”Everyone is so miserable about their bonuses, etc. We can’t talk about it –maybe next year.” So eventually, no one does any testing and this way it is very hard to make any progress.

Now I’m not trying to suggest that companies are stupid. For one, lawyers make it very difficult to test things. But, it seems that in general humans have an aversion to testing. Using experiments to answer questions just doesn’t seem satisfying for most people.