There are lines from songs, fragments really, that swirl around in my head until the circumstances are just right when they just pop out responsively. A line I have quoted many times in a wide variety of situations is from The Road, a song written by Danny O’Keefe in 1972: ‘you forget about the losses, you exaggerate the wins’.
I reflected on this recently while observing yet again basic human nature play out in interpersonal communications. I observed that when we humans like, or think we like, or will like, someone we tend to focus on the positive attributes and downplay or ignore the negative. The opposite is also true – if we don’t like them, or think we don’t, or won’t, the negative traits over shadow our perceptions and better judgment. It’s a social eclipse of the truth. [CLICK ON THE TITLE ABOVE TO CONTINUE READING]
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Coincidentally, around the same time that The Road was written, the concept of psychological or cognitive biases was introduced. This is defined as the tendency to make decisions or take actions while unconsciously making selective use of, or just plain ignoring, available data. It is the opposite of common sense and measured judgment. These biases reliable produce reasoning errors. When I looked into this a bit more, I learned that there were actually nine of these cognitive biases that affected the ‘social eclipse’ situations I recently observed. Who knew there could be so much psychology behind a simple line remembered from a song heard so long ago? Anchoring Bias – when people are over-reliant on the first piece of information they see or hear; their first impression. Availability Heuristic – when people overestimate the importance of information that is readily available to them or that they have seen with their own eyes, or felt in their gut. Choice Supportive Bias – when people actively choose something they tend to feel positive about it, even if that choice has flaws; a substantiation bias. Confirmation Bias – when people only really listen to information that confirms their preconceptions and ignore or block out all else. Selective Perception – when people allow their expectations to influence how they perceive events or others. Stereotyping – when people expect a person to possess certain qualities or traits and project them onto another without having any real information about that person. Halo Effect – when people attribute unverified capabilities to a person based on the observed capability. Overconfidence – when people are so convinced they are right they stop looking for or block out any evidence to the contrary. Blind Spot Bias – when failing to recognize your own cognitive biases is a bias in and of itself. People notice cognitive biases more so in others than in themselves. It’s difficult to spot these biases in ourselves because they come from subconscious thinking. Admittedly, it is even harder to overcome them, to guard against the instinctual responses so ingrained in our human nature. Avoiding or navigating through these biases demands a conscious effort and requires practice and patience. To be successful at letting light shine on these social eclipses requires introducing objectivity into your decision making and, more challenging, carving out sufficient time for this to marinate. It requires systematically evaluating information, bouncing your thoughts off others, especially those who challenge your opinions, and then listening carefully and empathetically to their views. And, after all that, putting the pieces back together in your own mind. But first, you have to want to. There must be a compelling reason to push you to make the effort to work that hard - like a desire to find what’s real or to gain a true understanding. Both are still worth it. |