#cognitive errors

There's a line from Buffy ("Conversations with Dead People") where a vampire listens to Buffy's description of being the Slayer and says "You do have a superiority complex. And you've got an inferiority complex about it." Freudian terms aside, I do think that there's a type of person who's stuck in this trap of thinking constantly that everything is about their own failings, "at once powerless and culpable" (X). And that the responsibility of being the only Slayer alive, the only war-prince on the planet, can create that mindset.

There are ways that, within Animorphs, Jake really is the most important person on the planet. And there are ways that — we can see from the outside — he has an exaggerated sense of his own importance and thus his own imperfection. None of the six Animorphs do the math that the nartec are amphibious and can attack from the land and water at once, as you said, and yet Jake somehow feels like he's uniquely stupid for not having spotted it (#36). No one on the team figures out a way for them to get out of the sario rip in #11, but Jake is utterly certain that he's the only one who can figure it out and that it must be him who does. So on and so forth.

Cassie's right, that "We didn't do you any favor when we made you leader, did we?" And Marco's right that "I remember back when you didn’t want to have to make all the big decisions" (#16). Being in charge changes Jake, not necessarily for the better. It makes him give himself impossible standards, and then inevitably fail. And soon he has that same thing as Buffy going on: he's surrounded by people who don't get it, he sometimes hates them for that, and he hates himself for hating them.

In this series of posts we look at what you as a a facilitator can do to prevent “cognitive errors”  from derailing dialogues.  What is a “cognitive error”?  It’s a thinking pattern that distorts the processing of facts, emotions and other information.  Cognitive errors are often behind impasses or angry “flare-ups” in discussion. Cognitive errors we will be reviewing in future posts…

There are several other cognitive errors that regularly appear in our political discussions, including those related to gun violence. These include the following: Mind reading: Although there is little evidence that most of us can accurately read minds, many indulge in that exercise anyway.  Mind reading sounds like this: “I know what they’re thinking, they’re thinking X and that means we need to…

Polarized Thinking is a cognitive error that is a close cousin to over-generalization and filtering.  This error is very common in our political culture.  “Polarized thinking”  involves forcing complex issues into “either/or” pairings.  This forced pairing then encourages debate between which of the paired options is better and discourages exploration of the information, experiences, or values…

We continue our series on cognitive errors today with a discussion of over-generalization and filtering. Over-generalization involves using one piece of data, or just a few data points to form broad conclusions.   This thinking pattern is well represented in discussions on gun violence.  Here are a few examples: +Background checks are “useless” because “criminals will never submit to them.”…

Continuing our series on cognitive errors, we review two in this post that often lead to flare-ups of incivility.  These are  catastrophizing and personalization. Catastrophizing is evidenced by a dramatic anticipation of disaster and corresponding defensive reaction. For example, +”They’re preparing for armed rebellion and ready to destroy our country” or +”The ultimate goal of the liberals is a…

There are 15 billion pairs of eyes in the world, but we can only see it from one: ours. It’s no wonder we often make the wrong choices, if we’re limited to only experience one tiny part of it. We aren’t able to see the big picture, how one thing influences another, and this is dangerous in a universe where cause and effect is the rule. So, how can we acquire a bigger understanding of the situation?

Because we don’t have all the facts, our brain is naturally biased. This means we’re prone to think, feel a certain way or favor one idea over another based on the few hard facts we know.

A common example is the actor observer bias. This bias happens when someone exhibits a behavior, and you attribute it to a personality trait. However, if you do the same, the blame falls on external factors.

Say a person arrives late to a meeting and you automatically think they’re irresponsible. But when you do it, you can excuse yourself with “the traffic was atrocious”.

In the first one we’re unaware of the cause; we don’t have context. So, we judge because we don’t have all the facts.

Trying to completely eliminate biases is impossible unless we find a way to see the whole world at once. But we can reduce them.

If the problem is a lack of facts, then the solution is to collect them.

In order to accomplish that, we must target a specific decision to make (our mind can only do so much at once) and treat it like journalists.

Journalists move around looking for the answers they need to complete a narrative. They collect the information and record them into a system. It could be a timeline, mind map, table, bullet points, questionnaire or plain old paragraphs. The main idea is that the information is organized and easy to understand.

It’s not always an easy process; sometimes they find the answers in the most unusual of places. But at the end of the day, they’re able to connect the dots and possess a clear notion of the cause and effect chain. We can use that chain to make the best decision possible.

In summary, before you make a choice be sure to reduce your biases as much as possible by:

Collecting all the relevant information.

Record it in an easy-to-understand system.

Analyze it and make the choice.