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Brain-Based Transformational Solutions

Conspiracy: Making Distinctions

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While the brain is quite good at categorizing, it is not very adept at making distinctions. (Much like the human brain, neither is Google.)

We encounter this problem in the area of personality or temperament. Just because behavior X is a characteristic of a particular group of people doesn’t mean that every individual in that group will demonstrate behavior X. Believing that everyone in a group demonstrates all of the same characteristics is the basis of stereotyping.

So the problem also routinely arises in regard to ethnicity, gender, nationality, religion, age, and political preference, among others.

Categorizing is an automatic System 1 (unconscious) process. Distinguishing is a System 2 (conscious) process that requires intention, attention, and effort. Categorizing is easy; confirmation bias makes it feel right. Eventually tracks are laid down in the brain that carry us along effortlessly. We have no reason to question our perception. Distinguishing is hard and generates cognitive dissonance, which does not feel good.

Making distinctions after those tracks have been laid down in the brain is called change. Changing our perception of another person or group of people may alter our perception of ourselves, as well. Our sense of self is a construct; our beliefs are one of the things that contribute to that construct. And our brain takes our sense of self very seriously. Changing a belief, therefore, is not a small matter.

What Is Up with Conspiracists?

All of that is by way of getting to some recent thoughts about conspiracy theories currently being floated and about those who have bought into them so completely that they see “evidence” for them everywhere. These people appear to be living in a very different world than I’m living in. If I didn’t already know something about the extent to which we create our own reality, I would have concluded either they are delusional or I am.

But I know that our brains do not allow us to experience reality first-hand or directly. We have to be trained even to be able to see what’s out there. So while there are no doubt extreme conspiracy theorists who are—or border on being—delusional, most of them are simply processing the world differently from the way I process it. And that interests me.

When I started exploring the subject from a psycho-social, neurological, philosophical, and historical perspective, I accessed a few resources I already had. And then I turned to Google, which does a great job of categorizing everything related to conspiracy, but is absolutely abysmal at distinguishing between conspiracy and conspiracy theory.

They are definitely not the same thing. Conspiracies do exist. Conspiracy theories are speculations. Furthermore, the word theory has a broad definition. A conspiracy theory is not the equivalent of a scientific theory, which is the result of research, evidence, and consensus. Good scientists modify or even abandon their theories when new information is uncovered. Conspiracists either reject conflicting information out of hand or expand the theory to incorporate it. More importantly, scientific theories are falsifiable; conspiracy theories are not.

Understanding the Concepts

Here are some definitions (from freedictionary.com):

Conspiracy: (1) an agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act, (2) an agreement between two or more persons to commit a crime or accomplish a legal purpose through illegal action, (3) a joining or acting together, as if by sinister design.

Examples of conspiracies: Watergate, The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, the 1980s Savings and Loan Crisis

Conspiracy Theory: a theory seeking to explain a disputed case or matter as a plot by a secret group or alliance rather than an individual or isolated act.

Examples of conspiracy theories: JFK’s Assassination (various), Moon Landing (didn’t happen), Illuminati (alien shapeshifters who run the world)

Looking for Answers

Some of the questions I’m hoping to answer for myself include:

  • Who believes conspiracy theories? Are some people more temperamentally inclined to believe them than others?
  • If a large percentage of a population believes in conspiracy theories, does that have an effect on actual conspiracies (committing or uncovering them, for example)?
  • What’s going on in the brains of conspiracists vs. non-conspiracists?
  • Are different groups of people more inclined to believe particular conspiracy theories than others—and does it matter?
  • How do conspiracy theories affect real-world outcomes?
  • How can we distinguish possible from highly improbable conspiracies?

I’ll share what I learn. I’m compiling some useful articles on the topic that I will eventually put into a shareable format for anyone who is interested.

I believe this is a timely subject that bridges brain, behavior, and change. And I hope that exploring it may lead to some measure of understanding. We could surely use more of that in our troubled world. What do you think?

What’s Your End Game?

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I recently came across an article written a few years ago in which the author, a small business owner, asked that question.

Focusing on the end game—both in life and in business—is a popular idea attributed primarily to Stephen Covey. The second of his 7 Habits of Highly Successful People is “begin with the end in mind.”

Covey at least incorporates the concepts of imagination and desired outcome into his advice. But while the author of the article in question quoted Covey’s second habit, he was squarely focused on objectives, not on desired outcomes.

I think this happens a lot because desired outcome is a slippery concept for many of us, given that it’s intangible and involves imagination. Objectives, which are far less abstract, are easier to identify and talk about. And, of course, objectives are absolutely essential for getting where you want to go. The problem is that if objectives are all you have, they can end up stripping all the joy and satisfaction from your life.

That’s because objectives are a means not an end.

Once you settle on an objective to aim for, you can determine the steps you need to take to reach it. But before you can decide on which objective to pursue, you have to identify your desired outcome.

An objective answers the question what (what do you hope to achieve, accomplish, or attain). Your desired outcome answers the question why or so what (what difference will achieving your objective make).

If you already have an objective in mind, ask yourself:

  • What do I really want?
  • How juicy is it?
  • What difference will it make?
  • What will it be or feel like? Try to paint at least a mental picture by describing it in detail and with feeling.
  • What change in the status quo am I hoping to achieve?

The more clearly you can visualize your desired outcome the better you’ll be able to evaluate how likely it is that the action you’re contemplating is the best path to getting there. If it is, great! That clarity can be highly motivating. If it isn’t, that’s great, too, because you can change or revise your plan and save yourself the time, energy, and effort of going off on a wild goose chase.

The more time, energy, or effort it will take to attain your objective, the more imperative it is that you identify your desired outcome. The unconscious part of your brain is hooked on instant gratification, but changing the status quo tends to be gradual, mundane, repetitious, and tedious. Being able to remind yourself not only what you’re aiming for (the objective means) but also why it’s important to you (the subjective end) will go a long way to keeping you focused and on track.

In addition to being essential in creating transformational change and solving complex problems, the ability to identify your desired outcome is useful in everyday situations, such as responding to a social media post, accepting an invitation, choosing a book to read, or tackling your to-do list. It’s a truism because it’s true: it’s considerably easier to get what you want if you know what that is.

Suspend Disbelief and Commit
to the Process (Part 1)

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Disbelief: an inability to believe that something is true.

As a lifelong reader and writer, I’m on familiar terms with the concept of willing suspension of disbelief. The ability to suspend disbelief makes it possible for us to immerse ourselves in stories about people who don’t exist living in places that don’t exist (or don’t exist exactly as they are depicted) so that we can, at least temporarily, relate to them as if they and their thoughts, feelings, predicaments, and actions are every bit as real as we are.

Reading a novel is sort of like making a compact (looser than a contract) with an author. The reader agrees to suspend disbelief, which means trusting the author. And the author agrees to do his or her best to be trustworthy by getting things right, even when those things are not factual—in fact, especially when they are not factual. That includes keeping the plot and the characters straight, maintaining internal consistency, not making obvious errors, and having a juicy story to tell in the first place.

Vampires in San Francisco

I stopped suspending my disbelief in Atonement by Ian McEwan once he introduced an event for the sole purpose of moving the plot forward. I willingly suspended my disbelief in Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire until she placed the toll booths at the wrong end of the Golden Gate Bridge. Losing my suspension of disbelief in Atonement was a big deal because the plot contrivance was pivotal to the outcome of the story. The toll booths, on the other hand, were a minor issue in Rice’s Vampire Chronicles.

As a reader, I felt I was doing my part in both cases; it was the authors who let me down. I would have had a much different experience, however, if I’d approached Interview with the Vampire without a willingness to suspend disbelief. The very idea of “vampires” would have been a deal-breaker; I would never have begun reading the book. Not reading Interview with the Vampire probably wouldn’t have altered my life significantly—although it did give me that toll booth example, which I’ve used many times.

Things without Names

But there are other books I’ve read that I believe have enhanced my life, and reading them has contributed, even if in a small way, to me becoming the person I am now. One example is my all-time favorite novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It begins:

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point.

Magical realism definitely requires the willing suspension of disbelief.

But there has to be some promise—some prospective payoff—to cause us as readers to suspend our disbelief and invest our time and energy in a story. We like the genre or the author. The book comes highly recommended by a trusted source. It’s the next volume in a series we’re already hooked on. Or maybe we pick up a copy in a library or bookstore and are immediately captivated by the opening.

Whatever the case may be, on the one hand we readers automatically understand that suspension of disbelief is a requirement of getting the most out of fiction. On the other hand, we don’t automatically or permanently suspend disbelief for every work of fiction we encounter. We discriminate. But once we’re in, we’re in, so to speak—unless the author messes up.

Imagination and Truth

Author and columnist William Safire explored the subject of suspension of disbelief in a 2007 piece for The New York Times:

[W]ho coined the phrase and in what context? The quotation books have the coiner — the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in his 1817 “Biographia Literaria”: “That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.”

But the context is an eye-opener. Coleridge and William Wordsworth were neighbors. They agreed one day that “the two cardinal points of poetry” were “the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature” (Wordsworth’s specialty, with his “host of golden daffodils”) and “the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colors of imagination” (which Coleridge was especially good at). They agreed to contribute individually to a group of “Lyrical Ballads.”

You may not have noticed, but we’ve sort of wended our way, via imagination and truth, to art and science.

Safire added:

Richard Sha, professor of literature at American University, takes this to mean that “…one must willingly suspend one’s skepticism.”

Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid!

Suspending one’s skepticism in undertaking to read a work of fiction doesn’t usually pose much danger. But in other realms of life, it can lead to a variety of negative outcomes, from minor mistakes to profound tragedy. But while it shouldn’t be done lightly or habitually, there are some times and places where it definitely should be done—where it has to be done if we’re to get anything out of the situation, the learning, or the experience. We not only need to suspend disbelief, we also need to commit to the process if we want to:

  • Learn something new (a musical instrument, a language, a creative pursuit…)
  • Start something (a business, a project, a relationship…)
  • Make a significant decision (to become a parent, to get into or out of a relationship, to take or leave a job…)

What does this have to do with creating transformational change? Maybe you’ve figured that out. If not, it’s what I’ll be covering in the next installment.

Maximizer or Satisficer:
How Do You Choose?

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I first stumbled across the word “satisficer” (had to look it up) in The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz. In his book, he compares the way satisficers and those presumably on the other end of the spectrum—maximizers—go about making choices.

First, though, he claims that the two groups are defined by having different goals. Maximizers “seek and accept only the best,” while satisficers “settle for something that is good enough” without worrying that something else might be better.

Seeking and accepting only the best is not a goal, however; nor is settling for something that is good enough. Rather than being goals, seeking only the best and settling for good enough could be considered ways of operating, behaviors, attitudes, tendencies, or even drives. They play a part in how you go about trying to achieve a goal or accomplish something—and how you measure your success. But to call them goals entirely misses the point of what a goal (or objective) is. And that’s not inconsequential.

Maximizers Are Green

I’ve been revisiting this notion of satisficers and maximizers in light of a theory of personal operating systems I’m working on, as well as in terms of barriers to transformational change.

In regard to personal operating systems, of which there are three, I’m faced with another in a series of binary concepts. And once again, I don’t fit neatly at either end. Although I would generally and readily rank myself among the satisficers, there are areas in which I operate based on the high standards of the maximizers. The tyranny of the binary (I made that up, but it’s kind of a real thing) is probably a result of cognitive bias and the desire to oversimplify.

If the word didn’t already have sort of a definition associated with it, I would call the third way of operating “objectivizers,” meaning: deciding how to choose (what method to use) based on the objective—or, really, the desired outcome. It’s an accurate, if made up, way to describe it. And I’m not against making up words.

If you have been following the development of the personal operating systems, in general, those who have the teal operating system are most likely to be satisficers; those who have the green operating system are most likely to be maximizers; and those who have the purple operating system are most likely to be objectivizers.

What Works?

Maximizers, by striving to make the best choice—whether or not they can really be assured of having done so—are not focusing their attention on their objective or desired outcome as much as they are focusing it on the process and the end result of that process—getting “the best.” “The best” is an external frame of reference. It stands in, unsuccessfully, for a juicy desired outcome.

Schwartz points out how being a maximizer can lead to a lower level of satisfaction, for example, and a greater tendency toward rumination and regret. Satisficers appear to be happier than maximizers, but maybe they’re just in denial. I’m only partially joking. If satisficers really are all about “settling for good enough,” it doesn’t sound like they are focused on juicy desired outcomes any more than the maximizers are.

As a now self-identified objectivizer, I think I adopt the method of choosing that’s most likely to get me my desired outcome. The more focused I am on the desired outcome—and the more intentional I am about pursuing it—the more likely I am to shift between the maximizer-satisficer poles in order to hone in on it. That’s what works for me.

We all have tendencies to think in certain ways and act in certain ways; we all operate on autopilot much more of the time than we like to admit. But creating transformational change requires identifying a juicy desired outcome and pulling out all the stops to go after it rather than being attached to the way we prefer to operate.

Being a full-time maximizer won’t get you there, but neither will being a full-time satisficer.

You Can’t Live Anywhere
BUT in a Bubble

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A character in a story I wrote a long time ago imagines zipping himself closed inside a transparent bubble. As it turns out, we are all living inside our own transparent bubbles; most of us just don’t realize it. We take our experiences at face value. We assume everyone accesses the world the same way we access it, pays attention to what we pay attention to, sees the same colors, and has the same understanding of basic concepts.

Yes, we disagree with some people, but they’re so obviously wrong. The rest of us are on the same page, right?

The topic of the Monthly Meeting of the Mind (& Brain) this month was imagination. One of the participants commented that he has difficulty creating and sustaining visual mental images. The inability to form mental images is called aphantasia. It was identified in the 1880s but only named a few years ago, perhaps because it affects such a small percentage of the population. I can’t imagine being unable to create mental images! Visual mental imagery is an integral aspect of my sense of self and of how I function in the world. I couldn’t be me if I couldn’t do that.

Several years ago I learned about misophonia, also called soft-sound sensitivity. For people with this condition, ordinary sounds the rest of us easily tune out, such as chewing noises, tapping, or rustling paper, can be deeply disturbing. People with misophonia may have such strong physical and emotional reactions to certain sounds they curtail their activities to avoid them. Many more people are affected by misophonia than by aphantasia.

A few months ago I created a handout with a chart using four different colors, including a dark green. So many people saw the color that was clearly green to me (and my computer program) as black or gray or brown that I changed the shade for subsequent copies. These weren’t instances of color blindness, just different visual interpretations.

And then there’s the experience of anger. A lot of people believe anger to be a negative emotion, to be avoided, mitigated, or managed—certainly contained. But others, including me, find that anger can be energizing and even motivating at times. When I described getting angry about an aspect of my health/heart conditions to a friend earlier this month, she tried to persuade me of the value of acceptance. (If you know me, feel free to laugh now.) But I often experience anger that is about something—as opposed to anger at someone—as productive rather than destructive.

That Pesky Four-Letter Word

Lastly there’s a word common to all of us, and whether we use it or someone else uses it, we assume we know exactly what it means. The word is goal. In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz begins one of his chapters* with this paragraph:

Choosing wisely begins with developing a clear understanding of your goals. And the first choice you must make is between the goal of choosing the absolute best and the goal of choosing something that is good enough.

Does this paragraph make sense to you? Did you sort of nod (at least mentally) in agreement? Apparently it made sense to him.

You could call what Schwartz is talking about a preference, a strategy, a drive, an inclination—you could call it a lot of things, but goal is definitely not one of them. The definition of goal is:

the state of affairs that a plan is intended to achieve and that (when achieved) terminates behavior intended to achieve it.

A goal has an end point. (Visualize a goal post if you can.) It represents a significant change from your current state of affairs, which is why it requires a plan. Once you reach that end point, you no longer need to keep taking the steps you outlined in your plan to get there.

Semantics, you may say. So what?

Well, Schwartz is talking about taking an action that involves choosing something. The most important thing to determine when you’re choosing something is what is your desired outcome not what is the method you are going to use to make the choice. And that’s a lot more than semantics.

So you may know what a goal is and how to set and achieve one. Or you may think getting gas on the way home from work—or making the absolutely best choice—is a goal. In any case, you probably assume others define the word the same way you do.

My Particular Bubble

I can and do create vivid mental images (don’t have aphantasia). I’m bothered by the reverberating bass sounds coming out of speakers in cars next to me at stoplights or the apartment next to mine, but I don’t have misophonia. I can distinguish dark shades of green from black or brown. I don’t experience anger as an entirely negative emotion. And I have a good understanding of what a goal is and how to achieve one.

These are all things I now know are not the same for everyone else. But there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of things I must assume to be the norm for everyone. It’s part of the human condition. It’s also one of the reasons I have always been interested in learning about temperaments or personality types—not for the purpose of “putting people in boxes” but to understand perspectives that are so different from my own.

Your view from your bubble, like my view from mine, is unique. The conditions inside your bubble, like the conditions inside mine, create our personal experience. Rather than taking everything at face value and assuming our experiences or interpretations are valid for everyone else, we might be better off adopting the perspective of one of my former clients, which is:

Isn’t that interesting?

*The subject of this chapter of Schwartz’s book will also be the subject of my next blog post.

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