Cognitive Biases Archives - Farther to Go!

Born to Make Snap Judgments
—and Run with Them

January 10, 2022 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

The brain is all about the action. It wants to know what’s going on with and around us so it can figure out what to do about it. Uncertainty only gets in the way of its imperative to always know and to always have an answer. Thus, the brain could be considered to be allergic to uncertainty and to the very idea of randomness.

Not only is the brain trying to figure out what’s going to happen next, it’s also trying to identify patterns to speed up and (hopefully) improve the process in the future.

In short, as far as the brain is concerned: randomness is bad; patterns are good.

Association

The part of the brain that is focused on what to do next operates via associative thinking rather than logical, linear thinking. Associative thinking (or learning) is based on finding patterns, making connections, and categorizing. Associative thinking is fast and nonlinear, and we always have access to it.

Associative thinking takes place automatically. We can’t stop our brain from doing it, which is a good thing; if the brain wasn’t able to find patterns, make connections, and categorize things, our chances of survival would be diminished, and it would take us a lot longer to learn anything. Logical, linear thinking, which is used by the conscious part of the brain (System 2), is slow, effortful, and limited.

Since associative thinking puts a premium on speed rather than accuracy, however, it makes mistakes. If errors are not corrected, they can turn into beliefs or habits of thinking, just like habits of behavior, and become part of our mental model. The more frequently we encounter an apparent pattern or connection, the likelier we are to believe it is true and accurate. That’s also the case with classification and categorization.

Snap to It

Stereotype: fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing. (Oxford Dictionary)

We are born to judge others by how they look: our brains come hardwired with a specific face-processing area, and even shortly after birth, babies would rather look at a human face than anything else. Within their first year, they become more discerning, and are more likely to crawl towards friendly looking faces than those who look a bit shifty. By the time we reach adulthood, we are snap-judgement specialists, jumping to conclusions about a person’s character and status after seeing their face for just a tenth of a second. And we shun considered assessments of others in favour of simple shortcuts—for example, we judge a baby-faced individual as more trustworthy, and associate a chiselled jaw with dominance. —Kate Douglas, New Scientist

Other research indicates that these conclusions we begin jumping to in infancy can develop into stereotypes that then influence future interpretations as well as behavior. It’s highly likely that the brain generates all kinds of stereotypes as mental shortcuts to identify things, people, situations, etc.

Categorization

Categorization: the act of sorting and organizing things according to group, class, or, as you might expect, category. (vocabulary.com)

Categorizing is an automatic System 1 (unconscious) process. That means it’s easy; eventually tracks laid down in the brain carry us along effortlessly. We rarely question our perceptions because confirmation bias makes them feel right. While it is relatively easy—and requires no conscious attention—to lay down these tracks, the same cannot be said for changing them.

Recognizing the differences between things (distinguishing), on the other hand, is a System 2 (conscious) process that requires intention, attention, and effort. Those, in turn, require logical, linear thinking. Making distinctions can be difficult and often generates cognitive dissonance, which is uncomfortable.

Pattern Detection

Pattern recognition/detection: the imposition of identity on input data, such as speech, images, or a stream of text, by the recognition and delineation of patterns it contains and their relationships. (Brittanica, pattern recognition in computer science)

Patternicity: the tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise. (Michael Shermer)

We use our brain’s pattern-detection processes all the time: when driving a motor vehicle, listening to music, observing someone’s behavior, following a story, running experiments, playing games or sports, etc. The brain’s attempts to identify a pattern or determine if a pattern is present generate activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which is part of the reward system. That means pattern-detection is reinforced by the brain.

It’s not a stretch to imagine that most if not all of perception is a result of pattern-detection. And given that pattern-detection operates unconsciously, in the part of the brain that values speed over accuracy, it’s also not a stretch to recognize how likely it is to be fallible.

According to Jamie Hale, in PsychCentral:

Our pattern-detecting ability serves us well in many instances, but it also can lead to seeing something when there is nothing there. In the words of Rudolf Flesch:

“Instead of the black and-white, single-track, everyone-knows-that-this-is-due-to-that approach, get used to the idea that this is a world of multiple causes, imperfect correlations, and sheer, unpredictable chance. It is true that the scientists, with their statistics and their probabilities, have made a stab at the harnessing of chance. But they know very well that certainty is unattainable. A high degree of probability is the best we can ever get.”

The brain lulls us into believing that we have a good grasp of what’s happening, that certainty is attainable, and that our snap judgments are accurate perceptions of reality. However, things are not as they seem.

Books to Change Your Mind,
Your Brain, and Your Self

September 8, 2021 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

Here are brief summaries of a dozen books I consider foundational for understanding brain, mind, and behavior. Most of them were published between 2010 and 2012. There are plenty of books that have been published since then—and a couple I’m eagerly awaiting that will be out later this year—but these remain the most salient.

If you were to read all of them, you would see that some cross-reference each other in one way or another. That repetition is extremely useful! You would also get schooled in the extent to which we are wrong, which is also extremely useful.

Each summary includes a quote from the book, my take on what the book has to offer, and a link to a related blog post on my website. The books are listed roughly in order of importance.

Incognito | David Eagleman | 2011

Our brains run mostly on autopilot, and the conscious mind has little access to the giant and mysterious factory that runs below it.

It’s silent and dark inside the brain. So what happens in there to give us the rich visual and auditory perception of the external world we seem to have? How often do we mistake illusions for reality? Is the brain even focused on attempting to accurately represent reality or is it actively making things up? To what extent can you trust your sense of time? Is time real? How confident are you in your answers to any of those questions?

This was the threshold book for me: the book that didn’t just show me why and how the way we think about things is wrong, but also opened up so many possibilities. It left me with a big question: what is the best use of consciousness and conscious attention?

Blog post: Z Is for Zombie Systems

Thinking, Fast and Slow | Daniel Kahneman | 2011

A mind that follows WYSIATI (What You See Is All There Is) will achieve high confidence much too easily by ignoring what it does not know. It is therefore not surprising that many of us are prone to have high confidence in unfounded intuitions.

Here’s everything you wanted to know about System 1 (the unconscious) and System 2 (consciousness). I sometimes refer to these two parts of the brain as Smart Hamster (S2, the slow thinker) and Strong Hamster (S1, the fast thinker). Kahneman details the benefits and shortcomings of both types of thinking.

He also explains the basis of intuition and when it is—or is not—likely to be reliable, as well as some of the many cognitive biases System 1 uses in order to arrive at its quick judgments and conclusions. Overall assessment: mind-boggling.

Blog post: Intuition: Knowing Without Knowing How We Know

Self Comes to Mind | Antonio Damasio | 2010

The narrative of mind and consciousness that I am presenting here does not conform to the requirements of fiction. It is actually counterintuitive. It upsets traditional human storytelling. It repeatedly denies long-held assumptions and not a few expectations. But none of this makes the account any less likely.

Many of the books on my list contain what’s known as troublesome knowledge; Damasio admits upfront that his is one of them. He takes us on a trip from single-celled nonconscious organisms to us: many-celled conscious organisms with a sense of self and multiple selves.

I put off reading this for a long time, but it was worth the effort to get through the science to get to the issue of what it’s like to live with consciousness. As Damasio says, our conscious deliberation is circumscribed by numerous unconscious processes, some of which we can affect and some of which we can’t.

One surprising conclusion is that the unconscious is capable of making much higher-level decisions than we give it credit for—that is, if we have trained it well.

Blog post: Are You a Fictional Character?

The Ego Trick | Julian Baggini | 2011

The self is a construction of the mind, one flexible enough to withstand constant renovation, partial demolition and reconstruction, but one that can be brought down if the foundations are undermined.

Baggini, a philosopher, tackles a big question: If each of us has an enduring essence that makes us the same person throughout our lives (or even after), where and what is it? He attempts to answer the question via philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, and spirituality.

He says that the self is an illusion but that he does not mean it isn’t real, just that it isn’t what we think it is. That is the so-called “ego trick.” If there is no “true self,” we can, to a certain extent, create ourselves. His emphasis on action and agency make this a must-read, I think, for anyone interested in transformational change.

Blog post: Time to Let Go of the Myth of the True Self

What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite | David DiSalvo | 2011

I believe that the new wave of cognitive research actually undercuts a great deal of self-help advice, and will continue to do so in the years ahead by showing just how vacuous, groundless, and fraudulent much of that advice really is. We do not need more self-help—we need more science help.

The brain is “happy” when it is avoiding loss, lessening risk, and averting harm. While these protective tendencies can be quite useful, they can also get in the way of creativity, innovation, and living a satisfying and meaningful life.

The brain is also happy when it can connect the dots, whatever those dots may be: experiences, symbols, words, images, sounds. It does not like randomness, but it does like patterns. It doesn’t like questions; it likes answers.

As Disalvo says, we have a big brain capable of greatness with hardwiring for survival. And as I’ve said, learn how to use your brain instead of letting it use you.

Blog post: Are You Living the Good Life?

Stumbling on Happiness | Daniel Gilbert | 2006

Because it is so much easier for me to remember the past than to generate new possibilities, I will tend to compare the present with the past even when I ought to be comparing it with the possible.

We are really bad at affective forecasting (predicting how we will feel in the future or about a future event).

For a variety of reasons, making decisions about what to pursue in life based on what we think will make us happy in the future is largely a recipe for unhappiness. Where and how do we go wrong? Gilbert might say, Let me count the ways. In addition to exposing our wrongheadedness about happiness, he relates a considerable amount of research about a myriad of things we take for granted—and about which we are also wrong.

Note: You can skip the last chapter.

Blog post: Miswanting: The Problem with Affective Forecasting

The Storytelling Animal | Jonathan Gottschall | 2012

We are the great masterworks of our own storytelling minds—figments of our own imaginations. … And like a novel in process, our life stories are always changing and evolving, being edited, rewritten, and embellished by an unreliable narrator.

Stories permeate both our waking and sleeping lives. We are so addicted to stories that, even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night telling stories. Why do we find stories so compelling that we easily suspend disbelief? Why are we so compelled to turn everything into a story? And why should we question our—and others’—stories far more than we do?

Gottschall provides many fascinating stories about stories, including the stories of our lives, which are based on that most unreliable source of material: our memories.

Blog post: Consciousness Is a Narrative Process

The Hidden Brain | Shankar Vedantam | 2010

Nearly all our social, political, and economic institutions are based on an assumption of how human beings behave that is at best incomplete and at worst fundamentally wrong. The mistakes are so fundamental to the way we think about the world that we have enshrined them in international treaties and in constitutions.

What are the broader-scale effects of our assumptions, cognitive biases, and other errors in thinking? How do they affect our interactions with others and the ways in which we set up and run our social institutions, such as the criminal justice system?

Vedantam, who is the host of The Hidden Brain podcast on NPR, describes how our erroneous beliefs about the way we operate contribute to so many of the problems in the world. By becoming aware of them, we can begin to mitigate some of their negative effects.

Blog post: Success: Is It Random or Predictable?

On Being Certain | Richard Burton | 2008

To be effective powerful rewards, some of these sensations such as the feeling of knowing and the feeling of conviction must feel like conscious and deliberate conclusions. As a result, the brain has developed a constellation of mental sensations that feel like thoughts but aren’t.

As far as the brain is concerned feeling right is identical to being right. And we are persuaded by feelings more than we’re persuaded by facts. We don’t like being or feeling wrong—or being or feeling uncertain. This matters because the more certain we feel, the less likely we are to question our beliefs, judgments, or conclusions.

Among many other things, Burton talks about how feeling certain might, in some cases, serve an evolutionary purpose, what rewards have to do with certainty, and how seeing—or experiencing—should not equate with believing.

Blog post: I Could Be Wrong

Mind over Mind | Chris Berdik | 2012

Exploring the vast influence of expectations brings up humbling, even frightening possibilities. We might discover just how little contact we truly have with bedrock reality, and how much of our time, effort, and emotion we devote to watching and worrying over shadows. On the other hand, the power of expectations makes our reality coherent, meaningful, and open to the possibility of change, if we put our minds to it.

We can’t not have expectations, although we have often been advised to try. One reason is that our brain is in the business of predicting what’s going to happen next, and we have no control over that. We just go along for the ride.

Berdik explains what expectations have to do with—among other things—the placebo effect, addictions of all kinds, and athletic performance. Not surprisingly, the brain’s reward system plays a significant role in our responses to what are, first and foremost, our brain’s expectations.

Blog post: X Is for eXpectations

The Power of Habit | Charles Duhigg | 2012

Habits, scientists say, emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort. Left to its own devices, the brain will try to make almost any routine into a habit, because habits allow our minds to ramp down more often.

From the brain’s perspective, habits are an energy-saving device. Duhigg tells us everything we need to know about them from the science behind them to practical application.

There are three parts to the so-called habit loop: a cue, a routine (the behavior), and a reward. Once a habit gets created, we can’t just eliminate it, but if we identify the cue and the reward, we can change the behavior. Similarly, if we want to create a new habit, we also have to determine what the cue and the reward will be.

Blog post: Is There a Blueprint for Habit Change?

Brain Rules | John Medina | 2014

The brain appears to be designed to (1) solve problems (2) related to surviving (3) in an unstable outdoor environment, and (4) to do so in nearly constant motion.* I call this the brain’s performance envelope.

Medina does in fact provide “rules” (which are more like recommendations) in 12 different areas: survival, exercise, sleep, stress, wiring, attention, memory, sensory integration, vision, music, gender, and exploration. He supports his recommendation with lots of data and examples.

In the chapter on wiring, he states that every brain is wired differently, but goes on to talk about what’s so for everyone (the “experience-independent” parts: much of the structure and function) as well as what’s so for individuals (the “experience-dependent” parts that are unique to each person). Our wiring is altered by what we do and what we learn.

*The book would have made my Top 12 list for this quote alone.

Blog post: 31 Ways to Be Good to Your Brain

Randomness Does Not Compute

April 17, 2021 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Have you noticed that the brain has an answer for almost everything? Not only does it work overtime to predict what’s going to happen next, it works nearly as hard to explain what happened after the fact.

The associative machinery of the brain seeks causes.

When something unexpected occurs, the brain tries to explain it and incorporate that explanation into our mental model. Random acts or events, however, are impossible to anticipate and account for.

A random act or event is one that is governed by or dependent upon chance.

Synonyms are: stray, accidental, arbitrary, indiscriminate, haphazard, unplanned, fortuitous, aimless, desultory, hit or miss, unpremeditated, purposeless, adventitious, chance, unintentional, and unexpected.

We’re continually nudged in this direction and then that one by random events. As a result, although statistical regularities can be found in social data, the future of particular individuals is impossible to predict, and for our particular achievements, our jobs, our friends, our finances, we all owe more to chance than many people realize. … In all except the simplest real-life endeavors unforeseeable or unpredictable forces cannot be avoided, and moreover those random forces and our reactions to them account for much of what constitutes our particular path in life. —Leonard Mlodinow, The Drunkard’s Walk

After the fact, everything seems inevitable. After the fact, the past appears coherent as a result of our storytelling mind imposing order on it. After the fact, we have a sense of having had far more control over the direction of our lives than we actually had. But a story is still a story, and there’s no such thing as a “true story.”

Hindsight bias is the tendency to construct one’s memory after the fact (or interpret the meaning of something in the past) according to currently known facts and one’s current beliefs. In this way, one appears to make the past consistent with the present and more predictive or predictable than it actually was. —Robert Todd Carroll, The Critical Thinker’s Dictionary

The brain makes post-hoc dot connections.

It’s not surprising that when the brain looks back, it can construct a neat cause-and-effect explanation for an event that was not expected. The hindsight bias helps all of us maintain the illusion of control by seeming to eliminate randomness. But it’s only possible to clearly and accurately separate the signals from the noise—and connect the dots—after an event has occurred and the outcome is known. Even then, our explanations are going to be coming from our brain, which means our experiences, our point of view, our beliefs, and our biases.

Our brain looks for patterns in order to explain unexpected events so it will be better prepared to predict and respond to them the next time they occur. But no matter how good it may be at figuring out and responding to a single unexpected event that has occurred, it will never be able to predict truly random events.

The question is would you want it to?

Can you recognize a random act and accept it as such or are you more comfortable having an explanation for it even if that explanation isn’t true?

The photo at the top of the post is from the movie Stranger Than Fiction. Author Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson) has been trying to decide how to kill off the main character in her novel. She finally figures it out when she notices an apple fall onto the sidewalk and roll away.

Pointers for the Unsettled, Unsituated, and Uncertain

March 25, 2021 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Thanks to our brain we have a sense of a constant, relatively unchanging world. We’re pretty confident we can distinguish reality from unreality. In fact, we’re pretty confident about a lot of things. But neuroscientist Anil Seth refers to our perception of the world as a “controlled hallucination.” And theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser says we can thank our brain for tricking us into building a sense of the “real.”

The universe is in a constant state of flux. Since we are part of the universe, so are we. And just because we’re convinced that we experience reality as it is doesn’t make it so. Our brain regularly makes best guesses about what’s out there, based on its mental model of the world, and we aren’t in the habit of questioning its conclusions.

It’s no wonder we get tripped up by the unexpected, or stuck when we try to pin things down, or flummoxed when we turn out to be wrong. The remedy is to embrace being unsettled, unsituated, and uncertain because doing so is more effective, more powerful, more exciting, more interesting—and it’s actually based in reality.

Unsettled

We have these prior ways of seeing things and the brain likes that, likes closure, likes to be settled, and letting go of that requires a lot of mental energy. —Ray Land

The unconscious part of the brain prefers to make definitive statements and declarations because it wants to cut to the chase. It wants to figure out what’s what, who’s who, what’s going on, and what we should do about it. Any number of cognitive biases—mental shortcuts taken by the brain—are based on this drive to pigeonhole everything so we can move on. So:

Remember that life is dynamic and in a constant state of flux, not fixed or static.
Generate provisional assessments based on your current perspective, knowledge, and desired outcome, rather than seeking or accepting definitive statements.
Recognize that everything is a work-in-progress rather than a finished product.

Unsituated

Wandering aimlessly, trickster regularly bumps into things he did not expect. He therefore seems to have developed an intelligence about contingency, the wit to work with happenstance. —Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World

Being situated means being located or established in one place and having a narrow perspective as a result. Being unsituated means putting ourselves in a position to expand our horizons and our understanding. Trickster is a good metaphor for being unsituated, as he can generally be found on the move and often far from home—on the road, at the crossroads, on the border or the boundary—pursuing one thing or another and encountering new sights and sounds. So:

Identify and actively pursue what you want as opposed to trying to reduce uncertainty.
Spend more time exploring what you don’t know than exploiting what you know.
Take on the role of a quester rather than the role of an expert.

Uncertain

The world makes much less sense than you think. The coherence comes mostly from the way your mind works. —Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

Our brain craves certainty and it really wants to be right—so much so that we can experience feeling uncertain and/or wrong as an actual threat to our survival. But aiming for certainty and being right are not part of the recipe for a satisfying and meaningful life. Certainty is often ephemeral, if not illusory. And being right is the booby prize. The recognition that we could be wrong, on the other hand, is downright liberating. So:

Remind yourself that you could be wrong instead of trying to prove that you’re right.
Evaluate feedback in terms of actions and outcomes rather than as self-judgment.
Always ask questions. Value good questions more than good answers.

Click here or on the graphic below to print or download the pointers.

Conspiracy Theories and the
Storytelling Mind
(Conspiracy Part 3)

July 29, 2020 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

The most important thing about conspiracy theories isn’t that they aren’t true. They’re stories; of course they aren’t true. There’s no such thing as a “true story.”

We see, understand, and explain the world and other people—including ourselves—in terms of stories, not facts. Stories and the telling of them come naturally. They are easy to formulate and to remember. Facts, on the other hand, don’t come naturally. That’s why much of what we’ve learned, including most of our deeply held beliefs, has been transmitted to us via the stories we’ve heard, read, or watched—beginning with the fairy tales and nursery rhymes of early childhood.

In fact the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are more important to our sense of self than the actual facts of our lives. What we remember of an experience is a story about it. The details are subject to revision, and we often employ confabulation, in the service of reinforcing a particular emotional state.

Emotion determines what we remember and how we remember. Emotion is what makes an event or an experience compelling. And there’s nothing more compelling than fraught situations, lurking danger, and bad outcomes. That’s because the brain is first and foremost a threat detector—as it should be, since although pleasant things are rewarding, unpleasant things can kill us. We need to know about those things so we can try to avoid them.

Wired for Story

It’s really no surprise that facts don’t persuade people to change their beliefs, especially in regard to conspiracy theories. Facts are not persuasive. Stories, on the other hand, are so persuasive and come to mind so easily that the world seems to present itself to us as a series of stories with beginnings, middles, and endings.

In his highly readable and wide-ranging book The Storytelling Animal, Jonathan Gottschall devotes several pages to a discussion of how conspiracy theories are one outcome of our mind’s tendency to impose the structure of story in places where there is no story.

He prefaces the discussion with the example of a 1940s experiment involving an animated film of geometric shapes. When the psychologists running the experiment, Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel, asked viewers to describe what they had seen, almost no one said they saw geometric shapes moving around the screen. Instead they related detailed narratives imputing intentions and desires to circles and triangles.

They saw soap operas: doors slamming, courtship dances, the foiling of a predator. —Gottschall

Gottschall says that he, too, saw a very convincing story involving a hero, a heroine, and a villain. Heider and Simmel’s experiment has been replicated, and other similar experiments have been developed since. All have produced the same result.

Ripping Good Yarns

Conspiracy theories connect real data points and imagined data points into a coherent, emotionally satisfying version of reality. Conspiracy theories exert a powerful hold on the human imagination. …They fascinate us because they are ripping good yarns, showcasing classic problem structure and sharply defined good guys and villains. They offer vivid, lurid plots that translate with telling ease into wildly popular entertainment. —Gottschall

Conspiracy theories serve multiple purposes. Via the structure of story, they provide an explanation for why things are bad in the world; they separate the good guys from the bad guys; they tie random events together to weave a seamless whole.

Conspiracy theories…are always consoling in their simplicity. Bad things do not happen because of a wildly complex swirl of abstract historical and social variables. They happen because bad men live to stalk our happiness. And you can fight, and possibly even defeat, bad men. If you can read the hidden story. —Gottschall

Our brain is so good at altering our memories to support and affirm particular emotional states that we can become firmly convinced that something that didn’t happen happened (or vice versa). In the same way, conspiracy theories buttress our worldviews, altering our mental model and our actual experience of reality.

Conspiracy theories are an example of allowing the associative processing of the unconscious (System 1), which is gullible and prone to cognitive biases to run unchecked by the skeptical, critical thinking of System 2. It’s an example of letting our brain use us. And because of the way the brain works, once someone starts down that road, it becomes easier and easier to believe the story, and more and more difficult to question it.