Cognitive Biases Archives - Page 2 of 7

Intention Seekers
(Conspiracy Part 2)

June 16, 2020 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

People who believe in conspiracy theories (conspiracists) are motivated by the same thing that motivates everyone: the drive to understand and make sense of the world we live in. Failing to understand what’s happening around us or how things work could jeopardize our survival.

So from an early age, we begin developing and testing theories to increase our understanding. The brains of both conspiracists and non-conspiracists are always trying to connect the dots. System 1 (the unconscious) operates by making associations: detecting patterns and making connections. It functions at a rapid pace and uses heuristics (mental shortcuts) to make determinations. As a result, it jumps to conclusions, seeing patterns that may not be there and making connections that may not exist. Again, this is true for everyone.

It’s System 2’s job to scrutinize questionable System 1 conclusions. But as we know, System 2 is slow, lazy, easily depleted, and may be otherwise occupied; it misses a lot.

Conspiracists appear to be both more likely to see patterns and connections and less likely to question them, especially when they support preexisting beliefs. In The Believing Brain, Michael Shermer says:

Why do people believe in highly improbable conspiracies? I contend that it is because their pattern-detection filters are wide open, thereby letting in any and all patterns as real, with little to no screening of potential false patterns.

All Explanatory Theories Are Not Equal

Conspiracy theories are different from other theories in a number of ways. They aren’t falsifiable, which means they can’t be disproved, so they can’t be proved; they are only apparent to those who are in the know or can see through the purported cover-ups; they represent a gloomy, sometimes sinister, worldview; they tend to be vast, far-reaching, and complex; and they disallow for the possibility of random or accidental events or occurrences.

Conspiracy theories can’t be proved because they are not likely to be based on verifiable evidence. Lack of evidence would disqualify most other types of theories, but in the case of conspiracy theories the lack of evidence is considered to be evidence of the existence of the conspiracy.

In addition to having wide-open pattern detection filters, the people who believe in conspiracy theories tend to be more suspicious, untrusting, and eccentric than their non-conspiracist counterparts. They have a need to feel special and tend to regard the world as an inherently dangerous place. They are also more likely to infer meaning and motive where others do not.

Several other personality characteristics and cognitive biases have been linked with the tendency to endorse conspiracy theories, including:

openness
neuroticism
authoritarianism
mild paranoia
confirmation bias
the conjunction fallacy
the proportionality bias
projection
attributions of intentionality
decreased sense of personal agency
traditionalism
rejection of science and/or experts
confidence in one’s beliefs

Two additional factors were identified in research reported by Lehigh University in 2018.

People who overestimate how well they understand politics are more likely to believe that hidden actors or clandestine groups are conspiring in wide-ranging activities to influence important world actions, events, and outcomes.
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People who identify with traditional values and systems they believe are under siege due to social change also tend to adopt conspiracy theory thinking.

Intention Seeking

Just as both conspiracists and non-conspiracists are driven to understand the world in which they live, both are also attempting to discern the intentions of others—again because not being able to do so accurately can have significant negative consequences. Our ability to quickly discern intentionality develops rapidly during childhood. Like pattern-detection, it is an automatic function of System 1, the unconscious. And System 1 can make the same kinds of mistakes in discerning intentions as it does in detecting patterns.

The fast and automatic operation of intentionality-seeking cognitive processes allows us to quickly make inferences about the mental states of those around us—an important evolutionary adaptation. However, as is the case with other low-level cognitive processes, inferences of intentionality may be subject to biases and heuristics. Not only are we sensitive to the intentions of others, but we may be overly sensitive, biased towards perceiving or inferring intentionality even where such an attribution may not be warranted. —Robert Brotherton and Christopher C. French, PLoS One

One series of studies reported in 2008 suggested that our brain automatically attributes intentionality to all actions, even those we know are not intentional. System 2 has to override this automatic process in order for us to recognize the lack of intention.

Judging an action to be unintentional requires more cognitive resources, takes longer, and results in increased ease of recall compared to judging the same action to be intentional. —E. Rossett, Cognition

This is an intriguing area of research given that we now know how little of our behavior, moment-to-moment, is in fact either rational or intentional. The consistent, coordinated, intentional action of multiple individuals over time and across distance for agreed-upon nefarious purposes isn’t impossible, of course. But it is highly improbable.

Nevertheless, as Brotherton and French state in their PLoS One article:

To the extent that an individual tends to regard ambiguous events or situations generally as having been intended, conspiracy theories may appear more plausible than alternative explanations.

Next time: Part 3: Conspiracy Theories and the Storytelling Mind
Last time: Part 1: Conspiracy: Making Distinctions

Conspiracy: Making Distinctions

June 2, 2020 by Joycelyn Campbell 1 Comment

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?

Maximizer or Satisficer:
How Do You Choose?

November 29, 2019 by Joycelyn Campbell 3 Comments

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.

Our Similarities Are
as Important as
Our Differences

June 20, 2018 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

We tend to identify and characterize Enneagram types by focusing on what makes each one different from all the others. One of the ways the brain makes sense of the world is by categorizing the things in it, and as Leonard Mlodinow says in Subliminal:

One of the principal ways we categorize is by maximizing the importance of certain differences.

Emphasizing differences is one of the shortcuts the brain uses to help us function and survive in our fast-paced, sometimes dangerous world. And there’s value in exploring those differences, which are actually critical to the survival and advancement of our species from an evolutionary perspective.

Life on earth is chancy. In the pursuit of successful reproduction, every animal must navigate the equivalent of cats trying to eat you, weasels trying to cheat you, and a flood carrying away your winter’s supply of food. Life is risky. And the key to personality is that there’s no single solution that answers every risk.

Two things distinguish the human personality from that of a mouse. One is our profoundly social lifestyle. Most mammals evolved to fend only for themselves, but a few species found that the benefits of cooperation outweigh (if only by an ounce) the self-centered simplicity of a solitary existence. Our social life is etched into the personality of our entire species. Instinctively, we communicate. Biologically, we’re built to share. Without ever meaning to, we care. Not everyone cares equally, but even the nastiest person you know cares more than the nicest weasel or bear.

Our other distinction is the sheer size of our brain. Our tremendous wattage, plus the social instincts, yield nuances of behavior that we don’t see in other creatures. And when the nuances mingle and collide, amplifying or offsetting one another, our personality becomes complex. —Hannah Holmes, Quirk

As we explore each type in the Enneagram classes I teach, we talk about what that type has to offer that the rest of us benefit from. We acknowledge the value of each type’s differences.

Even so, focusing exclusively on our differences can be problematic—especially in light of that other set of shortcuts we use known as cognitive biases. It can be a very short hop from different to bad or wrong or undesirable, whether those we categorize as different share a nationality, religion, age, political affiliation, or personality type.

So I’ve always appreciated the fact that the Enneagram symbol and system doesn’t just differentiate individual types, it also delineates their relationships and interconnections and encloses all of them within a single circle.

Although it’s our differences that tend to get played up; there’s equal—if not greater—value in exploring our similarities.

Find the Common Ground

You can easily identify what you have in common with the other types by locating yourself on the Contact Points chart below. If you’re a type 2, for example, what you have in common with types 3 and 4 is the Feeling center. What you have in common with types 5 and 8 is being part of the same triad. What you have in common with types 1 and 6 is taking the Compliant stance. And what you have in common with types 7 and 9 is having the Positive Outlook coping style.

The patterns of connection within the Enneagram make it clear that we aren’t really as separate from each other as we sometimes imagine we are.

To quote Lennon and McCartney:

I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.

Success: Is It Random or Predictable?

May 16, 2018 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

The two primary definitions of success are: (1) the achievement of something desired, planned, or attempted; (2) the gaining of fame or prosperity.

But what do you think success means? Do you believe, for example, that the most successful people are the best in their fields—or that the lack of success indicates a lack of talent or of the personal characteristics that create success? What do you tend to attribute your own successes or failures to?

Is There a Formula for Success?

If you assume the most successful people are also the most competent, you may attempt to find out how they do what they do and try to emulate them in order to become successful yourself. (There’s a huge market for this.)

It’s true that successful people do have some characteristics in common, such as passion, perseverance, imagination, intellectual curiosity, and openness to experience. And of course they are not completely without talent.

But talent, along with positive personal traits and characteristics, doesn’t account for all of the variance between successful and unsuccessful people. Recent studies suggest luck and opportunity play a significant role.

People overestimate the degree to which ability can be inferred from success. —Leonard Mlodinow, The Drunkard’s Walk

What Is Talent?

Talent is whatever set of personal characteristics allow a person to exploit lucky opportunities. It can include traits such as intelligence, skill, ability, motivation, determination, creative thinking, and emotional intelligence. More talented people seem to be more likely to get the most ‘bang for their buck’ out of a given opportunity. But…

Even a great talent becomes useless against the fury of misfortune. —Allesandro Pluchino and Andrea Raspisarda, physicists, and Alessio Biondo, economist

In simulations run by Pluchino, Raspisarda, and Biondo, the most talented individuals were rarely the most successful. In general, mediocre-but-lucky people were much more successful than more-talented-but-unlucky individuals. The most successful agents tended to be those who were only slightly above average in talent but with a lot of luck in their lives.

Chance is a more fundamental conception than causality. —Max Born, Nobel Laureate

Why Isn’t Talent Enough?

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

We have a tendency to believe, as Mlodinow says, that the combination of our personal qualities and the properties of any given situation or environment lead directly and unequivocally to precise consequences.

That’s a mechanistic mental model that doesn’t reflect reality. We are complex adaptive systems living within multiple other complex adaptive systems. As a result, life isn’t always fair, good doesn’t always triumph over evil, and talent doesn’t always lead to success.

In The Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam talks about the often invisible undercurrents that may boost—or impede—our success, depending on whether we’re flowing with or against a particular current:

When undercurrents aid us…we are invariably unconscious of them. We never credit the undercurrent for carrying us so swiftly; we credit ourselves, our talents, our skills.

Our brains are expert at providing explanations for the outcomes we see. People who swim with the current never credit it for their success because it genuinely feels as though their achievements are produced through sheer merit.

And it isn’t just the people who flow with the current who are unconscious about its existence. People who fight the current all their lives also regularly arrive at false explanations for outcomes. When they fall behind, they blame themselves, their lack of talent. Those who travel with the current will always feel they are good swimmers; those who swim against the current may never realize they are better swimmers than they imagine.

When we assess the world, Mlodinow says, we tend to see what we expect to see. We define degree of talent by degree of success—and then reinforce a cause-and-effect relationship by noting the correlation. So although there may be little difference in ability between someone who is hugely successful and someone who is not, there is usually a big difference in how they are viewed.

Our assessment of the world would be quite different if all our judgments could be insulated from expectation and based only on relevant data. But our brains aren’t wired that way.

What Can We Do About It?

Be clear about our desired outcome
Recognize the extent and the limit of our personal agency
Develop solid habits
Follow through on our intentions
Persevere