beliefs Archives - Page 2 of 3

Think You’re Thinking?

May 26, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 4 Comments

Much of what passes for thinking consists of unconscious, not conscious, mental processes. When it comes to taking in information and deciding what to believe and what not to believe, for example, we are appallingly predictable. We are most likely to believe:

What Is Familiar

Information that feels familiar is easier to absorb and believe than information that is unfamiliar. The information could be familiar because it’s associated with other beliefs we have or it could come from a trusted source. On the other hand, it could simply be something we’ve come across before—especially if we’ve come across it multiple times. Frequent repetition can be enough to convince people to believe things that are not true because familiarity generates a sense of cognitive ease. Called the mere-exposure effect, advertisers make use of it, but they aren’t the only ones.

Even if we’re aware of the mere-exposure effect, we probably think we’re immune to it because we’re more sophisticated than that. Believing we’re immune to it, however, might make us even more susceptible to it than we would be if we simply recognized it.

What Is Easy

Information that is easy to understand gives us a sense of cognitive ease. Information that is difficult to understand requires greater cognitive effort to process. Our brain prefers to chill out, so it just says “no” to exerting additional cognitive effort.

Say you’re faced with choosing between two concepts, ideas, or explanations. Idea A is easy to understand, while Idea B is more difficult. Statistically speaking, you’re much more likely to accept Idea A instead of Idea B simply because Idea A is easier for you to swallow. This is especially likely to be the case if you are already experiencing some degree of cognitive strain or if your conscious (System 2) attention is depleted. You’ve undoubtedly had the experience of feeling “brain dead” following a mentally fatiguing effort. That’s when you’re most susceptible to believing what is easy.

What Validates Our Preexisting Beliefs

Information that confirms what we already believe to be true makes us feel right and certain, so we’re likely to accept it uncritically. On the other hand, we’re more likely to reject information that is inconsistent with what we already believe. At the very least, we hold inconsistent information up to greater scrutiny. So we have different standards for evaluating information based on the level of cognitive ease it generates. And evidence has precious little impact on us if it conflicts with what we believe simply because the cognitive strain of processing it is too great.

The easy acceptance of information that validates what we already believe is a result of confirmation bias. Confirmation bias causes us to selectively notice and pay attention to what confirms our beliefs and to ignore what doesn’t. For example, people who favor gun control pay more attention to stories about injuries and deaths resulting from gun use; people who are against gun control pay more attention to stories about people using guns to defend themselves. Confirmation bias underlies the discomfort we feel around people who disagree with us and the ease we feel around people who share our beliefs [see What is Familiar and What is Easy, above].

It’s easy to believe what’s familiar, what’s easy to grasp, and what validates our pre-existing beliefs. No critical thinking or cognitive effort are required. On the other hand, actual thinking, as Dan Ariely says, is difficult and sometimes unpleasant.

The Danger of a Single Story

April 10, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

This TED talk is very important and very moving. It made me think about and ask myself who are the people and what are the places I have a single story about?

So that is how to create a single story, show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.

The consequence of the single story is this: It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar.

The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.

Stories matter. MANY stories matter.

Novelist Chimamanda Adichie

Challenging Conventional Wisdom

April 7, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

Remember that we treat ideas like possessions, and it will be hard for us to part with them. —Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan

Many of our ideas are based on what could be called common sense or conventional wisdom. They just seem so obvious we never consider questioning them. Because they make sense to us, we operate as if they are factual. We don’t need to know if there’s any evidence to support them. But those kinds of ideas are actually beliefs: things we accept or trust to be true. And when it comes to beliefs, trust generally trumps the need for evidence.

Here are two recent examples where evidence doesn’t support the conventional wisdom. Both involve children and child-rearing attitudes.

The conventional wisdom is that parents’ involvement with their children’s schooling is advantageous to their children’s education. That just seems like common sense. But this belief had never actually been tested or measured until recently. And it turns out that the conventional wisdom is not all that wise.

Don’t Help Your Kids with their Homework and other insights from a ground-breaking study of how parents impact children’s academic achievement: Parents can impact their kids academic success, but not by helping them with their homework, especially when the kids get to middle school.

Other conventional wisdom in regard to kids is that the world is a more dangerous place than it used to be, and the primary job of adults is to keep kids safe. This also seems obvious. But it’s also a belief that isn’t often examined. It turns out that the world may not be that much more dangerous than it used to be, and the zealous overprotection of kids may be doing them more harm than good.

The Overprotected Kid: A preoccupation with safety has stripped childhood of independence, risk taking, and discovery—without making it safer: Kids need to have time away from the watchful eyes of their parents or other adults, and they need to experience a feeling of being in danger in order to develop into competent adults.

There are many more examples of evidence not supporting the conventional wisdom in other areas, especially aging and behavior. In the two instances cited above, I think it’s interesting to consider how these beliefs may have been formed and how they became so widely accepted. It’s generally harder to find a middle ground when beliefs are involved because beliefs have such a strong emotional component.

And that’s another area in which common sense or conventional wisdom fails us. We think the level of confidence we have in a belief has some positive correlation with the accuracy of the belief. But it doesn’t. In fact, there’s probably little evidence to support many of our beliefs.

Declarations of high confidence mainly tell you that an individual has constructed a coherent story in his mind, not necessarily that the story is true. —Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

The bottom line is that our brain craves certainty, and beliefs provide us with a feeling of certainty. If we want to use our brain, however, we need to challenge some of our own deeply-held beliefs instead of doing everything we can to shore them up. That’s easier said than done, of course.

Reinvent the Wheel

March 3, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

Last spring when I was clearing stuff out of my apartment and garage, I noticed that none of my exercise equipment or paraphernalia ever made it into the recycle piles. I simply left it where it was without even considering letting go of it. I had to question the hands-off attitude since I hadn’t used any of that stuff in at least a couple of years. Then I realized that, of course, I intended to use some or all of it again…one of these days.

I had been thinking about getting back into strength training for several months. I already had a fold-up weight bench, two sets of dumbbells, and a program I had followed here in the privacy of my own home. So when I imagined doing strength training, I automatically thought of re-starting that program. That’s what I had done before. I knew how to do strength training.

The problem was I didn’t want to do that program; I didn’t want to do any program in the privacy of my home. I wanted to join a gym and work with a personal trainer. It took me a while to realize that the strength training program I had used in the past wasn’t right for me now. Holding onto the exercise equipment—and my belief that what I needed to do was what I had done before—was actually keeping me from doing what I wanted to do. In fact, it was keeping me from doing anything.

So I got rid of most of the exercise stuff, joined a gym, connected with a great personal trainer, and have been working out four times a week for the past four and a half months. I love it, and I feel great.

This wouldn’t be particularly interesting if were nothing more than a personal anecdote. But I’ve noticed I’m not the only one with this mindset. Two friends—one male and one female—both want to lose weight. Both successfully lost significant amounts of weight in the past. Both have grappled with the conviction that they know what they need to do, which is to replicate what they did in the past. And just like me and my desire to re-start a strength training program, that conviction has delayed their taking action.

Another friend wants to get a better handle on her day-to-day finances. She developed a system that she used in the past, and her first inclination was to go back to that system because it worked before. But she readily admitted that she didn’t really like it and didn’t particularly want to start using it again.

Whether it was exercising, losing weight, or keeping track of money, all of us got hung up on whatever we did that worked in the past and assumed that was the only way we could be successful in the present. Rather than using our past successes as motivation to figure out what would work now, we focused on the details of what we did before. We forgot that when we were successful the first time, we weren’t relying on past experience. We had to figure it out. (We also may have forgotten other failed attempts that preceded our successful ones.)

Our brains create the sense (illusion) of a continuous self. But our present self is not our past self, nor is it our future self. When we imagine that we “know how to do that” because it worked in the past, we forget we’re not that person anymore. Instead of trying to repeat what our past self did, we’re more likely to be successful if we start fresh—if we start by assuming we don’t know how to do that. Then we have an opportunity to find out what might work this time around.

4-Step Program for Reason Addicts

February 20, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 4 Comments

Believing that reasons are responsible for what we feel, think, and do is a habit of thought that has many characteristics of an addiction. We have to have reasons. We can’t imagine living without them. Coming up with a good reason for something is one of the most satisfying experiences we can have.

Even when we recognize–conceptually–that reasons don’t actually exist and that the reason habit is self-destructive and delusional, we still can’t just quit reasons cold turkey.

So here’s a 4-step program that may help.

Step 1

Admit that you can’t do (or not do) anything without having a reason for it.

I did (or didn’t do) Y because of X.

You can’t think, feel, or do anything other than what you think, feel, or do because reasons cause you to think and feel certain things—and do (or not do) the things you do. You are at the effect, and at the mercy, of all the causes surrounding you. You are powerless. A pawn in the Game of Life. (Too melodramatic? Not really.)

Step 2

Question the assumption that reasons have both an independent existence and a direct cause-and-effect relationship with what you think, feel, and do.

X happened, and so I decided to do (or not do) Y.

Take a deep breath. Insert yourself into the equation. When you take some responsibility, you also regain some of your autonomy and power. Notice your reaction.

Step 3

Recognize that no direct cause-and-effect relationship necessarily exists between what happens (or what happened–especially in the far distant past) and what you think, feel, or do.

X happened and I did (or didn’t do) Y.

When you stop habitually turning situations, events, conditions, encounters, and incidents into reasons, you reclaim even more of your power. Notice that far more possibilities exist than you may have previously recognized.

Step 4

Free yourself from the habit of creating reasons to justify and explain every little thing. Just do it. Or don’t do it.

I did (or didn’t do) Y.

Discover and exercise your amazing ability to simply act. Experience the freedom of being a cause rather than an effect.