Mastering the art and science of change involves learning about how the brain works—meaning what’s so for everyone.
But it also involves learning about our individual differences—meaning what’s so for you vs. what’s so for me.
We don’t all process information in the same way, respond identically to the same stimuli or experiences, want the same things, or perceive the world through the same mental model. Understanding those differences is just as important for creating change as is understanding how the brain works.
Grouping people based on various categories—nationality, religion, political leanings, Type A/Type B, extraversion/introversion,* etc.—comes naturally. All brains do it, which makes it an example of what’s so for everyone.
Finding patterns, making connections, and categorizing things are all part of what’s called association learning. The unconscious part of the brain processes everything associatively rather than logically or analytically. Associative thinking is fast and nonlinear, and we always have access to it.
Logical, linear thinking, which is used by the conscious part of the brain, is slow, effortful, and frequently offline—sometimes at the most inconvenient times.
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 severely diminished, and it would take us a lot longer to learn anything.
Sometimes A really is connected to B; sometimes it is not. When it is, we have learned something valuable about the environment from which we can make predictions that aid in survival and reproduction. —Michael Shermer
Although we like to think of ourselves as unique, if our mind had to treat every person, object, and situation it encountered as one-of-a-kind, we would experience too great a cognitive load to be able to function in the world.
Since associative thinking puts a premium on speed rather than accuracy, however, it does make mistakes. If errors are made and not corrected, they can become beliefs or habits of thinking, just like habits of behavior. 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.
Unthinkingly stereotyping ourselves and others can be dangerous and nonproductive, especially when we:
- create “out” groups in order to dehumanize others
- label the unconventional with psychiatric diagnoses
- assume that classifications are permanent and unchanging
- operate as if a classification or label describes everything there is to know about someone
No one wants to be thought of as a stereotype; nor do we want to see ourselves as treating others that way. But, as Julian Baggini points out in The Ego Trick:
Human beings think in terms of stereotypes for good reasons. Without mental shortcuts, we simply couldn’t get by. There is just too much information to process, and we often have to be quite crude as to how we filter it.
The utility of thinking in stereotypes aside, we wouldn’t have developed this mental habit if the resulting categories were completely without merit. Snap judgments are based on something: associations of beliefs, experiences, and encounters we may not even remember or be consciously aware of.
We can’t stop the brain from categorizing or look inside to discover what our categories are based on, but we can educate our brain so that its resulting snap judgments are more accurate and more useful. We should also remember that:
- Classifications are not necessarily permanent and unchanging.
- Although labels do say something about us (and others), they don’t say everything about us.
There’s both an art and a science to categorizing people, too!
*It’s fairly easy to distinguish extraverts from introverts based on observation. But the most significant difference between them isn’t visible: it’s the way in which they respond to rewards. While we all respond to our brain’s reward system (what’s so for everyone), the reward pathway is longer and more complicated in the brains of introverts, which is why they are less sensitive to immediate rewards in the environment than their extraverted counterparts (what’s so for you vs. what’s so for me).