These 5 Mental Errors Can Impede Your Personal Growth!
And How You Can Overcome Them!
“Trust your instincts, and make judgements on what your heart tells you. The heart will not betray you.”
― David Gemmell, Fall of Kings
When it comes to making important decisions, you might have received the advice to follow your heart, like the above quote from Fall of Kings. In several movies, you probably saw the protagonist make a decision based on his instincts.
It works in movies, but it is not great advice for making rational decisions in life.
Instincts are helpful for people who are repeating the same task over and have gained mastery over it. A chess Grandmaster can trust her instincts. A Neurosurgeon can also sometimes trust her instincts. But it is not suitable in novel and uncertain situations.
Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky opened a new frontier in 1974 with their paper Judgement under uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases on cognitive biases. They showed how humans are not rational decision-makers and use mental shortcuts to make the so-called "intuitive" decisions.
According to the Encyclopedia of Behavioural Neuroscience,
Cognitive biases are systematic cognitive dispositions or inclinations in human thinking and reasoning that often do not comply with the tenets of logic, probability reasoning, and plausibility.
Cognitive biases show that we are biased to make certain choices even when it is not the most rational choice. Seeking instant gratification, avoiding loss, and using bare minimum information to make a decision are all outcomes of our cognitive biases.
There are over 100 cognitive biases, and more are in research as we talk. Sunk cost fallacy, present bias, anchoring bias, availability heuristic, and the list goes on.
I have found five interesting cognitive biases that hinder your thinking and lead to sub-optimal decisions affecting your personal growth.
- Commitment bias
Commitment bias explains why people do not change their previously made decisions even when they are presented with loads of contradictory evidence.
This bias is not limited to relationships, but you can at least think of one friend or acquaintance who is in a toxic relationship. She may even justify how it is a good choice.
It is an example of commitment bias.
The primary reason behind this bias is that you and I think of ourselves as rational decision-makers, but we are not. There is tons of evidence against it.
You may decide to get into a relationship, invest in a stock, or choose a career that is the best choice right now.
The situation can change over time. You may not enjoy your current job. You may realize that a relationship is not working for you. You may realize that the cryptocurrency you invested in is not the next big thing.
In such situations, commitment bias can make it hard for you to change your decision.
It is not easy to overcome a human bias just by knowing it, but it is the first step.
If you are making a major decision in life, you should ask yourself if you are trying to maintain consistency with your past self or if it is a reasonable decision for you.
2. Confirmation bias
Confirmation bias is the tendency to look for evidence that supports your existing beliefs. It is one of the most common biases humans suffer from.
It is one of the reasons why a person with strong beliefs fails to admit any contradictory evidence. She will give more credibility to the evidence that supports her beliefs while discrediting the evidence that goes against it.
If you love coffee, you would look for and focus on the research that mentions how drinking coffee is good for your health, immunity, etc. At the same time, you are likely to ignore if a person comes with an opposite view.
The main reason behind confirmation bias is our tendency to look for mental shortcuts called "heuristics."
Since we tend to avoid time and energy gathering sufficient information, it is easier to believe what we already know compared to looking for more information.
To make sure you are making the right choice, it is required to not only look for the evidence that supports your choice but also the evidence that goes against it.
If you think content writing is a great profession for you and you have looked for all the reasons to support that. You should also look at the downsides of it.
It is better if you have a friend or family member who can tell you the objective truth. In many cases, you will need to be your own Devil's Advocate to overcome this bias.
Often learning about downsides does not mean that you need to change your decision, but once you go ahead, you will be better prepared to face reality.
3. Loss aversion
Loss aversion is the human tendency to prefer avoiding a loss compared to a gain of a similar magnitude.
If you are offered $10 you would feel happy. If you lose $10, you would feel worse.
Researchers have studied that our brain works on a ratio of 2:1 between gains and losses. If you lose $10, you would need $20 to compensate for the same.
The reason behind loss aversion is closely related to our neurological makeup. The part of the brain — Amygdala, that is activated for fear is also activated in case of loss.
Oftentimes, it is required to change place, old beliefs, let go of old relations, etc.
You may rationally know you will have a better career in a different city or country, but the comfort of home or going away from family and friends can hold you back.
To overcome it, you need to attain physical or mental distance.
Briefly go to a different place where you can leave the people and emotions behind to think about the problem.
Take a 10–10–10 test on how you would feel about this decision ten days from now, ten months from now, and ten years from now. It will give you a perspective that you may lack at the moment.
4. Empathy Gap
The empathy gap explains our inability to understand the impact of emotions on a decision. We make a decision that is only coherent with our present mental state or emotions.
Have you ever watched a game show on TV and thought you would do much better than that? That is the empathy gap. When you are sitting at home calm and relaxed, you don't realize how it would feel to be on a live TV show.
Empathy gap can exist not only in misunderstanding your own emotions but also in understanding the emotions of others.
For example, if you recently excelled in your career and shared the achievement on social media. You would probably expect that everyone else would be proud of you too, but your colleagues and friends might envy you.
It can be the opposite also. You may think a particular colleague would envy your growth, but he might be too busy dealing with his problems to pay attention to your achievements.
Empathy gap can often result in bad promises to yourself and others.
You may think you will not say hurtful words to your loved ones, but it may happen in moments of anger.
You may promise yourself not to eat pizza more than once a month. But you may give in on an exhausting day when you are famished.
It isn't easy to correctly measure your future emotions, but you can prepare yourself by taking the data from your past.
If you know you are likely to order a pizza in the moments of hunger, keep a healthier alternative around. It will help you avoid an impulsive choices.
Recalling how you behaved in the past in the face of emotions can help you prepare for the future.
5. Dunning-Kruger effect
It explains the tendency of people to overestimate or underestimate their skills.
Let's say Steve decides to learn to code. Steve spends a few days in the struggle. He tries to solve problems, but he fails.
After a few days of practice, he can understand the logic and solve problems. At this stage, Steve is likely to overestimate how much coding he knows.
On the other hand, if Steve has spent 20 years in coding, he may think coding is extremely simple, and anyone can do what he is doing.
Initially, Steve overestimates his expertise, whereas, over time, he may not realize he has become better than the average coder.
“Ignorance frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”
— Charles Darwin
This phenomenon was studied in 1999 by David Dunning and Justin Kruger.
According to their research on students in a test, those who were in the bottom 25% predicted themselves to be at the top, whereas the top 25% slightly underestimated their scores.
The most common illusion that people have after knowing about this effect is that they think they do not suffer from it, but others do.
In some parts of our lives, we may struggle to know our incompetence or, in some cases, even our competence.
It takes additional effort to know what you don't know about a skill or a topic. Talking to your friends, family, and colleagues can help you to understand where you stand in skills and how to reduce your shortcomings.
It is not possible to keep every bias in mind and go through it while you make a decision.
Often, you don't have a structured way to make major decisions in life. Understanding these biases can help you to limit the major shortcomings that you face in your thinking.
Think of past decisions where you faced these biases and what you would change to make sure you don't succumb to them while making decisions.
Even though you are not a rational decision-maker, you can aspire to be a little more rational than you were yesterday.
Let me know in the comments which bias amazes you the most.
Stay tuned for more.
References:
