Thinking Traps You Have Already Fallen Into. Part I
We are not our body, our brain, or even our mind. We are all at once and none of it. How often do you remember that even your thoughts are beyond your control? Ideas pop up in your head on their own in response to incentives that we sometimes don’t even warm up to. Our thought process is autonomous, and so the most important knowledge for someone who wants to think clearly would be to be aware of our brain bugs — the pitfalls of thinking. So, fasten your seatbelts, because this is going to be very ‘relatable’.
The Spotlight Effect or Psychological Projection.
When you wake up in the morning and look at yourself in the mirror, you notice a small pimple on your face that popped up while you were sleeping. Upset, you go about your business, but in the gaze of every passerby you read an imaginary phrase:
How dare you, ugly, go out in that condition? *
*of course, this is very figurative and perhaps hyperbolized, but it’s for eloquence’s sake :)
Later, a passing car has provided your snow-white trainers with a few drops of mud, and now the mere thought of having to go somewhere in that condition makes your legs grow heavy.
Your eyes are watering from the dusty wind — that’s it. Now you can buy a ticket to another country and feel free to move because now everyone in town knows you’re a weepy girl.
It’s natural to assume that every little thing about us becomes public knowledge. After all, we are the center of our world. But think about it: how often are you so attentive and strict with your colleagues, friends, and even more so with ordinary bystanders? Here lies the first mistake of thinking — we are not as interesting as we would like to be.
And with awareness of this, life will become much easier.
Probability error.
All of us in our school years tried to unravel the sequence of test answers.
Here, in two answers in a row, the answer is B, so the next answer is definitely not B. Is it logical?
But what if it’s just your troll teacher who set three tasks in a row with the answer B? And now, frustrated, you go home with a bad grade.
Of course, not every such coincidence is the antics of a bored teacher.
Let’s take the well-known coin toss: if heads fall out 10 times in a row, it does not mean that tails will fall out 11 times — the chance is still 50–50. However, according to polls, most people will bet on tails.
It often seems to us that there is some kind of universal balance that regulates everything in our life, but this is not the case. By the way, casinos often play on this — they bet on a person’s subconscious, which tends to see patterns in small repetitions.
It is worth soberly assessing the role of chance in any life situation.
Confirmation Bias or Propensity For Confirmation.
Our thoughts and judgments already reinforced in our minds tend to interpret themselves during life — this is our nature.
This was once useful: if a caveman was attacked by a snake from under a bush with red berries, then it is easier for him to believe that there is a snake under each such bush. Yes, now a caveman will not touch a bush with a snake, but a bush without a snake will be inaccessible to him.
In the modern world, this is irrelevant.
Any philosopher will tell you that the truth lies not in attempts to justify it, but in attempts to refute it. However, not everyone is capable of such a method of analysis, because it directly opposes our nature.
Accepting your own beliefs or finding confirmation in arguments similar to ours is easy and “free” while accepting a new point of view is quite difficult.
If, for example, you like Cola and not Pepsi, then it will be much easier for you to listen to someone who also likes Cola. This is how your social bubble is formed, where your friends, favorite bloggers, journalists, classmates, and just acquaintances are also like Cola, although Pepsi is also not bad.
Therefore, people are divided by interests, faiths, political and economic views, and other positions. They broadcast similar thoughts and confirm them with similar arguments — this has always been the case.
However, there is a neutral part of those people who do not belong to any of the groups. Often these people are aware of the mistakes of our thinking, and they tend to check any information, not be afraid to ask questions and listen to people with different opinions. Staying in the caste of these people, it will be easier for you to avoid the social clichéd bubble.
Try to be flexible and receptive to new information, because we live in a constantly changing world.
By the way, IMHO Cola is really cool. It tastes better.
Frequency Illusion or The Baader–Meinhof Phenomenon.
Has it ever happened to you that you met a new word, and everyone around you began to use it too?
One might think that this is a failure in the matrix, if one does not know about the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, also referred to as the illusion of frequency. Having received some new information, we tend to perceive it as more important: this is called the novelty effect. Following this, we are haunted by the confirmation effect, which makes us believe in the information, supporting it with old arguments. The sum of these two effects gives us the illusion of frequency.
Therefore, it is not necessary to be surprised that everyone in the city has the same sneakers as you — it’s just that now you have begun to notice it.
It’s not things that haunt you, it’s just that now you see them.
We tend to look for familiar patterns in an ever-changing and powerful flow of information. In addition, we constantly analyze everything that we perceive, so there is no reason to worry.
Over time, everything will fall into place again.
The Zeigarnik effect.
“Business first, pleasure afterwards” or “done the job — walk boldly”.
These are good phrases, but their meaning is not always available to us. Maybe there are so many cases earned that it is simply impossible to complete them all in a short time. At such moments, we are seized with anxiety: thoughts about unfinished business are constantly swarming in our heads and do not allow us to concentrate on something really important. Of course, the best cure for anxiety will be the completion of all pressing matters.
But it’s easy to say!
So I’ll consider another way. We can help our inflamed brain, unload RAM a little. Having written out on a piece of paper all the tasks that we have to solve, we will do it. It will be much better if we also write an action plan for the implementation of each of the tasks. This will greatly relax our brain, and it will relieve itself of responsibility from constant reminders of unfinished business.
So that was the first part of our thinking mistakes. Thank you so much for taking the time to read my article. If you liked it, then subscribe to me on Medium, I would be very happy. And while you’ve finished reading these words, I’m already writing part two, so put up notifications for my articles and don’t miss out ;)
