I’m Writing a Book!
It’s About Mental Models
Why Study Mental Models?
It happened organically! I remember the exact moment the initial thoughts came to mind, and it occurred while I was sitting on a bench in Lafayette Park located in San Francisco. I originally walked over to the park looking for some peace and quiet, but after spending a few minutes reflecting coupled with some mental wandering, I had a sudden epiphany that human beings use mental models in many facets of our daily lives. My exposure to design thinking while previously a Product Manager at an early-stage startup underscored how interacting with physical or digitally designed objects elicits a need to reduce cognitive load — in other words, there’s a need for mental shortcuts that help separate the signal from the noise. This tendency is why designers and product managers spend significant time understanding the needs of potential users and clarifying the mental models people employ to craft products and experiences that resonate with one’s expectations of how things should work.
In a similar fashion, I realized that when people leverage type 2 processes to “think fast” as Daniel Kahneman asserts in Thinking, Fast and Slow, they are also leveraging mental models which act as a filter shaping what information is paid attention to and offer shortcuts guiding how we react to certain stimuli. In daily life, we constantly make judgments and decisions, both consciously and unconsciously, which sometimes violate rules of logic and our own principles. Depending on the situation, it is optimal to resort to simple and near-optimal heuristic decision rules, or mental models, to increase the likelihood of an acceptable outcome. This may be particularly effective in conditions with time-constraints, lack or overload of relevant information, or when no optimal solution is evident.
Connecting the role that mental models play in how people interact with design as well as how people make fast decisions led me down a rabbit hole, prompting me to ask the seemingly innocuous question, “How else are mental models at play in our lives, and what are the advantages or disadvantages of them?”
What are Mental Models?
Mental models are invisible tools we use to make sense of the world around us. Not only do they shape what we think and how we understand but they also shape the connections and opportunities that we see. Mental models are how we simplify complexity, why we consider some things more relevant than others, and shape how we reason. Mental models at their core are internal cognitive representations of an external reality that enable people to interact with the world around them. These representations are constructed and shaped by one’s experiences, beliefs, and world views, and are dynamic in nature.
In other words, mental models are cognitively constructed representations that comprise how we imagine, interpret, and conceptualize phenomena. For example, people in developed nations might understand a house to be a structure with a roof and doors and windows in which people live; people with basic knowledge of automobiles might understand cars to be a set of wheels connected to an engine with a steering and braking system that runs on gas and gets them from point A to point B.
Unfortunately mental models aren’t always so harmless. They also act like a filter, coloring the way we reason, store information, and behave yet often go unnoticed. Mental models embody the knowledge about how the world around us with which we interact functions and responds in turn to our actions. They guide decisions and choices by identifying the options which, as we believe, help us achieve our goals while excluding those which run counter to our objectives or at least do not further them.
What The Invisible Filter Will Be About
While in it’s early stages, my vision for The Invisible Filter (working title) is to illustrate how mental models shape our lives and share lessons we can learn by applying them. At their core, mental models are internal representations of our external reality that influence how we reason, cooperate, and think. I plan to explore the role they play by analyzing everyday and unique challenges like confronting bias, unlearning unhealthy habits, working well as a team, or stopping Zika in Guatemala with a mental model lens. Through conversations with experts, I’ll suggest actionable takeaways to mitigate their downsides and optimize their benefits.
Who I’d Love to Speak With
Naturally, mental models touch a multitude of fields given how abstract the concept is and how it relates to reasoning or thinking. I’m keen to explore the role they play in different fields, and would love to chat with anyone with experience in the following professions:
- Cognitive Psychologists: folks who study how humans think, solve problems, or address bias
- Organizational Anthropologists: folks who study how we work together in teams
- Operating Room Personnel or Military Combat Specialists: folks in high pace, high pressure situations where being in sync really matters
- CBT Therapists: folks who use cognitive behavioral therapy to help others break away from mental models
- Designers / UX Researchers: who understand the role mental models play in design or actively study it
- Addiction Treatment Professionals: who can speak to patient recovery and the role that a strong support network plays
- Philosophers / Sociologists: who study institutions and ideologies
If any of the above resonated with you, feel free to follow me or reach out at rishimgupta@gmail.com if you’d like to discuss or connect. I’ll be sharing interviews with experts, thoughts on the book writing process, and more here along the way.
