Oh, The Sky Is Falling! Really?

When we predict how long we will feel about some event, we tend to over-estimate the duration of the emotional impact. Whatever our emotions, although we have ups and downs, we tend to return to a neutral 'home' position within a relatively short time. 

Because of our Durability Bias we tend to overestimate the length and/or the intensity of how we will feel about something in the future. This may be caused by focalism (def - a cognitive bias that describes the common human tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information offered (the "anchor") when making decisions.), where people focus too much on the event in question and not enough on other future events.

Research has discovered that football fans were less likely to over-predict how long the outcome of a football game would influence their happiness if they first thought about how much time they would spend on other future activities.

I think about how I would feel if my wife left me. I suspect I would feel very upset and believe I would feel this way for a long time to come. The fact that I might meet someone else before long and change how I feel does not come into my thinking. (If my wife is reading, this is JUST an EXAMPLE :))

What do we do to get past this faulty thinking?

Getting people to think about other events that will happen in the future and how they will react to these will reduce their misperception about how long feelings about current events might last.

You can also do this by getting people to think only about the over-arching impact of a desirable/undesirable event and how long the feelings about this will last.

When thinking about how long you will feel about something, think about the possibilities of other events changing how you feel right now.

If it all sounds contorted and/or complicated it’s not.

We can sum it up in this way: 

Do not let the temporary distract you from the long-term. 

When you were young breaking up with a girl/boy friend seemed like the end of the world. 

Did it actually end?

Just asking… 

TJ

Don't Believe Everything You Think...Others are Thinking

One of the ways we assess other people is by watching other people and attributing intent to them. This can help us what to do or say next. It can also go seriously wrong. 

Mind-reading

We all try to read the minds of other people, developing a 'theory of mind' around their motivation and thoughts. We become quite skilled at this, certainly enough to interact, persuade and display sympathy. Reading body language and the nuances of how people speak especially allows us to understand moods, emotions and general intentions. 

Really? What could go wrong?

1. Over-confidence 

Problems can arise when we become over-confident in our mind-reading ability, especially when we try determine the exact detail of thoughts. Effectively what happens is that we first guess their general thoughts, then we put words to these thoughts. 

The more concrete the imagined thoughts become, the more confident we become that this is an accurate assessment. This then become a confirmation spiral as our need to be right drives us to imagine and seek further evidence to support our assessment. 

2. Self-importance 

Quite naturally, we are each in the middle of our own universe which, modesty aside, makes us pretty important. We think about ourselves quite often, and not just in glowing positive terms. 

A common trap based on this self-importance is that we often tend to think they are thinking about us when in fact they are thinking about other things (quite possibly themselves). This can lead to significant mind-reading errors and consequent social confusion that can make us appear overly self-focused (which of course we are, even though we seldom admit it). 

3. Personal bias 

We all are affected by bias in our thinking, which can be positive, negative or harmless. This is shaped by many factors, for example where a risk-averse person sees risks as bad or where greed gives a strong money focus. 

Personal bias is quite natural and can even be helpful, for example where risk aversion keeps us out of harm's way. Problems can occur when we do not realize our biases and see our views as unbiased and normal. This blindness often leads to the assumption that others see things the same way as us. While we may share many biases with friends they also have their own distortions, which serve only to make our mind-reading more wrong (and with strangers this can be much worse). 

4. Assuming conscious thought 

People have two ways of thinking and acting. Sometimes we think carefully and make conscious choice. But we are constrained by time and so have to make many choices quickly, so we use habit, heuristics and other short-cuts. This is mostly done by our unconscious minds. 

When read the minds of others we often assume their decisions were carefully considered. Hence when they say or do things that hurt us or of which we disapprove, we assume a negative intent, that they deliberately set out to upset us.

WARNING:

Watch your own mind-reading and catch these errors before they lead you to do something that you may later regret.

Also watch others as they read your mind. Many strange ways of behaving can be explained by people attributing thoughts to you that you have not had.

TJ

Understanding Others

We commonly believe that we understand others better than they understand us.

The rationale for this stems from our external, objective viewpoint and the assumption that the other person has a significant blind-self, while our own blind-self is small.

There is also asymmetry in the reverse situation -- we believe we understand ourselves better than others understand us and may feel insulted if they try to show they understand us more than we do.

The same effect happens for groups, where the in-group believes they understand out-groups better than out-groups understand them.

Overall, this is a position where we generally assume we know more than others, perhaps because we know more about what we know.

TJ

Root Principle

Having and using a right standard of why we do what we do is important to sound judgment and understanding who we are and why we do what we do. Without a right standard we will be susceptible to the fundamental attribution error.

 Measuring ourselves, our values, and our behaviors using our situation, and excluding our personality traits is equally as dangerous as others judging us by using our personality traits to the exclusion of situational factors in our lives.

The root of just about all of the principles in social psychology usually comes in the form of cognitive bias called the fundamental attribution error. It reveals how people tend to consider their own behavior in a different, biased, way from the way they perceive the behavior of others.

Real Life

Within the world of congregational Christianity, or, one might say, the church world this error has proved to be very invasive. As a minister, there never seems to be a dull moment. Each week brings many and varied challenges that seemingly pop up to derail us from our already overloaded schedule. 

One of the major points of conflict between staff members (ministers) and laity (church members) is understanding the differences between who we are, what we do, and what we deal with everyday. Ask a church member to comment on how effective they believe a particular minister is in their role, and many of the comments will revolve around likes and dislikes pertaining to the minister’s personality. 

In contrast, ask a minister about his effectiveness and you will likely hear about the daily grind, and all of the areas of responsibilities and unforeseen circumstances that make up their ministry. As much as the minister’s tend to lean into the situation, the membership leans much hard into the personality.

It is normal to want to understand why people behave the way they do. It is just natural curiosity for most of us. Using cognitive biases is a standard way for the brain to process human behavior. The problem we need to recognize is that cognitive biases can be wrong. 

Observing someone’s personality can allow us to make quick decisions about that person, but we need to be careful and remain cognizant of our biases so we can consider the alternate explanations for someone’s behavior.

To remedy the fundamental attribution error I try to put myself in the shoes of the other person. I think about what I might do in the same situation. 

By doing these things, I can come up with some situational factors that may lend themselves to the behavior exhibited. I also look for hidden factors to help me better read the other person’s behavior. 

The inverse is also just as important. When I look at my own behavior, I need to avoid the actor-observer effect, and be sure to include my own personality when I am assigning credit for my own actions. 

TJ