Brain Paradoxes: Cognitive Distortions

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

If you think that prejudices are unusual for you, then you are probably subject to them. If you think that cognitive biases (that is, systematic errors in thinking) are not about you, therefore, one of these distortions sits in you - called "naive realism": the tendency to perceive your opinion as objective, and the opinion of others as full of cognitive distortion. What kind of thinking mistakes are there?

There are a lot of them - psychologists single out more than a hundred. We will tell you about the most interesting and the most common ones.

Planning error

This is about the saying about the promised and three years. So everyone faced this cognitive bias. Even if you do your job right on time, for example, on-screen politicians who promise to build a road / bridge / school / hospital in a year, and build in two, can hardly boast of this. This is the best case scenario. The worst ones went down in history. For example, the famous symbol of Australia's largest city is the Sydney Opera House, the construction of which was supposed to be completed in 1963, but in the end it was opened only 10 years later - in 1973. And it's not just a mistake in time, but also in the cost of this project. Its original "price" was equal to seven million dollars, and untimely completion of the work increased it to as much as 102 million! The same misfortune happened with the construction of the central highway in Boston, which was seven years overdue - with an overrun of $ 12 billion.

One of the reasons for all this is planning error - a cognitive bias associated with over-optimism and underestimation of the time and other costs required to complete a task. Interestingly, the error occurs even if the person knows that in the past, solving a similar problem took longer than he thought. The effect is confirmed by numerous studies. One was in 1994, when 37 psychology students were asked to estimate the amount of time it would take to complete their theses. The average estimate was 33.9 days, while the real average time was 55.5 days. As a result, only about 30% of students assessed their abilities objectively.

The reasons for this delusion are not exactly clear, although there are a lot of hypotheses. One of them is that most people simply tend to wishful thinking - that is, they are sure that the task will be completed quickly and easily, although in fact it is a long and difficult process.

About horoscopes

This cognitive distortion is most susceptible to lovers of horoscopes, palmistry, fortune telling and even simple psychological tests that have a very indirect relationship to psychology. The Barnum effect, also called the Forer effect or the effect of subjective confirmation, is the tendency of people to highly appreciate the accuracy of such descriptions of personality, which they assume are created especially for them, although in fact these characteristics are quite general - and they can be successfully applied. to many.

The mistake of thinking is named after the famous American showman of the 19th century Phineas Barnum, who became famous for various psychological tricks and who is credited with the phrase: "We have something for everyone" (he skillfully manipulated the public, forcing them to believe in such descriptions of his life, although everyone they were generalized).

A real psychological experiment that showed the effect of this distortion was staged by the English psychologist Bertram Forer in 1948. He gave his students a test, the results of which were to show an analysis of their personalities. But instead of the real characteristics, the cunning Forer gave everyone the same vague text taken from … the horoscope. Then the psychologist asked to rate the test on a five-point scale: the average mark was high - 4, 26 points. This experiment in various modifications was later carried out by many other psychologists, but the results differed little from those obtained by Forer.

Here is an excerpt from his vague characterization: “You really need other people to love and admire you. You are pretty self-critical. You have many hidden opportunities that you have never used to your advantage. While you have some personal weaknesses, you are generally able to level them out. Disciplined and confident in appearance, in fact, you tend to worry and feel insecure. At times, you have serious doubts about whether you made the right decision or did the right thing. You are also proud to think independently; you do not take someone else's statements on faith without sufficient evidence. Does everyone seem to think so of themselves? The secret of the Barnum effect is not only that the person thinks that the description was written especially for him, but also that such characteristics are predominantly positive.

Faith in a just world

Another common phenomenon: people firmly believe that their offenders will certainly be punished - if not by God, then by life, if not by life, then by other people or even by themselves. That "the earth is round", and fate uses only boomerang as an instrument of retaliation. Believers are especially prone to this mistake, who, as you know, are taught that, if not in this life, then in the next life or in the afterlife, "everyone will be rewarded according to his deeds." Also, studies have shown that authoritarian and conservative people are predisposed to such a view of the world, showing a tendency to worship leaders, approve of existing social institutions, discrimination and a desire to look down on the poor and disadvantaged. They have an inner conviction that everyone gets exactly what they deserve in life.

For the first time this phenomenon was formulated by the American professor of social psychology Mervyn Lerner, who from 1970 to 1994 conducted a series of experiments on belief in justice. So, in one of them, Lerner asked the participants to express their opinion about the people in the photographs. Those interviewed who were told that the people in the photo had won large sums of money in the lottery endowed the latter with more positive traits than those who were not informed of this information (after all, “if you won, you deserve it”).

About dolphins and cats

Cognitive bias called survivor bias is often used by even the most intelligent people, and sometimes by scientists. Particularly indicative is the example of the notorious dolphins, which "push" a drowning man to the shore in order to save him. These stories may well correspond to reality - but the problem is that they are spoken about by the very ones who were "pushed" by the dolphins in the right direction. After all, if you think a little, it becomes clear that these, no doubt, beautiful animals can push the swimmer away from the shore - we just do not know stories about this: those whom they pushed in the opposite direction simply drowned and cannot tell anything.

The same paradox is known to veterinarians who bring cats that have fallen from a height. At the same time, animals that fell from the sixth floor or higher are in much better condition than those who fell from a lower height. One of the explanations sounds like this: the higher the floor, the more likely it is that the cat will have time to roll over on its paws, in contrast to animals falling from a small height. However, this opinion hardly corresponds to reality - the movements of a cat flying from a great height will be too uncontrollable. Most likely, in this case, the survivor's mistake also takes place: the higher the floor, the more likely the cat will die and simply will not be taken to the hospital.

Black bag and stock traders

But everyone probably knows about this phenomenon: it consists in expressing unreasonable sympathy for someone just because that someone is an acquaintance. In social psychology, this effect is also called the "familiarity principle." There are many experiments dedicated to him. One of the most interesting in 1968 was conducted by American psychology professor Charles Getzinger in his auditorium at Oregon State University. To do this, he introduced the students to a novice student, dressed in a large black bag (only legs were visible from under it). Getzinger put him at the very last desk in the class. The teacher wanted to find out how the students would react to the man in the black bag. At first, the students looked at him with dislike, but over time it grew into curiosity, and then into friendliness. Other psychologists conducted the same experiment: if students are shown a black bag over and over again, their attitude towards it changes from worse to better.

The "familiarity principle" is actively used in advertising and marketing: the more often a particular brand is shown to the consumer, the more trust and sympathy it evokes. Irritation is also present at the same time (especially if the advertisement turned out to be too intrusive), however, as experiments have shown, most people still tend to rate such a product as the best compared to an unadvertised product. The same is seen in many other areas. For example, stock traders are most likely to invest in companies in their country just because they know them, while international companies may offer similar or even better alternatives, but this does not change anything.

Less is more

This thinking error is called the "less is better" effect. Its essence is simple: in the absence of a direct comparison of two things, preference is given to an object of lesser value. For the first time, research on this topic was carried out by the professor of the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago, Christopher C. In 1998, he presented a group of subjects with things of different value. The task is to choose the most desirable gift for yourself, while the items were shown separately and without the possibility of comparing them with each other.

As a result, Xi came to interesting conclusions. It found that people perceived an expensive $ 45 scarf as a more generous gift, as opposed to a cheap $ 55 coat. Ditto for any category of things: seven ounces of ice cream in a small cup filled to the brim, versus eight ounces in a large one. Dinnerware set of 24 whole items versus 31 set and a few broken items a small dictionary versus a large one in a worn-out cover. At the same time, when “gifts” were presented at the same time, such a phenomenon did not arise - people chose the more expensive thing.

There are several explanations for this behavior. One of the most important is the so-called contradictory thinking. Studies have shown that bronze medalists feel happier than silver medalists because silver is associated with the fact that a person did not receive gold, and bronze is associated with the fact that they received at least something.

Belief in conspiracy theories

A favorite theme of many, but few people realize that its roots are also in the errors of thinking - and several. Take, for example, projection (a psychological defense mechanism when the inside is mistakenly perceived as outside). A person simply transfers his own qualities, which he does not realize, onto other people - politicians, military men, businessmen, while everything is exaggerated dozens of times: if we have a villain in front of us, then he is phenomenally smart and cunning (paranoid delirium works in approximately the same way).

Another factor is the phenomenon of escapism (the desire of a person to escape into a fictional world of illusions and fantasies). Reality for such people is, for some reason, too traumatic to accept it as it is. Strengthens belief in conspiracy theory and the fact that it is extremely difficult for many to perceive the phenomena of the outside world as random and independent of anything, most tend to give such events a higher meaning ("if the stars light up, then someone needs it"), building a logical chain. This is easier for our brain than "keeping" in itself a huge number of disparate facts: it is naturally unusual for a person to perceive the world in fragments, as evidenced by the achievements of Gestalt psychology.

It is very difficult to convince such a person that there is no conspiracy. After all, this will lead to an internal conflict: ideas, thoughts and values that are opposite in meaning will collide. An adept of conspiracy theories will not only have to abandon his usual train of thought, but become an “ordinary” person who is not initiated into “secret knowledge” - therefore, lose some of his self-esteem.