Just
a reminder that the purpose of this discussion aims at stimulating
thought and self awareness as tools
to help those in recovery
from trauma learn how to make safer
choices. To make the discussion more jocular, we've defined
Cognitive Biases as “CranioRectal
Inversions” (CRI).
The
False Consensus Bias refers to a tendency to overestimate the
number of people who share our views, beliefs, values, and behaviors.
I tend to think of Descartes' “I think therefore I am.” If I
start with myself at the center of my understanding, it seems to
naturally follow (at first) that most people will be somewhat like
me. I think this, therefore a good number of people will think the
same thing. You are your own norm, and you can fall into the trap of
thinking that you represent most people.
But
I grew up differently than most people, and I spent most of my time
with adults as is common with only children. As noted before, the
false consensus becomes something of a pitfall for those who didn't
grow up with the challenges that siblings impose, so they tend more
than others to see others as the same as they are. And it's odd,
because as eccentric as I am, I'm rarely ever the typical example of
anything. People raised in high demand groups probably also struggle with this challenge because of the insular environment in which they were raised.
Family
Dysfunction
It's
also painful when whatever norm involves family dysfunction. As hard
as I've chased after healthy growth, examples of the past still come
up with my counselor. Having worked with her for a very long time, I
recognize her distinctive smile, direct gaze and the gentle, subtle,
and slow shaking of her head, expressing, “No.” She never
actually says anything like that, as my awareness of the change in
her expression is usually enough. I never see it coming, either.
It's usually something that I grew up with and didn't think was so
bad, but when spoken aloud to another, it quickly becomes apparent.
The first time it happened, I was working with another counselor
years before who was floored by my quoting of a family member. “Did
you hear what you just said?” she asked. It gave me permission to
question what I thought of as a common experience.
Research
into this type of bias has shown that one of the primary reasons why
people tend to fall into this bias can come from assuming that one's
family represents what is normative. If more of our life is spent
with people who share the same values and experiences (our friends
and family), we would have no reason to think differently about
others outside of that circle. Most all of those around us behave as
we do, and we can take for granted that this is universal. Having
been through several cross country relocations, I can definitely
attest to the rude awakening of a new norm concerning just the
common, benign elements of daily life. We also tend to notice in
others those same things that are important to us, so our selective
attention makes them stand out to us, possibly leading us to believe
that people think as we do.
As
a Tool
Though
it wasn't my first brush with true evil, when I exited my spiritually
abusive church, I was essentially forced to think about how horrible
people could be. I'd been able to avoid and dance around evil
before, pretending that it wasn't that deep or terrible. Every
person has some good quality, but I experienced first hand just how
those I thought of as the best of people could be the most horribly
cruel and glib about it.
Researchers
have suggested from their findings that the False Consensus Bias
helps to support self-esteem. If we feel positive about ourselves,
we have a hopeful motivation to believe that others think like we do.
At
age thirty, I walked away from my abusive church, and it seems like
the next decade of life was an education on just how evil people
could be. We moved to a different part of the country, and I felt
like every single area of my life every day was affected by these
evil people that were either held back from me, or I had just managed
to avoid them by living in a tighter bubble with people who thought
more like I did. I've since learned, also, that I had a very good
experience in clinical areas where I was not exposed to certain
conflicts and garnered a great deal of respect. It was as if I'd signed up for a
graduate level course on how evil, fickle, and duplicitous people
could really be, for everything seemed to change. I think that some of it had to do with PTSD, but
moving to a very different culture had much to do with it as well.
Projection
Projection
as a cognitive bias takes the idea of thinking that you think the
same as others in the form of false consensus and advances it a step
further: that people are motivated and act the same way that you do.
Projection was first studied, before false consensus, as an ego
defense mechanism which allows people to feel more justified about
their own behavior by projecting it on to others. If it's the norm,
than it's okay.
When
that veil of innocence was lifted away from me as I processed what
happened to me in my Shepherding Discipleship church, I realized just
how much projecting they did and how willing I was to accept it
because previous experience (and thought reform). But something
surprising happened as I healed and worked through the painful
recovery process. I found that I could learn a great deal about the
frame of mind of the person doing the projecting.
About
a year after I left that church, I ended up taking a job with a
sociopath – which I didn't realize right away, of course. I was
hired to teach nursing part-time, and I started out full time to
finish up with the round of students who were nearing graduation.
The program was small enough that we had occasion to talk about the
performance of the students, and I was amazed at how my sociopath
coworker ascribed the worst of everything to those students. As hard
as it was for me to think deviously and as easy as it was for me to
have compassion and hope for the students, the opposite was
consistently true of her. Since that time, I tend to see this bias
as my friend, for people end up telling you a great deal about
themselves when they start projecting – especially if their
observations are negative.
The
next post will explore even more details about
and
corollaries to the False Consensus Bias.
For
Further Reading:
- One of the $3 Kindle books about Cognitive Bias at Amazon.com
- Gilovich, Griffin & Kahneman's Heuristics and Biases
- Gilovich's How We Know What Isn't So
- Robert Cialdini's Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
- Judith Herman's Trauma
and Recovery
