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).
We've
already visited a few biases that concern attribution errors, but I
hesitate to address some of them because they can quickly become
personally painful. I can trace most of my relationship mistakes and
boundary issues directly back to them, and in many ways, I feel as if
I never learn – or at least not fast enough. There's a chapter
in the Book of Matthew that explains how to deal with harsh critics,
and it doesn't promise a happy ending. It was quite significant to me when
I left my spiritually abusive church, but I'm slow to consider it and
take no pleasure in it. It explains that you should move on if
you're not well-received, and it's not a fun process.
In this
passage which speaks about shaking the dust off your feet as you
depart towns that reject you, I've long struggled with an
analogy that it makes. It says to be both as wise (shrewd) as a
serpent yet as innocent (harmless) as a dove. I like the dove part
of it, but when deeply contemplating it when I first left my church,
I realized that the dove is an animal of sacrifice. The serpent is
the predator, and I spent a good deal of time studying the habits of
serpents afterward. I don't know that I've learned that much so as
to develop a better blend of wise innocence, but I think often of
this paradoxical idea as I recognize my own problematic and habitual
biases. They pop up when I engage interpersonal conflict, and it
requires a lot of vigilance and effort to remain mindful of my own
patterns.
Heuristics
Heuristics
are the shortcuts or 'rules of thumb' that we take through much
information which allow us to make more timely decisions. We don't
have the available time to examine everything, so we make snap
judgements about things that we identify as more benign or obvious.
A man dressed as a policeman must be a policeman, and the nice old
lady surely must be a nice old lady. We identify certain
characteristics that are easy to see as representatives or prototypes
for what we already know and understand. We also tend toward
heuristics when thinking about how a new situation will likely unfold
by recalling a previous chain of events in our past.
Sometimes,
heuristics can help us, but it is just as likely that we will fall
prey to our own cognitive biases when we rely on them too much when
making crucial decisions. We put too much stock in the idea that the
new subject of our interest will be like the prototype that we hold
in our memories – provided that we even recall them accurately.
For this reason, Robert Cialdini refers to heuristics as 'weapons of
influence.' Our biases tend to put us in a favorable light and tend
to downplay the success of others. My personal tendency leans
towards thinking of professionals in helping professions in a
positive light, assuming that they chose their course in life for
wholesome and inspired reasons. (It's all doves and no serpents.) I
usually suffer much disappointment, and I'm still astonished after a
conflict ends because I don't tend to grasp things well until the
end.
The
Fundamental Attribution Error
It seems
that when trying to understand the behavior of others, we place far
more attention on the superficial or more salient characteristics of
individuals instead of on situations. It is not much different than
the self-serving bias which also happens to be an error in
attribution. If someone steps on my foot or cuts me off when driving
on the highway, I'm more likely to call them a reckless jerk. If I
make the same error, I have more flattering reasons as to why I
didn't perform up to par – not that I'm a jerk (even if I am). If
I failed a test, I have some more gentle reasons in mind as to why I
failed. The test was unfair or I had a headache. If a classmate
failed, it was all because they didn't study or just didn't have what
it took to pass the test.
Representativeness
Thinking
about the jerk on the highway, I now think of my car as an example of
this bias. My husband and I have happily owned Subarus for about the
past 25 years. While waiting for service on my car in a crowded
waiting room a couple of years ago, when I claimed the Subaru,
another fellow seemed quite surprised. He actually said that I
couldn't possibly own one because only scientists and weird engineers
drove them. At the time, I lived quite close to Motown, so foreign
cars weren't all that desirable. I imagine that when making traffic
errors, I was likely called choice names, and the make of my car
would not have helped.
In the
small diagram, I placed a Subaru silhouette at the top and a
comparison of four different men to demonstrate that all are men, but
each person might pick a different one as the prototypical male that
represents them. Along with that image there comes the bias that is
based on what that individual knows as their own representative
image. We think of such things as rather objective and fixed for us
in our own minds, but they are far more subjective than we'd like to
admit.
No one
individual ever perfectly fits the prototype or the group norm into
which they fall. We can be easily mislead by looking at averages and
arithmetic means, for no one person ever truly fits. We all have our
unique warts and foibles. Perhaps those types of errors are the most
common ones and carry the most damaging consequences.
Safety
in Recovery
Concerning
safety in recovery from trauma, we can learn a great deal if we keep
mindful of these biases – in ourselves and in others. Are we
filling in the gaps about what we don't know to make a causality that
works for us... but might work against someone else? Is someone else
using one of these prejudices against us?
Watch
how others make attributions. Question whether they're blaming you
for things outside of your control or whether they are always in your
favor. Do they see you as an individual or just a prototype – or a
pawn without depth or uniqueness? Friends who are worthy of trust
tell the truth and ask questions and will challenge your attribution
errors. They will help you have a more rounded perspective. Be
curious about people's motives. You can learn quite a bit about a
person's mindset from the heuristics and the biases that they employ
– and how often they rely upon them.
Be aware
of the tendency to focus on the characteristics of an individual in
snap decisions, and discipline yourself to also consider social or
situational influences that may have resulted in what has happened.
Stretch yourself by considering what it might be like to be in their
position, and you'll be less likely to fall into attribution errors.
For
Further Reading until the next post:
- One of the $3 Kindle books about Cognitive Bias at Amazon.com
- Gilovich, Griffin & Kahneman's Heuristics and Biases
- Robert Cialdini's Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
- Judith Herman's Trauma
and Recovery
