LTBH: COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS

02: Understanding Cognitive Dissonance

LTBH: COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS Understanding Cognitive Dissonance Healing is about realising wholeness, unity and integrity. True happiness, and lasting contentment depend

12: The Illusion of Ownership

LTBH: COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS Labelling: the Illusion of Ownership Ownership is a concept, and possession, is a relationship.  When I think,

13: The Illusion of Relationship

LTBH: COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS Labelling: the Illusion of Relationship I started the lesson by saying “ownership is a concept, and possession,

14: How We Filter Information

LTBH: COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS Understanding Cognitive Bias Do you think our anecdotal recollections of an experience are accurate?  Why do people

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LTBH: THE FOUNDATIONS My Account [pmpro_levels] Relection: What Am I Attached To? Get out your notepad. Name several things you

Understanding Cognitive Bias

Do you think our anecdotal recollections of an experience are accurate? 

Why do people often remember an argument or emotionally charged situation, very differently from one another? 

Do you think your pre-existing beliefs and opinions affect what you are able to remember about an experience, and how you interpret it?

The mind is predisposed to notice patterns, as this has helped us to survive. Noticing patterns helps us to predict events, which can help us to fulfil our needs and avoid danger. 

In order for us to notice patterns, the mind needs to filter out information that appears less relevant to our wellbeing. If we couldn’t do this, it would be very difficult to concentrate with so many different things competing for our attention. 

Think of it like this, when you’ve been taught the name of a wild flower, you walk through the forest and are quick to notice it among dozens of other plants and things you don’t know the names of. 

Seeing the flower is what you remember best from your walk through the forest but there were lots of other things there. Why don’t you remember them as clearly you do the flowers? 

Well, in order to look for something, you have to know what it is you’re looking for and because you weren’t looking for those other things, you took less notice of them. Your brain was filtering them out and paying less attention to them in order to help you concentrate.

Powerful emotions suggest to our brain and body that what we are experiencing is important to our sense of safety and wellbeing. The stronger the emotion whether positive or negative, the more likely we are to remember the experience. 

Take this example. Say your friends have shared with you some negative experiences they’ve had with men. They’re angry and upset and say things like “all men want is sex” and “they’re always objectifying women”.

These anecdotes can prime your mind to notice things which seem to prove these sentiments.

One day, you’re walking down the street when a guy whistles at you. You feel uncomfortable, and this makes the incident very memorable. As you walk away you think, ugh, men are such pigs, and you take this experience to validate the anecdotes you heard from friends.

When you reflect on your day later, or talk to your friends, you may tell this story and prime their minds as well, to notice this behaviour by the way you tell the story. 

You may not have noticed though, or considered carefully, that while you were walking, you passed a dozen, two dozen, three dozen other men that didn’t even look at you. This is an example of filtering. 

The mind is biased toward seeing, and remembering what it knows and expects. This causes us to see patterns where they don’t exist, or exaggerate them, as we see in this example.

We can only reflect on what we remember. It’s not possible to reflect on things we can’t remember. Exaggeration happens very easily since we’re prone to reminiscing, and every time we recall something, our brain sometimes interprets that, as another incident.

When we recall our previous experiences and replay them in our mind, we build familiarity with those thoughts and feelings through recollection, and this causes past experiences to be weighed more heavily than new experiences. This is one reason why children are more impressionable than adults. They have not mentally rehearse, and solidified as many ideas and experiences as adults have.

All in all, this means that we have a tendency to remember things that support our beliefs, and overlook things which might challenge them. This occurs through the force of habit and familiarity, which we have discussed. 

Whenever we start a sentence with something like, men are, or women are, we’re about to make a generalization that we have arrived at by filtering out information that does not support our statement. If we considered all the information, we’d see the statement isn’t true.

 

When you say the words, always, never, no one, and everyone, in reference to people, you can rest assured you have filtered out a lot of information to come to that conclusion. In saying something like this, you’re not considering what you do not know and what you don’t remember, that may contradict the conclusion you have come to. 

It’s important to question your confidence, and reconnect with uncertainty by remember the basics of critical thinking:

  • Ask yourself if you are certain.
  • Ask yourself what you don’t know.
  • Ask yourself if you’re emotionally invested in this conclusion and how that might affect you.

Filtering reinforces our beliefs, for better or worse, and affects how we see ourselves and the world around us. 

Magnification and minimisation are a type of filtering in which we exaggerate, or understate the frequency, value or impact of something. 

For example, in abusive relationships, it’s not uncommon for the abused person to minimise the negative traits of their partner while exaggerating their good qualities. 

At the same time, the abused person often minimises their own good qualities and exaggerates their own negative qualities. 

They may think their abuser is, not that bad, and consider themselves as deserving punishment. 

Why would someone do this? 

Well, the tendency to filter information in this way, arises from pre-existing negative beliefs. People who stay in abusive relationships often feel guilty, and believe on some level they deserve the abuse. That is why they cannot see their partner or themselves very clearly. 

In most cases, someone with a healthy sense of self-respect would never enter, or stay in an abusive relationship. 

They would see themselves and the other person in a more realistic, more balanced way from the beginning, as they would be less likely to filter out the negatives, or exaggerate the positives. They would see it is as dysfunctional and leave.

Filtering is something we also see with depression, or even a bad mood. When we’re feeling down, we’re more likely to notice and remember things that support the negative view we have of ourselves, or our life. 

Of course, it’s also possible for us to filter out negativity, and exaggerate the good side of ourselves. This is recognised as vanity or narcissism. 

It’s easy to be judgemental of people who seem narcissistic. I want you to remember that everyone is the way they are, and thinks the way they do, for very valid reasons. Everyone wants to be happy and free of suffering, just like you. So, what reason would a person have to filter out, or overlook their shortcomings and exaggerate their strengths? 

The narcissist is, in reality, insecure. Their self-acceptance is conditional on superiority. They want to be the best, or better than others, because they find the alternative unacceptable. They may believe, for example, that it’s not okay to be weak, or vulnerable, and they may perceive their own weaknesses or sensitivities as dangerous or reproachable. 

They may be so scared of their own feelings, that they do not want to look deeply at themselves and that is why their mind is busy doing what it can to validate their strengths. If they were to stop, they would otherwise feel themselves to be unacceptable, unlovable, or incapable of getting the love and acceptance they think they need. 

I go deeper into personal psychology in another course: Learning To Be Happy: Healing From Trauma.

We can reduce the negative effects of filtering, which is a kind of memory bias, by regularly asking:

  • What am I not seeing?
  • Is there another way to look at this?
  • What evidence is there against my point of view?
  • What would this look like from so and so’s perspective?

On a practical level, when we’re doing research, we can deliberately look up arguments for and against our point of view. We want to look for evidence supporting both sides of the subject. This will help to broaden our perspective and understanding. 

For example, if you’re using Google to research a supplement, you would want to search, clinical evidence on the benefits of ____, but you would should also search, clinical evidence on the risks or side-effects of ____, in order to ensure your understanding is well rounded. 

We can’t come to hard conclusions based on personal experience alone, which is statistically significant. In such cases we must qualify our thoughts, feelings and opinions, as having some uncertainty by making sure we say things like, “based on my own experience”.

Seeing all sides of a topic requires more conscious and deliberate effort than ever before, why? Because social media platforms have algorithms programmed to show you more of what you already like and engage with. 

We can’t assume the news that passively reaches us, is showing us all sides of the story. In other words, not only is our brain predisposed to notice things which confirm our beliefs and previous experience, but the algorithms built into our technology are amplifying this!

The best way to break the habit of gravitating to what we already think, is looking deeply at why we’re doing it. This involves looking at the emotional beliefs underlying why we think the things we do. That is something we’ll discuss in depth as the course goes on. 

Ultimately though, we get through this cognitive distortion with curiosity. We must want to see the truth. We need to stop labelling things as good or bad, right or wrong, and be genuinely interested in seeing the situation from as many perspectives as possible. We must be willing to evaluate and re-evaluate our perspective again and again. 

Our thoughts are meant to serve us, and lead us toward peace of mind. If your thoughts and beliefs aren’t making you adaptable, resilient, accepting and cheerful, then they are not serving you and need to be examined.

Filtering, can also be thought of as consciously deciding what you are exposed to. 

If, after careful reflection you determine that certain books, TV shows, games, people or environments are having a negative effect on you, then it would make sense to give them less attention.

Likewise if you come to recognise that certain books, TV shows, games, people or environments are having a positive effect on you, then it would make sense to pay more attention to them. 

When this kind of filtering is done on purpose, it’s not a cognitive distortion.

How can you maximise positive influences in your life? How can you minimise negative influences in your life?

Write down one thing you will do to increase your exposure to positive influences and one thing you will do to decrease your exposure to negative influences.

Here are some suggestions for you:

  • Seek the company of people who are patient, kind and loving.
  • Spend more time with people who are open minded and willing to question your opinions.
  • Spend less time with people whose thoughts, feelings, words and actions encourage your unwanted habits.
  • Spend less time with people who rely on drugs to have a good time, or complain a lot.
  • Unfollow groups and people on social media that share emotionally charged, polarising statements. You can hide all posts from people without unfriending them.
  • Follow groups and people that share positive quotes and inspiring stories. Your social media applications also have a way of making these appear at the top of your feed so that they’re the first thing you see.
  • Replace watching shows that feature violence and relationship drama with shows that teach life skills and help you to appreciate human life and nature.
  • Join the Learning To Be Happy Facebook group where I only ever share positive inspiration.
  • We are predisposed to notice patterns, even where they don’t exist.
  • We tend to notice and remember what we already know, and overlook or forget things that do not interest us, or that don’t align with what we already think.
  • We filter out a lot of information when we’re making a generalisation.
  • When you say the words, always, never, no one, and everyone, in reference to people, you are definitely filtering!
  • The term maximising refers to taking extra notice of something, which makes it seem more frequent or prevalent to you. The term minimising refers to taking less notice of something, making it seem less frequent, or less prevalent to you.
  • We can reduce the negative effects of filtering by asking these questions:
    • What am I not seeing?
    • Is there another way to look at this?
    • What evidence is there against my point of view?
    • What would this look like from so and so’s perspective?
  • When we engage in research on a subject, we can deliberately look for evidence supporting all points of view.
  • Curiosity will see us through this cognitive distortion. The most important thing to be curious about, is understanding why we are emotionally invested in a particular perspective.