We all react to the world around us in different ways. At the same time, there are things that most people perceive distortedly, due to their subjective ideas, as well as stereotypes and other factors that have developed in the process of life. This is called cognitive distortion. Which of them are the most common?
Distortions that help you deal with information overload
Buster Benson in his article "Cogntive bias cheet sheet" writes that since the world around us carries too much information for us, our brain, adapting to such a situation, selects only the information that may ever be useful to us.
For example, it is easier for us to remember what we already had to remember before, or what we often encountered earlier. At the same time, various strange, funny, outwardly attractive things catch our attention more than some familiar and ordinary ones. Our brains tend to exaggerate their importance compared to ordinary information. We tend to juxtapose the new with the old rather than evaluate it on its own. For example, if we bought a new refrigerator, we will certainly monitor whether it works better or worse than the previous one.
We are interested in what is consistent with our beliefs, but we tend to "ignore" what is contrary to them. So, if we are sure that some person is very good, we may not see his negative traits point-blank. But everything will be the other way around if we treat a person badly.
We are more likely to notice flaws in others than in ourselves. We often think that other people misunderstand reality. Whereas we ourselves perceive it distortedly.
Promotional video:
Distortions to help cope with the problem of understanding the world
To survive in this world, we need to draw conclusions about the laws of its existence. However, only a small part of the information about him is available to us. Therefore, we tend to fill in the gaps in the picture of the world, using already available information and our conjectures. For example, we will look for patterns between disparate facts. For example, we recall details that were not there, we believe that certain events are not accidental, we believe in luck or bad luck, and so on.
We can also fill information gaps with previously formed stereotypes, generalizations and experiences. We are more likely to accept what we know or like. We may like the thoughts expressed by our friend, but we can meet with hostility the ideas of a person we know little.
Our subconscious has a tendency to erroneously determine the likelihood of any events in the absence of accurate information about them. Therefore, we believe in different magic numbers, we are sure that we will not crash on an airplane immediately after another plane crash, etc. etc. We assume we have a clue of what other people are thinking. In this way, we are trying to model the thinking of another person. For example, if we think about him a lot, then we are sure that he also thinks about us.
We strive to project our current way of thinking into the past and future. However, we are not able to correctly determine how quickly or slowly events unfold in time. Therefore, many of us tend to distort the assessment of the consequences of certain events, embellish the past or exaggerate its impact on the future.
Distortions that help us respond quickly
We often have to make various decisions, sometimes on tight deadlines. However, we do not always have enough information to make the right choice. And in order to act, we must be confident in ourselves, in the correctness of our thoughts and actions. While often this confidence is actually just overconfidence, it gives us the impetus to take action.
We prefer to focus on quick results, rather than achieving something that takes time: a bird in hand is better than a pie in the sky.
We would rather identify ourselves with specific people rather than with anonymous or groups of people. We would prefer to learn from the experience of a friend Vasya or Petit, rather than some abstract individuals.
We strive to bring the matter to the end, if we have already spent time and effort on it. So, even if there are a lot of reasons to quit, we will look for a reason to complete what we started.
We wish to maintain the status quo. And when choosing, we settle on the most familiar of two evils or the least risky option, although it may turn out to be incorrect. A person generally prefers simple and unambiguous solutions to complex and indefinite ones, even if the more difficult path in our view will ultimately save us time and effort. So, a person who is not used to using online stores is more likely to look for the desired product in a regular store or in the market.
Distortions that help you remember the right information
We have to manipulate information so that we can remember it. After all, it's easier to remember generalizations or some key points than specific nuances. We also tend to edit our memories, adding details that weren't really there and discarding details that seem irrelevant to us. We can ignore particulars in order to construct and reinforce general statements. However, this sometimes leads to very negative consequences. We tend to reduce events to individual basic elements that we usually only remember. As a rule, the brain stores the information that seemed important at a certain moment. However, subsequently, the value of this information may be leveled.
I would like to add that it is cognitive distortions that help us survive in this complex and ambiguous world, so it is hardly possible to completely get rid of them.