When will the proof be enough?

I’ve been trying to figure out a way to describe a very important lesson I learned in the book How Minds Change: The New Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion, by David McRaney.  I first listened to this several years ago when my newest hobby had been amateur cognitive science – I was just starting out on my “Somebody Else’s Villain” theory and wanted to understand perception…and misperception.

Here are the basics --

When you take in new information, your mind creates a “mental schema” about that information – think of this kind of like a blueprint.  For example, let’s just say that you are introduced to a new person; all the first impressions and any background information you have about that person forms a mental blueprint to represent that person in your mind.  Because I process my world through simplified visual metaphors, imagine representing a blueprint of a new person in your mind as a basic circle. 

Then you find out something new about that person.  Maybe it is something else another individual tells you, maybe it is something you see your circle-person doing or hear them say, or maybe it is a nugget of info gleaned from the media.  What do you do with this new information? 

Your brain must find a way to add it to your mental schema.  If it aligns with what you already know about the person, it is absorbed into the circle.  Easy peasey.  But what if it conflicts? 

Your brain has two options: one, it can try to create a whole new blueprint, something that makes sense given conflicting information, or two, it can figure out a way to just add it to the old blueprint.  Even though this second option sounds difficult, as it involves justifying and rationalizing conflicting information, it is actually less work than it would be for your brain to start over with designing a whole new blueprint. 

So now you have your original circle, plus…well, maybe it’s like a little wart on the side of the circle.  It doesn’t fit exactly with what you originally designed in your mind to capture this person’s core being, but it feels small enough not to merit a whole revision.

Then you keep adding more little warts.  Each time you add a wart, it becomes easier to justify and rationalize doing so.  People are complex, after all.  We aren’t just simple circles.

Eventually, though, someone says “Hey, don’t you see?  That person is actually a hexagon!”  And you’re like, “No way, I know better.  This person is a circle.  They’ve always been a circle.  And yes, they may have some warts on them, but they are definitely NOT a hexagon.”

What David McRaney discusses in his book is the amount of evidence needed to change a person’s mind once their mental schema has been formed and painstakingly justified to persist in representing what you always knew it to be.  How much proof is needed before you finally see that your circle may – in fact – actually be a hexagon? 

And this is not a character flaw.  Seeing a circle with a bunch of mini warts attached rather than a hexagon is completely normal brain functioning.  It is not a phenomenon limited to narrow-minded or uneducated individuals.  Even highly empathetic people can mistake hexagons for circles with warts – actually, we may be MORE prone to doing this sometimes because we want to give people the benefit of the doubt.  Maybe they are a circle who just needs more encouragement and understanding; those poor, misunderstood non-hexagons.

But, of course, the opposite argument could also be made.  Maybe some of us highly sensitive empaths are just making hexagons out of circles.  Maybe we need to stop looking for patterns that aren’t there.

To those accusations, I counter that we must approach our interpretation by looking for consistent patterns.  Have multiple people seen a hexagon, in a variety of circumstances and spanning a significant amount of time?  Are these people prone to making erroneous claims?  What would be the motivation for these people to claim “hexagon” rather than “circle with warts”?  Would the hexagon benefit from being misidentified as a circle with a bunch of warts? 

There’s no way to prove any one perception is correct, in these instances, and some individuals will continue to be mistaken as circles with warts while others are mislabeled as hexagons, and vice versa.  I’m not trying to solve all cognitive conundrums here.  The point I am trying to make, however, is that perceptions are always going to vary, and no amount of "proof" may ever be universally enough, but training our individual brains to reassess our own mental schemas IS possible.  And no, I don’t have all the answers as to how, but I have some ideas to get the ball rolling.

·       If most of the people you encounter truly are circles with warts, it makes it SO much harder to identify the errant hexagon hiding in their midst.  There must be some way for us to start sniffing out hexagons without becoming so distrustful of others that we can’t even function as a society. 

·       I posit that the more often you adopt a rebuild mentality, the more likely you will be able to let go of old schemas and form new ones rather than simply update through endless justification.  I think we have to cultivate ways of thinking where we become completely comfortable throwing out old ideas and admitting when perceptions or ideas are wrong or no longer useful. 

·       Personally, I have had to learn to be more objective and LESS empathetic when it comes to giving circles the benefit of the doubt. As my mind continues to clear and I work towards living authentically by my values, I'm also becoming less naive. I never expect to be an expert at this, but if I keep working on it, I believe it can become more ingrained as an automatic process.  

I would like to see great minds come together and develop a critical thinking process that can be introduced in primary school to help individuals continuously and automatically challenge mental schemas, updating or revising them as necessary.  Until this happens, though, what do we do?  Where do we even start?

With people like you, who for whatever reason are willing to read my random writings. 

Obviously, this post alludes to what is happening on our national stage.  And I’m not saying all MAGA fans are just failing to update mental schemas correctly – some are just actual Nazis or bigots or greedy supervillains, which is terrifying.  But I have seen several posts screaming in frustration – when will the proof be proof enough?  Where is the BAKAWKING tipping point, for the love of humanity?  And I get it.  The proof appears to be overwhelming.

But I have also been the person who added warts to a circle over and over and over, refusing to give in and ever change my mind that maybe the circle was a hexagon.  Actually, I can remember doing this more than once.  The first instance was with a religious youth group in my misguided teenage years.  All I can say is that thank goodness it was just a church and I never met a true cult leader; I would have been the prime target of a cult up until about a year ago.

The second time was regarding a boss who I positively worshipped, so much so that when another colleague gave me all sorts of nuggets to add the warts I’d already collected, I told him he was dead wrong to see a hexagon – I knew better, he was just misperceiving the situation.  But then three months later I finally saw the hexagon…I am so sorry for not believing you, MT. 

I have other stories which must remain on the backburner for now.  The details are irrelevant to this point anyway – and that point is that any of us can fail to rebuild new mental schemas, in favor of just updating old ones through justification.  It is one reason why there are millions of stories all over the internet of individuals not being believed for complaints of abuse or assault.  It is one reason why so many hearts continue to break and nervous systems spiral even further out of whack as professionals (medical, legal, you name it) tell people that their version of reality is not true – after all, they know best.  But the thing is, years of professional experience only work AGAINST someone when it comes to rebuilding versus just updating mental schemas.  The brain wants to work smart, not hard, so it compares new schemas to similar ones it already has filed away.  Copy and Paste is WAY easier than starting from scratch.  And the more circles with warts you already have in storage, the more likely you’ll start every new intake with a client by building off the template of a circle with warts...

My challenge to you is to think of any time in your life when you suddenly realized a schema needed to be completely thrown out and rebuilt rather than just updated with conflicting information jutting out like a poorly-thought-out sun porch stuck on the side of a house.  Maybe it was your view of a person, but maybe it was broader than that – a whole idea, belief system, stereotype, whatever.  Think about how many nuggets it took and how hard it was to get to that tipping point.  If you can remember what it was that finally prompted the overhaul, note it.  Share it here, if you’re willing.  Let’s compare our experiences and maybe we can learn how to help people become better architects of their own minds.

Sorry for all the mixed metaphors and visuals.  My mind is a bit cloudy and muddy today. =)