10 common thinking traps, each of which is made of people's deep -hearted people

The truth that most people don't know is that you are not as rational as you think.

Emotional is human instinct. This is a by -product of the human brain's evolution. Most people, even those who have received higher education, are difficult to escape the trap of emotional decision -making. These instincts will disturb our understanding of the world and lead to various irrational decisions.

In the era of information hustle and bustle, maintaining a realistic and independent and sober mind is more precious. Today, I will share with you 10 common thinking misunderstandings, hoping to bring you inspiration.

Author | Hans Roslin

Source | "Facts"

Excerpt from "Facts: Thinking with Data to avoid emotional decision -making", Wenhui Press/Reader Culture Publish

I have promoted the world outlook around the world year after year, and I also saw people who ignored the facts in front of the iron and insisted on their mistakes day after day. To the general public, to the elite people, when answering questions about the basic facts of the world, the score is not as high as gorillas who are guessing.

In short, when we think of this world, we often think of negative information such as war, violent crimes, natural disasters, human disasters, etc. We feel that everything is getting worse, right?

The rich people are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer. The number of poor people is growing, and we will quickly exhaust our natural resources unless we take action now. I call it an excessive emotional worldview, and this worldview brings us pressure and misleading.

It is this excessive emotional worldview that misleads people and makes people choose the most emotional and negative answers to my questions.

However, this excessive emotional worldview is not caused by outdated knowledge, although I used to think so. In fact, even those who can contact the latest data and information still have a wrong understanding of the world.

Therefore, I believe it is not because of the misleading of the media, wrong publicity, fake news or error data, which has caused people to understand the wrong understanding of the world. The root cause lies in people's wrong, excessive emotional worldview.

How to use data as a recipe for cure ignorance, and rationality as the source of the peace of mind? How to avoid irrational decisions caused by emotion?

This world is not as bad as you feel. The way of thinking about truthful things should be a part of your daily life like a healthy diet and continuous exercise.

Accepting this way of thinking, you will be able to change the original excessive emotional worldview, and replace it with a world view of truth -seeking. You will have an open mind to correctly understand the world. You will make a better decision, keep a keen danger and possibility, and no longer nervousness for things that are not important.

01

split into two

People often divide this world into "developed countries" and "developing countries", "Western countries" and "other countries". This highly abstract and labeling way of understanding the world is so accustomed to it, but it is full of misunderstandings.

This world is much more complicated than this simple dual -point method. It is only divided in the dimension of income. This world can be divided into at least four development stages: first level (poverty), second (food and clothing), third level (third level (third level) (food and clothing), third level (third level (third level), third level (third level (third level) (food and clothing), third level (third level (third level), third level (third level (third level), third level (third level (third level), third level (third level (third level), third level (third level (third level) Xiaokang) and the fourth pole (wealth), most people are in the second and third levels, not in two extremes.

People have a strong, emotional instinct, accustomed to dividing things into two, and implying conflicts: good and bad, heroes and villains, we and them ... The instinct misleads us, taking smooth transitions as poles, and different from different ways to part ways, and consolidate the same differences in common deposits.

In order to attract people's attention, many media also like to describe the opposite people and opinions in the article, because this caters to people's thinking instincts, it is easier to accept us.

To control this emotional instincts that are divided into two, we must not only pay attention to the average, but also pay attention to the actual distribution of the data, because they are often not distributed in the poles, but are distributed in the middle state.

02

Negative thinking

Various data show that the world has improved a lot in the past 100 years, including income level, average life expectancy, accidents of accidents, and newborn mortality.

But many people think that this world is deteriorating. This kind of understanding is largely based on our negative thinking. It is easier for us to pay attention to bad things, not good things.

This instinct allows our ancestors to survive, and now we still dominate our emotional way, and it is easier for us to pay more attention to negative and dramatic things.

In order to get people's attention, the media prefer negative news, because negative stories are more dramatic than neutral or positive stories, and it is easier to attract people's attention.

This is the media's peeping effect, or the spotlight effect. He let us see what we want to see, and look down on things outside the camera.

Politicians and social activists are also good at using the anxiety caused by people's emotions of people's negative thinking to implement their own policy claims.

In the real world, we need to maintain two ways of thinking: there are indeed some bad things, but the world is better. These two things can exist at the same time, which is the correct way we understand the world.

03

Straight -line thinking

Regarding the speed of population growth, because the world population has increased from 1 billion to 7.6 billion in the past 200 years, it is worried that this speed will continue, resulting in the result of the entire earth's unable to bear the population explosion. This growth rate mainly depends on the progress of medicine, which greatly reduces the mortality rate of children.

However, the speed of population growth will not continue to grow linearly, because with the increase of per capita income, the average number of female fertility babies will decline rapidly, from 5 in 1965 to 2.5 in 2017.

Why does the population stop growing?

Because with the increase of per capita income, people decide to have less children. On the one hand, they do not need children as labor, and on the other hand, they do not need to give birth to so many children to hedge children's death. After all parents are educated, they also hope to raise less children and let them receive better education.

The best way to control the population is to get rid of the state of extreme poverty, so that they can get a better life and receive better education.

To control linear thinking methods, we must remember that there are many different curves in this world, including S -curves, slide curves, multiplication curves and bell curves. There are very few examples of real linear development.

04

Fear instinct

The development of information in this era is unprecedented. We are often in a state of information overloading, which makes our brain overwhelmed.

In order to avoid interference from external noise, our attention has a filtering mechanism that automatically shields the general information. Only those information that can cause human emotional response can be filtered.

How to break through this attention filtering mechanism?

The best way is to use people's emotional instincts, the most effective is fear instinct.

For example, in 2016, 40 million aircraft in the world landed safely, and 10 aircraft crashed, and it was the safest among various transportation.

However, no media will report to the 40 million flights that landed safely. They will only pay attention to the 10 crane planes, and the tragic photos of crashing planes are very impactful, so that people think that airplane travel is not safe.

In the United States, 3172 people have died in terrorist attacks (including 2996 people with 911 terrorist attacks) in the past 20 years, with an average of 159 people per year. Traffic accidents and murders caused by alcohol have hardly received reports, so that people think that terrorist attacks are more terrible than alcohol.

Fear instinct allows us to survive when facing danger, but it will also play a negative role in understanding this world. He misleads me to pay attention to things that we are afraid of, rather than really dangerous things.

When we fall into fear, we cannot see the reality clearly. To avoid this fear instinct, we must realize this cognitive distortion and do not make decisions in fear.

05

An illusion

People are always easy to pay attention to local and ignore the whole. We will cry for the story of a child's death, but the number sensitivity to the number of deaths of 10,000 children is not as sensitive as the former.

In Mozambique, the child who died in the hospital only accounts for 1.3%of all dead children. You can easily see a dead child in the hospital, thinking that more resources should be put into the hospital construction.

In fact, as long as the cost of spending little cost to improve the hygiene conditions, so that dysentery, pneumonia, and malaria no longer become a major disease that threatens children's life, and let the children get the vaccine injection. Child.

In addition, a single number is easily misjudgment of things.

For example, when you see 4.2 million babies in the world died in 2016, you will respond to this number emotionally, and feel that this number is terrible.

In fact, if you compare the other two numbers, you will find that this number is not as scary as you think. In 2016, there were 141 million new babies in the world, and the infant mortality rate was 3%. In 1950, the proportion was 15%. The infant mortality rate has decreased by 80%in the past 66 years.

To control the instinct of the illusion of scale, don't just pay attention to the single number, but depending on the proportion of it in the whole. We also have to sort all phenomena to find the most important things.

When comparing in different countries and regions, we must not only pay attention to the overall number, but also pay attention to the per capita number. This is more comparable.

06

Partial

Summary is a very important and useful instinct, but it will also distort our world view.

We often classify very different people, things and countries to the same group, and automatically assume that people, things and countries of the same group are very similar, in fact, the difference is very large.

The media once again served as this instinct friend. They like to choose extreme cases and label them to make them think that these people represent this group, so that readers can better understand this complex world.

One of the instincts divided into two allows us to divide the world into "us" and "them", and the comprehensive instinct makes "we" think that "they" exactly the same. In fact In fact, it is very different.

For example, the division of "Oriental" and "West" we often say have made a big mistake, that is, "Oriental" and "West" are regarded as a whole. The difference, this is a typical partiality. The best way to restrain with a comprehensive emotional instinct is to do thousands of miles. Let us see the diversity and complexity of this world, rather than understanding other countries from the life experience of our own country.

And to find a better classification method, find differences in the same category, find similarity between different categories, and look for different categories.

We should pay attention to extreme cases, and do not take extreme cases as common phenomena. Keep humility and curiosity, explore the truth behind the phenomenon.

07

Destined

The so -called destined emotional instinct is that we think that the inner attributes of things will determine its destiny, whether you are the people, the country, religion or culture.

This kind of thought believes that all these backwardness are caused by their inherent essence, and this will never change. This emotional instinct is related to people's long -term living in a relatively stable environment. Assuming that this stability will continue for a long time, it is important for human survival. As the environment changes, this emotional instinct will have problems.

The popularity of the Internet, smartphones and social media has brought great changes to our society and culture, but we rarely see too many reports from the media.

Society and culture are not as unchanged as rocks. They are continuously changing, but they are just happening slowly and not being perceived by us.

The emotional instinct that considers things that is unchanged will prevent us from learning new knowledge and let us ignore the upside -down changes in the real society.

Many Europeans have a sense of self -righteousness. They always like to use their own values ​​to judge other countries, and the facts that have changed greatly in these countries.

For example, many people do not agree with the masculine values ​​of Asian and African countries, and attribute it to regional culture or religion. In fact, this kind of masculinity has also existed in Europe, but it has disappeared with economic and social development. Essence

Regardless of Europe, Asia, or Africa, with the progress of economic and social progress, various values ​​will change, and it is not unchanged. We need to constantly update our knowledge.

For investors, we also have to see the tremendous changes in emerging markets, and we cannot see these countries with previous thinking methods. New investment opportunities no longer exist in large European cities, but emerging markets, such as Africa and Asia.

08

Single perspective

People always tend to think that all problems have a single reason and a single solution. I call this single perspective instinct.

When we have a simple idea and find that it can explain many things, we will be very happy. There are a single reason for all problems. We only need to solve this reason to solve all the problems. All problems have a single solution, we only need to adopt such a solution.

Why do people always use a single perspective to understand the world?

There are two main reasons: one is ideology, and the other is professional limitations.

The ideology will simply explain the world and give plans. For example, some people think that as long as the democratic freedom and the market economy are implemented, many problems will be solved.

Many experts did not realize that they only have professional knowledge about specific fields they are familiar with. They often do not recognize this and like to comment on the fields they are not familiar with.

On the contrary, you should continue to test your shortcomings. Take a humble attitude towards your own limited experience and actively obtain the latest information.

Keep your knowledge of knowledge outside your professional field, communicate more with people with different opinions, and treat these different opinions as useful resources to help you truly understand this world, rather than just have a common point of view with you Communicate together.

I have a lot of errors in this world. Sometimes it is reality that makes me realize my mistakes, but more often I find my mistakes through communication with people who hold different opinions.

If you want to control the instinct of a single perspective, you must have a toolbox, not just a hammer. There is no tool that is universal, and keeping in mind the best problem to obtain the problem is to observe the problem from multiple different angles to observe the problem , Get a more comprehensive understanding, so as to formulate a practical solution.

Don't just focus on the correct cases that can prove your thoughts, and discuss more with those who hold different opinions and discover the shortcomings of your own ideas. Don't think that you have any insights outside your professional field, and you must be humble about your unknown field.

Beware of simple ideas and simple solutions should recognize the complexity of things, and solve the problem on the basis of specific analysis.

09

Blame others

When bad things happen, people always try to find a clear and simple reason to blame others. This is what we say on people's instincts.

When something bad happens, we always seem to think naturally that there must be other people to do bad things intentionally. We always tend to believe that someone can use power or means to make things happen. Otherwise, this world will make people feel unpredictable, confusing and terrible. This is the psychological basis of conspiracy theory. The instinct to blame others always drives us to find a blame object, so that we ignore our understanding of the truth of the world, which greatly reduces our ability to really solve or prevent problems.

The accusations of others can often reveal our own thinking patterns. When we are looking for scapegoats, we actually reflect the thinking mode that we already exist in our hearts.

If you want to control the instinct of others, you should stop looking for scapegoats. Find the cause, not looking for bad people. When bad things happen, don't try to blame any individual or group, accept no one deliberately for this fact, and then try to understand the systemic reasons behind this.

Find the system instead of looking for heroes. When someone claims that he has done a great performance, it is usually the effective operation of the entire system, which makes good things happen.

10

Eagerness

"Actions now, otherwise you will always lose opportunities." Many politicians and salespersons are using this technique to stimulate your instinct to be anxious. If you can't think about it, you will make a decision quickly.

In the distant past, human ancestors must have this anxiety and chaos, quickly respond and act quickly under insufficient information. In today's society, we still need this instinct to react.

For example, when a car suddenly drove to us, we must quickly make avoidance.

But in today's society, we face the risk of urgency, and we must face more complex and abstract issues. At this time, the instinct of affection and chaos will drive us to make a wrong decision. It makes us feel a lot of pressure, enlarged our other instincts, and prevented us from analyzing and thinking. Under the circumstances, they take actions, and the results often bring a lot of side effects and do not really solve the problem.

To control the emotional instinct of emotions, we must keep in mind that most of the situation is not really urgent. Be wary of data that is related but not accurate, or those data that is accurate but actual.

Be wary of those predicted prophets, and any predictions about the future are uncertain. Any action should be steadily made steadily progress, and the effect of continuous observation in the process should be obtained.

The picture in the article comes from Tuwu's creativity, and the reprint needs to be authorized.

- END -