11 Mind Traps to Mind Over

1. Confirmation Bias

You have an existing belief about something. You go in search of evidence that supports that belief, which further reinforces the belief and you continue this cycle. If you come across evidence that doesn’t support your belief, you filter the disconfirming evidence and your brain forgets it after a short period of time. We never like to learn we’ve believed in a falsehood or made a bad decision, which is why we tend to filter what information we pay attention to, this is confirmation bias. This bias is subtle unconscious, and always present in the mind when rational thinking is needed, as opposed to the scientific method where you form a hypothesis or ask a question, gather evidence and then test the hypothesis. This bias leads to a narrow and selective interpretation of information, as we only seek out evidence that supports our preconceived notions. Confirmation bias can also lead to the rejection of evidence that contradicts our beliefs, which can limit our ability to learn and grow. A good example of this is when you keep googling until you find negative reviews of the recruiter who recently rejected you in job interview. Echo chambers are the flywheels for frequent repetition and dissemination of ideas. The same ideas are shared, liked and repeated and any new beliefs are quickly shut down. When people hear the same thing, repeated enough times, the facts may as well go out the window. According to Daniel Kahneman, a reliable way to make people believe in falsehood is repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. There is no way to eliminate confirmation bias. The only way to reduce its effect on you is to simply become aware that this mind trap exists. If time does allow you to reflect, try to think grey. If you truly want to become an independent thinker, you need to suspend judgments, explore the grey areas and expand beyond the hive-mind of the group. Try to get your information from a variety of sources and avoid being influenced into a belief because it is what others are telling you to think what has been repeated enough times. Try to widen your perspective because in most cases the objective facts lie somewhere in between the grey area.

2. Cognitive Dissonance

If you interview for a job and someone else gets it, instead of reasoning that the other person was better, you tell yourself the job was no good anyway or that the interviewer was unfair. When people can’t get what they want, they often tell themselves, it isn’t what they wanted. When people don’t want to follow through on something, they often find new beliefs to rationalize the action to fit against the first belief. You think all rich people are greedy and evil but you also want to be rich, this dissonance leads to discomfort mental stress and anxiety. If the dissonance grows more intense, it can lead to depression. If you notice dissonance, you can ask yourself: are these two incompatible beliefs and my endorsing this new belief is because I couldn’t get what I wanted? What actions can I take to change my behavior or mindset and eliminate the dissonance? Because when it comes to cognitive dissonance, you can play the clever fox that wants the grapes but can never get them and that is why they are sour.

3. Spotlight Effect

This mind trap is the root cause of your social anxiety. You arrive five minutes late to the office and you feel like everyone is judging you. It’s your first day at the gym and you feel like everyone is watching you. You spill a small amount of sauce on your shirt and you feel so embarrassed because you think the whole party is going to notice you. The spotlight effect is the phenomenon in which people tend to believe that other people are observing them more than they are. However, in reality, people don’t give a damn and are seldom interested in you and your actions as much as you think. Conversely, they too are afflicted by this spotlight effect and all they are doing right now is thinking about what you are thinking about them. Hence, both of you are in a spotlight in your own parallel universes with zero audience in actual reality. So, do yourself a favour. Stop overestimating how much people are observing you and reduce the anxiety that is probably just the result of this spotlight effect.

4. Anchoring Bias

Anchoring bias is the tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information encountered when making your decisions. This can lead to an overreliance on initial impressions, as subsequent information is interpreted in the context of the initial information. Anchoring bias can also lead to underestimating the range of possibilities, as the initial information serves as a mental anchor. In sales and negotiations, anchors are being used all the time and there will be people who are willing and able to set up this mind trap and exploit the anchoring effect against you. The car salesman setting a high price from the start so that the price that he actually wants to get from you seems like a good deal. The 150-dollar dress at the front of the store sets the anchor for the fifty-dollar dress at the back of the store. Online stores, salary negotiations and real estate deals are all playgrounds for this anchoring trap, and it’s one of our most powerful biases. You can’t turn it off, but you can remind yourself of your vulnerability to it. And try to proactively set your own mental anchors before, going into any sales or negotiation environment. Let not the numbers influence your thinking. Perform your own due diligence and arrive at our own number. Your objective, in this negotiation, is to move first and get them anchored to this number. To avoid this bias in other circumstances, it is important to consider a range of possibilities and to gather multiple sources of information before making any decision.

5. Halo Effect

Alan is intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn and envious. Ben is envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive, industrious and intelligent. If you’re like, most people, you see Alan in a better light than Ben. Even though the traits mentioned are exactly the same, when it comes to the halo effect, sequence matters. More weight is given to the first piece of information. We receive the first piece of information and our mind helps us quickly create a full story of the person or situation. Alan is stubborn and envious but that is only because he’s intelligent and wants to win in business. And yes, Ben is intelligent, but he uses that intelligence in envious ways. This halo effect occurs when a single initial aspect of a person or thing determines and effects or outshines, how we see the full picture. This halo effect is at most similar to anchoring bias; however, they differ in terms of application. In anchoring bias, you make a decision on based of an anchor, and in halo effect, you create a whole story with an initial piece of information. When you first start dating someone, both parties in the relationship are on their best behavior. You start to develop a halo of positive thoughts around this person. Things you dislike might begin to pop up but often go unnoticed because the halo, the positive emotions and the initial information. If we learn that someone is graduated from a prestigious University, the halo effect will distort all other traits of his/her and we will attribute good qualities to that person without any evidence. In the work environment, the standard practice of most meetings is to have open discussions on a topic. Daniel Kahneman, in the book, Thinking Fast and Slow, argues that it is better to gather independent judgments on the topic from everyone in the group before or after the issue is discussed because far too often the opinions of the first person that talks is given too much weight, and he/she influences the group’s input, especially if the boss speaks first. Always try to move beyond the first appearance of someone or something. Remember that your brain is trying to help you by making the most complete story from the limited information. But the problem here is that these mental shortcut stories we tell ourselves about a person or thing are often inaccurate or can might even be opposite from the reality.

6. Hindsight and Overconfidence Bias

Hindsight bias is the tendency to overestimate our ability to predict past events, once we know the outcome. This can lead to a distorted view of our decision-making abilities, as we may believe that we knew the outcome all along. Hindsight bias can also lead to an overconfidence bias mentioned below, as we may believe that past success is indicative of future success. To avoid hindsight bias, it is important to consider the uncertainty and unpredictability of events, and to avoid attributing too much weight to past successes. Overconfidence bias is the tendency to overestimate our own abilities and knowledge. This can lead to a false sense of security, as we may believe that we are more knowledgeable or skilled than we actually are. Overconfidence bias can also lead to a failure to consider alternative possibilities, as in this bias we believe that our initial assessment is accurate. To avoid overconfidence bias, it is important to seek out feedback from others, and to consider alternative possibilities and potential flaws in our own thinking.

7. Framing Bias

Framing bias is the tendency to make decisions based on how information is presented, rather than the actual content of the information. This can lead to different decisions based on the same information, depending on how it is presented. For example, a decision may be framed in terms of gains or losses, and people may be more likely to take risks when presented with a decision in terms of potential gains, rather than potential losses. This bias is cunningly used by people like politicians, news reporters, advocates, sales consultants, and the like. These manipulators have a mastery in creating framing bias that they can portray anything good as bad and vice versa, and you will surely subscribe to that without any doubts. To avoid framing bias, it is important to consider the actual content of the information, rather than how it is presented. You need to be clearly known about the existence of this bias and how it fools our mind. Be extra cautious when someone tells you their story and often follow it with the story of the second person as well. You will realise how a same story can have two different versions. Don’t just get manipulated by the sales guy the next time you go to the mall to shop for a Televison. Give emphasis to the actual product quality instead of the sweet praises of the salesperson.

8. Zeigarnik Effect

We can almost always remember incomplete tasks, but we easily forget completed tasks. To put simply, incomplete tasks will stick around in a memory longer than completed tasks. Originally, it was believed that the only way to prevent the zeigarnik effect from gnawing away at our thoughts, was to complete the incomplete tasks. However, further research into the zeigarnik effect found that simply having a written down plan to complete the task was enough to stop the effect. So, if you find yourself awake at night with these incomplete tasks stressing you out, grab a pen and paper and write down the quick plan to get the job done. Getting the task out of your head and onto paper combats this effect and will give you more peace of mind.

9. Contrast Effect

Research shows that people will walk an extra 10 minutes if it means saving Rs. 100 on groceries and veges. However, these same people wouldn’t walk 10 minutes to save Rs. 100 on the Rs. 1,00,000 wala iPhone. In other words, it’s easy to think something is attractive, large or expensive when it sits next to something ugly small or cheap. Absolute judgments can be difficult to make. Try to catch yourself the next time you go shopping to see if your purchasing decisions are being influenced by the contrast effect.

10. Baader-meinhoff Phenomenon – Frequency Illusion

You buy a certain brand of car and all of a sudden you start seeing that car everywhere whereas you didn’t in the past. When you learn a new word or concept, suddenly you start seeing it everywhere in your life. You start thinking. Wow, this is weird. How is it possible? I’ve never seen this word in my life and now I’ve seen it three times this week. Why do I keep seeing those new shoes I bought everywhere I go? They must be becoming so popular. This is an illusion in which after noticing something for the first time there is a tendency to notice it more often. It occurs when increased awareness of something creates the illusion that it is appearing more often. This phenomenon is augmented by two other biases, the recency effect, which inflates the importance of recent stimuli and confirmation bias, about which we talked already. Basically, our brains are master pattern-recognition machines that are always searching for meaning in data. What is amazing are all the patterns and stimuli flooding past you very single day that your brain simply ignores because it’s not in your awareness. We only see the things we are looking out for in reality. You have most likely seen that word or car number of times, but your mind simply wasn’t interested in noticing it.

11. Choice Paradox

A large selection of any given product is seen as a net positive, but once the number of choices increases past a threshold, a subjective state becomes negative, and leads to inner paralysis and decision fatigue. This paradox of choice is mostly found in modern day dating and in shopping scenarios. You would have married any random person you met locally before the era of internet and dating apps. Nowadays, because of the internet, you have so many choices for your future partner that your decision-making capability is completely sapped off. You may think that all this variety would make your decision easier, but this is the illusion of this paradox. In contrast, more optimal decisions can be made when given a smaller number of options to choose from. When faced, with a small number of options, people can easily weigh the pros and cons of each option and be fairly satisfied with whichever option they chose. When faced with a large number of options, knowing which option is best becomes more difficult. And the more options there are, the more chances are of feeling regret later on. The more you feel the need to compare the attractive features of the alternatives, you diminish the satisfaction in your final choice. Even if you make an excellent decision, the opportunity cost of the other options subtract from the overall satisfaction of your choice. Additionally, too many choices often lead you not making any choice and give up on the endeavour altogether.