Psychology and Sociology (a Foundation)
Our environment and our history have shaped how our minds have evolved, which in turn has shaped how we learn, think, make decisions and interact with others. This has all gone into helping define our phycological and social condition, which is quite complex. We have been left with a mixture of cognitive biases, moral values and emotions which along with our life experiences have given each of us a worldview with our own set of preconceived notions about how we think the world works and what we think our place is in society.
To understand our thoughts, decisions and actions we need to understand how we process and react to the world around us and how we define our place in our society. To do that, we need to understand our cognitive biases, moral values, emotions and worldview, which we can do through looking at some basic psychology and sociology. Psychology is the study of our mind and its functions. Sociology is the study of the development, structure and functioning of our society.
Although our cognitive biases, moral values and emotions evolved to help us make decisions and get along with and cooperate with others, they do not always help us as well as they have helped our ancestors. Although they can still be useful for some things, we usually make better decisions about the most important things in our lives when we base them on logic and common sense. However, unless we are careful, our logic and common sense can also lead us astray just as can our cognitive biases, moral values and emotions.
To understand how and when we should use our cognitive biases, moral values, emotions, logic and common sense, we need to understand how each works and when they can lead us astray or be used by others to manipulate us. We can do that by delving into each one to see how they are meant to help us, and to see how they can lead us astray and can be used to manipulate us. Once we understand them, we can fortify ourselves to guard against many of their negative aspects.
To help them with processing information and making decisions, our ancestors needed to understand how the world around them worked. That is, they needed to create a worldview that would inform them about what they could expect from their interactions with other people and with their environment. To do that, they needed to combine all that they learned from their unique upbringings and experiences to identify patterns from which they could make predictions about the future.
In addition to their unique upbringings and experiences, one of the biggest contributors to their worldviews were the cognitive biases that they were born with. These cognitive biases were short cuts and rules that their subconscious minds used to help them more efficiently and effectively process information. Their worldviews were also affected by and affected their moral and human values and their emotions and helped them cooperate and bond with the others in their groups.
Our ancestors’ worldviews needed to be complete and accurate enough so that they could use them to make good decisions. Since many of the decisions they make came from their subconscious using their cognitive biases, their cognitive biases also needed to be efficient and effective. If they were not, then they would have hindered their ability to make good decisions which could have led them to injury or death.
In the following subsections, I will talk about our cognitive biases, moral and human values and emotions, and how they work, how they help to shape our worldviews, how they can help or hinder us in our modern world and how they can be used by others to manipulate us. I will talk more about our worldview in the next section, and more about how others will try to manipulate us in a subsequent section.
Since it would take a lot more energy to fuel larger brains, our brains could not evolve to grow large enough to handle all the sensory input that we were exposed to. Therefore, we evolved some efficient and effective ways to filter out the less important information, so that we could concentrate on those things that were most important to our survival without suffering the cognitive overload that would happen if we tried to process everything.
One way in which our brains became more efficient and effective at processing information was to evolve some cognitive biases. These cognitive biases became hard wired into our ancestors’ subconscious minds. They helped our ancestors to determine what input was most worthy of their attention and how best to process that input.
These cognitive biases are comprised of simple rules and short cuts. Our subconscious uses these rules and short cuts to filter out what it determines is less important, process what is most important, and to alert us to anything that it determines is helpful or dangerous. For the most part, these cognitive biases helped our ancestors survive by ensuring that they paid attention to things like food sources, reproductive opportunities and signs of danger.
For instance, some of our cognitive biases help to make us pay attention to any indication that there is a lion in the tall grass. We may not see the lion, but we pay attention to any sign that one might be there, and if a sign is there, we would instinctively react and try to save ourselves. If our ancestors had not evolved the cognitive biases that helped them pay attention to these signs, then they might not have survived, and we would not be here today.
The simple rules and short cuts of our cognitive biases evolved so that our subconscious minds could use them to help us decide what we needed to look out for to help us survive and to protect us from the dangers and challenges that our ancestors faced. However, our cognitive biases were not designed to help us survive and to protect us from the new dangers and challenges that we face today in our more complex industrial and technological age.
This means that our cognitive biases may not always be as helpful as we need to survive in our modern world. In fact, some of our cognitive biases can lead us astray by making us pay attention to the wrong things and lead us to make some bad decisions.
We all start out with a similar set of cognitive biases. However, like most things that we have inherited from our ancestors, many of us have inherited slightly different versions of these cognitive biases. Although some of us may have cognitive biases that may serve us better than the ones that others have, we have not had time for them to evolve to help us better survive in our modern world, so we all have cognitive biases that do not serve us as well as we need them to.
To counter this deficit until such time as our cognitive biases can evolve better simple rules and short cuts to fit our modern age, we need to learn to recognize when our cognitive biases are leading us astray. We also need to learn to pay better attention to the dangers of our modern world. Luckily, our subconscious minds are somewhat flexible so we may be able to train them to use better rules and short cuts for some of our cognitive biases.
Researchers have identified more than 150 cognitive biases. Some of them serve us better than others. Dozens of these cognitive biases can now negatively affect how we view our modern world and how we make decisions. The following are just a few of our cognitive biases that could now lead us astray or that could allow others to manipulate us.
We are inclined to believe that others are being honest or truthful, especially when we do not see any obvious motive for deception. For many of us, our honesty bias can be quite strong. Once we believe someone to be honest or truthful, our belief can persist even when there is ample evidence to the contrary.
Our ancestors lived in small tribal groups where their survival often depended on the others in their group and these others often depended on them for their survival. Therefore, they all needed to trust each other so that they could work together and cooperate for their mutual benefit.
If others in their group came to feel that someone was not honest or trustworthy, then they might banish that person from the group. Without the support of others, banishment would often be a death sentence. Therefore, our ancestors either needed to be honest and trustworthy, or be skilled in hiding their dishonesty.
Today, most of us live quite differently than our ancestors did. We now live more independently and in much larger groups where we are no longer as directly dependent on each other. We also do not know most of those around us and they do not know us. For the individuals we do not know or do not know well, we may not know how honest or trustworthy they are. When we do not know someone, it is far too easy for that person to be dishonest with us.
The good news is that most individuals are mostly honest and trustworthy. The bad news is that it only takes one or a few dishonest and untrustworthy individuals to mess up or to ruin our lives. In most cases, we can still trust others, but we must verify in any case where our misplaced trust could cause us or others undue harm.
We are inclined to think we know more about something than we do. This is especially true for individuals who know the least about that something. This is the Dunning-Kruger effect, which occurs when our lack of knowledge about something leads us to overestimate how much we think we know about it. This overestimation can lead us to be overconfident and more prone to accepting misinformation about it as fact. A person’s overconfidence can in turn lead us to think that person knows a lot more about something than that person does.
There is a saying that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing”. That is, when we only have a small amount of knowledge about something it may lead us to think we know more than we do. When we do not know all the needed facts, we are also more vulnerable to misinformation and to making bad decisions. On the other hand, the more we learn about something the more we will realize that there is far more to learn about it than we thought, and our estimation of our level of knowledge becomes more accurate and we become less prone to believing misinformation.
With this Dunning-Kruger effect, many individuals who know the least about some subject may think they know a lot about the subject and use their limited knowledge to state their opinions in a very confident manner, even when they are wrong. In contrast, individuals who know a lot more about the subject are better at knowing what they do not know and may not seem as confident in stating their opinions, since they may stress the fact that there are some unknowns. The danger lies in the fact that many of us will conflate confidence with knowledge and go with the less trustworthy opinions of the individuals who know the least.
As an example, we may learn that company A makes a product that is currently very popular. If that is all we know, we may think we know enough to make a big investment in that company. However, if we learn more about the company, we may find that there is a lot more we need to know. That is, we also need to know more about the company’s financial condition, what other products the company makes, the future of this currently popular product, and much more. Without getting this additional information, we may make a bad decision and risk losing our investment.
Our ancestors might have needed to know a lot, but only when it came to a few things. They just needed to know things like how to make a few simple tools, how to get food, how to avoid dangers, how to get along with the members of their tribal group, how to reproduce and how to raise their children. Those who did not know enough and did not listen to those in their group who did have the knowledge, did not survive. In these small tribal groups, it was probably easy to know who in fact knew a lot about each of these different things.
Today, most of us need to know something about a lot more things and are much more dependent on others who know more about the things that we need to know about but do not have the time to learn. Most of the individuals who have the knowledge we need are not in our group of friends and family, so we are less likely to know how much we can trust their knowledge.
The Dunning-Kruger effect can then lead us to listen to the individuals who seem more confident instead of the individuals who are more knowledgeable. The problem is that many of the more confident individuals have a Dunning-Kruger bias that makes them think they know more than they do, which can lead them to provide us with less reliable information. In addition, some individuals who seem more confident may be purposefully misleading us for their own nefarious reasons.
There are many examples where the Dunning-Kruger effect has turned many straightforward reliable scientific facts into controversial issues. Just a couple of these are the contrived issues with climate and vaccinations. Although there is ample evidence that we are causing climate change, too many individuals who do not know enough about how our climate works are being misled by climate change deniers. Similarly, too many individuals who do not have a working knowledge about how vaccines work are being misled by anti-vaxxers.
We are inclined to prefer data that confirms our worldview. That is, we seek out, favor, or give more weight to information that seems to confirm what we believe, even when what we believe is wrong. We also are inclined to filter out or to block out information that contradicts our worldview. Since we tend to ignore evidence that contradicts our beliefs, this makes it difficult for us to correct any of our beliefs that are wrong.
Our ancestors lived in small tribal groups where most individuals had seen and experienced a lot of the same things. Therefore, their worldviews would have often been closely aligned with the other members of their group. This would have helped to strengthen their social cohesion, which was important for their survival. Their social cohesion also would have probably helped to overcome many of the problems caused by the flaws in their shared worldview.
Each group’s shared worldview would have been tested over the years, decades, and centuries. If it had not led to too many serious problems in the past, then it probably would have continued to work fine for them, since things changed slowly back then. On the other hand, a worldview that was too far out of sync with reality could have led the group into serious trouble.
Today, things are quite different. Things change much more rapidly, which forces many of us to change our worldview or be left behind. Most of us also no longer live in a small tribal group, which means we meet and interact with far more individuals who are outside of our family, friends, work, and social groups. Many of these other individuals come from very different backgrounds, so they may also have worldviews that are far less aligned with our worldview. This is especially true the less they and we have in common and the further their or our worldviews are out of sync with reality.
The more our worldviews differ from those around us, the greater the danger of conflict. This danger is greater the more our worldviews differ from reality. Even without conflict, our wrong worldviews can cause us many other problems.
However, whatever our worldview, today we can probably find others who have a similar worldview online. Our confirmation bias will even lead many of us to seek out others with a similar worldview. Although we may find comfort in knowing others have a similar worldview to our own, it can make it less likely and harder for us to realize when our worldview is wrong and to correct it.
When we passively take in information, we allow our confirmation bias to filter it, so we may not learn what we need to correct our worldview. The key to overcoming our confirmation bias is to do active listening, active reading, and active seeing. That is, when we are taking in important information, we need to process that information consciously as we receive it, so that we can overcome our confirmation bias, let in the valid information and filter out the invalid information.
We are inclined to pay more attention to negative or bad news than to positive or good news. When we get positive or good news, we usually do not need to do much except to enjoy it. However, when we get negative or bad news, we usually need to adjust to what has happened or to act to make things better. In addition, we need to learn from negative or bad news so that we can better avoid or deal with it in the future.
Our ancestors needed to prioritize being alert to dangerous things like predators over safe or less threatening things. Their very survival depended on it. They also needed to pay attention to things that could go wrong which could negatively impact them. This also meant paying more attention to things that went wrong as opposed to things that went right. By paying attention to things that could go wrong, they could better avoid them and could be better prepared to handle their aftermaths.
Today, we do not just get news that directly affects us or our family and friends, but news from around the world. Furthermore, news organizations know that we pay more attention to negative news, so they devote more time to giving us the negative news. This means that in addition to getting more information today than our ancestors ever did, more of it is negative information.
For instance, we are now more likely to hear about and to pay attention to reports of crime in our neighborhood, city, or area over all the good things happening around us. In addition, we hear more about all the bad things going on around the world. This could lead us to believe that we live in a neighborhood, city, or area that is more dangerous than it really is.
In addition, even though we are paying more attention to just the negative news, we could still be getting so much of it that we could suffer from cognitive overload. On top of that, most of this negative news is beyond our control, so we may feel powerless to do anything. This could lead some of us to be fearful, stressed or depressed. To deal with this, many of us may turn away from all the news and other sources of information. This can lead us to be less well informed, and easier prey for those who want to manipulate us.
A better alternative would be for us to seek out more positive and good news, and to take more control over what happens locally, nationally, and globally. When we take more control over what information we receive and over what happens around us, we will be less fearful, stressed or depressed and have more power to make our lives better.
We are inclined to pay attention to patterns that can help us predict what will happen in the future. This allows us to see order in what seems like chaos and to make better sense of our world. Some things repeat over short periods of time, so we can quickly see a pattern and learn to predict what will happen next. Other things may not repeat for months or years or even centuries, so it is much harder for us to be able to see a pattern unless we are able to reference the past occurrences that others have recorded.
This Predictive Information bias allowed our ancestors to see patterns in the weather, the stars, and the path of the Sun, which allowed them to predict the changes in the seasons. In turn, this allowed them to predict animal migrations and when different foods would be available. Among many other things, our ancestors also saw that certain foods or plants made them sick, and that other foods or plants could heal them or help them feel better.
However, our ancestors often saw patterns where none existed, which led them to make some bad predictions. For example, they often erroneously equated solar or lunar eclipses, earthquakes, diseases, floods, or droughts with angry gods, with spirits or with other supernatural beings. They then tried to appease these supernatural beings with things like animal or human sacrifices. If things happened to get better, then it reinforced the nonexistent pattern, which meant they would continue doing similar things in the future like making sacrifices.
Today, we have accumulated far more information than our ancestors ever had. This accumulated information has allowed us to see that many patterns that our ancestors saw are not real, to see more detail in some patterns, and to see many new patterns. This has allowed us to make better predictions about the future. For example, we no longer equate many celestial events and natural disasters with supernatural beings, we can better predict the weather, and we can now even predict the outcome of many things that happen at the atomic and subatomic levels.
For our predictive information bias to work properly and to see patterns clearly, we need to collect enough valid information and to filter out all the invalid information. The problem is that we are now inundated with far more information than we can effectively process, which can lead to cognitive overload. In addition, far too much of this information is invalid. That is, more of the information we now get is chock full of lies, disinformation, misinformation and exaggerations which can obscure true patterns and lead us to see too many false patterns.
We continue to look for and to see patterns and to make predictions based on those patterns. However, with so much invalid information around these days, it is hard to accumulate just valid information. Which means we are looking for and seeing patterns in the invalid information. This leads us to see many patterns and conspiracies that do not exist, to miss patterns that do exist, and to misinterpret patterns. Then, when we erroneously base our decisions on this flawed predictive information, we can end up making bad decisions.
We are inclined to follow the crowd, especially in environments or in situations that we are not very familiar with. When we do not know where to go, what to do or what is happening, we are usually better off following the lead of those who do. That is, when the individuals leading the crowd know the right thing to do and are doing it. However, if these leaders do not know what they are doing or are not doing the right thing, then those of us following them may be led astray.
Our ancestors were members of tribal groups. These groups needed to work together and to cooperate for the protection and benefit of the group and its members. Doing things that were bad for the group would have been bad for them as well. Therefore, if members of our ancestors’ tribal group were running away, then they probably had a good reason for doing so. So, it would have been advantageous for our ancestors to do the same and to save themselves from whatever danger was coming their way.
Today, many of our social, business, and other groups are not as closely knit as our ancestors’ tribal groups, nor do they have the same incentives for protecting and benefiting their members. In fact, many individuals in these groups may only be looking out for themselves. Therefore, following these crowds may not always work out as well for us.
For instance, if the members of some social media groups are pushing some product, stock, investment, or conspiracy theory, they may have some ulterior motive. Therefore, if we are not sure of their motives, then we would be better off researching and investigating those things ourselves and then making our own decision instead of just following this crowd.
In addition, our inclination to follow the crowd can also lead us into mob violence. That is, when those around us start rioting, we may be inclined to follow the crowd and do the same. In this situation, we should think about what is happening, and if we do not agree with it, then we should try to stop it or at least to extricate ourselves from it.
Bottom line, if we see no harm, feel there is danger in not acting, or trust those leading the crowd, then we should be able to follow our instinct and go along with the crowd. However, if we are not sure and we have time to think about it, then we should think about it before acting. In any case, if we do not agree with what the crowd is doing, then we should not follow that crowd.
We are inclined to remember information better when it is presented as being part of a story, even when the facts do not actually support the narrative. We do this because we are living the story of our lives, and our brains are designed to remember our story, and in turn any story. A story can combine lots of information and many facts. When we remember the story, we remember the information and the facts. Therefore, we rely more on stories to remember information rather than on individual facts.
Our ancestors told stories that were passed down from generation to generation. For most of human history, we did not have a way to write things down, so we told stories that included the information that our descendants needed to know. Each story could include a lot of information and facts, and life lessons.
Many memory aids rely on our ability to remember a story better than a list of facts or items. There are a couple of ways to weave facts or items into a story. We could create a unique story each time we need to remember a list of things, or we could add the list into an existing story. The more outlandish the story, the easier it can be to remember.
For example, let’s say we need to remember a list of items to pick up at the grocery store. Let’s say we need bread, milk, carrots, lettuce, and eggs. To help remember these items we could create a story of a ship navigating through rocky waters. However, the ship is a loaf of bread, the water is milk, the ship mask is a carrot, the sails are lettuce leaves, and the rocks are eggs.
Another way is to picture yourself walking through some location and placing the things you need to remember along your path. For instance, when I go to the grocery store, I sometimes picture myself walking the aisles picking up the items I need. Since I often get a lot of items from the produce section, I might use an additional memory aid there. For instance, I might picture a produce clerk and replace his facial features with the fruits and vegetables that I want to pick up.
Our predictive bias can combine with our story bias to create conspiracy theories. That is, we will see some pattern in random facts or events and then create a story to explain those facts or events. Since we would remember the story better than the facts or events, the conspiracy story may be easily spread, while we may forget which facts and events in the story were the original ones. The more outlandish the conspiracy and its story, the easier it is to remember.
Our story bias can also help to explain why we do not always vote for the political candidates that best match our positions on the issues. Basically, a position on an issue might just be a single fact, which we are not great at remembering. We are much better at remembering the stories that candidates tell, than what they say are their positions on the issues.
If candidates want us to remember what their positions are on the issues, then the candidates should weave their positions into good stories, so we would stand a better chance of remembering them. However, when candidates do tell stories, they are far more likely to tell negative stories about their opponents than stores about their position on the issues. Even worse, our negative information bias will combine with our story bias so that we will pay more attention to and more easily remember the negative stories.
These negative stories may also include a lot of distortions of the truth, disinformation, exaggerations and outright lies. By including these untrue facts in stories, it will make it easier for us to remember these distortions, disinformation, exaggerations and lies than the true facts. Therefore, when we hear stories, we need to be careful to ensure that they are true and complete.
We are inclined to see ourselves and those who seem to have more similarities with us in a more favorable light and see others with a more skeptical or negative view. We instinctively add individuals to our in-groups and to our out-groups. The individuals we add to one of our in-groups will more often share with us some common attributes such as physical appearance, religion, political view, hobby, education, or profession.
Our ancestors lived in small tribal groups that worked together and cooperated for the mutual protection and benefit of the group and its members and were often in competition with other groups. The members of our ancestors’ tribal groups were mostly related to one another and therefore shared many more similarities with them than with individuals in other groups. Thus, being similar was associated with individuals who were trustworthy and those who were less similar were associated with individuals who were less trustworthy.
Today, most of us do not live in small tribal groups and we are less likely to live with or near our relatives. Instead, we must interact with a lot of individuals who are not related and with whom we may not share many similarities. However, we still want to be included in an in-group even though it may be much harder to do now than in the past. This can lead us either to see everyone around us as part of an out-group or to seek out any group that will accept us.
When we are desperate to be included in an in-group, our Similarity Bias can make us vulnerable to being manipulated into joining the wrong type of group. Many hate groups are skilled at using our Similarity Bias to rope us in. They will try to highlight what we have in common with them and try to make us feel welcome in their group. This works especially well with individuals who do not feel like they are welcome in other groups and who will do almost anything to feel like they belong somewhere.
Once a hate group has roped us in by making us feel welcome, they will then try to turn us against some other group that they have defined as an out-group. This can lead some individuals to become prejudiced and to commit violence against those in this out-group so that they can be better accepted as part of the group that has included them.
When we limit ourselves to just associating or working with individuals with whom we share similarities, we lose out on a lot. Most of us, even those of us who appear different, are fundamentally good and could be our allies if we give them a chance. We can overcome our Similarity Bias by finding common or complementary ground with those individuals who appear different. If we can do that, then our in-groups will grow bigger and stronger. Then we would not need to fear those few who might remain in our out-groups, and we would not need to join hate groups.
We are inclined to want certainty and fast and simple answers to our problems. Expediency Bias occurs when we prefer to act quickly rather than to take the time needed to get clarity and understanding. In some cases, we need to act quickly. If our life is in danger, like when our house is on fire, we may need to act quickly to save our life. However, if our life is not in danger and we are just in a hurry or are tired, we may make a rush to judgement and suffer for our rushed bad decision.
Even when our life is not in danger, there are cases where making an expedient decision is okay or even good. For example, if we need to choose between a few different relatively good options, it may be best to make a quick choice rather than risk losing out on some of the options or all of them.
On the other hand, we should never make a quick decision when the consequences of a wrong decision could be significant. For example, we should never be too quick to decide when picking a career, a home, or a spouse, or when making any other life altering decision.
Individuals and groups who want to manipulate us want us to make a quick decision. They may try to generate a sense of urgency. They may give us some cherry-picked facts, disinformation or lies that support what they want us to do. They may also try to convince us that there is a simple answer to some complex problem.
Grifters, scammers and other con artists love to use our expediency bias by promising us fast and simple answers to our problems if we act now. For instance, a shady contractor may stop by and offer to seal our driveway. They say they are doing other jobs in the neighborhood, see that our driveway needs sealing, and can fit us in for a bargain price if we let them do the work today. They hope that we will mistake their offer as an expedient and inexpensive way of taking care of a problem we may not have thought we had without any hassle. However, our hassle is only beginning when the shady contractor uses inferior sealant that leaves our driveway an oily mess.
There are a few things that we can do to overcome our expediency bias. First, we should never make any big decision when we are in a hurry, rushed or tired. Second, we should never let someone rush us into deciding right away. Third, we should develop the habit of always gathering all the relevant facts and logically processing these facts before we make any big decision.
One way that I use to overcome my expediency bias is to use it to my advantage. Whenever someone tries to sell me something unsolicited, I simply say that I am not interested. They may try to pressure me into buying, but I have determined that it is more expedient to simply say no and not risk the consequences of being taken advantage of.
We are inclined to take our own perception (our worldview) to be the objective and total truth. Experience Bias occurs when we forget that other individuals see the world differently than we do. That is, we assume that our view of problems and situations comprises the whole truth instead of realizing that our view of the world is incomplete and may be inaccurate.
This bias is also known as the Curse of Knowledge. We know what has worked for us so we assume that it will work for others. However, it may not work as well or not at all for some other people. The problem is that this bias can hinder our ability to see alternatives or even to look for other options. Maybe our way does work best for us, but something else may work better for us and for others. Unless we are open to other perspectives and ideas, we may miss out on what is best for us.
Our unique combination of experiences has shaped our perception of the world. As I talked about above in the subsection on our Worldview, this has led each of us to see the world a little or a lot differently than everyone else. When our perception of something is incomplete, wrong, or even just off a bit, others can use that to manipulate us.
When dealing with other individuals we need to keep our different worldviews in mind. We need to find out how they see things and to let them know how we see things. If we perceive things differently or even the same, we first need to verify what the truth is. Only when we all know the truth will we be able to make a good decision and have a chance of coming to a valid agreement. Even if that agreement is to disagree.
We are inclined to give more weight and credence to things and to individuals who are close to us and to fail to see as much value in things and individuals who are further away from us. That is, we prioritize things that are nearby, such as in physical space, in time or in other domains. For instance, there is a saying that helps illustrate this distance bias. It goes something like, if you cannot be with the one you love, then love the one you are with.
Salespeople and others will try to take advantage of our distance bias to sell us something or on the idea of something that may not be our best option. That is, they will try to get us to go with what they have at hand instead of what might be somewhere else. Just because something is close in space or time does not mean it is the best option. We need to be aware that there may be better options and to take the time to look further away.
Our ancestors did not have much choice; they would need to take advantage of what was there at the time or possibly lose out. However, in our globalized and fast paced world, some of the best individuals, things and ideas may be located far away in space or time. If we rely on just what is close, we may risk losing out on someone or something better. Today, we often need to look at what is near and far, and what is in the past, present and future.
We are inclined to avoid a loss more than to seek a gain. That is, we generally prefer to play it safe rather than to take a risk. We tend to obsess over the bad things that might happen and underestimate the good things that might happen. Therefore, we are more afraid of any possible loss than we are excited about any possible gain.
For example, we prefer not losing money over gaining money. Therefore, we may choose to invest in something safe that has a lower return on investment than something riskier that has a higher return on investment. Individuals trying to manipulate us may try to make what they want us to do seem safer than the alternatives.
The sunk cost fallacy is an example of a Safety Bias. When we have invested a lot of time or money in something that is not working out, we may continue to invest in it to try to avoid the loss. For instance, we may have invested a lot of time and money in a relationship or project that is not working out, but we continue to stay invested in the relationship or project to try to avoid the loss of what we have already invested.
Our Safety Bias can also lead some of us to have such a strong aversion to loss that it can affect our tolerance for risk. That is, our negative reaction to a loss caused by our Safety Bias can counterintuitively lead us to increase our appetite for risk. That is, it can make us willing to take greater risks to try to recover our losses. For instance, instead of doing the sensible thing and walking away when we are losing at the roulette table, we double down.
It is not only actual losses that can lead us to taking greater risks but simply the perception of loss or of falling behind others. For instance, an owner of a successful business may take greater risks trying to grow the business when the owner feels the business is falling behind its competitors. In addition, when politicians or political parties think they are losing votes, they may try risky policy changes.
Since our safety bias is wrapped up in our emotions, we need to create some psychological distance, or else our emotions will warp our decisions. We need to make our decisions less personal or less immediate. For instance, we could imagine that we are making the decision for someone else, or we could imagine that we had already made the decision in the past and then see whether we are happy about it or not.
The consensus among experts is that our morality is a collection of biological and cultural traits that promote cooperation which is the process of working together to achieve a common goal. Our ancestors needed to work together to get food and to protect themselves from danger. Since they could not easily survive on their own, they needed to cooperate with one another. To do that, they evolved a set of moral values to achieve the level of cooperation that they needed.
According to the Moral Foundations Theory, our values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions, technologies, and evolved psychological mechanisms work together to suppress or to regulate selfishness and to make cooperative social life possible. Per this theory, our morality or moral values are based on the following moral foundations.
- Authority includes our respect for social order and obligation to our relationships and duties and for the authority of legitimate leaders and includes our rejection of subversion.
- Care includes our sensitivity to the suffering of others which leads to our virtues of caring and compassion and includes our rejection of doing harm.
- Fairness includes our stance against unfair treatment and cheating, and our more abstract notions of rights, equality and justice.
- Liberty includes our desire for freedom and our resentment of bullies and those who seek to dominate us and others and includes our rejection of oppression.
- Loyalty includes our obligations to our groups and community which includes patriotism, self-sacrifice and vigilance against betrayal.
- Purity includes our stance against physical and spiritual contagion, and our stance for things like cleanliness, chastity, wholesomeness, and control of desires.
Some researchers believe that purity should not be included in the moral foundations, since it mainly deals with things like our need to avoid diseases, parasites, waste products, and self-control and does not help with cooperation. However, I believe that trying to keep ourselves and others healthy and under control would help with our cooperation. However, when purity is used as an excuse to attack others because they do not conform to some purported standard of spirituality, chastity or wholesomeness then I do not believe it is helping with cooperation and should therefore not be considered a moral value.
In addition, some researchers believe that we should include some of the well-established types of evolved cooperation as some additional moral foundations. For me, these seem like they would already be included as part of Loyalty and Fairness, but it may be good to spell them out explicitly. The following are ones that some researchers believe should be included.
- Competitive altruism includes certain indicators of status like bravery and generosity.
- Kin altruism includes the sacrifices we make to care for and to protect members of our families.
- Reciprocal altruism includes sacrifices we make to benefit unrelated individuals who may reciprocate in the future.
- Respect for prior possession includes our respect for property rights and prohibiting theft.
In addition to the moral foundations that researchers have identified, I believe that we should also add Honesty. The goal of our moral foundations is to promote cooperation, but I do not believe that we can trust each other without Honesty. This would include avoiding lies, deceit, cheating and other forms of dishonesty. It is critical for building trust in relationships, communication and empathy. Although much of what is included in Honesty would be covered by Fairness, I think that clearly spelling out Honesty explicitly is important.
We are born with an initial set of moral values. They are a valuable part of who we are and help us with our human interactions by promoting cooperation. We may feel like our moral values are an immutable part of who we are, but they are shaped by our culture, by how we are raised and by what injustices occur in our lives. This means that over time they can and do change along with our changing worldviews.
With our moral values embedded in our worldviews they help shape who we are and how we see the world and other people. With our moral values being part of who we are, our moral judgements are mostly guided by our intuition and by our gut feelings instead of by our deliberate reasoning. They also guide our behavior and determine how we feel about how we all should behave towards one another and can guide us toward kindness and social justice or towards something else.
Along with changing how we feel about and interpret our moral values, we can grow to believe that some of our moral values are more important than others. This means that each one of us may come to perceive a different subset of these moral values as being more important than the others, which may lead many of us to prioritize the adherence to those moral values over the others. In fact, some of us may even end up not adhering to some of these moral values.
With each of us prioritizing our moral values differently, this can lead each of us to perceive the morality of a given act differently. Our moral values come down to what we intuitively perceive as being right or wrong, which may be somewhat or a lot different than what others perceive. Even to the point where one person perceives a given act as right and another sees it as wrong. This can cause a lot of problems if we start seeing and labeling others as being immoral or even evil.
Studies have shown that liberals and conservatives tend to favor different subsets of our moral values. In other words, how we prioritize our moral values can lead us to lean towards being more liberal, more conservative, or something else. Of course, we all favor each of our moral values along a continuum. Therefore, the more strongly we favor some of our moral values over others can lead us to have views that are more liberal, more conservative, or more something else.
When researchers looked at our moral foundations, they found that liberals favored care and fairness, while conservatives favored authority, loyalty, and purity. A libertarian might also tend to favor care and fairness like liberals but also prioritize liberty and a respect for people by not forcing a particular moral code on them. I believe that many independents like me may prioritize all moral foundations more equally. However, other individuals might favor other combinations and have other views.
I find it interesting but not surprising that neither liberals nor conservatives prioritize liberty. I believe that the reason for this is that both liberals and conservatives seem to want to impose their way of doing things on all of us which would take away our liberty. Although libertarians do prioritize liberty, as we could guess from what they are called, I have found their policy positions seem to go too far and could invite anarchy. It also seems that honesty is not a priority for a lot of these liberals, conservatives and libertarians, at least the ones that go into politics.
It has also been shown that by framing an issue based on a person’s favored moral values, we can sway that person’s opinion. For instance, conservatives can be swayed more towards favoring environmentalism by arguing for a clean planet based on purity rather than by arguing to protect the planet based on care and fairness. Liberals can be swayed to spend more on the military by arguing for fighting inequality based on care and fairness rather than by arguing for American supremacy based on authority or loyalty.
A major goal of my 3 fundamental rules is to promote cooperation. Therefore, these rules ("do no undue harm", "protect everything from undue harm", and "allow all living things to live their lives their way") should align closely in some way with the moral foundations. If we compare these rules with the moral foundations, then it should be obvious that these rules align nicely with at least the moral foundations of authority, care, fairness, liberty, loyalty, reciprocal altruism, respect for prior possession and even honesty. I believe these can also be grouped together in the category of mutual respect.
One thing that we all must keep in mind is that none of these moral values are intrinsically more important or better than any of the others. Even if we favor some moral values over the other ones, it does not lessen the value of the others. Therefore, even if we favor our set of moral values for ourselves, we should not deny others the right to favor their own set of moral values. In other words, if individuals are not causing any undue harm to others, then we need to allow them to live their lives based on their favored moral values and not try to impose our favored moral values on them. On the other hand, we need to respect all moral values and not do anything to deny any of them.
For our society to function smoothly or even at all, we need to cooperate with one another, and we need to be able to trust that others will do the same. Our moral values are meant to ensure that we cooperate with one another. However, as we can see in the prior subsection on Moral Values, we do not all prioritize our moral values in the same way. When others do not share the same prioritization of our moral values as we do, we may view them as untrustworthy and not cooperate with them. We may even work against them.
All our moral values are important. If we ignore, deny or undervalue even one of them, then we may find that many other people will not want to cooperate with us. For example, if we ignore, deny or undervalue Care, then we may not help those who have been harmed, or we may even harm others ourselves. If we ignore, deny or undervalue Fairness, then we may not help those who are being unfairly treated, or we may even treat others unfairly. If we ignore, deny or undervalue Loyalty, then we may not help those who are betrayed, or we may even betray others. When others prioritize certain moral values, then they may not trust or cooperate with us if we ignore, deny or undervalue those moral values.
Ignoring some of our moral values would be like ignoring some of the rules in a sporting event. In a game, both teams must agree to abide by all the rules. If one or both teams ignore some of the rules, especially when they each ignore different rules, the game can devolve into anarchy. At least in a sporting event, there are referees who are authorized to penalize and even eject those who break the rules.
With our moral values, things are not as simple. Some of our moral values have been codified in our laws. In those cases, our legal system can sometimes impose appropriate sentences on the offenders. In other cases, we are left to our own devises. Either way, we lose trust, and our society suffers when we do not fully cooperate with one another to fulfill our shared goals.
We can see this mistrust in our mainly two-party political system. The way we prioritize our moral values shapes our political views and divides us into opposing political parties. With each side mainly prioritizing starkly different moral values, our political system has become polarized and many on both sides do not trust those on the other side and in some cases even view the other side as evil. When members of any political party do not stand fully behind all our moral values, then we lose trust and cooperation.
To restore trust and cooperation, we all need everyone to realize that we need all our moral values. Even if we only prioritize some of them, we must never ignore, deny or devalue any of the other ones. This is especially important for our representatives in government. They need to represent all of us and all our moral values. If they ignore, deny or devalue any one of them or appear to not care about one of them, then some of us, their constituents, will not trust them and, in turn, not trust our government.
The one moral value that I believe is the most important and the one most often ignored by our representatives is Honesty. Not only does a lack of honesty erode our trust, but it also corrupts our knowledge which can reduce our power and can be used to manipulate us and to turn us against our neighbors. If nothing else, we need to demand honesty from our representatives.
Our human values are the things that we feel are most important in our lives. The human values of compassion, fairness, honesty, love, loyalty>, peace and respect are considered our basic inherent values because they bring out the fundamental goodness in us and our society.
Some of our other human values include things like affection, care, community, empathy, equality, fame, family, glory, gratitude, guidance, power, prestige, recognitionstatus, success, truth, and wealth.
Psychologists divide our human values into two broad categories. These are our intrinsic values which come from within the self and our extrinsic values which are dependent on outside stimuli.
Our intrinsic values are those which are rewarding in and of themselves or for their own sake. These include such things as creativity, social justice, and connection with nature. Those of us who lean towards intrinsic values have been found to prioritize things like community, empathy, and equality, and are more open to change and are protective of our environment.
Our extrinsic values are centered on external approval or rewards. These include such things as awards, social status, self-image, and personal security. Those of us with strong extrinsic values are drawn to things like power, prestige, status, and wealth. Those of us who prioritize extrinsic values have been found to be motivated by individual rewards and have a propensity for aggressive behavior and tend to dismiss social and environmental concerns.
When we prioritize our intrinsic values, we do not need to compare ourselves much with others, which means we can be happier with ourselves, and with those around us like our families and friends. When we prioritize our extrinsic values, our happiness is much more dependent on what we have and on what others think of us. By prioritizing our extrinsic values, we may become envious of those who have more things like wealth, power, and recognition. Our envy may then lead to anger, to hate, and to violence.
In our American cultural landscape, there has been a veneration of individualism and the accumulation of wealth. This has created a breeding ground for extrinsic values. In fact, a characteristic of the ‘American Dream’ is a desire for upward mobility, financial success, and fame. This is reinforced by the media and advertisers and helps to nurture a society where our extrinsic values flourish.
The division of society into ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ that started in the 1980’s and the subsequent shift in the political climate to embrace more free markets, capitalism, deregulation, and reduced government has led us to have a greater focus on our extrinsic values. Our political landscape in the United States over the last few decades has intensified this situation. As we have become more focused on extrinsic values, we have tended to gravitate towards more right-wing ideologies and the political parties that seem to validate this new more extrinsic worldview.
When we prioritize our extrinsic values too much, we become vulnerable to feelings of envy, anger, and hate, and more vulnerable to resorting to violence and to being manipulated by others. When we prioritize our intrinsic values too much, we may be happier, but we may not care about the recognition and wealth that would come with working productively which may mean we do not contribute as much to the prosperity of our community. Therefore, the key is to find the right balance between our intrinsic and extrinsic human values and not to let ourselves be driven to extremes when prioritizing any of our human values.
Most of us experience many different emotions throughout the course of our lives and often throughout the course of a week or day. Although we may recognize our emotions, understanding our emotions is not as easy. In fact, among researchers there is little agreement on what our emotions are, and many of them are still proposing new theories. However, they do have some basic agreement on some of the core elements of our emotions.
Before we continue, some of us may be confused by the difference between emotions, feelings and moods. Therefore, the first thing to do is to define each of them.
- An emotion is how we deal with a matter or situation that we find personally significant and that elicits a subjective evaluation which then results in a physiological response and a behavioral response.
- A feeling arises from the conscious expression of an emotional experience that may be influenced by our memories, beliefs, and other factors, and is classified in the same category as pain or hunger.
- A mood is a short-lived emotional state that lacks a specific stimulus and has no clear starting point.
It is believed that our emotions evolved to be a vital part of our survival, safety, communication and social bonding. Emotions like fear help us to survive when we need to make a quick decision to fight, flee or freeze in a dangerous situation. Emotions like disgust can keep us from eating something that may be contaminated. Emotions like sadness help us to communicate our needs. Emotions like love help us bond with our family and mate. Other emotions help to spur us into action or inaction, or to motivate us to do things that will help us, our family or others.
Like with our cognitive biases, our emotions evolved to be efficient and effective means to help our ancestors make decisions that might have otherwise required a lot of thinking and possible cognitive overload. Since our emotions evolved to help our ancestors who lived a lifestyle as hunters and gatherers in small tribal groups, they may not serve us as well today where we live more complex and hectic modern lifestyles.
Most of us experience many different emotions throughout the course of our lives. Although we may experience a wide variety of emotions, it has been theorized that they all derive from some basic emotions. There is some disagreement about which emotions are the basic ones, but they usually include anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise.
In addition, it is generally agreed that an emotion is made up of three parts. These parts are a subjective experience, a physiological response and a behavioral response. We will now look at each of these parts in a bit more detail.
An emotion begins with a subjective experience, which is also referred to as a stimulus. Basically, something happens, and then we subjectively interpret what happened based on our worldview. Our subjective interpretation can then lead us to experience one or more emotions, which could be different than what others would experience with the same stimulus. The intensity of each emotion may also differ by individual. For instance, the loss of a loved one could evoke various levels and combinations of anger, sadness, and regret in different individuals.
A physiological response is the reaction of our autonomic nervous system to an emotion that we are experiencing. The autonomic nervous system controls our involuntary bodily responses and regulates our fight-or-flight-or-freeze response. It is theorized that these automatic responses evolved to help our ancestors survive. Although, in some cases many of us overreact or underreact.
A behavioral response is how we express our emotions. Our emotions combine to help determine how we feel, which can then be expressed via facial expressions, body language, or many other reactions based on our societal norms and our personalities. For instance, we could smile or laugh when happy, frown or slouch when sad, jump or skip for joy, cringe or repel in disgust, or scowl or strike out in anger.
Our emotional state helps to control how we feel. How we feel can affect our thoughts and the way we think and feel about other things and how we respond to everything else in our lives. Depending on our emotional state, we may respond very differently to the events and the individuals in our lives and those who we encounter in either a positive or negative way.
Our emotions can also cloud our thoughts and our decision-making ability. When we let emotions take over, our ability to think rationally goes out the window and we make it easier for others to manipulate us. For this very reason, individuals who want to manipulate us will often try to stir up our emotions. Therefore, we need to be able to recognize and to control our emotional state to help us prevent others from manipulating us.
If we need to think rationally about something, then we must first recognize our emotional state. If we are not in a good emotional state, then we need to find a way to control our emotions before we make any decisions that require rational thought. By control, we want to be able to regulate our emotions and not to repress them. There was a reason for our current emotional state, so we do not want to deny or to ignore it. We need to look at why we have these emotions, by determining if they are valid and adjusting our emotions as needed.
There are different methods for regulating our emotions. What we need to do depends on what emotion we are feeling and on our individual personality. The best thing we can do is to find what works best for ourselves and to be ready to act when needed. Then, once we have our emotions under control, we will be able to think more rationally and be less vulnerable to being manipulated into acting in some way against our beliefs.
Worldview -
Our Worldview is the foundation for how we see and interact with the world.
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