The stubbornness of beliefs

Recently, a poor decision was taken around me.

I could not vent my frustration there. So, I’ll one up, and write about it !

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Belief – no matter, true or false

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Once a belief is lodged, it becomes difficult to dislodge.

Flaws in forming and updating beliefs have the potential to snowball.

Once a belief is lodged, it becomes difficult to dislodge. It takes on a life of its own. Leading us to notice and seek out evidence confirming our belief. Rarely challenge the validity of confirming evidence. And ignoring or working hard to discredit information contradicting the belief.

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This irrational, circular information-processing pattern is called motivated reasoning.

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Then – we keep getting evidence confirming our beliefs. Happend to you ?

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You can’t handle the truth

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We do NOT like our beliefs to be challenged. Its Discomforting !

 

During a break in a poker tournament, a player approached me for my opinion.

I didn’t witness the hand, and he gave me a very abbreviated description of how he stealthily played … but “had the worst luck”. I asked what I thought to be the most relevant question. “Why were you playing six-seven of diamonds in the first place?”

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(Even a brief explanation … would fill in details on many areas such as table position, pot size, chip stack, opponent’s style, his style, etc.)

His exasperated response was, “That’s not the point of the story!”.

 

Motivated reasoning tells us it’s not really the point of anyone’s story. We do not like our beliefs to be challenged. It is discomforting !

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Also, It doesn’t take much for any of us to believe something. Once we believe it, protecting that belief guides how we treat further information.

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Rigid

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As we know, beliefs are hard to change.

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Even when directly confronted with facts that disconfirm our beliefs, we don’t let facts get in the way. As Daniel Kahneman pointed out, we just want to think well of ourselves. And feel that the narrative of our life story is a positive one. Being wrong doesn’t fit into that narrative.

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If we think of beliefs as only 100% right or 100% wrong. When confronting new information contradicting our belief, we have only two options:

(a) Make the shift in our opinion of ourselves from 100% right to 100% wrong, or

(b) Ignore or discredit the new information.

It feels bad to be wrong, so we choose #b

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Information that disagrees with us is an assault on our self-narrative. We’ll work hard to swat that threat away.

On the flip side, when additional information agrees with us. We effortlessly embrace it.

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Why is this important ?

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How we form beliefs, and our inflexibility changing them has serious consequences. Because we bet on those beliefs.

Every bet we make in our lives depends on our beliefs:

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Or we believe we deserve a promotion !

 

Excerpt From: Annie Duke. “Thinking in Bets” ( edited )

 

Sequel coming up …

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