We are pretty fearful creatures. Drs. Kahneman and Tversky won a Nobel prize for pointing out that we are hardwired to risk aversion and make innate and predictable thinking errors when facing risk of loss. Because of this, and our immense capabilities, we have put lots of stock in trying to control things so we can alleviate our fears.
Part of the fear mentality is to overestimate the control we have. In decision science this takes many forms, such as the expectation or confirmation bias (we focus only on evidence that supports our expected findings) and what is appropriately called the illusion of control. When evaluating undesirable outcomes, we fall prey to illusory correlation, which creates an erroneous correlation between variables, and very sadly we start doing this from a young age.
The basis of psychology is to understand and undo the adaptations that we have made to circumstances to which we have been exposed. Abused children try to rationalize ways to avoid abuse and in doing so draw faulty correlations about what they can control in an attempt to avoid suffering. Like, “if I am extra kind and friendly I get beaten less”. So the child adapts to be kind and friendly in challenging circumstances, and that adaptation sticks despite being false. The child had no control and created a faulty but believable correlation that is now permanently a part of their personality. Other adaptations could be a general lack of trust, withdrawal, and other things that attempt to lessen or avoid mitigate potentially hostile situations. And what’s worse is that these adaptations are applied to circumstances with similar characteristics despite being different.
This thinking is not limited to our childhood or to extreme situations. You’ve heard about the baseball player who refuses to change their “lucky socks” for an entire season or the gambler who must rub their “lucky rabbit’s foot” with each pull of the slot machine arm. It’s not so dissimilar to a stock market analyst calling a ‘bottom’ during a natural disaster or a prophet predicting the end of the world. We sometimes call them superstitions and laugh about them, but these adaptations based on faulty or incomplete information are deeply ingrained in who we are because they represent an underlying correlation believed to be true.
Some correlations are true, and this is why it’s so confusing for us. Wearing sunscreen will prevent sunburns. A sensible diet will make you healthier. But some (many) correlations do not equal causation since there is something called a lurking variable that may reside between cause and effect, often with a dozen of its cousins. Women wearing skirts does correlate to more shark attacks. What? So are sharks rowdier due to skirts? Of course not. Women wear more skirts when the weather is nice (lurking variable 1) and when the weather is nice more people go into the ocean (lurking variable 2). More opportunities for shark bites come from more people in the water. But a controlling mind would wear fewer skirts in the hopes that it would prevent shark bites. This same cognitive approach causes people to erect walls in relationships, be ‘nice’ all the time, swallow feelings, communicate less, correct things in others that you think are errors you’ve seen before, etc.
So unfortunately, with our risk aversion and our belief we can understand and influence all causes, we become a series of beliefs and adaptations that modify the people we were born to be and hence where we can find contentment from simply being. It reverberates through all of our relationships, careers and life choices. Be safe, avoid pain, and use the knowledge built to understand what gives you pain. Sadly, we are mistaken and we throw the baby with the bathwater.
Our overarching purpose is tautological: to be who we are. If we adapt away from who we are then we are failing to fulfill our purpose. Therefore, it is an obligation to the human experience to unadapt. To discard everything learned in our personalities. To be exactly who we are irrespective of the circumstances. And definitely not to fall victim to our own faulty correlations that lead not only to personal adaptations but to prejudice, stereotypes, bigotry and isolation.
