Cognitive Biases have a drastic impact on how we perceive our surroundings and, therefore, on our well-being

I went for a walk the other day. 

I had been thinking about Confirmation Bias and my mind came up with a little game for me. As I put on my shoes, I said to myself, “Things are orange,” and I took Potato for a short walk in our neighborhood. 

That is what I saw within about three minutes...

I’ve never noticed so many orange items so rapidly in my life! 

This was a weird and very tangible experience of Confirmation Bias. The sheer amount of subconscious power that kicked in was surprising.

Here’s what I didn’t do:

• Tell myself to seek out everything orange that I could find.

• Consciously repeat this thought over and over while I walked.

Yet, my mind had a concept, so it did what minds do - it looked for proof.

This is compelling evidence for the importance of working with our thinking. We all have some faulty wiring - stressful beliefs, negative identities, and fears—and our minds are programmed to confirm these thoughts. These are forms of Cognitive Bias. 

In its basic form, Cognitive Biases are mental shortcuts - preformed opinions about how things work. They are helpful for our day-to-day functioning - saving us from having to figure out how to brush our teeth every single time we brush, for example. The energy that is freed up with this mental shorthand is immense. Without them, we would be like babies, needing lots of sleep throughout the day to recover from processing so much new information.

Cognitive Bias filters out information to the contrary and hyper-focuses on information that supports the position it holds. 

As I’m sure you can imagine, this can cause problems.

Here’s a recent example from my life: One morning, over coffee, I checked the news. Then, did a bit of doomscrolling before my hike with Potato. I left feeling like the world was full of selfish and destructive people. So, what was my experience on the trails? I fixated on rude hikers talking loudly on phones, thoughtless people hogging the trail, and unfriendly faces of people not saying hello to me (I wonder why!), My mind was on the lookout for anything that would confirm my bias. It was a sad and tiring hike.

On good days, voila! People seemed so open, considerate, and friendly. The weather was beautiful, and I couldn't believe my good fortune in living here!

The only thing that changed was my mind’s focus.

Confirmation Bias has a drastic impact on how we perceive our surroundings and, therefore, on our well-being. And, as if that weren’t enough, our minds also have another built-in filter: the Negativity Bias. The Negativity Bias is a biological impulse we all have, and it works in tandem with the Confirmation Bias.

Why would our minds do this to us? It’s a basic and primal survival mechanism designed to efficiently scan our environments for danger. Remember? A bias is a mental shortcut. We are wired to be more attuned to negative possibilities and our minds hold and give more attention to perceived negative experiences than positive ones. As Rick Hanson said in Hardwiring Happiness,

“To survive and pass on their genes, our ancestors needed to be especially aware of dangers, losses, and conflicts. Consequently, the brain evolved a negativity bias that looks for bad news, reacts intensely to it, and quickly stores the experience in neural structure. We can still be happy, but this bias creates an ongoing vulnerability to stress, anxiety, disappointment, and hurt…. In effect, the negativity bias is tilted toward immediate survival, but against quality of life.”

Our brains are wired to prioritize keeping our bodies safe and alive. Unfortunately, the mental health component doesn’t seem to be part of the equation.

Scientists now understand that our minds are not as fixed as they once believed. With mental training, neuropathways rewire and free us up to be more present, clear and creative. 

Here are some useful hacks:

1. Question your stressful beliefs and assumptions. The Work of Byron Katie is my favorite approach for this, as well as her daughter Roxann Burroughs' method of working with the Inner Critic. 

2. Interestingly, gratitude and positive affirmations aren’t very effective unless they arise naturally and are realistic. However, working with your thinking and cognitive biases results in new perspectives, more gratitude, and positive outlooks. So here's the trick - when they arise naturally, pause to really take them in. Let your body and mind integrate this grateful/affirming feeling and way of thinking - give it time to form a neuropathway and some muscle memory in your body. Because we are wired to focus on the negative - the scary, the unknown, the potential dangers - we tend to brush right past all the good that is right before our eyes. Slow it down, take it in… when it feels authentic and relevant to your life. 

   
   

3. The final hack I’ll offer is this. The mind continues to process the things we think about before we fall asleep. This is where gratitude and affirmations can benefit you - review your day and spend a few moments savoring the good, the fun, the safe. Keep it real and relevant or it’s a pointless activity. While you sleep, you’ve primed your mind to work with new systems of thinking in which you are safe, loved, included, etc. And, it doesn’t matter how small these examples are, as long as they are real. When I finished a long course of treatment for Leukemia, I felt isolated and severely diminished. I was depressed. Someone made eye contact and smiled at me at the gym. It meant a lot. The world felt kinder and safer. Letting that experience take up more space in my mind, rather than blowing it off, supported me tremendously.