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Your brain is sabotaging you all the time! WHO CAN WE EVEN TRUST?
Anthony here for DNews and your brain is built around survival in a harsh, unforgiving environment.
Unfortunately, those survival loops can cause us some harm in our safer, smarter modern
world. Here are 3 things your gray matter is a little too black and white about. Have
you ever kept watching a show, week after week, even though you don't like it? Or finished
eating a meal at a restaurant even though you were full because you already paid and
you didn't want the money to go to waste? That's the Sunk Cost Fallacy That food was
already made for you. It's as wasted as it's gonna get the moment it hits the table. You
don't like that show, watching more hours of it doesn't make those other hours less
wasted. On a larger scale, it can cause bad investments and keep people in the wrong relationships.
Whyyyyy, brain? Because in order to survive, early humans had to prioritize loss. Losing
a home, food, a mate could mean death. Not losing is more important to us than gaining.
Sunk cost takes place in the lateral front and parietal cortices, which are involved
in risk-taking and aversion. When we're losing, our brain only thinks in terms of saving the
situation, not what's best for us.
On the flipside is something called optimism bias. No matter what the odds of something
bad happening are, we tend to believe it's less likely to happen to us personally. Divorce
rates in the US are 40%, but newlyweds rate their likelihood of divorce at 0%- even if
they're divorce lawyers. Smokers think cancer is less likely to happen to them, people think
unprotected sex can result in pregnancy and infection- but probably not to them if they
do it this once. I won't get alzheimer's, I won't get mugged. What the what, brain?
Specifically, what the what, inferior frontal gyrus? THAT'S IRRESPONSIBLE. But optimism's
linked to knowledge of our future- if we're smart enough to picture a happy life, we're
smart enough to picture death. And constantly thinking about death and failure doesn't sound
like the behavior of a growing, thriving species- so people who are hopeful survived in our
early history and helped us reach all the great achievements we have. We also know that
stress has negative physical effects on the body- so optimists make for healthier, longer
living humans.
Finally, let's talk about one that I'm always trying to avoid- but I'm never sure if I'm
doing a good enough job. Confirmation bias. We hang out with friends who have similar
interests. We read news from sites that agree with us. We have a sense of beliefs that defines
who we are- and we tend to only seek out or information that aligns with those beliefs.
Other stuff just doesn't hold our interests. A 2009 Ohio State University study says we'll
spend 36% more time reading an essay that aligns with our opinions. It's more pattern
recognition- teaming up with the like-minded meant a stress-free survival in early society.
But it's bad when it's applied to news, media, research, or politics. Because if you just
keep confirming your own thoughts instead of seeking out full truth of something, you
actually wind up less intelligent. So how do you avoid this stuff? Well, short
of transcranial magnetic stimulation to your brain, the best thing you can do is be aware
of it and try to question yourself. Have you ever caught yourself doing one of these things?
Let us know down below and subscribe for more DNews.