You should change my mind
The Power of Surprise
Michael Rousell gives a Tedx Talk detailing the power of surprise, with much of the presentation centered around how surprise can potentially create belief change or belief confirmation. Here is an example he gives to introduce the idea:
“... think about Samantha. Samantha used to think that her shyness was a weakness. That is, until one day when her swim coach named her captain of the swim team. He told the team, ‘She may be shy, but when she talks, you are going to want to listen.’ Since that surprise comment, she now feels quietly powerful.”
Humans are very rarely aware of their beliefs, why they have them, how to change them, and how they impact our own lives.
Another example given by Michael includes a female character who felt “ungraceful and odd looking”. This was her current belief until one day she overheard her aunt describing her as “exotic looking”. Suddenly, this woman’s worldview has changed, and she now embraces her differences.
The stories and ideas here lead us to a few different conclusions. First, our words and actions are incredibly powerful. Samantha lived with the idea of shyness being a weakness. Samantha didn’t do anything to explicitly reframe that belief, quite the opposite, as someone else provided a strong stimulus for change. Now, who is to say Samantha wasn’t getting conflicting signals before that, but the signals lacked enough strength to reach a critical belief threshold. Michael remarks, these comments and ideas “may not result in immediate change.” They act to sow different beliefs, over time developing into a powerful reinterpretation of the self and the world.
Beliefs and Biases
The next idea worth considering is the ethereal nature of beliefs. They exist, they drive behavior, they influence many of our interactions with the self and others, but they can’t be pinned down or driven into conscious awareness. This reinforces the need for metacognition or thinking about thinking. Instead of being a passive participant in the world, question beliefs, question the emotional responses to different situations, think about decision making and why people do what they do.
What is not being said is that our automatic responses are “bad” or entirely flawed. They aren’t, otherwise, they likely would have been selected against during our evolutionary lifespan. Confirmation bias (the act of seeking out confirming information for specific beliefs), availability bias (overestimating the likelihood of an event because of an ability to recall many of those events in memory), recency bias (favoring recent events over past events), all have a place. It’s just that those biases have more limited utility than we give them credit for.
This information leads us to seriously consider the language used when discussing aspects of someone’s beliefs. You never know what kind of positive impact you could have on someone you care about.
“You are a confabulatory creature by nature. You are always explaining to yourself the motivations for your actions and the causes to the effects in your life, and you make them up without realizing it when you don't know the answers. Over time, these explanations become your idea of who you are and your place in the world. They are your self... You are a story you tell yourself.” - David McRaney