Thinking Badly—or Not Thinking at All?
Rationality is wasted if you don't know when to use it. When you ask people about improving thinking, they typically point toward numerous tools designed to help people think more rationally. But what I've learned from watching real people in action is that they're often unaware circumstances are thinking for them. It's as if we expect the inner voice in our head to say, "STOP! THIS IS A MOMENT WHEN YOU NEED TO THINK!" And because we don't know we should be thinking, we cede control to our impulses.
In the space between stimulus and response, one of two things can happen. You can consciously pause and apply reason to the situation. Or you can cede control and execute a default behavior. The problem is, our default behavior often makes things worse.
Reacting without reasoning makes every situation worse.
Biological Instincts
There's nothing stronger than biological instincts. They control us often without us even knowing. Failing to come to terms with them only makes you more susceptible to their influence.
Our biological tendencies are hardwired within us. Those tendencies often served our prehistoric ancestors well, but they tend to get in our way today. For instance, like all animals, we are naturally prone to defend our territory. We might not be defending a piece of terrain on the African savanna, but territory isn't just physical, it's also psychological. Our identity is part of our territory too. When someone criticizes our work, status, or how we see ourselves, we instinctively shut down or defend ourselves.
We're naturally wired to organize the world into a hierarchy. When someone infringes on our place in the world and our understanding of how it works, we react without thinking. Or consider when you get frustrated with your kids and end an argument with "Because I said so." (Or the office equivalent: "Because I'm the boss.") In these moments you've stopped thinking and regressed to your biological tendencies of reaffirming the hierarchy.
We're self-preserving. Most of us would never intentionally push someone else down to get where we want to go. The key word here is "intentionally," because intention involves thought. When we're triggered and not thinking, our desire to protect ourselves first takes over.
Conscious processing takes both time and energy. Evolution favored stimulus-response shortcuts because they're advantageous for the group: they enhance group fitness, group survival, and reproduction.
Knowing Your Defaults
While there are many such instincts, four stand out as the most prominent, the most distinctive, and the most dangerous:
- The emotion default: we tend to respond to feelings rather than reasons and facts.
- The ego default: we tend to react to anything that threatens our sense of self-worth or our position in a group hierarchy.
- The social default: we tend to conform to the norms of our larger social group.
- The inertia default: we're habit forming and comfort seeking. We tend to resist change, and to prefer ideas, processes, and environments that are familiar.
People who master their defaults get the best real-world results. It's not that they don't have a temper or an ego, they just know how to control both rather than be controlled by them.