#ThinkfullyHabit: Battle the binary
Do you think in a binary fashion? Yes or no? To make sense of the world, evaluate data and interpret information, we simplify and summarise. Often that’s helpful, necessary and much needed. However, the amazing thing is the extent to which we do this. Researchers have found that we have a tendency to reduce this down, often to two alternatives. Good or bad? True or false? All or nothing? We over-simplify complex ideas and problems. Psychologists call this our ‘binary bias’.
“There are two kinds of people. Those who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don’t.”
WHY?
Researchers from Carnegie Mellon and Yale Universities* found that summarising brings out our binary bias. We tend to sort, organise and compress information into just two categories, regardless of the relative strength of the evidence.
Psychological scientist Matthew Fisher clarifies that this is widespread and evident across many areas of life and with a whole range of information types. It’s a cognitive distortion that allows us to process large amounts of information relatively efficiently, probably driven by a preference for ease of understanding and certainty. The problem is that once we’ve establish categories it can be hard to change them. We often assume that new information and experiences fit into old boxes. So while it may give us a greater sense of certainty, it might not give us increased clarity. Reducing information so far down means throwing away extra levels of understanding.
Recognising what doesn't fit into two simple categories requires us to resist simplifying too soon or too far, especially when the issues are complex and important. Hans Rosling in his book 'Factfulness' gives us a great example of this when he challenges the view that the whole world is divided into two - the developed world and the developing world. He argues beautifully that we should update our misconceptions because countries do not fall neatly into these two boxes in the year 2021.
What helps us resist the two box temptation? It’s likely to include checking out the following:
- The outliers that don’t neatly fit; the exceptions to the rule
- The subtle nuances
- The caveats and the limitations to our current ideas and understanding
- The doubts, the dilemmas and the paradoxes
Our dilemma is that we need to theme and categorise information to make sense of complexity, but we need to do this in a way that avoids our binary bias.
We battle the binary bias whenever we toss away the two-sided coin, explore the implications of choosing both sides of the coin or recognise the range of options that sit between heads or tails.
REFERENCES
*Matthew Fisher, Frank C. Keil. The Binary Bias: A Systematic Distortion in the Integration of Information. Psychological Science, 2018