mind traps

“In driver’s training we were taught to identify our visual blind spots and eliminate them with the help of mirrors and sensors. In life (...) we need to learn to recognize our cognitive blind spots and revise our thinking accordingly”

from Think Again by Adam Grant

baja

In performance cultures, people often become attached to best practices. The risk is that once we’ve declared a routine the best, it becomes frozen in time. We preach about its virtues and stop questioning its vices, no longer curious about where it’s imperfect and where it could improve.

Adam Grant • Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

frozen ‘best practices’

Zero-risk bias is a tendency to prefer the complete elimination of risk in a sub-part over alternatives with greater overall risk reduction.[1] It often manifests in cases where decision makers address problems concerning health, safety, and the environment.[2] Its effect on decision making has been observed in surveys presenting hypothetical... See more

Daniel Crosby • Zero-risk bias

The spotlight effect is what happens when we imagine that our lives are performative, or “on display” for others to consume.

Brianna Wiest • The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery

spotlight effect

We are currently trapped in the illusion of growth. The belief that all businesses should grow indefinitely. To expand their business, profits, and workforce… Everything in nature is circular, so there’s nothing natural about this growth craze.

Angelos Arnis • Designing for the last earth

Both the physical and the electronic isolation from people we disagree with allow the forces of confirmation bias, groupthink, and tribalism to push us still further apart

Jonathan Haidt • The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

Utility maximization was first developed by utilitarian philosophers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. In microeconomics, the utility maximization problem is the problem consumers face: "How should I spend my money in order to maximize my utility?" It is a type of optimal decision problem. It consists of choosing how much of each available good... See more

Jonothan Levin • Utility maximization problem

The urge to blame is based . . . on the fear of being blamed

Sheila Heen • Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most

Earlier I discussed the bewildering variety of priming effects, in which your thoughts and behavior may be influenced by stimuli to which you pay no attention at all, and even by stimuli of which you are completely unaware. The main moral of priming research is that our thoughts and our behavior are influenced, much more than we know or want, by

Daniel Kahneman • Thinking, Fast and Slow

priming effects

Occam’s broom is used to describe people’s tendency to sweep relevant facts “under the rug.” No doubt you’ve experienced Occam’s broom in an argument before — when the other person simply refuses to engage with a fact you’ve laid out in favor of your side.