When there is an action you need to take, are you more likely to do it right away, or deliberate about it at length first?
Share why if you wish.
Category: Thinking
Cognitive Dissonance Or Hypocrisy?
When someone holds two conflicting ideas in mind at once, do you think it is likely to be intentional hypocrisy? Or are they simply a victim of cognitive dissonance? How does this apply to you?
Share why if you wish.
Cognitive Dissonance Or Hypocrisy?
When Have You Had A Sudden Change Of Viewpoint?
As humans, we try to be consistent. However, sometimes circumstances lead to a sudden change of perspective. Has this happened to you?
One reason why this sudden change might occur is simply through collecting additional data. You might start out believing, say, that Columbus discovered America. You add more information to the picture, and then finally some piece of data makes you realize that it isn’t true.
Another way is a sudden re-framing of the data you have. An example of this is the move ‘The Sixth Sense’ with its twist ending. The revelation makes you reinterpret what happened all throughout the movie.
Sometimes, you can change your mind just by thinking about the situation. You might just realize — by yourself or with the help of someone else, like a therapist — that you were simply wrong. You never bothered to examine your beliefs, or were blinded by emotion or fear, or some other reason. But suddenly your error is exposed, and it changes how you think.
There are other ways you might change your mind quite suddenly. Has it happened to you? What led to the change? And how did you change the way you think about similar things because of it?
Related questions: What is necessary to change your mind?What beliefs do you have that might be wrong?How do you adopt new ideas?
When Does Something Become An Unhealthy Obsession?
We all have interests. Sometimes, however, an interest can become an obsession that can endanger our mental and emotional well-being.
Obsessive behavior is all too common in our society, from eating disorders to gambling addiction to OCD. There are times we cannot stop our thoughts from damaging our relationships and our very lives.
And yet, obsessions don’t start out as obsessions. They start out as simple interests, the kinds we all have, very naturally, throughout our lives. At some point, however, an interest may undergo a transformation into an unhealthy behavior. We may not be in control of our thoughts, or of our reactions to those thoughts.
How does this change happen? How can you tell if such a thing has happened to you? And if you do manage to recognize it, is there anything you can do to modify your behavior or to lessen the impact on you?
What role does our society play in reinforcing obsessive behavior? And what can we do to proactively reduce the likelihood of an interest become an obsession? Finally, have you every had obsessive thoughts, and if so, what did you do about it?
Related questions: Could everyone benefit from therapy? How does technology influence your emotions? What should you let go of? How are your body and mind intertwined? How do you find peace when you need it?
When Are Limits Beneficial?
We tend to perceive limits as fundamentally bad. But is that necessarily the case? Can limitations be good for us?
There is a natural sense that the more options we have, the better. Limitations are… well, limiting. They keep us from getting the exact thing that we want.
However, in some cases our brains can be confronted with information overload. Given a choice of two or three items — for instance, jars of pasta sauce at the grocery store — we can settle on one fairly easily. Maybe we look at the price, or the ingredients, or one is a family favorite, or whatever.
However, that choice becomes much more difficult when there are a hundred options. Comparing a hundred prices, or a hundred lists of ingredients is much more daunting.
We see this with the internet. Someone opening up a web browser has a virtually unlimited number of websites they could visit. Perhaps you want to check out some news. Or play a game, or watch some cat videos, or learn a foreign language, or talk with someone halfway around the world. All of these, and much, much more, are available at the click of a mouse or a swipe of a finger.
How do you decide what to do? It can feel completely overwhelming.
It turns out that limiting your choices can actually be good in many cases. Narrowing your choices reduces cognitive load, or the amount of brain energy needed to make decisions. A sub-optimal decision made quickly and decisively, may be preferable to a slightly better option made later on.
Can you think of ways that limits can be beneficial?
Related questions: How do you limit yourself? How much is enough? When is it useful to fail? Too much or too little?