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“To err is human,” said the ancients. It would seem that doing stupid things is part of our nature, but how hard it is to admit our mistakes! Why does our mind sometimes drive us into traps, how do others push us to make mistakes, and is it possible to do something about all this? Let’s try to figure it out.
There is a “fool” who is usually treated with condescension, a “round fool” that causes irritation, and a “moron” who considers himself better than everyone else, for whom others practically do not exist. He climbs out of line at the ticket office, in a crowded bus in a hurry to take the only free seat, not paying attention to a woman with a small child or an old man who can hardly stand on his feet. We have to put up with his existence, with his demands, outbursts and pretend that everything he says does not cause outrage. In that sense, he is truly terrible.
Everyone daily witnesses stupid things, hears or reads about them. We consider ourselves fair judges. But if you think about it, we all do stupid things from time to time, despite the fact that we would very much like to be reasonable.
Angry with ourselves, we exclaim: “What a fool I am!” / “What a fool I am!” And yet it would never occur to us to call ourselves a complete jerk.
From the stupidity that manifests itself in the absence of empathy, sometimes even the most outstanding minds are not spared.
“Adolescence and some others can temporarily turn us into fools. But the real jerk is the one who remains one for life, ”says Aaron James, professor of philosophy at the University of California.
From the stupidity that manifests itself in the absence of empathy, sometimes even the most outstanding minds are not spared. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the author of the famous pedagogical treatise Emile, or On Education, abandoned all his children to their fate. Nobel Prize-winning writer Knut Hamsun sympathized with Nazism.
“The stupidity of stupidity is different,” says Doctor of Psychology Maria Falikman. “On the one hand, everyone has made bad decisions, such as chasing immediate rewards instead of delayed ones, or chasing two birds with one stone instead of one. On the other hand, many great discoveries are known, which contemporaries considered nothing more than stupidity or ignorance. Sometimes such “ignorance” turns out to be the basis of openness, the ability to see the situation differently than specialists are used to seeing.”
Worst Assumptions
Errors in judgment are universal: at one time or another they mislead us all. Psychologist Serge Ciccotti uses the term “cognitive failure”. The most common of these is fixation on negative attitudes. This is a real “radar of stupidity” that makes us take more interest in the negative sides of life than the positive ones, and pay attention to failures rather than successes. “This is what makes it easier for us to identify a jerk than a genius,” the psychologist notes.
Such negative attitudes form a slight paranoia: “If I don’t find the right item, it’s because someone moved it. When we are in a car and another driver overtakes us at breakneck speed, we immediately decide that a crazy scorcher is driving – we don’t even think that he is taking his wife or child to the hospital. If an employee does not turn in a project on time, then his boss immediately tells himself that he is lazy, and that he is simply overloaded with work.
The constant need to find an explanation for everything and speculate only reinforces this failure.
lazy mind
In most cases, we analyze the situation poorly or little before taking action: because of the laziness of the mind, we use “scripts” – automatically triggered behavioral habits. The most famous script is that we automatically ask a crying person: “Are you all right?” although the answer is obvious.
There is also a stupid automatism that pushes us to search for a lost item in those places where we have already searched for it. “Having exhausted all known possibilities, we cannot imagine that the lost thing is in another place,” notes Serge Ciccotti. “Therefore, we tell ourselves that we looked badly, and again we begin to look for everything in the same place.” And, oddly enough, sometimes we find …
When there are several of us, we become even dumber than alone.
The theme of the general propensity to do stupid things is also explored in the work of 2002 Nobel Laureate in Economics Daniel Kahneman and his colleague Amos Tversky. For thinking, we use two different systems operating at two different speeds. System No. 1 is reminiscent of popular TV shows in which you need to quickly answer the question posed. This system is fast, intuitive, and driven by emotion. Her job is to find a solution as soon as possible. System #2 is much more targeted and accurate, it includes increased control and a close relationship with mental activity.
But it takes extra effort, which is why we prefer System #1, which has to do with emotions and opens the door wide to biases and all sorts of errors in judgment and judgment. Alas, even high intelligence does not protect against errors of this kind! Apple founder and brilliant inventor Steve Jobs died of pancreatic cancer, which is often successfully operated on, due to the fact that he preferred to be treated with acupuncture, herbal medicine, juice therapy and fasting and thus lost valuable time.
Nobody’s perfect
“Who should be considered fools?” This question was asked in the 1950s by psychologist Rene Zazzo, a specialist in the study of thinking. He offered psychologists, psychiatrists and doctors a list of 120 names (which included all of them, including Rene Zazzo himself) and asked them to mark with a cross those whom they considered fools.
“There was not a single person without a cross in front of his last name. So, each of us is a fool for someone, ”he commented.
The winner in this “competition” was a big leader, a good clinician, whose intelligence quotient (IQ) was at least 120 points, but he was completely devoid of a sense of humor. He was not very good at communicating with people, did not differ in sensitivity and did not notice that he offended and humiliated others.
The team is not helping.
When there are several of us, we become even dumber than when we are alone. This sad reality was discovered in the 1950s by psychologist Solomon Asch. It is enough for a ridiculous and deceitful idea to be supported by the majority, and many new followers will join it. For reasons of conformism, we are ready to give up not only our beliefs, but even our perception of reality.
A little later, Soviet psychologists confirmed this by setting up the following experiment.1: a group of young people were shown two pyramids, black and white. Several of them were asked beforehand by researchers to claim that they were both white. Those who remained in the minority agreed with the majority. “If seven people say yes, it’s hard for the eighth person to say no,” explained one participant.
But it’s not just slyness: evidence from medical imaging studies suggests that the brain deceives itself so that we join the majority opinion.
Those who think alone on a project come up with twice as many ideas as when they think in a group, according to a 1993 experiment by Paul Paulus and Mary Dzindole.
Nowadays, stupidity is most evident in the work, says Jean Cottro. Someone pretends to be stupid in order to flatter management and thus achieve a promotion: bosses like to surround themselves with people even more stupid than themselves, in order to shine in front of them. Nevertheless, stupidity is often a necessary condition for the disclosure of intellectual and creative potential, argues the philosopher Maurizio Ferraris, adding: “… If it is avoided.”
Protect yourself from your own stupidity
We learn from mistakes, and it is natural to make them. But some of them can be avoided so as not to reproach yourself later. Here is what psychologist Maria Falikman suggests for this:
- Learn to say “I don’t know.” This will help you start looking for information when you need it and seek advice from a more experienced person in time.
- Listen to yourself. Everyone has accumulated a wealth of experience that can give an accurate clue even in a new environment.
- Give yourself time: a lot of stupid things are done in a hurry, on the run, when we do not allow ourselves to stop and think.
- Be critical of your ideas without overestimating them. Alas, they may not be the most perfect, but it is better to notice this in time than mindlessly insist on your own.
- Distinguish between situations where you can let your feelings run free and where you should not be led by emotions, which often cause cognitive distortions along with our desire to make the world simple and understandable. Folly is forgivable for lovers, but it is definitely not worth submitting to anger or despair once again.
1 See the film “Conformism”, Kievnauchfilm, 1971.