Without trust – in ourselves, in our feelings, in the people around us – we would not be able to live a fulfilling life. However, an excess of trust in our assessments can prevent us from seeing the situation with an open mind and taking into account the opinions of others.
If a person does not trust himself too much, he may refuse to take action and make important decisions. But an excess of trust is not good for us either: we run the risk of overestimating our strengths and knowledge and not noticing alarming signs in people’s behavior.
how do we make decisions?
The ventromedial prefrontal cortex is responsible for generating feelings of trust. Thanks to it, we can evaluate options for action and make decisions. Neuropsychologists have found that decision-making actually involves two steps that happen almost simultaneously: our judgment of something and the degree to which we trust that judgment.
Our decision to trust our feelings depends on how strong these feelings are.
For example, we look at the menu in a restaurant and choose what to order. One group of neurons fires when we try to imagine the taste and smell of a dish. Let’s say the image of a steak seems appetizing to us. At almost the same instant, other neurons evaluate the likelihood that we are right.
distortions of trust
All this happens automatically, at an unconscious level, so two essentially separate decisions are perceived by our consciousness as one. In practice, this leads to the fact that our decision to trust our feelings depends on how strong these feelings are.
In other words, the stronger the sensations caused by this or that information, the more we believe our feelings. For example, we are more likely to believe emotional rather than rational arguments, as well as those that are already familiar to us or associated with pleasant sensations.
Distortions associated with excessive trust in one’s judgments are not only found in those who are prone to narcissism and inflated self-esteem. For example, 85% of drivers believe that their driving skills are better than others. Probably, first of all, they consider themselves quite experienced and accurate drivers.
The brain tends to self-belief: “If I decided so, then I’m right”
But their confidence in their assessment of their own abilities gives them even more confidence and dulls their doubts. Thinking like “I drive a car very well, but I’m not sure about it” is difficult for the brain, because it tends to self-belief: “If I decided so, then I’m right.”
Another example of distortion is the “halo effect,” in which we tend to trust people who seem interesting, witty, beautiful, or similar to us. If our first impression of a person is positive, it will also suppress our doubts – and along with our trust in other people’s words that do not agree with the image we have in our head.
Cognitive biases lead to risky decisions when playing the stock market. The more we believe in the possibility of making a profit, the more we trust our intuition. The consequences of such behavior are well known.
Is it possible to correct your thinking?
Why do we repeat the same mistakes over and over again? First of all, because it rarely occurs to us to look from the outside at how we think and why we make certain decisions. The ability to metathink (analyze one’s own thinking) is one of the most difficult to master.
However, you can develop it – for example, by speaking out loud your reasoning or discussing it with others. In a 2010 study, Danish and English psychologists found that two participants judge colors in a painting more accurately than they did individually. But such a result was achieved only under one condition: if they shared their opinions with each other and allowed themselves to doubt their assessments.