The Foolkit — How to fool yourself and everybody else

Every person has habits or traits they would like to change which they probably can but haven’t yet. If I were to ask you why you are the way you are, I am sure you would have a perfectly reasonable sounding explanation for the same. A narrative that makes sense of all the things that have happened to you. The Story of you.

How much of that story is true? Scientists and philosophers may have started with the notion that people are ‘rational’ but that myth has been busted by their modern counterparts. We are not rational beings but rationalising beings. We are not driven by reason but by emotion. We find ourselves in situations that dictate our actions & emotions, and then we make sense of these actions & emotions in a way that keeps our psyche and ego intact. Basically, we do things first and then convince ourselves the things we did made sense, forming a narrative for that purpose. Whether they truly made sense or not, is an entirely different matter. To figure that out, we need to become familiar with the tools we use to fool ourselves.

Cognitive Dissonance & Confirmation Bias — The two most important tools in our foolkit

Cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias are the two most basic components of the foolkit and can be found in almost every instance of our brain’s attempt to fool ourselves. Hence, it is important to understand them.

Cognitive dissonance — It refers to a situation wherein an individual holds conflicting beliefs, attitudes, values, or behaviours, leading to a degree of mental stress (dissonance) which is resolved by changing one of the cognitions (beliefs, attitudes, behaviours etc) in question.

Here is an example, imagine you are giving a certification exam which has the chance to boost your career. Exam day is here, and you are not as prepared as you would like to be. You find your seat is right next to the guy who is most likely to top the exam and his answers are easily visible making it easy for you to cheat. Let us say your beliefs regarding cheating at the beginning are more or less neutral, leaning slightly towards the notion or belief that cheating isn’t ethical. You know cheating a bit will get you that career change or boost you so desperately want and not cheating would probably mean you have a high chance of failing, at the same time it also conflicts with your belief that cheating may be unethical. There is a degree of cognitive dissonance. You may either cheat, or you may not. Whatever path you may take, your narrative of the situation and your personality as a result will be changed forever.

Suppose you cheat, you are likely to resolve the internal conflict by adopting a belief that cheating is not all that bad if the end justifies the means, making you likely to engage in similar behaviour in the future, moulding your personality in a certain direction. If you do not cheat, you resolve the conflict by adopting a more moralistic POV that cheating is unethical, and all cheaters are probably bad people because you refrained yourself from engaging in that behaviour and effectively ‘gave up’ a chance to boost your career and the same must be justified to your psyche by forming a narrative that supports it. Making you more likely to look down upon people who cheat and engage in similar behaviour in the future.

The key here is to notice how you started off with an almost neutral stance on the subject and depending on the actions you took according to the situation you were in, your stance shifted towards either end of the spectrum. Too many iterations of such behaviour can lead to extremism and dogmatism. But an extremist or dogmatist does not reach there with without the help of another important tool in our foolkit, Confirmation Bias.

Confirmation Bias — It is the tendency to search for, interpret, favour, or recall information in a way that supports our prior beliefs, values, or attitudes.

Returning to our example above, now that you have formed an opinion on cheating (whichever side of the spectrum you find yourself to be) you will automatically look for ways to confirm that opinion each time you encounter the subject through any form, pushing you more towards the extreme end of the spectrum. Say you did not cheat and formed the opinion that cheating is highly unethical, and cheaters are likely to be bad people, you are going to seek out information which justifies your moralistic stance and often unjustly apply it to people who have a different opinion, interpreting the things they say or do in a light that justifies your perception of them as “cheaters” or “bad untrustworthy people”. Whether that is the truth is not starts becoming irrelevant to you.

The more you move towards the end of either side of the spectrum, the more powerful the effects of confirmation bias are simply because the belief itself is more concrete or powerful. You are also less likely to respond to the logic and facts of each situation.

Almost all of us have had the displeasure of arguing with someone who could not accept to change their beliefs regarding a subject despite overwhelming evidence against it. We have all been guilty of the same behaviour as well. This is a wonderful cocktail of confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance at play. Examples of such behaviour are plenty in our current political and social landscape.

Our brains are lazy, it will take a cognitive shortcut if it can, and we allow it to get away with it. These two tools combined with a few other peculiar quirks of the brain comprise the other tools in our foolkit which are the basis for many of our faulty personal & collective narratives.

Scripts that fool us

1. Us and Them — People tend to identify with people who are like them. Everybody knows that. There is no “Us” without a “them”. Targeted propaganda is often used to amplify the confirmation bias & cognitive dissonance within groups to create a dynamic favourable to the propagandist. These are the dynamics that help them rally a group against a common enemy or goal to keep them in power.

An example is how often groups engage in name calling and labelling of rival groups increasing the level to which the group identity merges with the self-identity of each member of the group (e.g., the more you tease a rival sports fan the prouder he seems to be of being called a supporter of his team and harder he will defend). Each time name calling occurs, the rival group will also respond with a version of theirs, creating a never-ending loop. Such labelling causes people from different groups to stop seeing each other as people with differing opinions and start seeing each other as a threat to their survival. This amplification of confirmation bias causes you to focus on the worst aspects of the other group & the collective ‘personality’ of the group gets attributed to each member within the group. If you were to encounter someone from a rival group whose personality did not match up to the perception of the ‘average rival group member’ you have built up in your head, you suffer from cognitive dissonance. Such dissonance is resolved either by correcting your opinion of the person or group in question to a certain degree or dismissing the entire thing altogether and doubling down on your perception. Pushing you further down the rabbit hole.

All religious debates (Hindu vs Muslim etc), political debates (Liberals vs Conservatives in the US or Congress (lutyen gang) vs BJP(Bhakts) in India etc), fanatical sports fans (Messi Vs Ronaldo) etc all display this dynamic to some degree or the other.

In moderate to less than moderate degrees, this dynamic can be helpful in some contexts. When the volume is turned up however, the song is no longer harmonious.

2. It’s not your fault (your life sucks because you don’t have our product) — You don’t need to go far to watch this script in play. Just watch TV or YouTube and you are bound to run into an ad that follows a variant of this script.

The more subtle variations of this script can be found amongst the tons of self-help books or courses sold online positioned as the “fix” that will get your life on track. Why does this work though? After all, scores of people still buy these books and products and the people who run these businesses make quite a lot of money to keep doing it. The answer is cognitive dissonance.

The biggest source of cognitive dissonance in our lives is the difference between what we would like our lives to be and what it really is. We are often on the lookout for explanations that bridge or explain this gap. We buy books, courses, products, and whatnot because we desperately want to believe the explanations the marketeers and authors sell us. Once we have this product or know this information, we feel we can finally realise all our dreams.

Even more subtler variations can be found in election campaigns. For example, politicians will tell people their poverty and suffering are to be blamed on another class of people (usually belonging to the opponent’s voter base) and once they are voted to power (they are the product being sold), they will rectify stuff and change their lives. This also fuels the ‘Us vs Them’ dynamic explored earlier.

The reality of the situation is often far more complex that the one solution approach taken by those who wish to profit from this dissonance. Like the popular saying goes, “It is what it is” and there is no running away from the state of reality by buying into explanations that seem to make sense but do nothing more than fool you so that others may profit.

3. When the comfort zone gets too comfortable — The company that cannot seem to adapt to changing technologies, when you do not want to try out that new cuisine or restaurant, or any time you come across the phrase, “This is the way it’s always been done”.

All are examples of behaviour that primarily take place due to Status Quo Bias. It usually occurs when you are comfortable with things the way they are, and you would rather do stuff that is within your comfort zone than risk stepping out of it and experiencing some degree of cognitive dissonance.

Confirmation bias helps reinforce the status quo by selectively choosing explanations which fit our narratives of maintaining the status quo. “The technology hasn’t proven itself to be useful yet”, “That last time we tried something new it sucked, let’s go someplace we know”, “It has been done this way for a reason and we better do it the same way”.

Status quo bias usually gets dangerous when we fool ourselves to the extent that we deny the inevitable (like a company being obsolete due to outdated tech, or Thanos) which often is the cause for the next script in our foolkit. Shock and awe.

4. Shock and Awe — This one is self-explanatory. Anytime you find yourself in a situation that is so out of the ordinary (in the context of your life) that you simply do not know how to react, you have been shocked and awed.

This usually happens when we have been lulled by status quo bias for a while and something comes along and just shatters it. Leading to massive amounts of cognitive dissonance and the activation of our flight or fight mode. We then desperately seek out something that helps makes sense of the events which has thrown us off balance. In doing so, we are likely to accept the first somewhat sensible explanation we are likely to come across.

This is often why dramatic events in someone’s life often causes dramatic behavioural changes. Because the experience is so novel and due to the degree of dissonance it causes, you are likely to seek out an explanation that helps you reconcile with what has happened. The explanation does not have to be true, since the only requirement is that it helps you reconcile and come to terms with the event.

Take the COVID-19 pandemic for example, the whole ordeal has caused such massive amounts of cognitive dissonance and stress all over the world that people are ready to accept whacky explanations and indulge in inexplicable behaviour (etc. conspiracy theories of big pharma or try out unproven medical treatments) just to make sense and cope with what is happening. This effect is further amped by confirmation bias if they are predisposed to engage in such behaviour.

5. Everybody seems to think this way so maybe its true (Social Proof) — If you have ever changed your stance on a subject because everybody around you believed differently, you have been a victim of this script.

This happens when the opinion you hold on a subject is not that rigid and is usually formed based on second-hand information (internet, other people’s opinions etc) and not on your own experience. It makes you more likely to be swayed due to social proof.

Say you are in a discussion with a group of friends regarding a subject you do not hold firm opinions about. If the rest of your friends think one way regarding the subject, and it happens to be the opposite of your initial stance in the subject, you are probably going to change your stance to match theirs. This is primarily because you want to avoid the cognitive dissonance and stress of getting into an argument over a topic with people you trust over something you are not all that sure about. Once you have changed your stance and adopted your belief in accordance with what your friends think, you are more likely to defend that belief next time (confirmation bias comes in play since you have a group backing for that belief now) which sows the seeds for an “Us vs Them” dynamic. For all you know your friends formed their opinion due to second-hand information too.

Schooling the Fool within

It is difficult not to fool yourself, almost impossible. The only way out is to catch yourself in the act and call your own BS (and others). These cognitive mechanisms exist for evolutionary and biological reasons and are likely to stay with us for the rest of our lives, even if we are aware of them.

Being aware of cognitive shortcuts, the inherent lazy nature of the brain, its faulty reasoning, and the emotional effects it causes may be the first step in figuring out the objective truth of any subject or situation, assuming there is one.

An open mind and self-awareness go hand in hand. You must be willing to realize you can, do, and will fool yourself every day. We often tend to be incredibly aware of someone else’s unreasonable behaviour but somehow manage to explain away our own. And each person in turn believes they are being perfectly reasonable while it is the other person who does not get it. This is a vicious cycle. It can be only stopped by being self-aware. It requires you to put your ego aside, which we can all admit is incredibly hard.

Like the quote often attributed to Mark Twain says, “It’s not what you don’t know that gets you into trouble, it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so”.