The Trust Dilemma: Why You Can't Always Trust Yourself?

9 ديسمبر 2024

The only way to ensure that neither your life nor the lives of others don't go off the rails is to acknowledge your own biases and other cognitive limitations.

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people are so full of doubts," as writer and philosopher Bertrand Russell once stated.

Maybe it's best to embrace uncertainty and ambiguity, question all your beliefs and rose-tinted dreams, and be skeptical about everything in general and especially about yourself. We can't fundamentally trust our own minds because we don't have the slightest clue what's really going on, even when we think we do. Keep that in mind.

8 psychological reasons why you shouldn't trust yourself

1. You're biased and selfish without even realizing it

The fundamental attribution error (actor-observer bias) suggests that we all think others are bad people. For example, if someone runs a red light at an intersection, you might think to yourself, 'They're reckless and endangering everyone to save a few seconds,' and you might even label them with the worst qualities. But if you're the one running the red light, you'll justify it as a small mistake or unintended harm and come up with excuses and justifications for your actions.

Here, take note of the various viewpoints on the same behavior. When you are involved, you see it as an innocent mistake, but if someone else is, you see it as a deliberate and harmful act.

We all have this mindset, especially in conflicts. People usually label the actions of those who have offended them as unreasonable and utterly inappropriate when they talk about them. They assume malicious intent is behind them. But when they talk about times they caused harm to others, they look for any excuse to justify their actions, making them seem right. They even blame the victim and believe it's unfair that others hold them accountable for what they did.

In fact, both of the above points of view are inaccurate, so neither can be totally true. Follow-up studies conducted by psychologists have found that both criminals and victims distort the facts to fit their narratives.

Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker calls this phenomenon the 'ethical gap,' meaning that the more we find ourselves in conflict, the more we overestimate our good intentions and underestimate others', creating a vortex where we believe others deserve harsher punishment while we don't.

All of this happens unconsciously, and people believe they are entirely rational and objective. But the truth is quite the opposite.

2. You have no clue what brings you joy or sorrow

Renowned psychologist Daniel Gilbert, from Harvard University, elucidates in his book "Stumbling on Happiness" that we often fail to recall how something made us feel in the past, nor can we accurately predict how something will make us feel in the future.

For example, you will be upset if the team you support loses a title match, but your account of the agony you experienced doesn't truly reflect the extent of your misery at the time. We often exaggerate the bad things more than they actually were, as well as the good things, and the same goes for the future; we overestimate the happiness good things will bring us and the misery bad things will inflict upon us.

To make matters worse, we often fail to grasp what we're feeling now—more evidence against seeking happiness as a goal. Based on the available data, it seems like we have no idea what happiness is or even how to pursue it.

3. You're easily swayed toward bad decisions

You might have encountered folks handing out flyers or free books on the street, but when you take something from them, they start demanding your commitment to something or asking for money for their cause. Here, you realize you've fallen into a trap. It feels awkward to refuse their request after they've given you something for free, and you don't want them to think you're mean.

It's easy to manipulate people into making decisions by, for instance, offering a gift before requesting a service in return as a trick to increase the likelihood of accepting their request. So next time you want to skip the line somewhere, ask anyone to swap places with you for whatever reason you have in mind, like telling them you're in a hurry or pretending you're sick. Studies have shown an 80% chance of being able to skip the queue when offering an excuse compared to having none, and surprisingly, the reason doesn't even have to be convincing.

According to behavioral economists, people have a "default" preference for one price over another without any sensible reason. For instance, when given a $2000 trip with three options—a trip to Paris with hotel accommodations and breakfast, a trip to Rome with hotel accommodations and breakfast, or a trip to Rome with hotel accommodations but breakfast excluded—more people chose Rome than Paris when the phrase "Rome without breakfast" was added. This is because many people prefer eating out in Rome's streets and think it's a great deal, forgetting about Paris entirely.

4. You generally use logic and reasoning to support your beliefs

Researchers found that some people with damage to parts of their brains responsible for vision can still "see" without even realizing it. Although these individuals are blind and claim they can't see any object no matter how close we bring it to their eyes, if one of their eyes is exposed to light, they can often guess which eye the light was directed towards; however, they'll tell you it's just a guess because they have no conscious idea about the illuminated side. So, how would they know the color of the objects in front of them? Nevertheless , they are aware of the light's source.

The human mind in this example seems very peculiar. Acquiring knowledge and being aware of it are two entirely different things. We can all acquire knowledge, just like these blind people, but the opposite is also true: you can feel as though you know something, even though you don't.

When we miss the difference between what we feel like we know and what we actually already know, motivated reasoning and confirmation bias thrive, and this is the basis for a broad range of biases and logical fallacies.

5. Your emotions and perspectives change without you realizing it

Most of the time, our emotions drive us to make poor decisions. For instance, you might feel annoyed by a silly comment from a coworker and decide to distance yourself from that person, even quitting your job for some peace of mind, but—or even quit—to have some peace of mind. This isn't exactly a logical choice.

It gets worse when we realize that avoiding critical decisions driven by emotions isn't good enough and that emotions can influence our decisions days, weeks, or even months later, even after things have calmed down and we've given it more thought.

What's surprisingly counterintuitive is that common emotions that pass quickly can influence your future decision-making in a lasting way.

Let's say your friend wants to meet up for drinks, but you hesitate because you feel unsafe. You don't want to agree immediately, despite your love for this friend and desire to hang out with them. However, you're cautious about making plans and not sure why. Perhaps you forgot about an old friend of yours that you were close to for a long time, but that fell apart after a few silly incidents. Perhaps you moved on with your life and forgot about it altogether, and your friendship with that old friend eventually returned to normal; nevertheless, it caused you some discomfort and scratched at your heart.

Perhaps it didn't bother you then, but it bothered you for a little while before those feelings vanished without knowing it. Now, even though your new and old friends are completely different, your hazy and subconscious memory of the former makes you wary of the latter.

Basically, you often use emotional memories as a cornerstone for decisions you make later, but you do this all the time without realizing it. Old feelings you may not remember can affect you unconsciously, causing you to stay home and watch TV, not go out with your friends or join your group.

6. Your memory is poor

Elizabeth Loftus, one of the world's leading memory researchers, confirms this fact. Her findings focus on how our memories of past events can easily change with previous experiences or with new, incorrect information. This made everyone realize that eyewitness testimony isn't really the gold standard upon which people should base their judgments in courtrooms.

Loftus and other researchers concluded the following:

Our memories of events don't just fade over time; they may become more susceptible to misinformation.
Warning people about the possibility of having false memories doesn't always help get rid of that misinformation.
The more empathetic you are, the more likely you are to include false information in your memories.
It's not just about replacing memories with false information but implanting complete memories; we're vulnerable to this, especially when family members or other trusted individuals implant these memories in us.

Therefore, we can't trust our memories, even those we're 100% sure of.

It seems that in certain situations, your bad memory is ingrained in your brain's programming, but why can neuroscientists anticipate whether you will misremember an event based on the activity in your brain during the event?

Although it seems that humans have poor memory at first, your mind is not the same as a computer in that it does not store data, text files, or photos. Ultimately, you will not use a computer that frequently loses or modifies your files after you stop working on them.

Our memories help us learn from past events, helping us make better decisions in the future. Still, memory actually has another function that we rarely think about, a much more important and complex function than just storing information. Humans need an identity and a sense of self to navigate complex social situations and accomplish tasks most of the time. Our memories help us form our identities by giving us a story from our past.

It doesn't really matter how accurate our memories are, as having a stored story from our past in our memory contributes to our sense of self; instead of using precise replicas of our memories for that, it's easier to use vague memories and quickly fill in the gaps to fit the version of ourselves we've created and accepted.

Perhaps you remember the constant teasing from your brother and his friends and how painful it was sometimes; that's why you explain your nervousness, anxiety, and embarrassment, but in reality, those actions may not have been as hurtful to that extent.

Maybe when you remember the bad treatment from your brother, you take the feelings you have now and pile them on top of those memories, such as nervousness, anxiety, and embarrassment, even though those feelings may not be related to your brother's puns in the past.

Now, only the memory of your brother's bad treatment that made you feel bad—whether true or not—fits with your identity as a nervous and somewhat anxious person, preventing you from doing things that may cause you further embarrassment and pain and ultimately justifying what you do to get through your day safely. You might ask yourself here: "Well, are you saying that the person I think I owe is nothing but a bunch of ideas my mind made up?"

7. You are not who you think you are

Think about it: your online persona and daily life aren't precisely the same as they are in real life. Your behavior with family is different from how you act with friends. You might have a work persona, a home persona, a family persona, a solo persona, and many others you need to navigate through life's maze and survive in a world where social interactions intertwine. But which one truly reflects you?

You might think one version is more authentic than the others, but all you're doing is retelling the story that's spinning around in your mind, which we know is based on imperfect information.

Social psychologists have stumbled upon a rather hard pill to swallow over the past couple of decades: the idea of a "core self"—your constant, unchanging self—is just a myth.

Ironically, these experiments have been published in reputable books and magazines by famous people who essentially echo what Eastern philosophical traditions have been saying for thousands of years—those who did nothing but meditate in caves and contemplate for years on end.

In the West, the concept of individual identity is the cornerstone upon which many cultural institutions are built, not to mention the advertising industry, all focusing their attention on discovering who we are to the point where we rarely pause long enough to consider whether this concept is helpful or not.

Maybe the idea of "who we are" or "what defines us" hinders us as much as it helps us, perhaps constraining us more than liberating us. It's useful to know what you want or what you enjoy, but you can still achieve dreams and goals without relying on such a fixed concept of yourself.

8. Your physical experience of the world is not as real as you imagine

Our nervous systems are incredibly intricate and are always sending information to our minds.

According to some estimates, our senses—sight, touch, smell, hearing, taste, and balance—send our brains approximately 11 million bits of information every second. But this is just a tiny slice of the infinitely vast data from the world around us; the light we can see is just a narrow sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum; birds and insects see parts of it differently than we do; and dogs can hear and smell things we're not even aware of. Our nervous systems are more like data-filtering devices than they are like data-collecting ones.

Moreover, your conscious mind can only deal with about 60 bits of information per second when engaging in intelligent activities like reading or playing a musical instrument.

So, at best, you're only aware of about 0.000005454% of the mind-boggling amount of information your brain processes in every waking second.

To put it into perspective, for every word you've seen and read in this article, there are 536303630 other words written, but you can't see them. We can disregard everything else and concentrate exclusively on what is important to us because that is what we deal with daily.