How The Mind Works…and Sometimes Doesn’t

Have you ever considered buying a book, only to put the idea out of your mind a few minutes later because you may disagree with some of the writer’s points of view?  Have you ever avoided the news headlines from one source (CNN or FOX) and run to another source (MSNBC or CSPAN) to find the same information?  Has your team ever been up in the middle of the game, only to lose in the last five minutes, and your response is, “I knew that would happen!”  Have you ever been so focused on reading or watching something that you didn’t realize one of your dogs was running across the living room with a progressively unrolling roll of toilet paper?

If any variation of these things has happened, then you’ve experienced what is commonly known as cognitive bias.  Cognitive biases occur when a subconscious error in thinking leads you to misconstrue information from the activities of the world around you. When this cognitive bias occurs, it affects the accuracy and rationality of your thinking and decision-making.  Generally speaking, these unconscious biases exist in the brain to assist decision-making by speeding up our mental processing capabilities.  

Essentially, these well-worn paths in the forest of our mind; are shortcuts we’ve created based on learned behavior, experiential data, social expectations, and our emotions.  Broadly, bias typically favors or opposes people, groups, ideas, or things.   From a psychological perspective, there are two branches of cognitive bias:  Conscious and unconscious.

Conscious bias has both positive and negative aspects to it.  If you’re health conscious, you will naturally watch what you eat and make good decisions about exercise.  However, the negative side, which we often witness in the life of others, is the bias of stereotyping based on partially learned information that’s been applied to every person or group of people.  

While a good deal can be said about conscious bias, it is not the intention of The Reinolds Group to focus on the seen; instead, on the unseen–the unconscious bias.  Many times unconscious biases are both naturally & supernaturally leveraged to affect people’s actions or reactions toward a God-sized movement beyond the scope of their current understanding.  Since we war not against flesh and blood, it can be concluded that the unconscious biases that influence the behavior and attitude of those within a specific organization are a result of our residual fallen nature, our human resistance to the grace of God, and a helpful tool against progress in the context of our congregation and communities.  

In our subsequent posts, we want to give you a definition and example of the common unconscious biases that are mental barriers to organizational breakthroughs and some of the tools needed to help others work through them.
 

Sign Up to Receive our Newsletter, “Short-Circuit Mental Barriers to Breakthrough”