Having a spectrum of choices is what makes life colorful, so why do humans have the tendency to get stuck intwo binary and opposing viewpoints?
People love to divide and categorize. We do it all the time. Black or white. Red or blue. Rich or poor. It helps us organize our world and process an overwhelming amount of information. Our mind can take large amounts of complex information and simplify it to make sense of the world.
You can see an ominous shadow and within milliseconds realize it is leaves blowing in the wind. You can meet someone and quickly decide if they are worthy of friendship or not. The mind is magical.
But this instinct to categorize everything into two – or even a few – categories have consequences.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and learning about how to limit the risks of binary thinking. I post on Instagram about it. I design lessons to help young people become critical thinkers. Through the years, I have seen people dig themselves more deeply into binary thinking. It is costly to their health, wellness, and relationships. I wanted to share why binary thinking is dangerous and how you can monitor your own binary thinking to minimize its effects. There isn’t a simple solution to for how to reducing categorical thinking for yourself and others, but I am offering my roadmap to develop your muscle for seeing a spectrum of choices.
Flatten
Flattening is the process of placing people into one category and treating them as if they are all alike.
It sounds like “Boomers are selfish and millenials are entitled.”
These labels blind us to the variation that you find within and between categories. When you flatten a group of people, you remove what makes them unique individuals.
Magnify
When you magnify the differences between members of different categories, you assume they are more different than they actually are. Magnifying creates stereotypes about categories of people.
It sounds like “All liberals oppose gun control and all conservative oppose clean energy.”
Studies show that people tend to exaggerate the extremity of opposing political parties.
Favor
When you favor certain categories, your tendency is to hyperfocus on the categories you prefer. When you do this, you limit yourself to a smaller slice of the pie.
It sounds like “Advanced degree required.”
When hiring managers favor people with advanced degrees, they dramatically shrink their applicant pool and potentially miss out on skilled workers without an advanced degree.
Fossilize
Binary thinking lends itself to a fixed view of the world. When you fossilize your understanding of the world through categories, you are less likely to update your views. They give you the false sense that your categories are identities.
It sounds like “No one wants to work anymore.” The reality is that people want jobs that are worth their time.
John Maynard Keynes writes that “The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones.”
The good news is we can shape our brains to look for ways to correct the tendency to remain stuck in our ways.
How to Minimize Binary Thinking
We take in information, process it, and then use that information to act. So how can you avoid the harm that comes from binary thinking? Here are four alternatives.
Wait and See
Everyone thinks in binaries. It is a part of the human experience. But you must be conscious of the oversimplifications and distortions that happen when you think in black and white.
When you are presented with a binary choice, beware of the urgency instinct. The urgency instinct tells you its now or never. It is a rather convincing tactic used to get people to make poor, rushed decisions.
“Last chance before the price goes up!” This binary choice gets your heart pumping and sends your rational thinking out the window. It wants you to believe are are only two choices, when there are actually three.
The third choices is to wait and see. Choices are almost never urgent. If you feel a choice between either/or, pause and look for a third option.
This and That
Get comfortable with uncertainty, nuance, and complexity. You can hold two or more truths at the same time.
F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
Exploring nuaced ideas will lead to better outcomes. The world is more complicated than this or that. Making room for nuance and complexity means being flexible to new information and critical of the beliefs you hold. Regularly revisit your core beliefs and identities to ensure you are not stuck with outdated information.
Average Joe
Don’t fall for extremes. Remember that most people fall somewhere in the middle of binary categories. For example, we tend to divide countries into developed and developing, but these terms don’t actually describe the world in which we live. Middle-income countries make up most of the world. There is no clear income ‘divide’ today between countries, and the dichotomy of developed or developing doesn’t capture this.
Extremes do not capture the most common experiences, so beware of the type of binary thinking that only highlights extremes. (Be vegan or die young!)
Here is another prominent that impacts you or someone you know. In 2016 there were 10 plane crashes reported in the media. Yet, in 2016 10 of 40 million flights landed safely. It was “the second safest year in aviation history.”
Beware of extremes.
Rare or Well Done?
How about median? Be cautious of averages. They can be misleading. Averages do not always capture the most common experiences. In any data set, there are often outliers which can skew data one way or the other. This is why the median can be a better number to look at because it is less impacted by outliers. For example, people often cite that 50% of marriages end in divorce, but when you parse out the data, you get a very different picture depending on age, education, race, geography, and religion.
Conclusion
Categories are how we manage a world that is only growing more complex. But binary thinking can warp our view of the world, and give us inaccurate ideas and beliefs about other people. In doing so, our ability to make decisions and build relationships suffer. The key to thriving in the 21st-century will be learning to make more informed decisions when faced with binary choices.
REFERENCES
★ “The Dangers of Categorical Thinking,” by Bart de Langhe and Philip Fernbach (Harvard Business Review, 2019).
★ “Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling, Anna Rosling, and Ola Rosling (Flatiron Books, 2018).
★ “How Can You Escape Binary Thinking,?” by Angela Duckworth and Stephen Dubner (No Stupid Questions, 2021).