Palejovo ABC - HISTORY

We make choices and decisions based on what seems best to us at the time or what we happen to have access to. And when it seems to an outsider that there is only one solution and nothing to think about, to the person making the decision it is not so obvious at all. And this is because he has a broader perspective. He knows the whole background, possibilities and resources available to him and his family.

How many times in your life have you heard words about yourself from strangers that were hurtful and far from the truth? For many people, judging comes with great ease. It happens to each of us to draw hasty conclusions, to judge someone through the prism of a one-time unfortunate situation or first impression, to add to a story that didn't happen, or to take someone's views and opinions as facts. This is how errors and cognitive distortions work, and they prove useful and helpful in the short run.

In everyday, mundane matters, quick judgments help us make decisions, but when it comes to important matters, they can lead us astray. As humans, we tend to overestimate our ability to accurately assess situations and other people. At the same time, we think others are wrong, but we are not. We think that our perspicacity and accuracy in judgments is much greater than that of the average person. We explain people's behavior primarily by their character and fixed qualities, without taking into account the circumstances in which they find themselves.

Our mind likes to take shortcuts, hence the ease in making judgments and interpreting situations to fit our approach to the world and confirm what we think about it. There would be nothing wrong with this if people realized that they often function in this way. However, when we think we know the whole story and that gives us the right to judge, we miss the truth considerably. The belief that we know more about others than they do about us has a name - it's the blind spot fallacy, described by Professor Emily Pronin. Based on their thoughts and experiences, people tend to overestimate their objectivity. Thus, some conflicts and false judgments about others often arise because of our certainty that we already know the whole story, and a broader perspective simply would not be possible.

Parents, their choices, decisions, and even how they dress their children and what they buy for them and themselves at the store are constantly under criticism. In fact, no matter what they do, there will still be someone who will question the sense and effectiveness of their actions. In a situation where a family is raising funds for a child's treatment, commenting on their purchases, what they do in their spare time, or what kind of car they drive is highly inappropriate, and still happens all too often. Without knowing the entire family history, it is easy to make judgments about how people should run their lives.

Looking from the outside, many things seem simpler than they really are. Even if we have personal experience of a situation, we cannot say with certainty what we would do next time. A decision and then acting under its influence depend on many factors - the people around us, our mood, and even what happened to us a few hours earlier. We are not able to predict how we will behave and what emotions will accompany us. Let's recall how many times we have behaved irrationally, and when we cooled down, we found it hard to understand why. Therefore, although we are wrong ourselves, we are often accompanied by the belief that we know what another person is experiencing, what they are experiencing and what they should do. Making inferences based on snippets of information is risky and fraught with error.

So the next time you hear unpleasant words, think about your whole story. Recall in your mind your experiences that got you to where you are now. No one on the outside has experienced what you have, so although they think they know what you are facing, they have no idea. Look at your child and hug him with love. Just like you, it too has its own unique story.

And when someone rebukes you in a store or waiting room, right away, when automatic thoughts about that person come into your head, think that maybe she is also having a challenging time in her life. We don't know what happened that made her behave in that particular way. We don't know the whole story.

Pronin E., Kruger J., Savtisky K., Ross L. (2001). You don't know me, but I know you: The illusion of asymmetric insight, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology