They act as mental shortcuts and they’re helping us simplify information processing, allowing us to make quicker decisions, navigate our social environments, and just overall conserve mental cognitive resources, which our brains are constantly trying to do. Essentially, our brains are. Constantly trying to find the path of least resistance.

Hello my friends, and welcome back to not another Mindset show. I’m your host, Dr. Kasey Jo. My goal with this podcast is to take the science of mindset and behavior change and distill it down into actionable takeaways for you. Together we’re gonna unpack research around motivations, self-sabotage, willpower, and so much more, and we’re going to take all of that and translate it into.

Strategies you can immediately apply to your health, fitness, relationships, business, marketing clients, all of the things. But just to be clear, it’s not all serious and sciencey around here. We’re gonna have a ton of fun too, and I’m so excited to share all of this with you. All right, let’s go ahead and get into the episode.

Hello. Hello my friends, and welcome back to not another mindset show. Today we’re talking about. Your brain in all of the distorted ways that you think, and this is actually coming from a conversation that I had. With a student inside level two of the Health Mindset Coaching certification. This is our five month sort of apprenticeship style program where you’re taking clients through the program with you in real time.

And yes, it is all mindset. Behavior change, psychology type of practices they can use with your clients to help them stick to the plan and stop self-sabotage at more of an advanced level. It’s our advanced application program and inside the program we talk about cognitive biases and distortions and her and I were having this conversation and how she’s recognizing how many ways her thinking is distorted and how she then is thinking about.

Her gut feelings and intuition and how the cognitive distortions that she has might be playing a role in that. So where she might be thinking, oh, this is a gut feeling. That’s why I don’t like this person. That’s why I shouldn’t do this thing. Is it really a gut feeling or is it just her mind in some ways kind of playing tricks on her?

So that brought me too. A podcast episode on this topic. So we all suffer from these cognitive biases and distortions in our thinking. You have heard of probably so many of them just. Whether it’s like on Instagram content or in conversation with people, or just generally you just know these things.

Something like confirmation bias is a popular one that’s talked about a lot. This is where we are seeking information specifically that supports our beliefs, and in some ways, ignoring the information that does not support our beliefs so it can feel like. There is so much information out there that supports the way that I think, but the reality is you’re just seeking information that supports the way that you think.

Or you may have not heard of this by the name, or maybe you have. The halo effect is this belief that someone is trustworthy because, for example, they are outgoing and likable. So you meet someone and you’re like, wow, this person’s so great, and they’re so likable and they’re such a great conversationalist.

And then. We automatically then believe them to be more trustworthy or credible, maybe in an area or a topic that we have no idea if they actually have any knowledge on. This is similar to like the, the idea that beautiful. What is beautiful is good. So people who are objectively attractive are seen as.

More credible, more trustworthy, et cetera. But that is just, it’s a cognitive bias that we have. Um, another one is self-serving bias. We tend to attribute positive events to our own character, but negative events. To external factors. So if something goes well for you or something good happens to you, it’s like, oh, it’s because of who I am as a person, or because I’ve worked so hard and I put in so much effort.

Which yeah, that, that stuff can still be true. But then if something negative happens to you, it’s not, oh, it’s because of something that I didn’t do or the type of person I am, it’s because of this external factor or this other person. You’re, you’re blaming someone else, right? Or something else. So. What I wanna say first is that these.

Distortions the way that we think these biases that we have aren’t necessarily a bad thing, and in fact, we are. Our brains have developed to even do this in the first place because it does help us in some capacities. They act as mental shortcuts, and they’re helping us simplify information processing, allowing us to make quicker decisions, navigate our social environments, and just overall conserve mental cognitive resources, which our brains are constantly trying to do.

Essentially, our brains are constantly trying to find the path of least resistance, and for better or for worse, these biases, these distortions help with that. They are mental shortcuts. However. These mental shortcuts can also get in the way of our accurate perception of reality. We can misjudge situations, we can confuse these shortcuts for gut feelings or intuition, which is where, like I said, is kind of the idea for this podcast episode came.

So first, let’s talk about some examples of how these mental shortcuts are actually helpful and why we do want them around in some capacity. So, I kind of mentioned this already, but it provides us with. Cognitive efficiency. Our brains are wired to save energy and function efficiently. So with these shortcuts of, I’ve had this past experience, or I saw this thing once, or I’ve seen these things before, and our brain just wants to essentially make sense of a situation based on that past stuff sometimes can be correct and sometimes can be helpful and help us make decisions quicker and act faster in certain situations.

For. This is kind of like a, it’s kind of like a silly example, but if you’re walking down a dark alleyway at night and you see a shadow move really quickly, your immediate thought is probably gonna be, oh, someone’s, someone’s there. I need to be careful. I need to look out for my safety. I have to, I have to prepare for whatever this.

Issue is that is arising over over there, that, that scary shadow. Um, but then you might come to find out that it was just someone has a flag wa waving from their window and that was causing the shadow. But your mental shortcut was. Protect me. I know. I know these stories of someone getting mugged in the alleyway and it’s bringing that to your attention first, rather than taking the long route, the path of most resistance in your brain and using the most cognitive resources to think what are all of the options of what that shadow could be.

Right? So. This helps us make quick decisions and reduces the need for like an exhaustive analysis of what’s going on. And a lot of times that can be really helpful. Another example is like the availability heuristic. This allows us to judge the like. Hood of events based on how easily examples come to mind.

So this can be beneficial in situations where quick decisions are necessary. So very similar to the the dark alleyway example. So the first thing that comes to mind is like, oh, this could be a killer, right? This could be someone who’s after me. And that helps us make quick decision in the moment to walk faster, to get out of the alleyway.

’cause if it was someone who was trying to. Hunt you down and steal your wallet, then you would need to make that quick decision. However, there are situations that we are assuming the likelihood of it to be real based on past scenarios or events or situations or, I’m thinking I is me always coming back to like dating and relationship type of examples because I’m just inundated with that in my friend group, with my single girlfriends and me being single and.

We want, it’s almost like a, an a jumping to conclusions situation. So availability heuristic is based on how easily examples come to mind. So, but those examples could be coming to mind easily because of a past experience you had. If I’m on a date with someone and they say something that kind of like rubs me the wrong way and it’s rubbing me the wrong way because of an ex-boyfriend that did me dirty, then I’m immediately going to use that information in the moment to be like, Ooh, I don’t like this person.

But the reality is like that person has nothing to do with those previous experiences. They may have just like said something in a certain way that reminded me of it. So. Other good things before, I’m just like jumping to the bad things, but social connection. So biases can actually enhance our social interactions as well.

Something like the in-group bias is a good example here. It leads us to favor those who belong. In our social group. So we have this favoritism around the people who are in our network, in our circle of friends, and this can foster community and cooperation and promote strong bonds and a sense of belonging, which, you know, I’ve talked about the basic psychological needs that we have as humans to feel motivated and stay motivated.

Autonomy, belongingness. And competence. So this bias, this in-group bias can actually help foster a sense of belongingness amongst the people that we spend time with, which is actually really a good thing. Another thing is emotional regulation. So cognitive distortions can often serve as mechanisms to protect our self-esteem and protect our overall.

Wellbeing, for instance, we have the illusion of control bias, which allows us to believe we have more control over events than we actually do. However, as human beings, we don’t like uncertainty and uncertainty feels uncomfortable. And when we feel like we don’t have control over something that can be.

Feel really not good. So if we have this illusion of control bias where we do feel like, no, I have control over this and I do get to make the decisions and I can decide where this goes, that can bring you a sense of safety and security, which can also help you emotionally regulate. But where can these shortcuts become problematic?

I’ve kind of already hinted on some of this, but overall what I see is just a. Reduced cognitive flexibility. So this is where things like all or nothing thinking comes up, or black and white kind of perspectives. And it’s either this way or that way. There is no in-between. There’s no nuance. So going back to the idea of confirmation bias, if you stick to following people on social media who see things the same way that you do, or you pick news sources that only align with your perspectives.

You are essentially just continuing to funnel yourself and creating a funnel of information based on what you like, what you believe in, and therefore you’re going to see it more and more. And the more we see it, the more we. View it as important and notice a pattern like, oh, I’m seeing this stuff all the time, and it also happens to be what I believe in.

So that must be true. And that pattern recognition is a bias. It’s all lose. It’s like an illusion, illusionary correlation. So we’re seeing this correlation, this pattern that only exists because we kind of created it, but we believe it. So. That can be problematic. And if we’re not able to see other alternative routes, alternative ways of thinking, I mean, we all know how that goes.

And that is like so much of society today and kind of coming back to the reason I created this podcast episode, we can confuse these distortions and these biases for gut feelings. So in situations of. Fast decision making. Both gut feelings and cognitive biases allow you to make rapid decisions without extensive analysis.

Good and also can be bad. When you have a decision to make and you are trying to rely on your intuition to guide you, what feels good, what is the thing that is like really pulling me? What should I be doing in this situation based on my gut feelings? That can sometimes be biased. So rather than making an accurate assessment of the situation, we may not realize that our gut feelings is actually a cognitive bias.

Pulling on past experiences, situations, something that you saw on social media, there’s what other people are saying, what other people are doing. So while we’re feeling like, oh, this is the right decision to make. That’s my intuition speaking to me. Is it or is that based on something else that you don’t realize you are cognitively processing in a biased manner?

A example that comes up here too is sunk cost fallacy, which you’ve likely heard of before. So after putting a lot of time or effort into something, it feels a lot harder to let go of. Simply because you put a lot of time and effort into it, thinking about like a relationship that may not actually be good for you, but you’ve been with that person for five years and you guys have worked so hard on the relationship and you’ve tried so many things, even though here’s where your gut feeling might be right, even though your gut feeling is telling you, get the fuck out of there.

This sunk cost fallacy will come into play in bias, your decision making and tell you that it’s worth staying in. However, we know logically, again, if we sit down and really think about it and remove the bias. You’ve already spent five years in relationship that likely isn’t going to work for you, and you’ve tried all of the things.

You’ve exhausted all of the options. Do you really wanna spend another, even five days? In the same situation, but we’re not often doing that. We’re just falling prey to the cognitive biases that we have. Like Scot fallacy, emotional influence, like if we talk about how emotions are involved here, gut feelings are often tied to emotions and past experiences.

Which is similar to how cognitive biases can be influenced by your emotional state in the moment. So you’re biased based on your emotion, and also we’re saying that your gut feelings come from an emotion, so that can be confusing. If we think about the affect heuristic as an example, this suggests that we make decisions based on our current emotional state.

So if you feel positive. About a particular option. You may rely on that feeling to justify your choice in the moment, even if it’s influenced by past experience or emotions. If you can think about maybe fear of trying something new, whether it’s in your business or in a relationship, or. Even just like, oh, I’m gonna run a marathon and try something new.

And all of the time and effort and things that are gonna go into trying something new and you’re asking yourself, is this something I really wanna do? Is this a risk I wanna take? Is this a thing that I want to pursue? You may. Try to access your intuition and try to access your gut feeling. I feel like the marathon example was silly in this, in this, now that I’m getting into this.

But if you’re like making a, a decision to start spending more money on ads in your business and there’s a, it’s a big risk there. There could be a good reward, but you don’t necessarily know. Your gut feeling is telling you just keep doing what you’re doing. ’cause what you’re doing is working. We don’t need to, we don’t need to take risks.

Is that your gut feeling or is that an affect heuristic? It’s based on your emotions in the moment that is fearful of the risk, that it’s uncertain you don’t feel safe. And also when you’ve made some decisions in your business in the past that were risky, it didn’t pan out. So is it your intuition and your gut telling you not to do it, or is this based on.

A negative emotion that you’re experiencing. And the affect heuristic, which is a cognitive bias distortion, is happening in the moment. So one thing I really wanna hammer home is that many of these biases are inevitable. It’s going to happen. And I’m not sitting here telling you to stop using mental shortcuts.

’cause listen, you’re not gonna be able to, that’s literally not possible. We simply don’t have the time to evaluate every thought and every decision. All of the time and making sure that there’s no bias present in those thoughts and decisions. We can’t do that. And that’s why these mental shortcuts exist in the first place.

So rather than thinking like, how do I stop thinking in a mental shortcut fashion? I would rather you think, how can I create space? How can I bring some more mindfulness to decisions? How can I better understand, which I hope this podcast episode helped you do better? Understand where I might be falling prey to a cognitive bias, where my reality and decision making is being distorted by past experiences, emotions in the past, or emotions.

Now, the time and the effort that I put into something, is that influencing my decision here, how I’m feeling about the situation. Just do your best to recognize. That this could be at play and you could be thinking in this manner. And again, that’s kind of like the purpose of this podcast episode is to just make you more aware.

And let me tell you, awareness can seriously just be the most simple but most powerful thing. So even if it’s just you going about your day in the next few weeks and you’re noticing something come up for you, or you’re having to make a decision in your life. To just take a, take a beat and think is how I’m feeling right now, gut feeling intuition, or is this based on a bias or is there something in my past that’s coming up?

Where am I maybe drawing on a mental shortcut when some more extensive processing might be the better route that I can take some time to do that. And I think. Just understanding that your brain does this and why can help you make more informed decisions and oh my gosh, maybe question your gut feelings, which I know like the, the woowoo very intuitive crowd would be like, what are you saying, Kasey?

But the truth is that this is just how our brains work, and it’s important to recognize that. And I’m not knocking intuition. There have definitely been times in my life where I’ve been like. In that situation, I definitely knew what was going on. Sort of like a hindsight 2020, which is also, which is also a cognitive bias where we reflect on past situations and believe we saw that coming or believe that we knew that the outcome was going to be the outcome back then now in the present moment.

Um, but there’s definitely been situations in my life where it’s like you kind of knew. And you ignored it. I’m not saying to do that. I am just asking you to try to bring some more consciousness and some more processing to the situation. Because even if you do that with gut feelings, with intuition, if you really sit down and think about it, like, where is this coming from?

Why am I feeling this way? Rather than just assuming it’s a gut feeling and just moving along with your life, that’s still more processing than you normally do with a mental shortcut of just kind of jumping to conclusions. So. Be skeptical of your thoughts, my friends, and recognize that your brain is doing a lot to conserve mental resources and to help you make sense of things and assign meaning to things and make fast decisions.

However, there are a lot of times in our lives where that is not going to be the most helpful strategy, and we can love it and we can hate it. We can have a love-hate relationship with how our brains work, but that is how our brains work. So I hope. This was helpful. Kind of got you thinking on some stuff, but that is all I have for you on how your brain is wired to take shortcuts and how that can be helpful, but also what you need to look out for.

Alright, that’s all I got for you and I will see you next week.

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