Life Lessons

            In this article in Psychology Today, science writer Jena Pincott lists correctives for some common cognitive biases (inborn and acquired):

            • Understand that not everything that happens to you is about you. “At the very least, the egocentric bias causes us to misread others,” says Pincott. “It undermines empathy and tolerance. It also traps us in a bubble; we waste vast amounts of psychic energy recovering from insults that were never targeted at us in the first place. To live a life that is less reactive, more directed, it is necessary to put the ego in its place.”

            • Worry less about what others think of you. It turns out that people are much less aware of our competence, awkwardness, verbal flubs, facial expressions, even what we wear, than we imagine. “When we care less about our curated self-image, we open the door to interacting more genuinely,” says Pincott. “We can let down our guard. Others may respond in kind, focusing less on their own self-image and opening up.”

            • Realize that you don’t have to act the way you feel. Pincott advises “self-distancing” to keep disappointments and negative emotions from spilling into everyday interactions. This involves processing our feelings from an outsider’s point of view, addressing ourselves in the third person to normalize and make meaning of disturbing experiences. This makes it possible to preserve our dignity, privacy, and self-respect when we’re not at our best.

            • Reframe and manage disappointment and adversity. “There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” said Hamlet. Social psychologists have confirmed Shakespeare’s wisdom, showing that although there are differences in people’s innate ability to handle stressful events, mental fortitude can be acquired. This means learning how not to jump to conclusions, overgeneralize, catastrophize, personalize, and engage in black-or-white thinking. “Resilient people do not define themselves by their adversity,” says Pincott. “They understand that bad times are temporary affairs.”

            • Solicit honest feedback. It’s possible to be internally self-aware (in touch with our own values and passions) and not externally self-aware (knowing how others see us). “External self-awareness allows us to be more in sync with others,” says Pincott. “It makes us more effective leaders because we have more empathy, which comes from understanding other people’s perspectives.” She advises identifying several “critical friends” and periodically asking them questions like, What am I doing that I should keep doing? What should I stop doing? What about me annoys you?

            • Stay true to your own values despite what others expect. There’s sometimes a tug-of-war between what we want and what others expect – parents, teachers, love partners. “People high in both internal and external self-awareness can navigate competing expectations,” says organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich. They value authenticity and integrity, knowing what they want to do and illuminating it with other perspectives.

            • Be open to revising your thinking. “The world doesn’t stand still,” says Pincott. “Situations change. Available information changes. However much we get emotionally attached to our own decisions, however much our opinions and perspectives may have once served us, there comes a point at which constancy can curdle into rigidity.” Studies show that we’re most open to change when we’re feeling good about ourselves, most resistant to change when we feel threatened and uncertain. Hanging out with a four-year-old is a good way to see what cognitive flexibility looks like.

            • Find ways to tackle tasks you want to avoid. Pincott suggests several approaches: write down how the drudgery will end with a success; gamify the activity, introducing an element of competition; use second-person self-talk (You can crush this, Ted!); bite off a small piece to get started (Just 20 minutes on this and I’ll do something else); and get into a routine (for example, rising at six to exercise).

            • Zone in on your purpose in a zoned-out world. “The two most important days in life are the day you are born and the day you discover the reason why,” said Mark Twain. But a sense of big-picture purpose depends on focus and self-regulation, and that’s undermined by the current obsession with checking social media every few minutes, driven by the fear of missing out on something. “You may want big ideas,” says author Larry Rosen, “but if your attention is jerked away constantly, they won’t come. There’s no time to process anything on a deeper level.” There isn’t even time for the overstimulated brain to daydream. Rosen strongly recommends 30-minute tech breaks. Turning away from the small screen, he says, can reorient us to the big picture.

            • Tolerate ambiguity. Uncertainty is a “sure-fire fuel of anxiety,” says Pincott, but it’s part of modern life, and dealing with it has many rewards. “We’re more able to shift gears, experiment, be more flexible, take in new information that we’d otherwise reject, and let a situation develop before pulling the proverbial trigger,” she says. “We’re better able to handle risk and to make decisions without deluding ourselves into thinking we know everything there is to know. In the end, we’re less anxious.” Studies have shown that one way to make yourself more flexible in uncertain situations is to read fiction. “When nothing is sure,” says novelist Margaret Drabble, “everything is possible.”

“Lessons You Won’t Learn in School” by Jena Pincott in Psychology Today, May/June 2018
Please Note: This summary is reprinted here with permission.  It appeared in issue #734 of The Marshall Memo a fabulous resource for educators.

Hans Rosling on Ten Human Instincts That Distort Our Thinking

           In Factfulness, a book currently on The New York Times best-seller list, Hans Rosling, the late Swedish physician and statistician, describes ten ways we tend to misinterpret the world around us, and offers advice on how to do better:

            • The gap instinct – This is what Rosling calls “that irresistible temptation we have to divide all kinds of things into two distinct and often conflicting groups, with an imagined gap – a huge chasm of injustice – in between.” For example, it’s common for people to see the world dramatically split between rich and poor countries. In fact, the 2017 world population is at four levels: Level 1, very poor, getting around on foot (about 1 billion people); Level 2, improving conditions, traveling by bicycle (3 billion); Level 3, more resources, traveling by motorcycle (2 billion); and Level 4, first-world countries, traveling by car (1 billion).

In short, says Rosling, there’s a range, and significantly, most people are in the middle, not the extremes. To control for the gap instinct, he advises:

-   Beware of comparing averages. They have a way of disguising important in-between information.

-   Beware of comparing extremes – for example, the extreme poverty in Sudan versus the comfortable existence of Western countries.

-   Beware of seeing the world “from up here.” Looking at others through the lens of one’s own lived experience distorts what lies in the middle.

• The negativity instinct – This is the widespread tendency to notice the bad more than the good. Pollsters found that in 30 countries, more than half of the people surveyed believed things were getting worse. And indeed, there are many bad things happening: terrorism, overfishing, the crisis in Syria, rising seas, financial instability. But the big picture shows overall progress: the percent of humans living in extreme poverty fell from 85 percent in 1800 to 9 percent today; average life expectancy has risen from 31 in 1800 to 72 today. There have been dramatic improvements in a number of other areas: deaths from disasters, hunger, child labor, plane crash deaths, HIV infections, legal slavery, nuclear weapons, smallpox, ozone depletion, women’s right to vote, girls in school, literacy, democracy, child cancer survival, mobile phones, drinkable water, Internet access, and immunizations. To control for the negativity instinct, Rosling advises:

-   Beware of the myth of a rosy past.

-   Realize that things can be bad and better at the same time.

-   Know that more news does not equal more suffering.

-   Recognize that good news and gradual improvement are almost never reported.

• The straight line instinct – This is the tendency to believe that a trend line (for example, the population of the planet) will continue in linear fashion. But trends change; for example, the average number of babies per woman was almost 6 in 1800. Now it’s 2.5. A number of important indicators change dramatically as people move from extreme poverty to Level 4, bending the curves: schooling, age of marriage, literacy, vaccinations. Rosling’s takeaway: don’t assume straight-line trends.

   • The fear instinct – “None of us has enough mental capacity to consume all the information out there,” says Rosling. “The question is, what part are we processing and how did it get selected? And what part are we neglecting?” We focus on information that triggers fear: violence, sharp objects, forces of nature, loss of control, entrapment, contamination. But deaths from natural disasters, plane crashes, murders, nuclear leaks, and terrorism combined account for only 1 percent of people who die each year. Frightening and dangerous are two different things, says Rosling. “Paying too much attention to what is frightening rather than what is dangerous – that is, paying too much attention to fear – creates a tragic drainage of energy in the wrong direction… I would like my fear to be focused on the mega dangers of today, and not the dangers from our evolutionary past.” One more thing: When you’re afraid, make as few decisions as possible until the panic has subsided.

            • The size instinct – There’s a strong tendency for people to get things out of proportion, misjudge size, and exaggerate the importance of one data point. “The media is this instinct’s friend,” says Rosling. “It is pretty much a journalist’s professional duty to make any given event, fact, or number sound more important than it is. And journalists know that it feels almost inhuman to look away from an individual in pain.” But individual numbers can be profoundly misleading. For example, in 2017, 4.2 million babies died worldwide. This sounds like a terrible number, and each death is tragic for the parents and families involved. But that number compares to 14.4 million babies dying in 1950. Given that perspective, 4.2 million is “beautifully small,” says Rosling. Tremendous progress has been made with infant mortality, and the trend continues. To control for the size instinct, it’s important to:

-   Put statistics in perspective.

-   Apply the 80/20 rule: look at the few largest items on a list and deal with them first; usually, dealing with 20 percent takes care of 80 percent of the problem.

-   Amounts and rates can tell very different stories, and rates are more meaningful, especially when comparing different-sized groups.

• The generalization instinct – “Categories are absolutely necessary for us to function,” says Rosling. “They give structure to our thoughts… Everyone automatically categorizes and generalizes all the time.” But generalizing can also distort our worldview. It can lead us to group people or things together – stereotyping – and jump to the conclusion that the people or things in that group are all alike. The gap instinct divides the world into “us” and “them” and the generalization instinct makes us think that “they” are all the same. To combat this instinct, Rosling suggests:

-   Look for differences within groups.

-   Look for similarities across groups.

-   Look for differences across groups – don’t assume that what applies to one group applies to another.

-   Beware of “the majority.” It just means more than half, which could be 51 percent.

-   Beware of vivid examples.

-   Assume that people are not idiots.

• The destiny instinct – This is the idea that innate characteristics determine the destinies of people, countries, religions, and cultures – for example, that African nations will never catch up to Western levels of civilization. Rosling says we need to recognize that many things appear to be constant just because change is happening slowly, and that even slow change is still change. Some pointers:

-   Keep track of gradual improvements.

-   Update your knowledge.

-   Talk to Grandpa – he will remind you of how values have changed.

-   Collect examples of cultural change. “Challenge the idea that today’s culture must also have been yesterday’s, and will also be tomorrow’s,” he says.

• The single perspective instinct – “We find simple ideas attractive,” says Rosling. “We enjoy that moment of insight, we enjoy feeling we really understand or know something. And it is easy to take off down a slippery slope…” Some examples: an ideologue who believes passionately in the free market, another who is committed to equality. The key, says Rosling, is to recognize that a single perspective can limit our imagination. Some advice:

-   Test your ideas.

-   Don’t claim expertise beyond your field.

-   Remember that no tool is good for every job.

-   Use numbers, but not only numbers.

-   Beware of simple ideas and simple solutions.

• The blame instinct – This is the human tendency “to find a clear, simple reason why something bad has happened,” says Rosling. “It seems that it comes very naturally for us to decide that when things go wrong, it must be because of some bad individual with bad intentions. We like to believe that things happen because someone wanted them to, that individuals have power and agency; otherwise, the world feels unpredictable, confusing, frightening.” The key, he says, is recognizing when a scapegoat is being used “and remembering that blaming an individual often steals the focus from other possible explanations and blocks our ability to prevent similar problems in the future.” Workarounds:

-   Look for causes, not villains.

-   Look for systems, not heroes.

• The urgency instinct – This is the tendency to believe it’s now or never, you have to decide now, you won’t have another chance. “Relax,” says Rosling. “It’s almost never true. It’s almost never that urgent, and it’s almost never an either/or.” His advice:

-   When your urgency instinct is triggered, take a breath.

-   Insist on the data.

-   Beware of fortune-tellers. Any predictions about the future are uncertain.

-   Be wary of drastic action. Look at possible side effects. Ask how the idea has been tested. “Step-by-step practical improvements, and evaluation of their impact, are less dramatic but usually more effective.”

But Rosling says there are some global risks we should worry about: global pandemics, financial collapse, World War III, climate change, and extreme poverty.

            Rosling closes with some thoughts on what we should be teaching young people to protect the next generation from a lot of ignorance:

-   That there are countries at all different levels of health and income, and most are in the middle.

-   Their own country’s socioeconomic position in relation to the rest of the world, and how that is changing.

-   How their own country progressed through the income levels to get to where it is now, and how to use that knowledge to understand what life is like in other countries today.

-   That people in less-developed countries are moving up the income levels and their lives generally are improving.

-   What life was really like in the past so they do not mistakenly think that no progress has been made.

-   How to hold these two ideas at the same time: that bad things are going on in the world, but that many things are getting better.

-   That cultural and religious stereotypes are useless for understanding the world.

-   How to consume the news and spot the drama without becoming stressed and hopeless.

-   Common ways that people will try to trick them with numbers.

-   That the world will keep changing and they will have to update their knowledge and worldview throughout their lives.

Most of all, Rosling concludes, we should be teaching our children humility and curiosity.

Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlung, Flatiron Books, 2018

Please Note, this summary by Kim Marshall appeared in issue #733 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent weekly resource for educators.

Focusing Curriculum Units on Conceptual Understanding

Jay McTighe shares this suggestion from Harvey Silver: When drafting the title of a unit, add “A study in…” or “A study of…” followed by a concept or theme. This ensures that the unit is conceptually focused and is a natural segue to developing Enduring Understandings and companion Essential Questions. Some examples:

-   A unit on the rainforest – A study of a complex ecosystem;

-   A unit on decimals, fractions, and percentages – A study of equivalence;

-   A unit on the story, Frog and Toad Are Friends – A study of true friendship;

-   A novel study of The Catcher in the Rye – A study of author’s craft;

-   A unit on World War I – A study of unintended consequences;

-   A unit on weight training – A study of proper technique.

“UbD Ideas and Resources” by Jay McTighe, personal communication, January 2018
(The suggestion above appears in issue #721 of The Marshall Memo, an EXCELLENT resource for educators.)