How the truth will set you free
Get comfortable with being uncomfortable
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
Philip K. Dick
Critical misunderstandings
I wrote previously about the unconscious mind and how, if we ‘immerse’ it in a problem, challenge, or creative task, it will process vastly more data than we can deal with consciously, to potentially come up with what we know as insight, or a set of feelings that guide our analysis of the problem. The unconscious is vastly more powerful than the conscious mind, but it is fundamentally different in a way that we can all benefit from understanding properly.
Two minds
The conscious mind is often seen as the seat of logic and deliberate thought, where we make decisions based on reason, and where our awareness of self, and of the world resides. It deals with agreements, checks, and balances, and it is where we engage in rational thought processes.
Conversely, the unconscious mind operates below the level of conscious awareness, guiding, directing, and, at times, forcing our behaviour through a complex network of learned associations, memories, and instincts. It doesn't adhere to the rules of logic in the same way the conscious mind does; it is a heuristic system, meaning that it operates on patterns and shortcuts based on beliefs, past experiences, and deep-rooted instincts [1].
Do you notice this?
I don’t recall ever adding up twelve twelves, I just know they make 144. If you ask me seven sevens, I will just respond without having to think; I don’t add them up every time I need the answer. I just know the answer. But if you give me a more complex mathematical problem, my logical, cognitive mind will use a pencil and paper, and call upon selected heuristic knowings, like; how to perform the calculations, and various numeric transforms such as the multiplication tables that were drilled into me at school [2].
The symptom isn’t the cause
Our problems begin when we fail to consider these fundamental differences and make the mistake of attributing the unconscious mind with the same degree of logical reason as its counterpart. It doesn’t work that way; the unconscious mind is unconcerned with logic or the veracity and consistency of its contents and can hold contradictory ideas without the need for resolution, unlike the conscious mind, which seeks coherence and consistency [3].
A quick look at the opposing viewpoints regarding all manner of mainstream subjects will provide a wealth of examples of this phenomenon. Among the various opposing political parties, protest groups, the advocates, and detractors for this or that; are the people on one side or the other of these things intellectually disabled? While that accusation might get thrown around, the tribal ‘belongings’ here are really just people having unconsciously absorbed belief systems, and in an increasingly secular world, these things appear to slot right into the same unconscious machinery that was previously the preserve of the metaphysical beliefs of our tribe [4].
What are we supposed to do about this?
As Socrates said: ‘Know thyself’. Know about it, look for it, and start to notice it within ourselves. Education and intelligence provide no defence against these powerful, and transparent human traits: You can have a Master's degree, a 160 IQ, and still be capable of believing something untrue, and therefore being subsequently driven by the consequential feelings and emotions arising in your unconscious mind to feel, perceive, react, act, think, and speak as though that falsehood were real or true [5].
Flawless computation
With all of the above in mind, let's go a little further. The unconscious mind does not make mistakes in its operation. It flawlessly computes our feelings, according to the external information that we choose to accept, plus our conditioned-in beliefs, and our evolved-in, Palaeolithic, social, survival, and reproductive biases. These unconscious computations and the feelings and emotions that arise from them drive and shape our perception, our conscious thoughts, actions, and reactions, and shape our personal reality [6].
Unconscious Processing and Individual Reality:
The unconscious mind, as a prodigiously powerful computational system, shapes our perception by integrating the various inputs described. However, when these inputs are distorted or incomplete, our perceptions and feelings are optimised for a reality that does not exist. We experience a flawed representation that seems real or authentic because we instinctively, but erroneously, feel that it is right. This misalignment can show up as a range of felt, emotional, and psychological disturbances, as our conscious mind struggles to navigate a reality that doesn’t match up with that of its unconscious counterpart. To make matters worse; if the situation is left unchecked, it can tend toward loops of positive feedback, entrenching the distortions of reality that are driving the conscious-unconscious divergence. Exhausting [7].
Human fingerprints:
The distortions in perception and feeling that affect individuals can also manifest at the organisational level, similar to the way that personal biases influence individual perception. In companies, collective biases can lead to organisational blind spots and false understandings or beliefs, where the collective understanding becomes misaligned with external realities. Decisions based on these skewed perceptions can have far-reaching consequences for the organisation's strategic direction and operational effectiveness [8].
Organisational Reality and Feedback Loops
Within any organisation, the flow of information and the dynamics of communication are crucial. Misinformation or withheld truths can distort leadership's perception and understanding of internal and external realities, misdirecting their instinctive and logical judgement. In exactly the same way that an individual can compound a faulty belief by rationalising or defending it, or avoiding information that disrupts it, Management within an organisation can create positive feedback loops that lock the decision makers into a form of delusion [9].
The tale of "The Emperor's New Clothes" provides a metaphor for this phenomenon, illustrating how collective denial and the suppression of truth can lead to poor decisions and outcomes, however, while the story warns moralistically about vanity, pride, deception and gullibility, but there is a more stealthy factor at work: the default social heuristics that drive conformity and groupthink. While most people are guarded against their own vanity, pride, and susceptibility to flattery, who among us is looking out for the pull of their normal, healthy, human social tendencies, silently and invisibly tweaking at their perception, their logical judgement and reasoning?
Unconscious Mind Of The Organisation
As with an individual, a company has an Executive function, and so we might consider the information consumed by the unconscious of the executive or c-suite to be that consumed by the effective, unconscious mind of the organisation.
Tribal instincts will see team-members tend towards holding the same beliefs and feelings about certain internal and external matters, as the chain of command, regardless of veracity. Likewise, the urge to deliver good news and avoid being associated with bad news is evolved into us, as a very normal human unconscious bias or trait.
These edits of the reported reality may be subtle or blatant, but the overall effect will be to form the roots of an orthodoxy that is capable of growing out into the organisation, unchecked, until it reaches the corporate interface with external reality, and is experienced directly by those staff dealing with the fallout of that edited or distorted data being fed back to, and processed by, the executive unconscious [10]. A painful corporate delusion.
How bad is it?
In the 1950s, social psychologist Dr. Solomon Asch, then at Swarthmore College, conducted landmark studies known as the conformity experiments; demonstrating how people conform to group pressure. In the typical setup, a participant was placed in a room with several other individuals, who were actors, and in on the experiment, and was asked to match line lengths. The actors would deliberately choose the wrong lines, and the real participant would often conform to the group's wrong choice despite the correct answer being obvious. The findings from Asch's experiments showed that about one-third of participants conformed to the clearly incorrect majority. When interviewed afterward, participants expressed various reasons for conforming, including the desire to fit in (normative influence) and believing the group was better informed (informational influence) [11].
Corporate conformity
In a corporate setting with a clear hierarchy, the influence of authority and the established hierarchy can significantly alter the dynamics observed in Asch's conformity experiments. The presence of a strong authority figure or a deeply ingrained organisational culture can increase the pressure to conform, potentially raising the proportion of individuals who succumb to a faulty orthodoxy above the 37% figure observed by Asch. This rather obvious effect can broken down into three dimensions:
Authority Influence: When directives or beliefs come from the top of the hierarchy, employees feel an increased pressure to conform, due to the perceived consequences of dissent, such as risking their job security or career advancement.
Organisational Culture: A corporate culture that discourages dissent and prioritises alignment with leadership views can intensify conformity, making it more challenging for individuals to express or act upon authentic observations.
Social and Professional Risks: In a workplace, the risks associated with non-conformity aren't just social but also professional, potentially affecting an individual's willingness to stand against a prevailing but faulty orthodoxy.
While Asch's experiments provide a baseline understanding of conformity under peer pressure, the complexities of a corporate environment, with its blend of hierarchical authority and cultural norms, will amplify these tendencies, making the specific impact contextual and potentially more pronounced than in Asch's original setting [12].
The Truth will set you free
The truth will set you free from treating symptoms as root causes, and depending on how bad the faulty orthodoxy or beliefs are, and how far they have run, it will set you free from those problems that always seem to find you, or from shovelling more money and personal energy at self-inflicted waste, missed targets and failure. [13]
There is a quote attributed to Albert Einstein: "If I had only one hour to save the world, I would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem and only five minutes finding the solution."
This statement underscores the importance of thoroughly understanding a problem before attempting to solve it, suggesting that a well-defined problem is crucial to identifying effective solutions.
If you aren’t using information that is as close as possible to the truth, your unconscious will make you feel, and ultimately think, and act in accordance with a version of reality that doesn’t exist. Your motivation will become misaligned with the flow of events, causing you to ‘fight the current’.
Get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Sometimes the truth can make us really uncomfortable; looking at our own mistakes and misjudgements is seldom a pleasant experience, and so we need to expect that discomfort. Whether we find ourselves clinging to a personal belief that is working against us, or struggling to deliver or receive the unvarnished truth in a corporate or organisational setting, it is our ability to get comfortable with being uncomfortable that is the key.
References
[1] Heuristic Thinking and the Unconscious Mind:
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. (This book is a foundational source on the dual-process theory of cognition.)
[2] Cognitive Processing in Mathematics:
Geary, D. C. (2011). Cognitive Development of Numerical Cognition: A Review. Annual Review of Psychology, 62(1), 49-79. (This article explores how people learn and apply mathematical concepts from a cognitive psychology perspective.)
[3] Cognitive Dissonance:
Festinger, L. A. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford University Press. (This book is the seminal work on cognitive dissonance theory.)
[4] Belief Systems and Political Ideology:
Haidt, J. (2012). The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. Pantheon Books. (This book explores the moral psychology behind political ideology.)
[5] Education, Intelligence, and Susceptibility to Biases:
Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1121-1134. (This is a classic study on the Dunning-Kruger effect, which explores the relationship between cognitive biases and self-awareness.)
[6] Unconscious Processing Accuracy:
Bargh, J. A., & Chartrand, T. L. (1999). The Unconscious Mind in Social Psychology. European Review of Social Psychology, 10(1), 25-40. (This article reviews research on unconscious processing and decision-making.)
[7] Feedback Loops and Perception:
Rao, R. P., & Ballard, D. H. (1999). Prediction in Vision. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 9(4), 183-188. (This article explores the role of feedback loops in visual perception, which can be applied more broadly to perception in general.)
[8] Organizational Biases and Decision-Making:
Bazerman, M. H., Tenbrun, S. E., & Wade-Benzoni, K. A. (2002). Blind Spots: Why We Fail to See the Obvious. Harvard Business School Press. (This book explores how cognitive biases influence decision-making in organizations.)
[9] Communication Dynamics and Misinformation in Organizations:
Weick, K. E. (1985). Ex Machina: Discussions about and Around Organizational Structure. Sprangle Educational Services. (This book explores communication dynamics and information flow within organizations.)
[10] Leadership and Organizational Unconscious:
Conger, J. D. (1999). The Charismatic Leader: Behind the Mystique of Exceptional Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. (This book explores the psychology of leadership and its influence on organizational behavior.)
[11] Asch Conformity Experiments
[12] Corporate Conformity and Hierarchy:
Triandis, H. C. (1994). Culture and Social Behavior. McGraw-Hill. (This book explores the concept of culture, including corporate culture, and its influence on conformity.)
[13] Benefits of Confronting Truth:
McAdams, D. P. (2011). Personal Constructs and the Story of Self. Guilford Publications. (This book explores the concept of self-awareness and its benefits for personal growth.)
Sources
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
az.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danninq-Kr%C3%BCger_effektie