{"id":1075,"date":"2015-08-22T10:48:30","date_gmt":"2015-08-22T17:48:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/?p=1075"},"modified":"2015-08-22T10:51:24","modified_gmt":"2015-08-22T17:51:24","slug":"we-are-all-fallible-experts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/?p=1075","title":{"rendered":"We are all fallible experts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jean-Piaget-1970\"<\/a>It’s a blessing and a curse that we humans are such adept conceptualizers\u00a0and\u00a0heuristic<\/a>\u00a0thinkers. \u00a0We continually compare our perceptions\u00a0about the world to paradigms in our head, performing\u00a0quick, unconscious goodness-of-fit assessments. We instantly\u00a0sense danger when a large furry beast rapidly advances. \u00a0We don’t\u00a0waste\u00a0time discerning\u00a0whether it’s a lion or a tiger. (If it ends up being a friendly dog we breathe a sigh of relief, but better safe than sorry.)\u00a0 Immediately\u00a0categorizing\u00a0a new situation as dangerous versus safe is an\u00a0indispensable survival skill. \u00a0It many cases arriving at a decision right away is more important than\u00a0perfect accuracy; some “false positives” are acceptable.<\/p>\n

We’re not\u00a0the only\u00a0animal\u00a0to\u00a0react this way. \u00a0Lab experiments with mice, rats, and other creatures demonstrate their ability to abstract categories and react rapidly\u00a0in order to stay safe\u00a0or further their interests. \u00a0However, when it comes to assessing our fellow human beings, we\u00a0elevate\u00a0this skill\u00a0to an art form.\u00a0We instantly\u00a0judge whether a person approaching us is dangerous, whether a negotiator is\u00a0honest, whether to give weight to what another person says. \u00a0These intuitions are woven into everyday life, yet are hard to account for in detail. \u00a0Observing even one or two qualities we associate with dishonesty, e.g., a shifty\u00a0gaze\u00a0or\u00a0inconsistent narrative, may be enough for us to withhold trust. \u00a0The stakes involved, and our past experience\u00a0in similar situations, color our judgments in complex ways.<\/p>\n

Expertise in any area of life is the gradual replacement\u00a0of conscious, cognitive assessment by\u00a0more fluid, less conscious impression. \u00a0A beginning surfer\u00a0decides<\/em>\u00a0which wave to ride; an experienced surfer rides a wave that\u00a0looks\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0feels<\/em>\u00a0right. \u00a0A new driver tensely scans and\u00a0analyzes<\/em>\u00a0the scene; a long-time driver takes in the scene\u00a0as a whole<\/em>, anticipating traffic problems in advance. \u00a0A medical student\u00a0concludes<\/em>\u00a0that a patient has a serious disease; an experienced physician walks into the\u00a0patient’s\u00a0room and immediately\u00a0surmises<\/em>\u00a0this. \u00a0Experience leads to intuition, a sense about the situation. \u00a0It’s\u00a0implicit\u00a0pattern recognition: “yes, I’ve seen one of these before.”<\/p>\n

In this way\u00a0we are all experts about other people. \u00a0We get a gut feeling, a sense, a vibe. \u00a0When it comes to getting along with\u00a0one another, we’re like the experienced surfer, long-time driver, and seasoned doctor. \u00a0We don’t consciously analyze, conclude, or decide; the calculus happens unconsciously. \u00a0And although some of us are better judges of character than others, most of us are right most of the time.<\/p>\n

Stereotypes and prejudice are the price we pay for this expertise. The Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget explained<\/a> how children fit (“assimilate”) their observations about the world into their pre-existing assumptions, and only more reluctantly change (“accommodate”) their assumptions to fit new observations. This is a good description of how adults operate too. Pattern recognition\u00a0fails\u00a0when valid new observations don’t fit the old pattern. \u00a0We call\u00a0it\u00a0prejudice when past experience with criminals of a certain appearance\u00a0leads police officers to assume that others\u00a0who look like them\u00a0are criminals too. \u00a0We call it stereotyping\u00a0when\u00a0female health professionals trigger “nurse” before\u00a0“doctor,” even though there are plenty of male nurses and female physicians.<\/p>\n

Mental paradigms change slowly. “Consciousness raising” can help, but fundamentally it takes repeated exposure to countervailing examples to change assumptions. After all, those assumptions and paradigms have saved us more often than not. \u00a0Our common, repeated exposure to friendly dogs tempers our inherent reaction to large furry beasts, and repeated exposure to different kinds of people refines our expertise in this area as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s a blessing and a curse that we humans are such adept conceptualizers and heuristic thinkers. We continually compare our perceptions about the world to paradigms in our head, performing quick, unconscious goodness-of-fit assessments. We instantly sense danger when a large furry beast rapidly advances. We don’t waste time discerning whether it’s a lion or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[36,58],"class_list":["post-1075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-nature","tag-risk","tag-violence","odd"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1075"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1081,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1075\/revisions\/1081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}