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Think Slow ... Decide Fast, by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, has an entire chapter devoted to cognitive ease. Kahneman suggests that there are two systems that control cognitive processes.
One of them is a quick fix system. It is not a fact that the quick decision will be the right one and the most reasonable one. However, "autopilot" allows you to do many things without thinking too much, and the obvious or familiar option often really turns out to be correct.
When external factors force us to use more significant intellectual resources, the second system comes into play, which is able to critically evaluate the solutions proposed by the first. Her work requires more effort and stress, but the results obtained will be more thoughtful, "piece", suitable for this particular situation.
The first system corresponds to the state of cognitive ease, the second - to the state of cognitive tension (severity).
A state of cognitive ease is a signal that everything is going well. And the good for a person (or rather, for his unconscious motives - in words, you can be a rebel) is, more often than not, familiar. We are by nature creepy conservatives, because any new data raises the alarm. Our cognitive systems are activated: is it not necessary to somehow rebuild, take into account something new, will not what has already been created go to dust? Instinctive mental laziness is a way to conserve resources and maintain a satisfactory and safe status quo, even if imbalance may promise new benefits.
In the book Someone's Wrong on the Internet, Asya Kazantseva notes that cognitive ease is an important adaptation mechanism that allows animals not to be constantly under stress. The brain, no matter what living creature it belongs to, seeks to save on efforts and choose short paths: "if we were not eaten last time, then everything will go well this time."
The more repetitions occur, the more we tend to relax. A stable connection arises between neurons - a familiar path along which you can walk without looking at your feet. For the same reason, cognitive ease accompanies acquired and practiced skill. When some skill is brought to automatism, we stop paying attention to the process of work.
The causes and effects of cognitive ease, formulated by D. Kahneman.
Examples of cognitively light perception
Our consciousness readily relies on patterns and categories. This method is necessary in order to categorize the world and make it knowable. Whereas complete chaos, where there is nothing to rely on, would not give an opportunity to move on in reasoning and actions. Given the idea of an object and its qualities, we infer that similar objects also have similar qualities - although in fact no one guarantees this.
For example, it is known that rams are animals that have a fluffy fur coat and nibble on grass. This was also known by ancient European travelers, who described a sheep connected to the earth by an umbilical cord. When they first met a cotton plant, they believed that they were seeing not a plant, but an outlandish animal growing on a stem and feeding on the grass around them. The descriptions served as the basis for the appearance of the legendary animal-plant, called "ram" or "Scythian ram". So the external attributes of an animal known to travelers and authors of bestiaries were transferred to a real plant.
Das Boramez, oder Scythische Lamm, Friedrich Justin Bertuch.
Here's another botanical example. Suppose that a man is named two plants, one of which he knows and the other is not, and is asked which of them is dioecious. If a plant he knows is dioecious, he will name it.
In the same way, if we are talking about two cities, about which it is required to say which of them is the capital, the subject would rather name London, in whose status he is sure, than a lesser known city (for example, Naypyidaw, the capital of Myanmar).
The more often unfamiliar words appear in the media and are repeated by everyone around, the more people tend to consider them positively colored. This mechanism has been tested and described in research by psychologist Robert Zayonts ("the simple presentation effect"). After seeing faces in a photo several times, people rate them as prettier; beautiful and clear images seem more correct to us.
Cognitive ease also explains the celebrity phenomenon from scratch. The more often characters, even if they do not have any talents and noticeable merits, get into the media field, the more famous they become - simply because a lot of people know them.
Avoid manipulation and maintain clarity
In manipulative texts, repetitions of the same words or phrases are often found - in this way it is easier to make the reader believe in them. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish a vague feeling of recognition (“I've already seen this somewhere!”) From the truth (“this is how things are”), because our consciousness deceives us, preferring to look for a shortcut.
Even text design and typography play a role. Daniel Kahneman invites his readers to compare two statements written as follows:
Adolf Hitler was born in 1892.
Adolf Hitler was born in 1887.
In fact, Hitler was born in 1889, but many, looking at these phrases, tend to choose the first.
Authors of low-quality advertisements believe that the reader is inclined to believe in the persuasiveness of words in BIG type. Kapslok is discredited enough because it serves as a pressure marker instead of reasonable arguments, but it can still convince many people.
To avoid falling into such traps, try to rationalize and test, and not be led by free associations and emotional impulses. For those who have caught themselves overly cognitively light, Kahneman advises saying to themselves and others something like this:
Stereotypical methods often work better (that is, more effective) than the original ones. An example from the media is a high conversion of sites made according to familiar patterns (colors, texts, construction). An example from politics - populism can lead to electoral victory, even if everyone admits that a politician's methods of action are rude and manipulative. At the same time, the quality of such sites and the nature of such a policy will most likely cause distrust in a thinking person and a desire to change something.
Is being cognitively light bad?
Cognitive ease is accompanied by the ability to think associatively. And it has to do with intuition and creativity. Psychologist Sarnoff Mednik believed that the essence of creativity lies precisely in a well-developed associative memory.
But the same "free association method" can fail us if misused. For example, trying to solve with the help of fantasies a problem that requires logical reasoning, or arbitrarily conjecturing facts.
Psychologist Larry Jacoby reconstructed the effect of memory illusions in his studies, asking the subjects to read a list of fictitious names, and some time later - another one, asking which of these people is famous. The second list contained names from the first. The subjects pointed to previously presented names along with the names of real celebrities.
At the same time, many of them forgot about the initial presentation of names. They mistakenly used the sense of recognition as an answer to the question "Which of these people is famous?" Which, of course, could not be true.
Cognitive ease is a lack of tension. On the one hand, this is a very pleasant state, on the other, it deprives us of the opportunity to improve under the influence of circumstances, to invent new intellectual approaches, to direct efforts, to revise the habitual. After all, all of these things involve a certain amount of discomfort. And when we feel “on horseback” and are confident in ourselves, we check information less and are less critical of our actions.
Cognitive heaviness, in turn, makes us less relaxed, more distrustful. We begin to think critically, to evaluate information from different angles. It is more difficult to relax in this state; it can also be more difficult to make a decision because all the options don't seem to be good enough.
Both of these conditions have their pros and cons. One contributes to personal comfort and intuitive-creative perception based on archetypes. Other makes us more responsible and attentive, and also allows us to develop individual strategies of behavior.
One of them is a quick fix system. It is not a fact that the quick decision will be the right one and the most reasonable one. However, "autopilot" allows you to do many things without thinking too much, and the obvious or familiar option often really turns out to be correct.
When external factors force us to use more significant intellectual resources, the second system comes into play, which is able to critically evaluate the solutions proposed by the first. Her work requires more effort and stress, but the results obtained will be more thoughtful, "piece", suitable for this particular situation.
The first system corresponds to the state of cognitive ease, the second - to the state of cognitive tension (severity).
A state of cognitive ease is a signal that everything is going well. And the good for a person (or rather, for his unconscious motives - in words, you can be a rebel) is, more often than not, familiar. We are by nature creepy conservatives, because any new data raises the alarm. Our cognitive systems are activated: is it not necessary to somehow rebuild, take into account something new, will not what has already been created go to dust? Instinctive mental laziness is a way to conserve resources and maintain a satisfactory and safe status quo, even if imbalance may promise new benefits.
In the book Someone's Wrong on the Internet, Asya Kazantseva notes that cognitive ease is an important adaptation mechanism that allows animals not to be constantly under stress. The brain, no matter what living creature it belongs to, seeks to save on efforts and choose short paths: "if we were not eaten last time, then everything will go well this time."
The more repetitions occur, the more we tend to relax. A stable connection arises between neurons - a familiar path along which you can walk without looking at your feet. For the same reason, cognitive ease accompanies acquired and practiced skill. When some skill is brought to automatism, we stop paying attention to the process of work.
The causes and effects of cognitive ease, formulated by D. Kahneman.
Examples of cognitively light perception
Our consciousness readily relies on patterns and categories. This method is necessary in order to categorize the world and make it knowable. Whereas complete chaos, where there is nothing to rely on, would not give an opportunity to move on in reasoning and actions. Given the idea of an object and its qualities, we infer that similar objects also have similar qualities - although in fact no one guarantees this.
For example, it is known that rams are animals that have a fluffy fur coat and nibble on grass. This was also known by ancient European travelers, who described a sheep connected to the earth by an umbilical cord. When they first met a cotton plant, they believed that they were seeing not a plant, but an outlandish animal growing on a stem and feeding on the grass around them. The descriptions served as the basis for the appearance of the legendary animal-plant, called "ram" or "Scythian ram". So the external attributes of an animal known to travelers and authors of bestiaries were transferred to a real plant.
Das Boramez, oder Scythische Lamm, Friedrich Justin Bertuch.
Here's another botanical example. Suppose that a man is named two plants, one of which he knows and the other is not, and is asked which of them is dioecious. If a plant he knows is dioecious, he will name it.
In the same way, if we are talking about two cities, about which it is required to say which of them is the capital, the subject would rather name London, in whose status he is sure, than a lesser known city (for example, Naypyidaw, the capital of Myanmar).
The more often unfamiliar words appear in the media and are repeated by everyone around, the more people tend to consider them positively colored. This mechanism has been tested and described in research by psychologist Robert Zayonts ("the simple presentation effect"). After seeing faces in a photo several times, people rate them as prettier; beautiful and clear images seem more correct to us.
Cognitive ease also explains the celebrity phenomenon from scratch. The more often characters, even if they do not have any talents and noticeable merits, get into the media field, the more famous they become - simply because a lot of people know them.
Avoid manipulation and maintain clarity
In manipulative texts, repetitions of the same words or phrases are often found - in this way it is easier to make the reader believe in them. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish a vague feeling of recognition (“I've already seen this somewhere!”) From the truth (“this is how things are”), because our consciousness deceives us, preferring to look for a shortcut.
Even text design and typography play a role. Daniel Kahneman invites his readers to compare two statements written as follows:
Adolf Hitler was born in 1892.
Adolf Hitler was born in 1887.
In fact, Hitler was born in 1889, but many, looking at these phrases, tend to choose the first.
Authors of low-quality advertisements believe that the reader is inclined to believe in the persuasiveness of words in BIG type. Kapslok is discredited enough because it serves as a pressure marker instead of reasonable arguments, but it can still convince many people.
To avoid falling into such traps, try to rationalize and test, and not be led by free associations and emotional impulses. For those who have caught themselves overly cognitively light, Kahneman advises saying to themselves and others something like this:
If you yourself plan to manipulate someone, do not think that incompetence can be completely masked by using psychological tricks, whether it be a successful combination of colors (bright blue and red are "more veritable" than pastel shades), rhymes or spaced repetition of words.
Stereotypical methods often work better (that is, more effective) than the original ones. An example from the media is a high conversion of sites made according to familiar patterns (colors, texts, construction). An example from politics - populism can lead to electoral victory, even if everyone admits that a politician's methods of action are rude and manipulative. At the same time, the quality of such sites and the nature of such a policy will most likely cause distrust in a thinking person and a desire to change something.
Is being cognitively light bad?
Cognitive ease is accompanied by the ability to think associatively. And it has to do with intuition and creativity. Psychologist Sarnoff Mednik believed that the essence of creativity lies precisely in a well-developed associative memory.
But the same "free association method" can fail us if misused. For example, trying to solve with the help of fantasies a problem that requires logical reasoning, or arbitrarily conjecturing facts.
Psychologist Larry Jacoby reconstructed the effect of memory illusions in his studies, asking the subjects to read a list of fictitious names, and some time later - another one, asking which of these people is famous. The second list contained names from the first. The subjects pointed to previously presented names along with the names of real celebrities.
At the same time, many of them forgot about the initial presentation of names. They mistakenly used the sense of recognition as an answer to the question "Which of these people is famous?" Which, of course, could not be true.
Cognitive ease is a lack of tension. On the one hand, this is a very pleasant state, on the other, it deprives us of the opportunity to improve under the influence of circumstances, to invent new intellectual approaches, to direct efforts, to revise the habitual. After all, all of these things involve a certain amount of discomfort. And when we feel “on horseback” and are confident in ourselves, we check information less and are less critical of our actions.
Cognitive heaviness, in turn, makes us less relaxed, more distrustful. We begin to think critically, to evaluate information from different angles. It is more difficult to relax in this state; it can also be more difficult to make a decision because all the options don't seem to be good enough.
Both of these conditions have their pros and cons. One contributes to personal comfort and intuitive-creative perception based on archetypes. Other makes us more responsible and attentive, and also allows us to develop individual strategies of behavior.
