Binary bias: The human tendency to seek clarity by reducing a spectrum of categories to two opposites.Presumes the world is divided into two sides: believers and non-believers. Only one side can be right because there is only one truth. The antidote is to “complexify” by showing the range of views for a given topic.

Binary bias

Every individual possesses cognitive tools and accumulated knowledge that they regularly rely upon. But we rarely question or consider this knowledge which includes beliefs, assumptions, opinions, and prejudices. One of the solutions to this is what Adam Grant tells in this book as "rethinking". Rethinking is the process of doubting what you know, being curious about what you don’t know, and updating your thinking based on new evidence.

Summary

The overview effect: Astronauts who experience space travel gain a unique understanding of humanity. After seeing Earth from above, their perspective changes and they see the commonality of our existence.Counterfactual thinking: considering alternative realities, imagining different circumstances and outcomes.

Many beliefs are arbitrary and based on flimsy foundations.

Phil Tetlock’s (political scientist) mindset model: Preachers, prosecutors, and politicians.Preachers: We pontificate and promote our ideas. Changing your mind is a sign of moral weakness.Prosecutors: We attack the ideas of others, often to win an argument. Being persuaded is defeat.Politicians: We try to win the support of others, optimizing for approval and agreement (over personal conviction). We change our opinion opportunistically.

Preacher, Prosecutor, Politician

Adversarial approach: Common tendency to go into preacher or prosecutor mode without listening to the other party.Collaborative approach: Leads with humility and curiosity. Invites the other party to think like scientists.Logic bully: Someone who overwhelms others with rational arguments. The others might not agree with those arguments, but they are left defenseless and bitter.

Adversarial vs. collaborative approach:

Performance accountability evaluates projects, individuals and teams based on outcomes. Good outcomes aren’t always the result of good decisions.“Focusing on results might be good for short-term performance, but it can be an obstacle to long-term learning.”Process accountability evaluates projects, individuals and teams based on the decision-making process.

Performance vs Process

Psychological safety: The ability to take risks without fear of punishment or reprisal. In environments with psychological safety, teams will report more problems and errors. Psychologically unsafe settings hide errors to avoid penalties. “Psychological safety is not a matter of relaxing standards...it’s fostering a climate of respect, trust, and openness...it’s the foundation of a learning culture.”

Rethinking is not only an individual skill, it’s also an organizational one.

Conventional view: intelligence is the ability to think and learn.Alternative view: intelligence is the ability to rethink and unlearn. Grant argues these cognitive skills are essential in a turbulent and changing world.

Conventional vs. new views of intelligence:

“We won’t have much luck changing other people’s minds if we refuse to change ours. We can demonstrate openness by acknowledging where we agree with our critics and even what we’ve learned from them.”

Rethinking is fundamental to scientific thinking.“You’re expected to doubt what you know, be curious about what you don’t know, and update your views based on new data.”Changing your mind is a sign of intellectual integrity and a response to evidence.

Scientist

Totalitarian ego: Psychological term for the mental gatekeeper that keeps threatening information out of our heads. Our mini internal dictator. Two types of detachment:Detaching your present from your past.Detaching your opinions from your identity. “Who you are should be a question of what you value, not what you believe.”Values are core principles like excellence, generosity, freedom, fairness, integrity, etc. Values retain the flexibility that opinions do not.

Something to Ponder

<ul><li>Plan ahead to determine where they can find common ground.</li><li>Present fewer reasons to support their case. Weak arguments dilute strong ones.</li><li>Express curiosity with questions like “so you don’t see any merit in this proposal at all?”</li><li>Express their feelings about the process and their opponent's feelings.</li></ul>

Tactics of expert negotiators:

“Psychologists find that people will ignore or even deny the existence of a problem if they’re not fond of the solution.”

“Honest argument is merely a process of mutually picking the beams and motes out of each other’s eyes so both can see clearly.”

“Many communicators try to make themselves look smart. Great listeners are more interested in making their audiences feel smart.”

Three steps to thinking more critically:<ul><li>Interrogate information instead of simply consuming it.</li><li>Rank and popularity are not proxies for reliability.</li><li>The sender of information is often not its source.</li></ul>

Learn to ask questions that don’t have a single right answer.

“Questioning ourselves makes the world more unpredictable. It requires us to admit that the facts may have changed, that what was once right may now be wrong.”

The rethinking cycle: Humility-Doubt -Curiosity-DiscoveryThe overconfidence cycle: Pride- Conviction - Confirmation and Desirability Biases-Validation

Cycles

“The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club is that you don’t know you’re a member of the Dunning-Kruger club.”

“A rivalry exists whenever we reserve special animosity for a group we see as competing with us for resources or threatening our identities.”

Relationship conflict: Personal feuds and arguments Task conflict: Arguments over specific ideas and opinions Task conflict can be beneficial and generate better outcomes. Challenge network: A trusted group of peers to point out blind spots and errors in our thinking.The illusion of explanatory depth: We think we know more about things than we really do.Example: How does a bicycle, piano, or appliance work? Exploring these questions reveals the limits of our knowledge.

Conflicts

Cognitive bias: Seeing what we want to see.Desirability bias: The tendency to act in a manner that enhances your acceptance or approval from others.Instead of searching for reasons why we are right, search for reasons why we are wrong.

Biases

“In theory, confidence and competence go hand in hand. In practice, they often diverge.”

“Our identities are open systems, and so are our lives. We don’t have to stay tethered to old images of where we want to go or who we want to be. The simplest way to start rethinking our options is to question what we do daily.”

“The person most likely to persuade you to change your mind is you. You get to pick the reasons you find most compelling, and you come away with a real sense of ownership over them.” Stop trying to convince others about the right answer. Open their mind to the possibility they might be wrong and let them work their way to the solution.

Changing Minds

Anton’s syndrome is a condition whereby an individual is oblivious to a physical disability due to damage to the occipital lobe of the brain. Armchair quarterback syndrome: Phenomenon where confidence exceeds competence. Imposter syndrome: Phenomenon where competence exceeds confidence. The Dunning-Kruger effect: Identifies the disconnect between competence and confidence. The most confident are often the least competent.

Syndromes

“People who are right a lot listen a lot, and they change their mind a lot. If you don’t change your mind frequently, you’re going to be wrong a lot.”

We identify with our group or tribe. We distinguish ourselves from our adversaries—they are everything we are not.We preach the virtues of our side.We prosecute the vices of our rivals.As social beings, we are motivated to seek belonging and status. Group identification helps us achieve these goals.Group polarization: The phenomenon where we interact with people like us. This results in more extreme beliefs.

Group Dynamics

The best approach to changing someone’s mind is to help that person make the change on their own.  Three key techniques are used:<ul><li>Asking open-ended questions.</li><li>Engaging in reflective listening.</li><li>Affirming the person’s desire and ability to change.</li></ul>

Motivational interviewing: 

The author recommends twice-a-year personal checkups: opportunities to reassess your current pursuits, whether your current desires still align with your plans, and whether it’s time to pivot.

Grit is essential for motivation, but it can also blind us to rethinking.

What are the aspects of your life that need rethinking?

#1 New York Times Bestseller “THIS. This is the right book for right now. Yes, learning requires focus. But, unlearning and relearning requires much more—it requires choosing courage over comfort. In Think Again, Adam Grant weaves together research and storytelling to help us build the intellectual and emotional muscle we need to stay curious enough about the world to actually change it. I’ve never felt so hopeful about what I don’t know.” —Brené Brown, Ph.D., #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dare to Lead The bestselling author of Give and Take and Originals examines the critical art of rethinking: learning to question your opinions and open other people's minds, which can position you for excellence at work and wisdom in life Intelligence is usually seen as the ability to think and learn, but in a rapidly changing world, there's another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn. In our daily lives, too many of us favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt. We listen to opinions that make us feel good, instead of ideas that make us think hard. We see disagreement as a threat to our egos, rather than an opportunity to learn. We surround ourselves with people who agree with our conclusions, when we should be gravitating toward those who challenge our thought process. The result is that our beliefs get brittle long before our bones. We think too much like preachers defending our sacred beliefs, prosecutors proving the other side wrong, and politicians campaigning for approval--and too little like scientists searching for truth. Intelligence is no cure, and it can even be a curse: being good at thinking can make us worse at rethinking. The brighter we are, the blinder to our own limitations we can become. Organizational psychologist Adam Grant is an expert on opening other people's minds--and our own. As Wharton's top-rated professor and the bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take, he makes it one of his guiding principles to argue like he's right but listen like he's wrong. With bold ideas and rigorous evidence, he investigates how we can embrace the joy of being wrong, bring nuance to charged conversations, and build schools, workplaces, and communities of lifelong learners. You'll learn how an international debate champion wins arguments, a Black musician persuades white supremacists to abandon hate, a vaccine whisperer convinces concerned parents to immunize their children, and Adam has coaxed Yankees fans to root for the Red Sox. Think Again reveals that we don't have to believe everything we think or internalize everything we feel. It's an invitation to let go of views that are no longer serving us well and prize mental flexibility over foolish consistency. If knowledge is power, knowing what we don't know is wisdom.

philosophy

Philosophy

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

books

Books

#1 New York Times Bestseller “THIS. This is the right book for right now. Yes, learning requires focus. But, unlearning and relearning requires much more—it requires choosing courage over comfort. In Think Again, Adam Grant weaves together research and storytelling to help us build the intellectual and emotional muscle we need to stay curious enough about the world to actually change it. I’ve never felt so hopeful about what I don’t know.” —Brené Brown, Ph.D., #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dare to Lead The bestselling author of Give and Take and Originals examines the critical art of rethinking: learning to question your opinions and open other people's minds, which can position you for excellence at work and wisdom in life Intelligence is usually seen as the ability to think and learn, but in a rapidly changing world, there's another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn. In our daily lives, too many of us favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt. We listen to opinions that make us feel good, instead of ideas that make us think hard. We see disagreement as a threat to our egos, rather than an opportunity to learn. We surround ourselves with people who agree with our conclusions, when we should be gravitating toward those who challenge our thought process. The result is that our beliefs get brittle long before our bones. We think too much like preachers defending our sacred beliefs, prosecutors proving the other side wrong, and politicians campaigning for approval--and too little like scientists searching for truth. Intelligence is no cure, and it can even be a curse: being good at thinking can make us worse at rethinking. The brighter we are, the blinder to our own limitations we can become. Organizational psychologist Adam Grant is an expert on opening other people's minds--and our own. As Wharton's top-rated professor and the bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take, he makes it one of his guiding principles to argue like he's right but listen like he's wrong. With bold ideas and rigorous evidence, he investigates how we can embrace the joy of being wrong, bring nuance to charged conversations, and build schools, workplaces, and communities of lifelong learners. You'll learn how an international debate champion wins arguments, a Black musician persuades white supremacists to abandon hate, a vaccine whisperer convinces concerned parents to immunize their children, and Adam has coaxed Yankees fans to root for the Red Sox. Think Again reveals that we don't have to believe everything we think or internalize everything we feel. It's an invitation to let go of views that are no longer serving us well and prize mental flexibility over foolish consistency. If knowledge is power, knowing what we don't know is wisdom.

Adam Grant is an accomplished writer whose work has resonated with readers around the world. Adam Grant has published several books that explore a range of topics, from fiction to nonfiction, and has received critical acclaim for the ability to weave compelling narratives. Adam Grant's writing style is known for its depth and authenticity, and has earned quite a loyal following of readers.

ADAM GRANT

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