The Cat is Out of the Bag — BRELLA - Community Services Society

The Script to Fake News

By Louise Tremblay

Have you ever been labelled based on one small attribute of your personality or, even worse, based on a trait that doesn’t resemble you at all? Or on a behaviour that you worked hard to discontinue long ago, but someone in your family continues to characterize you based on your history? How did that feel? Did you feel judged, misunderstood, confined, or stifled by that other person’s perception? How aware are you of your own ability to judge others in the same way? If you think you are aware, this article may surprise you.

The Cat Is Out of the Bag

A few years ago, friends who live out-of-province came to visit me here in BC. Because of the distance, they were not familiar with the details of my lifestyle. When they arrived, they were aghast at the discovery that I would live with a cat and, what was worse, that I would allow him on my bed. They both declared I was the last person they would have ever imagined having pets because, according to them, I had no use for the messy creatures.

The reality is my friends don’t like having pets for the reasons they ascribed to me. Because they value a neat home and they know me for having similar standards, they inferred that I would feel the same way as they did about animals. What they didn’t know is that I’d always loved animals, and I could put up with the little messes in favour for their companionship.

My house guests had filtered their perception of me through their own mental models. They ascribed my likes and dislikes based on their own belief systems. They were surprised that the facts they had created did not match reality.

My friends are not bad or unusual people. They climbed the ladder of inference. They processed new information in the way most people do: through mental models.

What Are Mental Models?

Mental models are unconscious cognitive processes. They are essentially simple or complex assumptions and generalizations that people make about phenomena, based on personal experiences and beliefs. They involve reasoning, anticipation, and premise.

The human brain is not adept at sorting out complex situations efficiently. Mental models simplify information by categorizing it into generalizations. They accelerate the reasoning process when time is limited. They make strange occurrences seem familiar by relating them to our own beliefs and experiences.

Mental models are widely adopted strategies. Although espoused values vary greatly from person to person, mental models are consistently used among people irrespective of culture, occupation, gender, and other types of diversity.

The Impact of Mental Models

Mental models stem from conjecture, and they ignore falseness. We take observation and a little information and make unsubstantiated assumptions, which we quickly declare factual. Not only can they result in serious errors in judgement, mental models also have the power to model our behaviours and that of others.

We underestimate our ability to judge and to overemphasize positive as well as negative attributes. Even when faced with contrary evidence, we firmly believe the rendition of the events we have created. We don’t only judge others through mental models; we also judge ourselves in the same manner. In doing so, we may self-aggrandize by overestimating our abilities or self-deprecate by emphasizing feelings of inadequacies. In essence, they write the script for fake news.

The problem with mental models is that they lead to mental, intellectual, and emotional stillness. They prevent learning. Unless we are able to notice them in ourselves and in our organizations, we keep thinking, doing, and seeing the same things. They prevent change from happening for the better. They repudiate diversity and impede inclusion.

Challenging Mental Models

To liberate our minds from the confines of mental models, we need to recognize and question them and see our interactions with others from their different perspectives. This requires self-reflection, compassion, and a dose of reason.

Self-reflection entails understanding on how our own beliefs, values, and personal histories influence our outlook. When we self-reflect, we are able to observe emotions as they well up inside and take the time to understand what triggers them. Then, we can then segregate emotions from behaviour and decide on a different course of action.

Compassion paves the way to seeking the truth and making a difference in the lives of others. The more we can see other people within their own circumstances and anxieties, the more we naturally develop compassion. By combining self-reflection and compassion, we have the ability to dislodge deeply entrenched mental models and appreciate the difference between us and others.

Mental models are constructed in our own heads and they are flexible once they rise to our awareness. If we question them, they do not withstand scrutiny and they deconstruct. We then can give them different meaning and view diversity more realistically.