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Ex-Health Insurance Exec: Industry Is Using Decades-Old Scare Tactics to Fight Medicare for All
How Going Against Intuition Leads to Self Deception
Has there ever been a time when you had an intuitive feeling about something but you went against it? Regardless of how that particular outcome played out, it probably felt uncomfortable to go against your gut.
It’s common to think of intuition as having a kind of magical source. But it is really built out of a series of authentic experiences that reinforce our ways of thinking and ways of being over time. Once you experience success following a certain path of choices, you are likely to repeat that pattern of thinking. Likewise, if a series of choices leads to a negative outcome, you will remember that information for next time.
Over time and experience, we begin to develop a sense that we affectionately refer to as our “gut feelings.” It is hard to say how accurate these feelings are in guiding our individual choices, but one thing is certain, they have a significant impact on our self-perception and how we relate to one another.
When we go against our gut, it can be a form of self-betrayal. This can be hard to reconcile. Our intuition is so closely linked to who we are, when we doubt it, things can quickly become confusing.
In the book Leadership and Self Deception: Getting Out of the Box, published in 2000 by The Arbinger Institute, the authors explain how this process happens to us step by step:
1. An act contrary to what I feel I should do for another is called an act of “self-betrayal.”
2. When I betray myself, I begin to see the world in a way that justifies my self-betrayal.
3. When I see the world in a self-justifying way, my view of reality becomes distorted.
They go on to give an example of a young couple and their newborn infant. Both parents exhausted and bewildered by the sudden and extensive changes in their lives and sleeping patterns, like many a typical night in this circumstance, the baby begins crying. The father’s first intuitive thought is, “I should get up and tend to the baby.” But instead, he decides to pretend to be asleep and waits for his wife to wake up and care for the baby, going entirely against his first impulse. He has now betrayed his intuition. Once this happens, it is easy to begin to justify his self-betrayal with thoughts about his wife such as, “she should get up with the baby, I have to work all day tomorrow.” Or, “I washed the dishes and did bath and fed the baby tonight, it’s her turn to do something.”
Just like the father in this scenario, once we betray our intuitive feelings, we quickly begin to inflate the view of ourselves in terms of what we have done right while we equally inflate our view of others in terms of what they have done wrong, or have failed to do. It is through this process our perspective becomes skewed.
You can imagine the type of interpersonal conflict to which this may lead us. As we continue to deny our initial impulses, we layer upon layer self betrayal and self deception, getting farther and farther away from our natural, true, and transparent feelings, and more and more intricately bound up in our feelings of defensiveness, reactiveness, judgment, and doubt.
And the impact of self-deception is far reaching. The Arbinger Institute describes self-deception this way, “It blinds us to the true causes of problems, and once we’re blind, all the “solutions” we can think of will actually make matters worse. Whether at work or at home, self-deception obscures the truth about ourselves, corrupts our view of others and our circumstances, and inhibits our ability to make wise and helpful decisions.”
So how can we sort out if we are listening to our authentic intuition or being blinded by our own self-deception? We start with investigating our motives and exploring whether they are honest or ulterior.
And from there, it’s simple. We try to do better. We make one decision at a time, always striving for authentic, transparent communication, knowing we will have some missteps along the way. Just as the momentum can get going in the direction of self-betrayal, we have the power to turn the momentum in the direction of self-trust.
As we grow in this skill, we grow in our ability to trust our natural impulses and to trust our intuition, one gut feeling at a time.
Reference:
The Arbinger Institute (2000). Leadership and Self Deception: Getting Out of the Box. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Psychology Around the Net: August 3, 2019
This week’s Psychology Around the Net covers even newer research on screen time and mental health (specifically for adolescents), a few little tests you can perform to reveal a narcissist, a clue to the maternal instinct, and more.
Enjoy!
Screen Time Might not Be as Bad for Mental Health as We Thought: Isn’t it starting to feel like there’s going to be as many conflicting reports on screen time and mental health as there is for marijuana and mental health? Surely it’s not just me. Now on the reports of the negative mental health effects of screen time, According to University of Oxford experimental psychologist Andrew Przybylski says: “None of these [negative] claims is supported by facts or a drop of scientific evidence.” (Ouch.) After he and colleagues conducted surveyed approximately 10,000 15-year-old boys over the course of a decade regarding their households, life satisfaction, and social media use, Przybylski states the adolescents’ answers showed social media had little impact on their well-being. Specifically, “What we found was a whole lot of nothing.” (Double ouch.) However, some other researchers argue the study is flawed.
5 Tests Which Reveal a Narcissist’s True Colors: It’s not always easy spotting a narcissist — especially the ones who know how to disguise the kinds of behavior that gives them away. Shahida Arabi has gathered and explained five “tests” you can give to reveal whether someone is a narcissist — from watching how they react to your success to seeing if they use a personal disclosure as ammunition.
Scientists Find Clue to ‘Maternal Instinct’: New research has discovered a group of cells that are activated by oxytocin, the love hormone which is important in the regulation of maternal behavior, in an area of female mouse brains that isn’t present in the same area of male mouse brains.
ROZES Addresses Mental Health in Heartfelt ‘Call Me’ Video: Watch: Musician and mental health advocate ROZES has released a powerful new video for her latest single “Call Me,” which she co-wrote with Alex Hope and Sophie Frances. Both the song lyrics and the video address the importance of seeing help, as one woman struggles with mental health issues and another offers support: “I get how you lay in bed all day / I used to be the same way, ay ay ay ay / Remember how I used to be / All alone, by myself, only me.”
Hector, The Projector: What to Do When You Feel Like You’re Being Judged: Let’s face it: feeling judged sucks. It’s even worse when the person judging you is your partner, a family member, or a friend. What are the best ways to handle it?
How Journalists’ Jobs Affect Their Mental Health: A Research Roundup: Journalists report on a multitude of tough subjects every day — from political violence to natural disasters to human suffering — and it’s no wonder it can take a toll on a reporter’s mental health. Says Natalee Seely, an assistant professor of journalism at Ball State University: “Like therapists — who through the process of ‘transference’ can vicariously experience their patients’ emotional pain — reporters may also experience a type of indirect, secondary trauma through the victims they interview and the graphic scenes to which they must bear witness.” Check out these studies that take a look at the stress and psychological toll journalists experience(d) covering everything from Hurricane Harvey to everyday violence.
Our next antibiotic may come from dirt bacteria, suggests new study, which solved the X-ray crystal structure of the enzyme that makes obafluorin, a broad spectrum antibiotic agent made from a fluorescent strain of soil bacteria that might offer a powerful antidote to antibiotic resistance.
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