Yes, yes yes! When we apply intentions to others, we're projecting our own beliefs, needs, etc. Actually, projection is a defense that leads us to believe that everyone is just like us. But really, we are seeing our own reflection. We all do it to a certain extent, but when we're aware of it, we question - is that my stuff or theirs? Of course, equanimity (not reacting emotionally) helps us to look at it objectively.
Best to let people tell us who they are & make sure we're not reacting to our own stuff. Then we're free to respond appropriately.
This is an excellent example of behaving your way to success. It isn't only about external behaviors, it is also the filters that we have that are in between the facts of the world, and our perception of it. If yo are always assuming the worst will come, that will be the outcome that will come to pass.
Of course it is a popular new-age belief that objective reality is actually created by one’s thoughts and feelings, but there is vast evidence to the contrary for this assertion.
No Santa
However, our reality filters serve as a tunnel of opportunities in situational reality, that we can chose to take constructive steps to attain.
I thought you were going to say that those primed to assume people are safe would then "notice" and approach the safe people, whereas those who assume people are potentially dangerous would also "notice" and be in some way motivated to interact with the dangerous ones. OTOH, I watch a lot of the true-crime-murder shows (eg, Discovery channel) and very often the victims are described as so nice they would'nt have any enemies, only to discover that yup, there was one out there after all.
To me the whole concept of the benefit of the doubt is tied to faith. Of course this is part and parcel of my own personal history with deep religiosity. You have a filter built in to screen the 'good' people from the others. Of course this is absolutely fails catastrophically as soon as a bad actor starts manipulating the system.
A very interesting article and something that took me far to long to understand myself
Trusting others is tied to faith in God? Can you expand on that?
I tie it to faith too, but, my worldview is nondualistic. I experience it as faith in my own inner being, in my connection to everything, in my intuition. Without emotional reactions to sidetrack the information, intuition has never steered me wrong. Actually, it astounds me. So many examples...
This may prime our implicit social contract to assume that all people actually deserve our attention and respect automatically.
Yet many times it can lead to exploitation via irrational empathy.
The just world theory - people are not inherently good or bad, they are social mammals within a hierarchy, and tend to behave in ways that benefit themselves thru enlightened self interest.
It was all part of the religious indoctrination I experienced from a young age. You have faith and that can be extended to your 'brothers' and 'sisters' by default and not giving the benefit of the doubt was tantamount to being judgmental which was very bad unless you were doing it to those sinners.
It was all very convoluted but the bottom line was that you always by default trusted anyone who gave the same confession that you did. For the record, the church I attended at a very young age had a pedophile as a youth director who preyed on young boys and at the next church that I attended there was a lesbian among the girls though not being a girl I never knew if it was an adult leader or a senior girl who was responsible I just know that eventually there was a huge scandal about it. BTW I wasn't molested myself at the first place but I attempted to reveal what was happening and got severely criticized for slandering the "fine young man"
Religion has a lot to do with everything. There can be a lot of toxicity in there. There has been a paradigm shift from assuming automatically that religious people are likely to be better, towards thinking that they are likely to be worse, because so much in religion is intellectually and morally reprehensible, and all that is better understood nowdays. Once upon a time not many people had that on their radar. So it comes down to judging the individual. Remarkably (from an atheist humanist point of view), the world shows us that some religious people can indeed be absolutely rational in secular life despite their odd beliefs. The two track mind. It's an interesting phenomenon that I will leave to the philosophers and cognitive scientists. Meanwhile in my own life, I treat religious people with extreme wariness until they prove thier actual worth, as some of my friends have.
People often allow the presence of religion in a person to be indicative of "goodness". They don't evaluate them as an individual, they just assume that being involved with the church or religious in nature means that they are automatically trustworthy.
Wow. Where was intuition in this scheme? Even tho I was brought up in a religion that stressed listening within, it took decades of work before intuition became reliable. I just can't imagine what kind of psychological damage that a religion like that would do.
Would you mind sharing what religion that was? I've heard only of one religion that tells its members not to trust themselves. I hope that kind of thinking isn't common in religion. It's dangerous.
Two interesting mechanisms we have when we come into this world: empathy and intuition.
Without it most of us would be paralysed and unable to interact with the world around us. But both are only stepping stones to further development. With the emotional empathy we can choose to interact with others and will not be rejected, both our families and strangers. With our intuition we can guess at how things are and from that we can act to try to meet our needs and desires.
If we are safe around people and if we have access to opportunities, education and experiences – we will slowly but surely develop out of the emotional empathy over to the cognitive one, because the cognitive one is the one that is actually accurate and connected to reality. Our intuition will start out strong if we have the right environment. We will start to develop cognition through our initial intuition and with that we will learn to judge what information can build up stronger intuition, which in turn will help us think more cognitively instead of being reliant only on the emotional brain – which in turn will build even stronger intuition.
To explain better how I perceive our intuition; what goes in to our brain and body through sensation, experiences and information will form our intuition unconsciously in a mix with our emotions. Everything that comes into our brain and body – our systems (the different part of the brain and nervous system) will try to make sense out of it, they will try to see patterns and they will make unconscious assumptions, even though we are not making a conscious effort to do so. This mechanism is our intuition. But at some point in our development, if it goes well, we will realise how powerful our intuition can be, and how we can and should manage it ourselves to make it stronger and more accurate.
If every thought and every opinion is equal for example regardless of who puts it forth – if that is our attitude and assumption, then we will filter everything that goes in to our brain through that. We will categorize information from that presupposition. If that is a truthful and accurate assumption then our intuition will be stronger because we have the right filter for our brain to process information that comes in unconsciously. But if that is not an assumption that really serves the truth or the objective reality – then our intuition will be our enemy. And not taking care of your intuition is a really bad idea, because it likes to rule over us, especially when things get tough, emotional or when we feel an urgency to act quickly.
You might have consumed endless fiction, both in the form of books and movies, about how people would react if someone would murder their loved one. But fictional writers that write from their imagination first and foremost instead of doing research will get things wrong, and they will imitate each other’s ideas of how people would act in that situation, because it is rare to actually have an insight into the real deal. If you are unconscious of the fact that you actually have no real information about this situation, you might draw on all the fictional stories you have read and watched if you were told to rate how much insight you have into how people would feel in that situation. Because you were not categorizing the information when it went in as fictional and did not hold account over the fact that you actually have never heard how this experience is from a real source. It is easy for our intuition to get things wrong, when it is feed in vague manner, where we do not necessary categorize facts from fictions. But we all have it in common, regardless of how we manage (or fail to manage) our intuition, that we have an extremely strong urge to follow it and fight for the convictions that we get from it. Because it is our fallback system when we either do not have time to put in a lot of cognitive work, or even do not bother to.
Benefit of the doubt fails, when people are brought up to first and foremost rely on both intuition and emotional empathy without being allowed to develop it towards cognitive empathy and managed intuition and overt cognition. If you are raised in a dysfunctional family, you might be punished for recognizing facts or for connecting causes and effects. When that happens, we remain in a dependent state where your family members are effectively perpetual strangers that you are not allowed to come to conclusions about, hence you are stuck in this initial state of the benefit of the doubt. You need to be allowed to come to conclusions, or you will never be able to judge whether or not you should extend the trust into the future. And one thing that controlling people in dysfunctional families make sure of, is controlling the feed into your intuition so that it is always skewed, and so that you will never realise to take charge of it yourself. And then they complement or reward you for relying on your underdeveloped intuition that they are ruling over and paint others as evil or malignant for wanting more cognition from you.
Regarding small communities, they are not a guarantee for better outcomes. If the community is dysfunctional, you can end up with adult population that has been groomed from a young age to endure all sorts of bad behaviour from particular persons, based on social standing of all involved. It can actually be harder to fight back, then a predatory behaviour in larger societies, because in the smaller communities the society protects the predator because they have been groomed more extensively to do so.
You have a very similar way of thinking regarding intuition as I have. I believe that it is the brain picking up on unconscious cues that otherwise would be missed. People often override that information because their emotions tell them a different story however.
In this regard self-defeating quality of emotional trust is similar to such of emotional love. A lot of things about emotional trust and love, tradition of wearing rose-colored glasses in the relationships, for example, have always perplexed me. I can imagine an abstract of these emotions, but for me if they were present they would have to occur when it’s appropriate logically, like emotional trust firing when I trust someone cognitively or emotional love firing when I realize a like someone a lot.
How can you continue to love someone who you see has enough qualities you don’t admire or does things you consider unacceptable or worse abuses you? Why instead of it all making you instantly fall out of love with them, you begin to like these things about them, make exceptions and tolerate them? Isn’t it supposed to be vice versa?
What the biological purpose of it could be I can’t understand either, it seems to me that for the brain to shut down trust, love and attachment to the person that isn’t a good mate or poses a threat would have been much more productive. Even from the “reproduce, form relationships, cooperate with the society!” standpoint it makes no sense.
A good question, but people do all the time. They logically know better, but emotionally can't help themselves. I'm working on a post about this actually.
The only evolutionary idea I've heard that could possibly relate would be about women being attracted to bad boys. It may be a twisted remnant of when men fought tigers and women needed them to protect them. I'm not sure I buy it.
I think it's more likely conditioning. Generally, people who keep going back for more abuse were abused as children and the abuser was their model of normal behavior.
Attraction is an involuntary urge, it’s not a conscious choice.
(Acting upon this urge is)
Story- I am naturally a painfully introverted personality and prefer philosophy to sports, cars etc
And long ago I noticed that the girls liked the jerks, thugs, jocks and bad boys.
I railed and whined at the unfairness of it all. ‘Lisa is so nice, we are great friends but all she does is complain to me about her douche bag boyfriend !!’
I felt lonely, frustrated and dejected.
Then one day It just occurred to me to accept reality.
I stopped talking about nerdy things like science.
I lifted weights, ALOT
Got some tattoos
Ride a motorcycle
Join a metal band…
Adopt a cocky, but funny and light hearted attitude.
Did it work?
Hundreds of sexual partners over my lifetime.
There is a evolutionary advantage for men that look like they can fight, or break the rules when the rules don’t bring home the mastodon steaks.
"A harmless man is not a good man. A good man is a very dangerous man who has that under voluntary control"
That is what makes a good partner. Bad boys have nothing to do with it for me. It is about what the man is capable of, and what he allows to show depending on the circumstances.
I've heard complaints from the good guys about it, so I know it happens.
But we don't have to follow evolutionary urges. When I felt helpless and insecure, I wanted someone to fill the empty. Bad boys were exciting, they took drugs with me, they indulged in all the ways I escaped from myself. It wasn't exactly fun when they got thrown in jail, but it changed things up - it gave me entertainment.
Once I overcame my insecurity & helplessness, I wasn't attracted to those types of guys at all. I stopped needing an entertaining partner.
It's possible there was an evolutionary component in my attraction to bad boys, but I think it was primarily due to BPD, I would have rather died than be bored and alone. It was totally cured by the time I was 30. Took decades, tho, to find equanimity.
Humans are really complex creatures, aren't we? I'm sure there are causes of my behavior that are so buried I'm not aware of them.
Entertainment! Something exciting going on. Now that you mention it, I understand. I guess we all seek relief from our intolerable feelings in different ways and I would favour a feeling of safety over excitement, but that's me. Glad you got past it though, and those experiences will have taught you a lot.
Hey, good on you, I'm glad your changes worked so well for you! I think maybe we are defining 'bad boys' differently. To me, muscles, a bike and playing metal with a light hearted attitude are not bad boy as such, I'm thinking more of people's attraction to dark, dodgy, edgy, up-to-no-good types.
Certainly attraction is involuntary. My own attraction includes but is not confined to nerds. And I am absolutely indifferent to men's muscles and it's not my preferred look, although as a lifelong gym person myself I know what is involved and respect the work put in. And strength is useful anyway.
I suppose I just reject the cliche that women are attracted to people who are actually bad and will hurt them. When that happens there has been a tendency to scorn the woman's idiocy rather than look for the past damage that may have caused the maladaption.
Yes. I suppose my definition of bad boy means men ranging from everyday jerks to abusers, regardless of their lifestyle, manner or appearance. The ones who make women unhappy yet reluctant to leave.
Both in my case 40 years ago. I was an emotional kid who wasn't allowed to express emotions. Resulted in BPD & a fear of being bored and alone. Bad boys helped me escape until one day, I had to leave the last guy. I needed to heal. He was the nicest of the bunch & it was really difficult. I moved into a tiny apartment. I was so scared, I shook! I mean, pouring myself a drink was a messy procedure.
Long, long story, but in the end, it turned me into a mystic. Cured 40 years ago. And then, my attraction to bad boys was no more. Truly happy and at peace for the last 3.
I agree. That 'women like bad boys' cliche was deeply unhelpful, shallow, and dismissive, and distracted from looking for the origins in abuse, as you say.
It's madness isn't it? And yet here we are. You are fortunate that you say you would not feel love or trust when not deserved. I am in precisely that situation now, and am putting everything into fighting it, and have been for a long time, as the toll on my mental and physical health has been awful. But it DOESN'T WORK. Adults seem to have overall poor success with this aspect of relationships, though all credit to those who manage to change. I think a secure childhood and being explicitly taught about such things from a young age would help equip people to be immune to this nonsense or at least deal with it better.
I certainly agree with the last part. Hope you don't mind if I offer a different way of dealing with unwanted thoughts.
It's counterintuitive, but accepting how we feel causes the feelings to dim.
Your feelings have information for you about your unconscious processes. They're telling you what needs to heal. By trying to shut them down, they scream louder so you'll pay attention. Fighting them actually intensifies them. It confuses the issue. Accepting them lets us explore it calmly.
Problem with acceptance is that it scares people. We naturally think that accepting them means they'll grow stronger. But, that's not the case. By letting them be, we're able to get some objectivity. Then we're able to respond from choice instead of from an unwanted emotional reaction.
Mindfulness meditation (watching thoughts & emotions without participating and judging them) is another way to gain some objectivity.
I don't mind at all. This approach was suggested to me years ago by a very kind and rather spiritual doctor who I was seeing during a crisis. I followed up reading about it and gave it a try. Just accept rather than fight or judge your negative feelings and you will attain some detachment from them and they will hurt less, sounds good. But in all honesty, it didn't work for me. Perhaps it would if I trained for years in a monastery or something, but for all practical purposes I was not successful. I was certainly able to learn from my feelings by not shutting them out, but I could not diminish their intensity. I think as in all areas of life, different things work for different people, and it's a matter of giving things a try, you can be lucky, or not.
When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself. -
Isn't hypnosis effective for changing deeply held beliefs? I know tons of people who changed their views of religion from Abrahamic-based traditions to a mystical, inner view. I admit, I'm an extreme example, but I'm curious if Twain's quote reflects your own experience in your practice.
Are you familiar with the "Prisoner's Dilemma" experiments? Both the single-event variety and the continuing one? If I remember correctly for indefinitely continuing iterations, it turns out that starting with, not exactly a benefit of the doubt but a willingness to start with a cooperative stance--and then continuing with a tit-for-tat strategy, leads to the most successful outcome. Do you see this game theory idea as similar to yours that trust needs to be earned based on a person's behavior (which I agree with, BTW).
This is a great life lesson, I've been hurt in dating & relationships often because I've stupidly ignored numerous red flags if the woman is super hot and the sex is good, only for it to end badly when I discover how toxic they are....I will certainly take this on board moving forward and take action/withdraw as soon as I notice red flags in others.
Great piece, all this is such good advice. Perhaps people imagine that not giving the benefit of the doubt must mean looking at everyone with narrowed eyes and being always terse and aloof!
One thing though- you mention emotional trust, and this is something I puzzled over when you wrote about it on Quora when listing emotions. And I thought, what!? Trust isn't an 'emotion'!!! You may feel emotions towards someone and also trust them, but there's no Trust Emotion, surely. Isn't 'feeling trust' just figurative? What would it even feel like? I have never felt such a thing.
I pondered for a while, filed the idea away, and then one day out of nowhere, a dim flash of memory popped up. I can now recall, with effort, a feeling from earliest childhood that I had regarding my carers. It's faint, but I can go back in time in my mind, and yes, it was a distinct emotion, very comforting, and no doubt essential for developmental wellbeing when one is totally helpless.
But quite soon, that feeling disappeared. You learn that you can trust your carers more or less, as they have shown themselves to be more or less trustworthy, in at least some respects, and this creates a 'state' more than an emotion. I am sure I have never felt emotional trust since preschool. Do adults really continue to feel this emotion? I'm amazed.
But does this mean one then operates in a state of constant wary mistrust and careful judgement? Not at all. There are other factors beyond being ruled by ones emotions that can cause habitually giving the benefit of the doubt, and those that come to mind for me are 1. Copying social norms uthinkingly. 2. Deciding, wrongly, that one has to interact on a benefit of the doubt basis for the world to function. 3. Plain youthful naivety and stupidity and poor risk assessment.
All this can account for the bungles and disasters that result from putting trust in the wrong people, without any 'emotion' of trust being present at all.
We use the same words but our experiences are so different.
I am going to have to do some asking around:
"Hi, how's things? By the way, is trust an emotion?".
I think you will be amazed how much of a strong emotion trust can be. It also might give you some insight as to why some people so strongly to having their trust betrayed.
I am really trying to get my head around it. Now that you mention it I am recalling the feeling of having trust betrayed, and a whole cascade of memories from all ages ran through my head. I felt such betrayals very strongly, went into an absolute spin, rug pulled from under me, bewilderment, adrenaline rushes, outrage, taking a long time to regain equilibrium, all of that, so thats pretty neurotypical. But I'm not sure that gets me any closer to understanding an emotion of trust that would create that reaction. Perhaps I am feeling something I can't recognise, or maybe our words and descriptions are inadequate, or what I think of as my infant emotion of trust was something different altogether. I just don't know anymore, it's very confusing! I'd love to read some people's descriptions of the emotion of trust as they experience it. Anyone????
Religion has a lot to do with everything. There can be a lot of toxicity in there. There has been a paradigm shift from assuming automatically that religious people are likely to be better, towards thinking that they are likely to be worse, because so much in religion is intellectually and morally reprehensible, and all that is better understood nowdays. Once upon a time not many people had that on their radar. So it comes down to judging the individual. Remarkably (from an atheist humanist point of view), the world shows us that some religious people can indeed be absolutely rational in secular life despite their odd beliefs. The two track mind. It's an interesting phenomenon that I will leave to the philosophers and cognitive scientists. Meanwhile in my own life, I treat religious people with extreme wariness until they prove thier actual worth, as some of my friends have.
"Do not apply any intentions at all."
Yes, yes yes! When we apply intentions to others, we're projecting our own beliefs, needs, etc. Actually, projection is a defense that leads us to believe that everyone is just like us. But really, we are seeing our own reflection. We all do it to a certain extent, but when we're aware of it, we question - is that my stuff or theirs? Of course, equanimity (not reacting emotionally) helps us to look at it objectively.
Best to let people tell us who they are & make sure we're not reacting to our own stuff. Then we're free to respond appropriately.
Indeed, I agree with you.
So true.
A classic experiment with people surveyed to categorize themselves lucky, or unlucky
The two separate groups walk down an alley, with paper money placed on the ground off to the side of the alley, but in plain view,
The lucky usually spotted the money and picked it up, the unlucky did not see it.
This is a type of expectation priming, as we filter our world thru our core beliefs and expectations.
If you are primed to assume most people are safe and have your best interests at heart, you will miss most of the clues.
The opposite is also true, so can lead to overcautiousness and paranoia, thus missing opportunities.
This is an excellent example of behaving your way to success. It isn't only about external behaviors, it is also the filters that we have that are in between the facts of the world, and our perception of it. If yo are always assuming the worst will come, that will be the outcome that will come to pass.
Of course it is a popular new-age belief that objective reality is actually created by one’s thoughts and feelings, but there is vast evidence to the contrary for this assertion.
No Santa
However, our reality filters serve as a tunnel of opportunities in situational reality, that we can chose to take constructive steps to attain.
I thought you were going to say that those primed to assume people are safe would then "notice" and approach the safe people, whereas those who assume people are potentially dangerous would also "notice" and be in some way motivated to interact with the dangerous ones. OTOH, I watch a lot of the true-crime-murder shows (eg, Discovery channel) and very often the victims are described as so nice they would'nt have any enemies, only to discover that yup, there was one out there after all.
To me the whole concept of the benefit of the doubt is tied to faith. Of course this is part and parcel of my own personal history with deep religiosity. You have a filter built in to screen the 'good' people from the others. Of course this is absolutely fails catastrophically as soon as a bad actor starts manipulating the system.
A very interesting article and something that took me far to long to understand myself
Trusting others is tied to faith in God? Can you expand on that?
I tie it to faith too, but, my worldview is nondualistic. I experience it as faith in my own inner being, in my connection to everything, in my intuition. Without emotional reactions to sidetrack the information, intuition has never steered me wrong. Actually, it astounds me. So many examples...
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
You are your brothers keeper
This may prime our implicit social contract to assume that all people actually deserve our attention and respect automatically.
Yet many times it can lead to exploitation via irrational empathy.
The just world theory - people are not inherently good or bad, they are social mammals within a hierarchy, and tend to behave in ways that benefit themselves thru enlightened self interest.
I hadn't thought of that, but you are right. I can see how such rules could easily make a 'good' person more credulous and vulnerable.
It was all part of the religious indoctrination I experienced from a young age. You have faith and that can be extended to your 'brothers' and 'sisters' by default and not giving the benefit of the doubt was tantamount to being judgmental which was very bad unless you were doing it to those sinners.
It was all very convoluted but the bottom line was that you always by default trusted anyone who gave the same confession that you did. For the record, the church I attended at a very young age had a pedophile as a youth director who preyed on young boys and at the next church that I attended there was a lesbian among the girls though not being a girl I never knew if it was an adult leader or a senior girl who was responsible I just know that eventually there was a huge scandal about it. BTW I wasn't molested myself at the first place but I attempted to reveal what was happening and got severely criticized for slandering the "fine young man"
People really don't like hearing when they have let a wolf into the sheep pen, so any warnings about one tend to be looked at with incredulity.
That’s handy, for some.
Thanks for the reminder. I was allowed to abandon religion young and barely remembered these dangerous attitudes.
Religion has a lot to do with everything. There can be a lot of toxicity in there. There has been a paradigm shift from assuming automatically that religious people are likely to be better, towards thinking that they are likely to be worse, because so much in religion is intellectually and morally reprehensible, and all that is better understood nowdays. Once upon a time not many people had that on their radar. So it comes down to judging the individual. Remarkably (from an atheist humanist point of view), the world shows us that some religious people can indeed be absolutely rational in secular life despite their odd beliefs. The two track mind. It's an interesting phenomenon that I will leave to the philosophers and cognitive scientists. Meanwhile in my own life, I treat religious people with extreme wariness until they prove thier actual worth, as some of my friends have.
ReplyDelete
I treat all people this way. Religion is no more or less a haven for the corrupt as anything else. Including atheism.
People often allow the presence of religion in a person to be indicative of "goodness". They don't evaluate them as an individual, they just assume that being involved with the church or religious in nature means that they are automatically trustworthy.
Wow. Where was intuition in this scheme? Even tho I was brought up in a religion that stressed listening within, it took decades of work before intuition became reliable. I just can't imagine what kind of psychological damage that a religion like that would do.
Would you mind sharing what religion that was? I've heard only of one religion that tells its members not to trust themselves. I hope that kind of thinking isn't common in religion. It's dangerous.
The first was American Baptist Association and the 2nd Independent Fundamental Baptist.
Similar to the indoctrination of Jehovah Witnesses. It's chilling.
I was raised evangelical myself
Two interesting mechanisms we have when we come into this world: empathy and intuition.
Without it most of us would be paralysed and unable to interact with the world around us. But both are only stepping stones to further development. With the emotional empathy we can choose to interact with others and will not be rejected, both our families and strangers. With our intuition we can guess at how things are and from that we can act to try to meet our needs and desires.
If we are safe around people and if we have access to opportunities, education and experiences – we will slowly but surely develop out of the emotional empathy over to the cognitive one, because the cognitive one is the one that is actually accurate and connected to reality. Our intuition will start out strong if we have the right environment. We will start to develop cognition through our initial intuition and with that we will learn to judge what information can build up stronger intuition, which in turn will help us think more cognitively instead of being reliant only on the emotional brain – which in turn will build even stronger intuition.
To explain better how I perceive our intuition; what goes in to our brain and body through sensation, experiences and information will form our intuition unconsciously in a mix with our emotions. Everything that comes into our brain and body – our systems (the different part of the brain and nervous system) will try to make sense out of it, they will try to see patterns and they will make unconscious assumptions, even though we are not making a conscious effort to do so. This mechanism is our intuition. But at some point in our development, if it goes well, we will realise how powerful our intuition can be, and how we can and should manage it ourselves to make it stronger and more accurate.
If every thought and every opinion is equal for example regardless of who puts it forth – if that is our attitude and assumption, then we will filter everything that goes in to our brain through that. We will categorize information from that presupposition. If that is a truthful and accurate assumption then our intuition will be stronger because we have the right filter for our brain to process information that comes in unconsciously. But if that is not an assumption that really serves the truth or the objective reality – then our intuition will be our enemy. And not taking care of your intuition is a really bad idea, because it likes to rule over us, especially when things get tough, emotional or when we feel an urgency to act quickly.
You might have consumed endless fiction, both in the form of books and movies, about how people would react if someone would murder their loved one. But fictional writers that write from their imagination first and foremost instead of doing research will get things wrong, and they will imitate each other’s ideas of how people would act in that situation, because it is rare to actually have an insight into the real deal. If you are unconscious of the fact that you actually have no real information about this situation, you might draw on all the fictional stories you have read and watched if you were told to rate how much insight you have into how people would feel in that situation. Because you were not categorizing the information when it went in as fictional and did not hold account over the fact that you actually have never heard how this experience is from a real source. It is easy for our intuition to get things wrong, when it is feed in vague manner, where we do not necessary categorize facts from fictions. But we all have it in common, regardless of how we manage (or fail to manage) our intuition, that we have an extremely strong urge to follow it and fight for the convictions that we get from it. Because it is our fallback system when we either do not have time to put in a lot of cognitive work, or even do not bother to.
Benefit of the doubt fails, when people are brought up to first and foremost rely on both intuition and emotional empathy without being allowed to develop it towards cognitive empathy and managed intuition and overt cognition. If you are raised in a dysfunctional family, you might be punished for recognizing facts or for connecting causes and effects. When that happens, we remain in a dependent state where your family members are effectively perpetual strangers that you are not allowed to come to conclusions about, hence you are stuck in this initial state of the benefit of the doubt. You need to be allowed to come to conclusions, or you will never be able to judge whether or not you should extend the trust into the future. And one thing that controlling people in dysfunctional families make sure of, is controlling the feed into your intuition so that it is always skewed, and so that you will never realise to take charge of it yourself. And then they complement or reward you for relying on your underdeveloped intuition that they are ruling over and paint others as evil or malignant for wanting more cognition from you.
Regarding small communities, they are not a guarantee for better outcomes. If the community is dysfunctional, you can end up with adult population that has been groomed from a young age to endure all sorts of bad behaviour from particular persons, based on social standing of all involved. It can actually be harder to fight back, then a predatory behaviour in larger societies, because in the smaller communities the society protects the predator because they have been groomed more extensively to do so.
You have a very similar way of thinking regarding intuition as I have. I believe that it is the brain picking up on unconscious cues that otherwise would be missed. People often override that information because their emotions tell them a different story however.
I can share an mental exercise that can strengthen the unconscious to conscious communication.
I call it my dash board light, as it reminds me of a check engine light.
The feeling you get as you step out the door and your unconscious pings you left something inside, like car keys.
When the signal is correct do this:
Anthropomorphise it into a being of some sort, and literally thank it out loud, perhaps as if it was a well behaved pet.
I just say thank you dash light for letting me know.
Our beliefs are assigned to us
We are mostly unconscious, our conscious mind is just the surface showing iceberg.
(I’m a hypnotist)
In this regard self-defeating quality of emotional trust is similar to such of emotional love. A lot of things about emotional trust and love, tradition of wearing rose-colored glasses in the relationships, for example, have always perplexed me. I can imagine an abstract of these emotions, but for me if they were present they would have to occur when it’s appropriate logically, like emotional trust firing when I trust someone cognitively or emotional love firing when I realize a like someone a lot.
How can you continue to love someone who you see has enough qualities you don’t admire or does things you consider unacceptable or worse abuses you? Why instead of it all making you instantly fall out of love with them, you begin to like these things about them, make exceptions and tolerate them? Isn’t it supposed to be vice versa?
What the biological purpose of it could be I can’t understand either, it seems to me that for the brain to shut down trust, love and attachment to the person that isn’t a good mate or poses a threat would have been much more productive. Even from the “reproduce, form relationships, cooperate with the society!” standpoint it makes no sense.
A good question, but people do all the time. They logically know better, but emotionally can't help themselves. I'm working on a post about this actually.
I'll look forward to it.
The only evolutionary idea I've heard that could possibly relate would be about women being attracted to bad boys. It may be a twisted remnant of when men fought tigers and women needed them to protect them. I'm not sure I buy it.
I think it's more likely conditioning. Generally, people who keep going back for more abuse were abused as children and the abuser was their model of normal behavior.
I have never understood the particular attraction to the bad boy type. They are usually just a lot of effort for little payoff.
Irrational expectations are at the root of most human suffering
Why women like bad boys
Attraction is an involuntary urge, it’s not a conscious choice.
(Acting upon this urge is)
Story- I am naturally a painfully introverted personality and prefer philosophy to sports, cars etc
And long ago I noticed that the girls liked the jerks, thugs, jocks and bad boys.
I railed and whined at the unfairness of it all. ‘Lisa is so nice, we are great friends but all she does is complain to me about her douche bag boyfriend !!’
I felt lonely, frustrated and dejected.
Then one day It just occurred to me to accept reality.
I stopped talking about nerdy things like science.
I lifted weights, ALOT
Got some tattoos
Ride a motorcycle
Join a metal band…
Adopt a cocky, but funny and light hearted attitude.
Did it work?
Hundreds of sexual partners over my lifetime.
There is a evolutionary advantage for men that look like they can fight, or break the rules when the rules don’t bring home the mastodon steaks.
Sperm is cheap, Eggs are expensive.
"A harmless man is not a good man. A good man is a very dangerous man who has that under voluntary control"
That is what makes a good partner. Bad boys have nothing to do with it for me. It is about what the man is capable of, and what he allows to show depending on the circumstances.
I see the usefulness of a man who has danger potential, but for myself I could never trust that voluntary control.
Regardless of the conscious rationalizations against attraction to so called bad boys, real world experiences show that it is a very strong tendency.
However, they tend to be used as temporary flings, adventurers.
The dopamine chasing woman usually move on, as oxytocin levels stay muted.
Jordan Peterson is correct
Indeed he is
I've heard complaints from the good guys about it, so I know it happens.
But we don't have to follow evolutionary urges. When I felt helpless and insecure, I wanted someone to fill the empty. Bad boys were exciting, they took drugs with me, they indulged in all the ways I escaped from myself. It wasn't exactly fun when they got thrown in jail, but it changed things up - it gave me entertainment.
Once I overcame my insecurity & helplessness, I wasn't attracted to those types of guys at all. I stopped needing an entertaining partner.
It's possible there was an evolutionary component in my attraction to bad boys, but I think it was primarily due to BPD, I would have rather died than be bored and alone. It was totally cured by the time I was 30. Took decades, tho, to find equanimity.
Humans are really complex creatures, aren't we? I'm sure there are causes of my behavior that are so buried I'm not aware of them.
Entertainment! Something exciting going on. Now that you mention it, I understand. I guess we all seek relief from our intolerable feelings in different ways and I would favour a feeling of safety over excitement, but that's me. Glad you got past it though, and those experiences will have taught you a lot.
Hey, good on you, I'm glad your changes worked so well for you! I think maybe we are defining 'bad boys' differently. To me, muscles, a bike and playing metal with a light hearted attitude are not bad boy as such, I'm thinking more of people's attraction to dark, dodgy, edgy, up-to-no-good types.
Certainly attraction is involuntary. My own attraction includes but is not confined to nerds. And I am absolutely indifferent to men's muscles and it's not my preferred look, although as a lifelong gym person myself I know what is involved and respect the work put in. And strength is useful anyway.
I suppose I just reject the cliche that women are attracted to people who are actually bad and will hurt them. When that happens there has been a tendency to scorn the woman's idiocy rather than look for the past damage that may have caused the maladaption.
Perhaps there is a difference between a classic bad boy rough guy, and an abuser, although there can be some overlap.
Weak, obsequious sniveling men can be abusers, tough rule breaker bikers can be kind, but take no crap.
Tyler Durden
Captan Jack Sparrow
Batman
Yes. I suppose my definition of bad boy means men ranging from everyday jerks to abusers, regardless of their lifestyle, manner or appearance. The ones who make women unhappy yet reluctant to leave.
Bad boy has a broader definition.
The ones that make women confused and frustrated, yet reluctant to leave.
It doesn’t require overt abuse, but simply a flippant devil may care detachment.
Think Captain Jack Sparrow, or The Batman
I too think it’s likely has another cause. Plus attraction to “bad boys” happens with men too.
I think there are many possible causes, but a certain kind of abuse is one. Plain thrillseeking may be another!
Both in my case 40 years ago. I was an emotional kid who wasn't allowed to express emotions. Resulted in BPD & a fear of being bored and alone. Bad boys helped me escape until one day, I had to leave the last guy. I needed to heal. He was the nicest of the bunch & it was really difficult. I moved into a tiny apartment. I was so scared, I shook! I mean, pouring myself a drink was a messy procedure.
Long, long story, but in the end, it turned me into a mystic. Cured 40 years ago. And then, my attraction to bad boys was no more. Truly happy and at peace for the last 3.
Congratulations on your self recovery from BPD and dealing with that level of fear.
Thanks. It was a ton of work! The first six months were the hardest thing I've ever done. Took courage to look directly at it.
I agree. That 'women like bad boys' cliche was deeply unhelpful, shallow, and dismissive, and distracted from looking for the origins in abuse, as you say.
It's madness isn't it? And yet here we are. You are fortunate that you say you would not feel love or trust when not deserved. I am in precisely that situation now, and am putting everything into fighting it, and have been for a long time, as the toll on my mental and physical health has been awful. But it DOESN'T WORK. Adults seem to have overall poor success with this aspect of relationships, though all credit to those who manage to change. I think a secure childhood and being explicitly taught about such things from a young age would help equip people to be immune to this nonsense or at least deal with it better.
I would agree with that
I certainly agree with the last part. Hope you don't mind if I offer a different way of dealing with unwanted thoughts.
It's counterintuitive, but accepting how we feel causes the feelings to dim.
Your feelings have information for you about your unconscious processes. They're telling you what needs to heal. By trying to shut them down, they scream louder so you'll pay attention. Fighting them actually intensifies them. It confuses the issue. Accepting them lets us explore it calmly.
Problem with acceptance is that it scares people. We naturally think that accepting them means they'll grow stronger. But, that's not the case. By letting them be, we're able to get some objectivity. Then we're able to respond from choice instead of from an unwanted emotional reaction.
Mindfulness meditation (watching thoughts & emotions without participating and judging them) is another way to gain some objectivity.
I don't mind at all. This approach was suggested to me years ago by a very kind and rather spiritual doctor who I was seeing during a crisis. I followed up reading about it and gave it a try. Just accept rather than fight or judge your negative feelings and you will attain some detachment from them and they will hurt less, sounds good. But in all honesty, it didn't work for me. Perhaps it would if I trained for years in a monastery or something, but for all practical purposes I was not successful. I was certainly able to learn from my feelings by not shutting them out, but I could not diminish their intensity. I think as in all areas of life, different things work for different people, and it's a matter of giving things a try, you can be lucky, or not.
Establish rapport with your demons
When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself. -
Mark Twain
Isn't hypnosis effective for changing deeply held beliefs? I know tons of people who changed their views of religion from Abrahamic-based traditions to a mystical, inner view. I admit, I'm an extreme example, but I'm curious if Twain's quote reflects your own experience in your practice.
It can be
It depends on several factors
Example: I’m addicted to cigarettes, and that’s why I can’t quit smoking..
Reframe: everyone that has been addicted to smoking has never quit?
Well no.. it’s just that I can’t do it because I’m just a smoker I guess
Reframe: Could you say that smokers that have quit are now non smokers?
…
Are you familiar with the "Prisoner's Dilemma" experiments? Both the single-event variety and the continuing one? If I remember correctly for indefinitely continuing iterations, it turns out that starting with, not exactly a benefit of the doubt but a willingness to start with a cooperative stance--and then continuing with a tit-for-tat strategy, leads to the most successful outcome. Do you see this game theory idea as similar to yours that trust needs to be earned based on a person's behavior (which I agree with, BTW).
Yes, it is similar. I spoke about it in detail here:
https://athenawalker.substack.com/p/tit-for-tat
This is a great life lesson, I've been hurt in dating & relationships often because I've stupidly ignored numerous red flags if the woman is super hot and the sex is good, only for it to end badly when I discover how toxic they are....I will certainly take this on board moving forward and take action/withdraw as soon as I notice red flags in others.
Toxic people drain your life force if you give them the chance. It is always good to pay attention to the red flags. Beauty fades, crazy is forever.
Everyone starts out a blank slate to you and how they interact with over time sort of fills them in?
Yes, exactly
I see no flaw in your logic
Great piece, all this is such good advice. Perhaps people imagine that not giving the benefit of the doubt must mean looking at everyone with narrowed eyes and being always terse and aloof!
One thing though- you mention emotional trust, and this is something I puzzled over when you wrote about it on Quora when listing emotions. And I thought, what!? Trust isn't an 'emotion'!!! You may feel emotions towards someone and also trust them, but there's no Trust Emotion, surely. Isn't 'feeling trust' just figurative? What would it even feel like? I have never felt such a thing.
I pondered for a while, filed the idea away, and then one day out of nowhere, a dim flash of memory popped up. I can now recall, with effort, a feeling from earliest childhood that I had regarding my carers. It's faint, but I can go back in time in my mind, and yes, it was a distinct emotion, very comforting, and no doubt essential for developmental wellbeing when one is totally helpless.
But quite soon, that feeling disappeared. You learn that you can trust your carers more or less, as they have shown themselves to be more or less trustworthy, in at least some respects, and this creates a 'state' more than an emotion. I am sure I have never felt emotional trust since preschool. Do adults really continue to feel this emotion? I'm amazed.
But does this mean one then operates in a state of constant wary mistrust and careful judgement? Not at all. There are other factors beyond being ruled by ones emotions that can cause habitually giving the benefit of the doubt, and those that come to mind for me are 1. Copying social norms uthinkingly. 2. Deciding, wrongly, that one has to interact on a benefit of the doubt basis for the world to function. 3. Plain youthful naivety and stupidity and poor risk assessment.
All this can account for the bungles and disasters that result from putting trust in the wrong people, without any 'emotion' of trust being present at all.
We use the same words but our experiences are so different.
I am going to have to do some asking around:
"Hi, how's things? By the way, is trust an emotion?".
"?!".
I think you will be amazed how much of a strong emotion trust can be. It also might give you some insight as to why some people so strongly to having their trust betrayed.
I am really trying to get my head around it. Now that you mention it I am recalling the feeling of having trust betrayed, and a whole cascade of memories from all ages ran through my head. I felt such betrayals very strongly, went into an absolute spin, rug pulled from under me, bewilderment, adrenaline rushes, outrage, taking a long time to regain equilibrium, all of that, so thats pretty neurotypical. But I'm not sure that gets me any closer to understanding an emotion of trust that would create that reaction. Perhaps I am feeling something I can't recognise, or maybe our words and descriptions are inadequate, or what I think of as my infant emotion of trust was something different altogether. I just don't know anymore, it's very confusing! I'd love to read some people's descriptions of the emotion of trust as they experience it. Anyone????
That would certainly be interesting reading, I agree.
Religion has a lot to do with everything. There can be a lot of toxicity in there. There has been a paradigm shift from assuming automatically that religious people are likely to be better, towards thinking that they are likely to be worse, because so much in religion is intellectually and morally reprehensible, and all that is better understood nowdays. Once upon a time not many people had that on their radar. So it comes down to judging the individual. Remarkably (from an atheist humanist point of view), the world shows us that some religious people can indeed be absolutely rational in secular life despite their odd beliefs. The two track mind. It's an interesting phenomenon that I will leave to the philosophers and cognitive scientists. Meanwhile in my own life, I treat religious people with extreme wariness until they prove thier actual worth, as some of my friends have.
Yeah, there is that. The indifference and self focus. I think our terms and definitions need updating and clarifying!