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.
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
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.
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.
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. -
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?".
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
Everyone starts out a blank slate to you and how they interact with over time sort of fills them in?
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?".
"?!".
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!