Psychological research has produced three major insights about the way the mind works that will change the way you think about how you think.
The first is the proposition that our understanding of the world is always a matter of construal—of inference and interpretation. Our judgments about people and situations, and even our perceptions of the physical world, rely on stored knowledge and hidden mental processes and are never a direct readout of reality. A full appreciation of the degree to which our understanding of the world is based on inferences makes it clear how important it is to improve the tools we use to make those inferences.
Second, the situations we find ourselves in affect our thoughts and determine our behavior far more than we realize. People’s dispositions, on the other hand—their distinctive traits, attitudes, abilities, and tastes—are much less influential than we assume. So we make mistakes in assessing why it is that people—including ourselves—believe particular things and behave in particular ways. But it’s possible to overcome this “fundamental attribution error” to a degree.
Finally, psychologists have increasingly come to recognize the importance of the unconscious mind, which registers vastly more environmental information than the conscious mind could possibly notice. Many of the most important influences on our perceptions and behavior are hidden from us. And we are never directly aware of the mental processes that produce our perceptions, beliefs, and behavior. Fortunately, and perhaps surprisingly, the unconscious is fully as rational as the conscious mind. It solves many kinds of problems the conscious mind can’t deal with effectively. A few simple strategies allow us to harness the unconscious mind’s problem-solving capacities.