Cognitive Biases that Undermine Happiness

Hey, in this video, you’re going to get some science-based practical tools to help you be in a happier state of mind. This is not just about, I don’t know, like feeling good and total optimism or something, but ultimately, as a leader, if you’re aware of some of these psychological principles that you’re about to learn, you’re going to be in a better position to role model this quality of leadership that we want to cultivate and most likely help the people on your team show up better in their working life.

The concept of this video is that we, as human beings, all have certain psychological biases. I’m not talking about racial biases or subconscious/unconscious biases—those are important topics. In this context, cognitive biases are often errors in how we think and process information.

There are quite a few of these biases, and if you look at the literature around cognitive behavioral therapy, really all it is, is teaching people how to identify inaccurate, unhelpful mental patterns—patterns of thoughts or patterns of perception—teaching them to label these patterns. Once you label them, you’re able to rethink or reframe how you interpret events.

There are three specific biases, faults in our human reasoning, that come up quite often. Those three things are called generalizing, personalizing, and catastrophizing. I’ll give you an example of each one:

Personalizing is when we take something that’s rather impersonal and take it personally. Let’s say someone forgets to reply to your email. What probably happened is they have a mountain of emails, it’s in their spam, or they accidentally deleted it. Yet, all of us tend to take it personally, like, “Oh, do they not like me? What’s going on?”

Another example might be when a series of events largely outside of your control make a project not go so well. Things fall behind schedule because certain people didn’t get it done in time, or a stakeholder didn’t have the information, etc. You take it like, “Oh man, I screwed this up.” This is not to say you shouldn’t take ownership—you absolutely should. But there’s a certain bias where we, as people, tend to personalize things when they go wrong and make it feel like, “Ah, this is a me issue,” as if the failure of an external event, project, or task diminishes our quality as a person. Rationally, this doesn’t make a lot of sense. You might say, “Oh, I need to improve this skill set,” but one failure doesn’t negate your other accomplishments. We just don’t value them proportionally.

Personalizing is when we take something impersonal and blame ourselves or take the stress of it on personally.

Generalizing is a bias where we have a specific issue, problem, or negative event, and then apply it to life as a whole. For example, you’re driving to work, and you get a flat tire. That’s a specific, one-time event, but you start to say, “Oh my God, my life is so unfair. Why does this always happen to me?”

You’re stuck in line at the checkout and think, “Seriously? I always pick the longest line.” Have you ever had that thought? “I always pick the longest line.” What are the odds that you actually pick the longest line every time? So, this is a common bias where we take a one-time thing and generalize it. You might struggle with a type of project and start to think, “Oh, I suck. I’m not good at anything. I can’t do anything right.” That’s generalizing.

The third bias is catastrophizing. This is when we have a fairly small issue and think it’s the end of the world. I had one of these moments back when I worked in corporate. My boss sent me an email on a Thursday at 4 PM, and I was off that Friday. I missed the email, didn’t get it done, and when I came in on Monday, I saw she had sent me a couple of follow-up emails asking, “Hey, what’s going on? Are you good? I need this done.”

I thought, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to get fired. This is the end of the world. It’s over.” I sent her a huge email apologizing, asking if there was anything I could do. She literally replied with a one-sentence email: “Oh, it’s cool. Can you get it done tomorrow?”

There are certainly serious problems and things we need to be accountable for, but often, the mind tends to assume the worst. We take something small and escalate it to the absolute worst-case scenario.

All three of these biases are patterns, cognitive biases, that have been shown by scientists and researchers to be present in all of our thinking to some extent. The key is that once you get good at identifying these unhelpful, unproductive perceptual patterns, they have a lot less power over you.

So, here’s an assignment for you. In your small groups, you can do this in pairs or with a few people—either way is fine. I want you to think about your day-to-day life, maybe the past week or the past two weeks. Identify a few examples of times when you’ve done any one of these things—personalizing, generalizing, or catastrophizing. Don’t be critical of yourself for doing it, and only share examples you’re comfortable with. Just list a few times, talk through them as a group, and then discuss how you might call out these patterns as they come up in the future and how that might change how you relate to circumstances as you go through life.

That’s your assignment. Mainly, think about how these patterns or cognitive biases often show up in your life. Share as a group and discuss. As you do that, you’re increasing your awareness, so that down the line, whether at work or in your personal life, when these biases or patterns come up, you’ll be able to say, “Oh, I see, I’m just doing that thing.” Whether it’s catastrophizing, generalizing, or personalizing, ultimately, recognizing these patterns will help you show up in a much better place mentally, emotionally, cognitively, etc.

Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next time.