Assumptions and Complexity

Michelle Carter has an interesting post about being open minded versus closed minded. It emerged from a job description she saw that required candidates to be open minded (who, exactly, would ever claim they are closed minded?). At the end she talks about being able to revisit your perceptions of people over time.

Update Your Perceptions.  They are Likely Dusty.
When was the last time you sought to update your impressions of people using current data instead of mindlessly humming the old tunes in your head?

This is good advice, of course, but it points out another important issue, which is one I talk about a lot when I'm doing conflict resolution training: making assumptions. Michelle's advice is to basically test your assumptions about people. You draw a conclusion about the way someone is, which means you assume they will continue to be that way. By updating your perceptions--taking a closer look at who they are and how they behave--you are testing that assumption.

Assumptions come up a lot in discussions of conflict. We tend to view them negatively. "Don't make assumptions!" I hear people say. Well, here's a secret: assumptions are fine. In fact, they are not only fine, your brain is hard wired to make them. The reason is simple: reality is way too complex and complicated for our nervous systems to handle. There is simply NO WAY we can have all the information in our heads we need to make complete sense of our environment. Assumptions fill in those gaps. We make assumptions about things we don't know or can't know in order to have a complete enough picture to actually move forward and take action. In that way, assumptions fulfill a critically important function: they help us reduce complexity to an acceptable level.

And frankly, the overwhelming majority of our assumptions are correct. True, the times we make faulty assumptions are the ones that get our attention (and get us in trouble), but don't blame the assumptions. You have to make them (and so do the people with whom you are in conflict). The trick, as Michelle is pointing out, is to be vigilant in testing your assumptions (which, it occurs to me, is what the open-minded piece of that job description was probably about). Be aware of your assumptions, and when things start to go bad, look quickly at assumptions that can be challenged or tested, and start to share explicitly your assumptions with others, because once they see them, they might be able to test them for you!

Comments

[John Mahaffie]

Extremely well put. In my work helping people explore the future, it's getting assumptions out in the open, for scrutiny, that makes a difference. Too often people are not even aware of their own assumptions, let alone their colleagues'.

I've been enjoying your posts very much

[Lisa Junker]

Great post, Jamie! And great advice. It's something I've been thinking about lately myself, so I'd offer one addendum: Be aware of your assumptions, and also be aware of how you may be editing the information you receive to match your assumptions--even when that information goes directly against the assumption you've made.

For example, you've already made X assumption about someone, so when information that would support Y instead comes up, you either discount that information or interpret it as further evidence that the person is really X. (I think the book Stumbling on Happiness talks about this, if I remember correctly--I know I didn't come up with it on my own.)

Being aware of this human tendency makes it a lot easier to challenge your assumptions--because it will make it easier for you to actually see the evidence that goes counter to the assumptions you've made.