Last week I finished reading a book on critical thinking called Factfulness by Hans Rosling with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Ronnlund. This wonderful book talks about 10 cognitive biases that lead us to make wrong inferences about the world, and how the world is in better shape that most of us assume. In reflecting on the book, it occurred to me that many of these biases apply to how we think about those who have mental health disorders. I concluded that factfulness explains mental health stigma.
The Stigma of Being Different
We all encounter people who are different. This includes not only those with mental health disorders, but people who are neurodiverse and might be on the autism spectrum or have attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD). Many of these individuals might do or say things that seem odd because they are out of the range of what we expect. This can lead us to make wrong inferences about such people’s motivations and future behavior, leading us to avoid them. This happens not only in casual settings, such as in line at the grocery store, but in work settings where our biases can have negative consequences. Thus, people who are different can have a tough time getting a job because hiring managers find them to be a “poor fit” by not fitting the stereotype of a productive employee. This is unfortunate as many times organizations fail to hire talented people who could be highly successful just because they are different.
Factfulness Explains Mental Health Stigma
Our brains are wired with shortcuts that enable us to sift through the avalanche of information we receive every day and make sense of it. These shortcuts provide a structure to our experiences, allowing us to quickly categorize events and people into harmful vs. helpful. Whereas the quick categories can be helpful in safely navigating the world, they can also lead us astray when we rely on them too much. There are times when we need to override the shortcuts and think more deeply.
The 10 cognitive biases (the book calls them instincts) of Factfulness reflect our pre-wired tendencies to view the world in a certain way. They explain what we pay attention to and how we interpret events. Five struck me as relevant in how we view mental health and people who seem different.
- Gap Bias is the tendency to place people into two categories and assume they are very different. Thus, we think of people who are “mentally ill” vs. “normal”. The reality is that mental health is a continuum, and most people fall in the middle. Most of us have some level of mental health challenges. For the majority challenges do not rise to the level of a clinically diagnosed disorder, although they might experience many of the same symptoms such as anxiety or depression, just at a lower level.
- Negativity bias is the tendency to focus on the bad rather than the good. Bad events have a bigger impact on us that good events, so it makes sense that we pay attention to bad things so we can avoid them. This bias influences how we view people, focusing on the negative rather than positive side. Thus, a manager considering a person for a job who has a mental health disorder might focus on their limitations and ignore their talents.
- Fear Bias is the tendency to focus on things that are scary. We would be foolish to ignore things that can be harmful, but this bias can make us view the world as more threatening than it really is. We notice stories in the news about terrible things that someone with a serious mental disorder did. We watch shows about serial killers and people classified as “criminally insane”. This can lead us to assume that people with mental disorders are dangerous because these rare cases that are out of the norm capture our attention and make us afraid.
- Generalization bias is the tendency to place people into categories. Generalization is how we organize the world and make sense of it. We might classify people by their ethnicity, gender, or occupation. The problem arises when we over-generalize and stereotype people by assuming all members of a category have the same characteristics (particularly negative ones). We might assume that all people with a mental health disorder are dangerous or are drug abusers. We might assume that drug abuse started with recreational use purely for fun, when there are many reasons that someone gets involved with drugs.
- Single perspective bias is the tendency to lock into one way of thinking and ignore information that is contradictory. It can lead to a confirmation bias where we seek information that tells us our view is correct and avoid information that challenges our assumptions. This is why being exposed to different views can be important because they make us re-evaluate our perspective. It encourages us to think through our beliefs, so they are based on solid facts.
Taken together these biases affect how we interpret information and even the information that we pay attention to. They result in our giving too much weight to negative things we see about people with a mental health condition that gives us a distorted view. We then overgeneralize and classify people unfairly, assuming that if someone is “mentally ill” they have a list of bad characteristics that should be avoided.
As Factfulness explains, to counter these biases, we need to practice critical thinking. It begins by being aware of our cognitive biases and tendencies so we can recognize them. We should be questioning why we feel the way we feel and seek information so we can be sure that our conclusions are based on solid facts. The book Factfulness explains mental health stigma and how to avoid it.