The Brain: Why much of what you think you know is WRONG

Science Marches On
and older information becomes obsolete

© Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC

The Importance of Life-Long Learning

It’s an essential endeavor for everyone with a brain to continue to seek out and pay attention to credible information that will help us delay – or avoid – the onset of dementia, preserving cognitive functionality as we age.

However, it is especially important for scientists, treatment and helping professionals to keep up with new information and incorporate it into their theories, tests and treatment protocols.

And yet . . .

I have been beating this drum – while seeking new, scientifically valid information for over 30 years now – in my futile attempt [so far] to get some traction toward effective care for those of us with Executive Functioning disorders.

A concept known as Confirmation Bias explains part of the reason that my efforts [and those of others] have, for the most part, failed – but timing is everything.

Related Post: Why we HATE to Change our Minds

Getting updated, substantially more accurate information to “the professional down the street” simply takes far too long, as the continual explosion of partially-informed new coaches, bloggers and pinners confuse and confound the issue further.

They all seem to be well-intended, albeit at least partially misguided, spreading obsolete information all over the internet at an unprecedented rate.  For those who make an effort to continue to learn, it seems that the more that new information might persuade them to update their theories and methodologies along with their information base, the more tightly they hold to cherished beliefs – the very essence of cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory makes predictions that are counter-intuitive — predictions that have been confirmed in numerous scientific experiments.

If you aren’t familiar with the concept or the term, you will probably be surprised to see how widely it applies. Once you learn to pay attention to it, you will also be surprised at how it changes your behavior as well as your perception of your world.

Embracing its reality might also encourage you to investigate brain-based information further, allowing your mind to incorporate the latest in scientific findings, rather than repeating information that is, sometimes, decades old.

Don’t forget that you can always check out the sidebar
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What IS Cognitive Dissonance?

Found HERE

Dr. Carol Tavris is a social psychologist who is the co-author of a book explaining confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance: Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts. 

In an informative and entertaining interview of Tavris doubly posted to the Books and Ideas Podcast and the Brain Science Podcast (recently renamed Brain Science with Ginger Campbell, MD), cognitive dissonance was defined as the discomfort that we feel when we are faced with evidence that contradicts our beliefs.

Most of us hate it when our beliefs are challenged. Once we are invested in a decision or opinion, we tend to resist changing our minds – no matter who we are.  If someone presents evidence that does not support or agree with something that we believe, we will feel an uncomfortable  state of dissonance — and we will be strongly motivated to reduce it.

The easiest, quickest way that most of us attempt to reduce that hateful conflict between old information and new is to dig in and defend our current beliefs.

Tavris explains that our unconscious drive to reduce cognitive dissonance between, for example, the belief that “I am an educated, compassionate person of expertise” and “I hold a belief (or committed an action) that might make it seem as if I am not” is so strong that we tend to close our minds to updated information that could help us make significantly better choices in the future.

Understanding and remaining aware of the principle of cognitive dissonance allows us to recognize it in ourselves, our loved ones, our co-workers and colleagues, and our doctors — as it gives us better skills to be able to predict when it is likely to appear so that we can arm ourselves against it.

Tavris goes on to explain:

“You’re going to know, after you make a decision, that you’re going to want to justify that decision. That’s fine, just so long as you don’t do so much justifying that you keep yourself from being able to change your mind later if you need to.”

She goes on to share her belief that “our job as science educators is to show people the joy of the discovery.” It is not simply taking away a belief — it is replacing it with “a better belief, a more useful belief, a more exciting and helpful belief.”

“To understand what isn’t so,” she says, “can be as exciting, and important, and useful as to understand what is so. And I think that’s the attitude that we might want to work on conveying—those of us in the skeptical and scientific world—which is that science is about moving us forward toward better ideas.”

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For an earlier article offering another explanation of cognitive dissonance and the importance of attempting to work around it, I believe you will find the following article helpful and highly informative (along with a list of fascinating books informing the topic):

Confirmation Bias and the Tragedy of Certainty

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Implications for brain-based ADD/EFD Coaching

Even some of the foundational brain-based information I once taught to the students of my A.C.T. Training, the ADD-focused coach-training curriculum I developed and delivered through The Optimal Functioning Institute™ during the years when mine was the only such training available, is now obsolete. 

Newer scientific findings have shown that much of what we once thought we knew about the brain was discovered through the use of older technology that was not precise enough to connect all the dots.  Newer technology has resulted in updated information, with surprising implications.

Based on conversations with – and articles by – some of the students of some of my former students (who are now training coaches themselves), some of the resultant coach trainings still seem to be based on what their instructors learned at OFI, many years ago now.

It probably will not make me very popular to say so, but their coaching techniques can only be as comprehensive as their information base is current.

Stay Tuned: In coming articles, I plan to explain and update some of the mistaken principles that are still being passed along, hoping that a great many of the newer coaches will recognize their discomfort with cognitive dissonance and put it aside long enough to allow themselves to update their information base — understanding that newer information might mandate newer ways of working.

Help for the rest of you

Those of you who are not coaches or helping professionals will be able to benefit from updated information as well.

As I said in an earlier article, Why you can’t, and how you CAN:

“The more you know about Executive Functions, their disorders,
and the mechanisms behind them,
the better you’ll be able to build – or rebuild – executive skills,
AS you work around them to manage challenges
and  overcome difficulties.” ~ Madelyn Griffith-Haynie

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There’s a lot to know, a lot here already, and a lot more to come – in this Series and in others.
Get it here while it’s still free for the taking.

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You might also be interested in some of the following articles
available right now – on this site and elsewhere.

For links in context: run your cursor over the article above and the dark grey links will turn dark red;
(subtle, so they don’t pull focus while you read, but you can find them to click when you’re ready for them)
— and check out the links to other Related Content in each of the articles themselves —

Related articles right here on ADDandSoMuchMore.com
(in case you missed them above or below)

• Brain-based Coaching with Madelyn Griffith-Haynie

• ABOUT Executive Functions
• What ARE Executive Functions?
• Executive Functioning Disorders – not just kid stuff
• Confirmation Bias & The Tragedy of Certainty
• Why you can’t, and how you CAN

• Shifting your Come-From
• Evergreen

Other supports for this article – on ADDandSoMuchMore.com

Some LinkLists by Category (to articles here on ADDandSoMuchMore.com)

• The Optimal Functioning (Challenges) Series of articles
  (about the Inventory & articles from each category)
• The Executive Functioning, etc. Series of articles

Related Articles ’round the net

• Blog Archive: download mp3 or pdf of the BI/BSP Tavris interview
• Carol Tavris bio page at Social Psychology
• Cognitive dissonance and NPD (BPD, PTSD, etc)
• A Poem on Cognitive Dissonance caused by the Way Things Are
• Rational Markets and Irrational Traders
• 4 Ways That Cognitive Dissonance Makes You Ineffective
• Psychology’s Treacherous Trio: Confirmation Bias, Cognitive Dissonance, and Motivated Reasoning
• Wikipedia on Cognitive Dissonance Theory
• Wikipedia on social psychology

BY THE WAY: Since ADDandSoMuchMore.com is an Evergreen site, I revisit all my content periodically to update links — when you link back, like, follow or comment, you STAY on the page. When you do not, you run a high risk of getting replaced by a site with a more generous come-from.