Linear Nature Of Mind

Do you know about the Halo Effect? It’s a tendency to base our judgement on first impressions alone. Basically, if we find a positive trait in a person or thing in the beginning, we tend to incline towards its positive characteristics and ignore the negatives in the subsequent interactions.

Say you find a person attractive. As you interact with him or her, you tend to lean towards their good qualities. You form stories around them, paint an ideal picture of them in your minds. Now even if the person displays a couple of negative qualities, you brush them away.

Why? Because you were already attracted to them from the beginning. Your mind was already convinced that the person is God sent, so it tried to find more clues indicating the same.

Similarly, if the first impression of a person is negative, you tend to close your eyes to their good parts and only see the bad in them.

That’s the halo effect.

Our mind functions in a linear fashion, in a single direction. Our first thoughts become the basis of the subsequent ones. Just like a building takes shape by laying out bricks on top of each other, our worldview is formed by laying out thoughts, opinions, impressions on top of each other.

You try to pull out one brick from the bottom and the entire building might collapse. That’s why it is so hard to question our fundamental beliefs.

But if we do question those fundamental ideas, if we trace back to the seed of our thoughts, we can verify how close they are to the reality. We can remove biases, see the world for what it is, and make better judgement.

Good night,
Aachman