Life traps

‘You must throw your whole being against the life trap – your thoughts, feelings and behaviour.’ (Jeffrey E. Young)

I’ve never been to a casino. In the past couple of weeks, however, I’ve had two fascinating conversations with people who work in casinos in Germany. I asked them if players can develop ways to improve their chances of winning, or whether winning or losing is purely a matter of chance. They both said ‘purely chance’ – with the mathematical probability of winning weighted heavily in favour of the casinos. I asked them if players ever believe they can improve their chances of winning, to reduce the loading of the dice against them. They both said ‘Yes’ too. Players may think they discern patterns in, say, roulette results, whereas they are random.

This human ability and tendency to perceive patterns and to associate meaning with such patterns is known in psychology as the schemata phenomenon. I remember a philosophy tutor, Peter Hicks, inviting us, as students, to imagine he was holding a bag of 100 marbles. If he were to draw out one marble at a time, and every single marble was red, what would we guess the colour of the 100th marble would be? Now we know the colours of the 99 so far have nothing whatsoever to do with the colour of the 100th, yet everything within us still screams ‘Red.’ We superimpose a pattern, a schemata, based on what we have observed and experienced to date.

There are psychological benefits. For instance: schemata enable mental short-cuts by allowing us to process familiar information quickly without needing to analyse every detail from scratch; they provide a sense of predictability and order that reduces uncertainty; they help us navigate relationships by enabling us to anticipate how people will react and to adjust our behaviour accordingly; they reduce emotional overwhelm by, instead of processing every situation as if for the first time, allowing us to rely on past experience to guide us; they speed up skill acquisition and problem-solving by providing mental frameworks that help guide our reasoning.

There are risks too. For instance: they may lead to confirmation bias, where we selectively interpret information in ways that reinforce our pre-existing beliefs; they may lead to stereotyping and unfair generalisation of people, cultures or situations; we may experience disappointment, frustration or distress if reality doesn’t align with our expectations; negative patterns from the past may create unnecessary worry and avoidance behaviours now; if we assume our knowledge is absolute, it may discourage curiosity, learning and adaptivity; we may project our expectations onto others or fail to recognise their own unique perspectives.

Here are some techniques I’ve found useful: question whether your expectations about people or situations are based on facts or past experiences; be mindful of confirmation bias and stereotyping; engage with people from different backgrounds and cultures; try new activities, travel or change your routine to disrupt automatic thought patterns; view challenges as opportunities to refine your schemata; ask regularly, ‘What else could be true?’ to consider multiple possibilities for why something happened; if emotionally triggered, pause and ask whether your reaction is based on present or past experiences; try hard to make room for the new.

Do you need help with breaking free from life traps? Get in touch!