Too obsessed with Taylor Swift? It can be a coping mechanism

While researching “Cultish,” her book about “the language of cults from Scientology to SoulCycle,” the writer Amanda Montell continue to review research on cognitive biases or common errors in thinking. Montell couldn't help but notice that cognitive biases explain more than why some people become fanatics – they also explain many of her “own daily decisions in the information age” and the “seemingly puzzling” behavior of others in her life.

Montell's new book, “The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality” (Simon & Schuster), is her attempt to help people recognize and name how their mind is making them miserable, and then, hopefully, learn to avoid the traps.

Montell spoke with The Times about the specific challenges of social media, what Taylor Swift has to do with the author's mother, etc. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Psychologists, economists, and other social scientists have studied cognitive biases for decades, but you think understanding them is more important now than ever. Why so?

Cognitive biases, like sunk cost fallacy or recent illusionThese are innate psychological shortcuts that we always use to make sense of the world enough to survive. These behaviors have been observed and recorded for over a hundred years. But they can explain many of the absurdities that are directly products of the digital age. While the democratization of information is incredible and a positive thing for our society, our minds, our amygdala has yet to catch up with the culture we have created. go out.

The psychological shortcuts we once used to process much more limited information from the physical world are now being applied to more abstract information – some true, some not – and causes us to have truly painful reactions. So we are feeling a kind of vague, incomprehensible feeling of boredom, a feeling of lethargy, a feeling of panic, of fear for the future. We're using these age-old shortcuts that were once very useful in the new context when they're a bit outdated. Cognitive biases can actually explain a lot of the nonsense we face in society today.

Amanda Montell.

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In each chapter, you analyze a different behavior – sometimes cultural, sometimes personal – through the lens of cognitive bias. The first chapter is about Taylor Swift fans but also about your mother. How does that chapter's specific cognitive bias, the halo effect, explain both of those? Swift stan and your family dynamics?

The halo effect describes a person's tendency to admire something and then come to the conclusion that they must be perfect overall. This bias stems from the way we once identified patterns in our communities for survival purposes, but now we are applying the halo effect to modern parasocial relationships, specifically celebrities, in a way that is having seriously damaging consequences.

I came across this Pretty attractive study reflects how growing stan worship actually correlates in interesting ways with parent-child attachment. If we don't experience enough “positive stressors” from our parental figures and communities in real life, we often seek them out in online and offline spaces. virtual and that can actually expose us to major side effects ranging from narcissistic tendencies to poor physical health. images for criminals.

The relationship between the surrogate “mother” – that is, the female pop star – and our attachment to our real mothers is something I really wanted to explore. I talked about my personal experience regarding those ideas and my own mother and ultimately came to the point that my mother was a real person and we could get through that with empathy. and communication. It's two-way, but the fact that so many fans see celebrities like Taylor Swift as surrogate mothers is psychologically failing people because the method of communication is one-way. The surrogate “mother” can never fulfill their desires or live up to their standards and can never personify themselves the way a mother can.

In another chapter, you delve into the world of the masters of expression and argue that their rise can be explained by the “proportional tendency.” What is it and how does it work?

Proportionality bias describes our tendency to assume that a big event or even a big emotion must have a big cause. We only see a sense of proportionality between cause and effect when we say, “Oh, a massive, earth-shattering pandemic broke out, that can't be the result of a series of random little tragedies.” combined into this huge pandemic. one, instead the government must have deliberately designed it.”

Manifestation is another misattribution of cause and effect, only with a more positive connotation: if I get promoted, it's because I put a dollar sign on my vision board. But in this time of mass isolation when we feel extremely out of control and powerless over our futures, many online expression experts have seized on the ratio bias by conveying this very absolutist idea that you can actually control your outcomes and improve your circumstances with your mind as long as you sign up for our $25 a month course. I.

One of the main characteristics of the information age, as you call it, is social networks. How does social media hijack our mental networks, and how can recognizing cognitive biases help us there?

I can talk about this in a personal context. My day job for many years was working in the beauty industry. I thought, “I'm a mole and they won't be able to catch me” and the joke was definitely on me because having only been in the beauty industry for a few years, I already felt like human blonde hair. else just makes me brown- eh.

Then I left the beauty industry to write and thought, “Oh, thank God I'm out of social comparison purgatory.” And again, I'm being joked about because now I'm comparing myself to other writers and non-fiction authors who are my age and have the same hairstyle. That was really devastating and caused me a lot of psychological turmoil. In this book, I offer some solutions to combat that. total error is zero that sends you into a spiral.

It is the mistaken perception that someone else's gain means your loss. And there was a time when other people's access to food and mates actually meant you had a deficit, but that's not true in our modern economy. In fact, there is a way to build more wealth no matter what area of ​​life you are talking about, but it is innate to humans that we experience “win-win rejection.” .

Especially in times of political and social turmoil, we feel that if the government helps one group, the other group must surely suffer. Yes attractive study reflects that when we feel culturally unstable, people are more opposed to immigration because they start to feel that scarcity mindset.

You know, as I introduce this book, you start to feel a little more competitive than usual, so I'm really going back to the ideas of zero-sum bias and the Denial of win-win. It is an ongoing process.

Does knowing and naming these ideas help you combat them?

I will never be able to stop my instincts from steering me in the direction of zero-sum bias or confirmation bias, but I will say that the awareness of them is comforting. Even when someone else's behavior seems truly inexplicable or evil, I can accurately determine, “Oh, that's just overconfidence bias” in the same way that I notice an overconfidence bias in one's own behavior. Or “that's zero-sum bias, that's a recency delusion.” It feels great to have an excuse to not see your fellow human beings as defective.

But I've also come across a lot of research that contains useful, applicable information. One thing I keep coming back to is about addition and subtraction solutions. I came across this really fascinating study about the tendency to solve problems by adding more variables to the equation even when a much simpler solution would involve eliminating one or two things. The learn involved a spatial puzzle involving colored blocks, and the vast majority of participants chose the much more complicated addition solution instead of subtraction, because subtraction is not how our minds are oriented .

It reminds me of a relationship that didn't serve me. I thought during our difficult times that what might help us was an extra vacation or furniture replacement or some completely out-of-the-box complementary solution when a better way to approach the problem is to take something away, to part ways, to have potential.

I have applied this framework even to small problems. I was looking at my junk drawer and my first impulse was that I needed to go to the Container Store and buy some nice drawer organizers. But a much simpler and more effective solution is to throw this trash away.

Angela Chen is a journalist. Find her work at angelachen.org.

Shelf Help is a new health column where we interview researchers, thinkers and writers about their latest books – all aimed at learning how to live a fulfilling life than. Want to introduce us? Email alyssa.bereznak@latimes.com.