Our brains have to model the world to navigate it
WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN ABOUT ME?
As you probably started intuiting from the restaurant example, not all brains process information and make decisions in the same way.
There are many important differences in how people react to this scenario. These differences can be situationally specific (states) or personal tendencies (traits). We can think about individuals as having different settings for this process — which can be modified within a range based on the specific situation.
These settings create the great diversity of personalities we witness in the population.
Attention
Some of us may not have even noticed the change in the food quality, while others are hypersensitive to taste, and would have had a hard time choking it down. We introduced this concept of hypersensitivity in the “intro to personality” course — and talked about it as a general “tolerance” level for information. Basically what is the threshold that a prediction error has to meet for you to focus on it. The more “sensitive,” the lower that threshold.
Attention thresholds are to some extent context dependent — for instance, I could be hypersensitive to taste, but barely notice how noisy the restaurant is. This often comes with expertise — the more you know about something, the more discerning we often are about it — subtle distinctions and changes are more noticeable and, when we discern something negative, more bothersome.
Attention is often a more pervasive trait, however, with some individuals paying more attention to every prediction error or surprise.
Explanation
We rarely have complete and accurate information about errors, so our brain is always making it’s “best guess” at explaining them.
Individuals differ in their tendency to interpret errors positively or negatively. For example, one patron may interpret the change in pasta as a potentially positive event: “Huh, maybe the chef’s experimenting with a new recipe. Good for him for trying, but hope he does better next time.” Another patron may interpret it neutrally: “Huh, the chef must be sick, or the supply chain is disrupted. Better luck next time.” And still a third may interpret it as a fully negative event: “This restaurant is suddenly trash” or “these a**holes are trying to poison me.”
In these explanations, not only does the valence differ — whether the cause is positive, negative or neutral — but whether another human’s intention is ascribed to the event or not differs as well — whether good (experimentation) or bad (poisoning).
Learning
We can also differ in how we use these interpretations to learn about the restaurant and update our model of it.
We all know someone who, despite years of delicious meals, would have abandoned the restaurant after the first bad dish. This individual believes that things can change rapidly, and therefore places little confidence in their prior model of the restaurant. They place much more confidence in the new information as more likely to reflect the current reality, and rapidly incorporate new information into their models of the world accordingly.
On the flip side, we all know folks that would keep going back for years and years, always holding on to the belief that this restaurant is their favorite and nothing will replace it. This individual is highly confident in their existing model and doesn’t put much credence in new information. Things don’t really change…so why should I change my mind about them?
Behavior
Even if two people came to the same conclusion about the restaurant — they both agree it’s not as good as it used to be — they may act differently. There’s always a translation between what we believe and what we do about. One person may immediately start researching new restaurants, while another may keep coming back for months despite knowing full well the food wasn’t as good
Reflection Questions
In what area do you feel like you’re particularly sensitive or have strong discretion? In what areas do you feel like you have very limited sensitivity?
What needs or areas of life do you attend to most intensively? What do you ignore?
Do you tend to interpret events in the world more positively or negatively?
Do you often feel like other people are deliberately helping or hurting you vs. things happening through chance or luck?
How quickly do you feel like you change your mind about things?
How quickly do you feel like your life changes?
When you make up your mind about something, do you take immediate action (maybe even before you’ve fully come to a conclusion) or do you tend to wait and reflect for longer?