Fighting Personal Vision Gaps
Our goal is not to provide content about PVG tools (tools against Personal Vision Gaps) - there are others who do this better than us. However, in this page you can find a model we've built for principles of PVG tools, which aims to summarize the roots of these tools in a simplified form.
We have extended writings in Hebrew on each of these principles - feel free to contact us for those, or for questions on the matter.
The following model serves as a unifying theory for behavioral change, and is based on principles from Cognitive, Behavioral, Positive and Evolutionary Psychology, Neuroscience and Human Physiology.
The goal of these principles is to help anyone create tools, systems, products or services that deal with PVGs.
All principles rely on academic concepts, besides certain principles that we created in order to wrap up several academic concepts together (we mark those principles by using the words "according to this model"). You will find related terms under each principle (better citations are coming soon). See legal disclaimers at the end of this page.
Three core concepts
Generic tools (against any gap)
Principles for Specific Gaps
You don’t need to know all about Psychology in order to understand this model - but here are three core concepts from Cognitive Neuroscience that are important for understanding this model's principles.
A perception is the way an individual interprets anything they encounter in their lives - whether it’s an event, person, state, emotion, skill, ourselves. There are significant “rooted” perceptions such as friendship, parenting, work, but also minor perceptions such as the taste of cucumbers, a sunny summer day, the street in which we live, and so on.
Our thought consists of an enormous number of perceptions by which we know how to manage and act in life. This model sees perceptions as the main factor that influences behavior and patterns of thought.
Note: This is a very simplified version of the way Neurons and Synapses work.
Not every perception influences us all the time; when we are reminded of a certain perception, it is “activated”, or “pops” into our head (whether we’re conscious of that perception or not).
Whenever a perception is activated, two things happen:
The next metaphor can help explain this better: Let’s imagine a big network of lightbulbs that are connected with strings, and are off by default. Each of those lightbulb is a perception, each of those strings is an associative link, and this network is our mind.
When one of them turns on, linked bulbs turn on with different power of light (depending on how strong their strings are to the original bulb), and then those bulbs activate their linked bulbs with lesser power, which activate their linked bulbs with lesser power, and so on.
Eventually, our behavior and thought in a given moment are created by the perceptions activated in that moment (which are of course made by a vast number of combinations of beliefs, values, memory, the way we perceive the situation in that moment, and so on).
While it is not yet fully explainable, it is clear that mindsets affect other systems beyond just other mindsets - it affects physical conditions and health, such as with the digestive system or immune system.
Imagine the next experiment: Someone would watch a roulette wheel stop on a number between 10 and 65, and then they would be asked what percentage of United Nations that are African nations - Do you think the roulette wheel will influence their answer?
In a research done in 1974 by Kahenman and Tversky [1] Research shows that if participant’s roulette stopped on 10, their average guess was 25%, and if it stopped on 65, the average guess was 45%.
Why is that? As explained before, all activated perceptions affect our behavior. According to this model, specific numbers are also perceptions, and the stronger they’re activated in a given situation, the more influence they will have on our behavior. This example is mathematical (and defined as the anchoring bias), but obviously this is not limited only to numbers but to any perception; such as mood, semantic fields, visual items, and so on.
A trivial example could be how our mood in a certain situation affects the way we perceive and behave in that situation. By this principle, lightning or smell in a situation should as well affect our behavior, though much less than our mood.
Activated perceptions are more available to our memory than others, which can also lead to an affect on behavior (see availability bias below).
Our mind has a natural preference for using existing associate links rather than creating new ones. That means we are unconsciously prone to reinforce what we already know, believe in, or are more familiar with. We tend to reject facts that do not adhere with the way we see the world, our self-concept, or facts that are new to us.
Note: This is a very simplified version of Dual Process Theory or ACP.
All processes that our minds are capable of, can be divided into processes that only our conscious mind can do, and those that only our unconscious mind can do.
Generally speaking, our unconscious mind is way more powerful than our conscious mind. It is faster, its processes require much less effort, it has access to much more information. Yet, our consciousness is capable of much more complex processes.
These tools consist of analysis, speculation, doubt, thinking using defined set of rules (such as math, logics, social codes, judicial rules, and so on).
In addition, the conscious mind can activate any unconscious processing tool, but less effectively.
These tools consist of pattern recognition, recalling memories, imagination (and filling up details using imagination), distributing attention, modifying perceptions (learning), comparing scales of different measures, allocating weights to considerations.
Like all living things, we tend to choose courses of action that preserve our energy.
Since the unconscious processing tools require less energy than conscious ones, we tend to prefer using unconscious processes whenever possible.
Some of our wants and needs come from a deep natural instinct (such as sexual attraction, hunger, need for fun, social needs) rather than other wants and needs which are much more thought-driven (such as getting accepted to a prestigious school, being professional, being a good friend, living a purposeful life). The first class of wants derives from unconscious processes, while the second from conscious ones. It's important to make the distinction between these two, as for sometimes they can conflict - for instance when you have a conscious-driven want go jogging, but also an unconscious-driven want to stay comfortable at home.
Unconscious thought is our default thought - all stimuli and perceptions first goes through our unconsciousness, and only a small portion of it is processed by our conscious mind.
The unconscious mind can “choose to transfer” the processing of a perception to the conscious mind: For example, our unconscious mind is always “aware” of the smell of a room. But it would only alert our conscious mind if, say, something stinks, or strongly reminds us of a past memory.
On the other hand, our conscious mind can “choose to request“ a perception: For instance, it can use attention to smell at any moment, or use memory to recall a perception.
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For our definition of gap, see our explanation of PVGs (Personal Vision Gaps).
According to this model, changing perceptions consists of four steps:
* Tricks for identifying a negative perception:
**Tricks of articulting the new perception: After identification of the negative perception, there are several different ways to look at the new perception - here is a list of few. Try different articulations, and check what works for you and for this perception:
Our perceptions give instructions to be carried by our subconsciousness. Therefore, try to avoid:
Placeholder Technique: If you find it hard to articulate the new perception, don't put too much effort into it, and write down whatever you can come up with now. Ideas of how to refine this sentence will naturally come to your head each time you encounter it in the future.
*** List of strategies. The rule of thumb for those, is that the more memorable the strategy is (see the Memory chapter below), the faster the new perception will become natural and more automatic (because stronger associative links are created this way, therefore the perception will have more influence when activated):
We suggest not to work on more than 5 perception simultaneously, so you can focus on them, and not have duplicates of too many perceptions for the same problem. We do encourage to have a waiting list for perceptions you want to work on in the future.
Changing perceptions (instead of deliberately investing effort into “doing something differently” to force a new behavior) makes new behaviors come naturally. If changing a perception seems hard, then remember the more we practice the skill of changing perceptions, the easier it becomes - and it’s a skill that can serve us in anything we do.
This natural manner of a new behavior is important also because self-control and forcing behavior requires a lot of energy from us.
In addition to being based on other principles that are mentioned in this page, this section is heavily based on CBT, but different in form from any type of CBT - as it is meant to be applied through products that don’t include a therapist.
Due to our preference for existing associative links, it’s easier to do things that have already become habits - as behaviors that are habits are linked to certain triggers. For instance, cleaning your room can be linked to (and triggered by) arriving home.
This notion can be utilized by choosing a fitting trigger for a desired behavior, and repeating the behavior each time we are exposed to this trigger. It's important to remember that each time we are exposed to the trigger without doing something active about the behavior, the trigger loses its strength a little bit - for this reason, choose only triggers that you encounter only when you want to execute the behavior.
For the same reason, it is harder to start new things than to continue with previous habits. If it seems like starting to run regularly requires a lot of effort from you, then remembering that this effort will be minimized the more you do it, can help as motivation for starters.
This can also justify the use of programs that force you to do something for a limited time - for example, a call from a friend every second morning to wake up early for jogging, just in the first 2-3 weeks. Another example would be dedicating a weekend to begin playing guitar.
Habits are also “powered up” by rewards (though those rewards don’t have to be materialistic, for instance, just preserving the associative link can also stand as reward) - see the motivation chapter for that.
In many aspects of our lives, we don't have the possibility of creating a structural and exact habits, and we need some kind of a flexible habit. For instance, if we work too much, we can try to create a habit of finishing our workday at 5PM, and set an alarm for this time. But having the expectation of finishing exactly at 5 is not realistic - surprises can occur to both sides of finishing later or earlier.
In such cases, we need to:
Cognitive Biases are errors in our thought, common to all people. They originiate from the way our minds work, and cause our judgement to deviate from rational decisions.
There are a lot of known biases. We couldn't find any intuitive categorization for simplifying this long list, and made our way of categorization, that we call signals of truth:
(Note that each of those signals also apply for its oppositve: for example, “It’s right because it feels good” also means “it’s wrong because it feels bad”).
Due to our preference for existing associative links & our tendency to minimize effort
It’s the default / It already happened: Default Effect, Ben Franklin Effect, Status Quo Bias (/ System justification), Foot-in-the-door.
Previous opinion or familiar: Confirmation Bias, Belief Bias, Familiarity heuristic, Backfire effect, conservatism bias, Illusory truth effect, Hindsight Bias and Moral luck*, Normality/ostrich Bias (opposite), False consensus effect.
(Categorization notes: *both: when it’s a memory rather than forecast, it’s more believable).
Due to our preference for existing associative links.
Read more: Identifiable Victim effect (or Compassion Fade), IKEA Effect, In-group Bias, Social Comparison Bias (opposite), Self-verification (which is our tendency to defend our beliefs about ourselves. Leads to additional biases: either Optimism Bias and Illusory superiority, or Pessimism Bias or Worse-than-average - depends on the belief being judged).
Due to our preference for existing associative links ("good" and "right" are always linked).
Read more: Halo Effect, Illusion of control. It’s good for me: Self-serving bias, Pro-innovation Bias, Selective Perceptions.
The opposite is “it’s wrong because it feels bad” (such as with Horn Effect), but it’s worth to mention that negative is perceived stronger than positive (possibly due to an evolutionary mechanism of fear - see Evolutionary Biases below).
This is reflected in biases such as: Prospect Theory (“Loss is more significant than the equivalent gain”), Framing Effect, Loss Aversion.
Due to our tendency to minimize effort
This occurs either when (i) we don’t feel the need to seek additional information, or (ii) when we make an Attribute Substitution: which is when we unconsciously replace a complex judgment with an easier judgment.
Not seeking additional information (/first conclusion wins): Attribution/correspondence Bias (/Actor–observer Bias), Bandwagon effect* (when regarding that, take note of Optimal Distinctiveness), Dunning-Kruger Effect, Stereotyping, Survivorship Bias.
Attribute Substitution: unconsciously replacing a complex judgment with an easier judgment. For instance, we prefer dealing with specific (rather than general) information (Base Rate Fallacy), Searching for patterns in randomness (Pareidolia, Illusory Correlation), Projection Bias, Trait ascription bias.
(Categorization notes: *relying on others’ information)
Or in other words, because it's the most accessible to my memory. Due to our tendency to minimize effort.
Things can become more accessible to our memories because they're (i) more memorable or (ii) primed.
Read more:
It’s right because it's more easily accessible at the moment: (therefore more accessible): Peak-end Rule, Salience Bias, Rhyme-as-reason, Negativity Bias, Bizarreness effect.
Priming (& Wysiati), makes perceptions more accessible to memory: Anchoring effect, Embodied Cognition.
We can’t ignore memories: Curse of knowledge (If we try to remember how to is was live without knowing things, we would still encounter newest associated memories).
The general phenomenon: Availability Bias
The Present Bias is our tendency to rather settle for a smaller present rewarding event, than to wait for a larger future rewarding event*.
Read more: Spotlight Effect, Illusion of transparency.
* The magnitude of the present bias is determined by how psychologically far the event seems determines how abstract or concrete the details of the event seem (because of Psychological Distance (CLT)) - therefore causing positive-detailed event to be preferred if they are close, and negative events less preferred if they are close).
This section describes a group of perceptions that all human are born with. By the definition of a cognitive bias, such perceptions that are deeply rooted in us and are hard to change, can serve as source of bias for us.
(i). Different genders had different roles in our evolution: For hundreds of thousands of years, males had the role of protecting and hunting, while females had the role of raising offspring. Even after, almost all humans were nomadic hunter-gatherers since 105,000 years ago, until 10,000 ago when agriculture started. During thousands of generations, perceptions of humans were adjusted for reproducing and surviving within the context in which they lived. Here are some of these "hardwired" perceptions:
(ii). Social perceptions
(iii). Memory
Some types of memory are stronger than others because of evolutionary reasons. For instance, visual memory is stronger than textual (common people started reading only less than a thousand years ago) - see memory below. For that reason, we might prefer certain visual stimuli or memories rather than textual ones, and sometimes ignore the latter.
There are also biases that occur because our intuition doesn't comprise of some mechanisms about how the world work, or how people work.
Statistical concepts: Gambler’s Fallacy (statistical independence) or conjunction Fallacy (general events are more likely than specific ones), Berkson Paradox, Hot-hand fallacy, Selection Bias.
Mathematical concepts: Scope Neglect, Subadditivity Bias.
Psychological concepts: Impact/durability bias (we’re not aware of psychological defenses), Naïve realism (not understanding cognitive biases).
According to this model, the first step in de-biasing our decisions, is to notice whenever we evaluate truth - because in any evaluation of truth, some biases apply. We call this rule: "truth should be evaluated with consciousness". When noticing:
This model focuses on a theory of motivation called Motivational Salience (or Incentive Salience), by which every perception has “motives against it “(Aversive Salience) and “motives for it” (Incentive Salience).
In light of this theory, In order to motivate ourselves to do an action, we need to strengthen motives for the action and weaken motives against it. According to this model, this can be done in three ways:
*Convincing yourself or others can be done by utilizing the signals of truth.
The first signal (it’s right because it’s default) is the easiest to use, especially through foot-in-the-door methods.
When convincing others, it's important that they feel comfortable agreeing with you. When people feel you're trying to convince them out of selfish motives, they get defensive.
When convincing yourself, you can also utilize tools for changing perceptions (see above).
When convincing others in conversations, there's much to learn about (1) how to best choose and compose arguments, and how to use them during a conversation (2) Storytelling. We don't discuss these topics here.
**There are two ways to strengthen the priming effect for motives:
A different technique besides dealing with for and against motives, can be to ignore motives:
According to this model, our self-image is a core perception - a perception that is almost always active, and is interconnected to the vast majority of perceptions we have and experience. Due to our preference for existing associative links (see above) we have a strong subconscious will to prove to ourselves that our core perceptions are true.
As a part of that, we have a strong subconscious drive to prove our self-beliefs to ourselves (Self-verification theory, Self-efficacy, Self-affirmation). This drive is a crucial factor in the perceptions that our subconscious develops, whether they’re social (such as who I befriend, intimate partners, how to interact with people, what should I deserve from people, my role in a situation) or not (how should I spend my free time, what jobs am I fit to, what am I capable of).
This drive also causes us to subconsciously project our self-beliefs to others using body-language, language nuances, choices, and so on.
This phenomenon is extremely hurtful when it is driven by negative self-beliefs. This doesn’t apply only to individuals with general negative self-image, but causes damage to any individual when they face a situation that involves a negative self-belief.
For instance, even if a generally confident and positive individual believes they are bad at singing, their singing skills will be significantly decreased, and they will subconsciously try to convince both others and themselves of that belief. They will continue to do so until they encounter an event which makes them change this belief, such as reliable and convincing positive feedback for their singing after a concert.
But for the same reason, this phenomenon can also be extremely helpful when regarding positive self-beliefs and high confidence in certain skills or attributes.
An important takeoff from this concept is to take care of our self-beliefs. This can be done best with perceptions changing tools (see above), and when this is not possible, merely just by trying to convince and encourage ourselves.
There are other core perceptions besides self-image perceptions, that carry the same level of importance:
Core perceptions receive their power by being almost constantly active, and usually not thought of directly (therefore can more easily bias us, or influence us without our consciousness' interference).
Since our perspective is based on our experience in the present (see Cognitive Biases above), we tend to believe that if we have decided in the present to carry out an action in the future, our future-self will actually remember that.
In other words, when we’re making plans, we tend to say “I’ll do that in future”, and forget that afterwards. Implementation Intention is a self-management strategy, which focuses on making sure that plans are actually carried, by having a clear answer on when, where, and how they will be carried. It means to make sure that future-you actually executes these plans.
For instance, instead of just saying “I won’t use my phone when I eat” → put a note on the microwave to actually remember that in the relevant moment. As another example, instead of saying “I should start going to the gym” → sign up online right now for a gym, and create an event in your calendar for going there the first time.
If while reading this you get a feeling of "but that requires much more effort for making plans than right now" - that's completly natural, and that's the amount of effort required for communicating with your future self.
As explained before, activated perceptions affect other perceptions, our behavior, and other phenomena such as stress (see below). For that reason, theoretically it would be beneficial if we'd be able to deactivate perceptions.
While we’re not capable of deactivating certain perceptions, there are techniques we can apply in order to “clean our head” and deactivate most active perceptions in a given moment.
This theoretically this can be achieved with meditation (see below), breathing techniques (see below), distraction for prolonged times (see Flow above), or visual imagination (aimed specifically for “cleaning our head of active perceptions” - the lightbulb metaphor from above can be used here). We suggest on exercises that combine some of those together.
Note: This is not similar to negative priming.
A tool for utilizing the transferring of processing (see above) between our subconscious and conscious mind. We decided not to elaborate here as this tools lacks foundations in science, but you can read more here.
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Stress is an automatic response* of the body to perceptions that an individual perceives as challenging, or with potential to inflict damage. This could be minor challenges such as forgetting where your phone is, or long-term challenges such as changes in our life.
Stress is not necessarily negative, as mild levels of stress can increase certain types of performance (see Yerkes–Dodson law), but it does require additional energy from the body in order to maintain the physical state of stress (and has additional negative effects such as on the digestive or immune systems, ulcers, and more).
Long-term stress, called chronic stress, has much more negative effects (see allostatic load. For coping, see Psychological Resilience, Hardiness - and we also recommend consultancy).
* The physical response of stress: every one of our internal organs is controlled by one of two nervous systems - one for rest, one for arousalץ The latter is more dominant during stress. In stress, the body dedicates more energy to the internal organs that belong to the second system (the body also releases cortisol hormone, which for example improves creation of memories and concentration - see below). When the body “cools down” after a stressful event, the balance is restored between the system.
Through this definition, there is clear importance for using techniques to reduce stress when it’s not beneficial:
Whatever techniques we're using to reduce stress, it's important to remember that stress takes time to recover from. This is trivial when we think of physical recovery, but our emotional recovery is as important; stress has a physical and mental influence on our mind and body, and we shouldn't expect a single session of meditation to entirely reset our emotional state.
Breathing techniques are mostly useful (and have evidence for) reducing stress.
In addition, it’s important to remember that we can use breathing techniques quickly, in every situation, without needing to sit down and close our eyes (although that would be more effective), and then breathing techniques can also be useful as immediate response to anger, despair, feeling lack of self-control, and so on.
Most techniques suggest breathing (1) very deeply (2) very consciously (extremely important) (3) through the nose (4) Some techniques suggest holding breath for a few seconds. There is no consensus over other rules (such as how many breaths, how many seconds for inhale/hold/exhale).
Read more: Effects of breathing techniques [1],[2], A research claiming that breathing without attention does not yield the effect.
Mindfulness is defined as the purposely bringing one's attention to experiences occurring in the present moment without judgment.
This affects the positiveness of active perceptions (both by not judging them negatively, and both by consciously observing them without negative emotional response, that would otherwise be automatic).
The concept of mindfulness is highly tied to the concept of time, and to the concept of acceptance. Echkart Tolle captures this connection very well in these two quotes:
“Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry – all forms of fear – are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.”
“Don't look for peace. Don't look for any other state than the one you are in now; otherwise, you will set up inner conflict and unconscious resistance. Forgive yourself for not being at peace. The moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non-peace becomes transmuted into peace. Anything you accept fully will get you there, will take you into peace. This is the miracle of surrender”
Meditation’s main benefits are (1) stress-relieving (2) practice of mindfulness.
Preparing for meditation:
During meditation:
There are some tricks for more easily concentrating on breathing, by curiously examining different attributes of them. Examples: (1) the gap between inhale and exhale: what is happening there? (2) The air’s texture, temperature, pace, smell (3) Think of the meaning of breathing, and it’s relation to being alive.
Activating attention is a state of arousal - see stress.
Attention control is the ability to selectively process perceptions (consciously or unconsciously) or ignore them.
This is a list of techniques for improving focus in a certain situation. Since our subconscious mind is controlling our ability to control attention, the following techniques are intended to influence our subconscious thought:
Another important aspect for concentration is our surroundings:
Activating memory is a state of arousal - see stress.
This section describes three strategies for improving memory:
Our model consists of techniques for good* communication, which consists of tools for influencing others (such as utilizing the signals of truth, storytelling, creating impressions), for letting others influence us effectively (such as active listening and reading body language), and for maintaining and strengthening relationships (such as taking care of the perception of the relationship by all sides). We haven't translated these tools yet. Contact us about it.
* This model defines this as a positive mutual influence between the internal worlds of people.
Changing fears is not different from the perception-changing techniques mentioned before, and these will probably work, but usually after much time and effort, since most fears are deeply rooted perceptions. For that reason, it is worthwhile considering turning to consultancy for such cases (at least for assessment).
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Contents of this page belong to Gidon Kadosh © 2020.
Disclaimer: Although this model can provide basic tools for personal change, it is not a replacement for the personal process that can occur in psychological counseling or other forms of counseling. This model is not responsible for any harm caused by its use, and any sort of responsibility is to be carried by its user. In cases of distress, we highly suggest turning for counseling - even if just for one meeting, for assessment. Feel free to contact us about questions on the matter.
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