Blue and black or gold and white?
Yes, it’s The Dress That Launched a Thousand Social Media Posts.
Cast your mind back to 2015, and you might remember that EVERYONE was eager to share an opinion on The Dress.
It’s an extreme example, yet it illustrates a key point: it really is possible for people to view exactly the same thing in entirely different ways.
But how?
“Bias,” as Yale neuroscientist Molly Crockett puts it, “is the brain’s strategy for dealing with too much information.”
If we consciously received all available data, we’d be overwhelmed. That’s why 95% of our brains’ processing is subconscious. Our brains essentially decide on our behalf what information we do or don’t become aware of.
However, if everyone’s subconscious biases process data differently, can we really trust our views?
Curiously, The Dress wasn’t taken as a humbling message that we can’t fully trust our instant reactions. If anything, people doubled down on their “right” opinions, and were more eager to share their views than ever.
Is that helpful?
If we can learn anything from The Dress, I think it’s this: sometimes, it’s okay not to have an opinion (yet). There’s power in saying “I don’t know.”
So what say you? Would a pause for thought help your clients?