What You See Is All There Is
The concept that can drastically change your perception of life
Consider the following scenario: your doctor offers you a drug in which he explains 94% of people do not experience any severe side effects. Now consider instead he gives alternate information, telling you that 6% of people who took the drug suffered severe side effects. Suddenly, this ‘6%’ statement brings a little more concern, despite being identical to the first statement.
This influence from whatever information is apparent is what psychologist Daniel Kahneman refers to as WYSIATI: What You See Is All There Is, covered in his book: Thinking, Fast and Slow.
This type of cognitive bias works on the basis that we often fail to consider data that isn’t currently visible, focusing only on the information presented to us. It is through this we could be dangerously impressed by a new mobile phone that lists 3 top-quality features but avoids to mention its battery life of 25 minutes.
Selectively picking details is not just a trick of the marketing industry — as we’re about to discover, it is one of the greatest life hacks you can learn for many domains of your life.
Strengths Over Weaknesses
Staying with the topic of persuasion, you may find yourself convincing somebody of an opinion of yours or the outcome of a decision you’ve made. Every decision or action we make is inevitably going to have both flaws and plus sides. But you’ll sound far more credible mentioning the successful elements of your decision rather than the drawbacks of it. This sounds like simple logic but is often negated by peoples’ tendency to speak their thoughts out loud.
What You Say Is What You Become
A lack of consideration of the words you choose during conversations can have a damaging effect on your appearance on both an internal and external level. If, for instance, you talk to people about how your train was late, that you’re tired or complain about the weather, you will embrace the life of that person, and, following the law of WYSIATI, will be perceived as a fussy person.
If on the other hand, you share with people topics that inspire or energize you, or you mention upcoming things you and they have to look forward to, you’ll likely give off a much stronger vibe, even if your train was late.
Having conversations filled with successful elements of purpose or intent is a desirable trait of all humans. This is where choosing what to tell people becomes key in forming connections, and in conversation mastery.
There are an infinite number of ways you can respond to a statement within a conversation. Sometimes your response will be automatic and appropriately tailored to suit more professional settings. But the advice here concerns the act of making valuable friendships through your life and widening your group of connections.
Often in casual conversations, there is a priming effect is at play. As people bring up particular topics, your mind generates linked ideas to what has been said. You then proceed to respond by selecting one of these thoughts.
Here, a choice is offered to you: a choice to select one of the multiple ideas that may have sparked in you as the person spoke. This is where most people unfortunately slip up and utter the first reminder that shoots to mind without taking a moment to assess the best thing to respond with.
As seen earlier, this could be a bland complaint or agreement with a complaint. It could also be an automatic nod and mere acknowledgement of an issue someone may be having. This might feel like a satisfactory way to respond unless you consider how you could help the person with that issue, or offer beneficial insights to bring light into the conversation.
By selecting your words carefully, you boost your self-image and carve a pathway for a more meaningful and brighter conversation.
The Therapy of Talk
The benefit of implementing WYSIATI into your conversations does not only affect the outside world; there exists a great internal benefit to this practice.
Very often, talking in a conversation involves the exchanging of emotions between two people. This can happen consciously but often is subconscious.
It is this concept that lies behind one fascinatingly powerful benefit of talking to people: the ability to activate thoughts and recollections that would otherwise be inaccessible.
These thoughts and memories often embrace a positive nature — one that ignites something in you, whether that be motivation or gratefulness. You may have experienced this when a particular topic is brought up in a conversation, sparking a little mental reminder in your brain, like ‘oh, wasn’t that nice!’
Whilst it is often the other person who raises the topic, there is great potential for this to happen through your own words. You can easily spark this happy buzz in yourself merely by mentioning the topic in conversation.
In this way, talking offers the pleasant, often revitalising opportunity to lay out the mesh of thoughts in your head into a solid structure. Through processing your thoughts in the presence of another person, you carve a unique pathway for new ideas and thoughts to shine through.
In the next few days, try reminding yourself of this concept and see if you notice anything new. It is likely there are plenty of exciting details and special elements of your life you aren’t currently paying attention to.
