Incivility in our Society
From small insults to more serious forms of aggression, acts of disrespect have consequences on our health, wellbeing and confidence. Take the example of being cut off in traffic, an experience that leaves one seething miles later or perhaps you have been rudely interrupted by a colleague in an important meeting. The magnitude of the effect it has on your decision making is not surprising, as most people replay the threatening scene repeatedly in their mind. When a person is rude to us, we feel targeted. The nervous system interprets these events as life-threatening and our ability to problem solve is compromised. ‘Anchoring’ is a term for cognitive bias describing the human tendency to rely too heavily on a first piece of information when solving a problem. For example, our outrage creates an overfocus (or anchor) on our initial interpretation ofwhat happened and ignores mediating information. The anchoring effect keeps us from logical solutions because of our judgment errors related to skewed expectations and dismissed information.