126 - Emotional Heuristics

Humans learn to predict the emotional states of others based on correlates, particularly when causally related factors are unclear or unknown. Like most cognitive biases, these heuristics are usually accurate enough, and hence "useful, but wrong". However, when they aren't accurate, they create systematic deviations in perception and prediction.

It took someone recently pointing out two things in the span of the same conversation for me to notice that normal correlate-based prediction would strongly deviate based on one, to predict the opposite of the other, and vice versa. Both are things that people have observed about me with clockwork regularity, and biases regarding the perception of one train people to expect the opposite of the other.

People who've met me repeatedly in person have routinely commented on how I'm very calm and relaxed, radiating a kind of peacefulness (in the sense that people around me pick up on and are pulled toward the same state). This kind of calm is strongly associated (correlated) with the cognitive biases that people learn with culturally specific subsets of communication and beliefs, such as how some people might think of yoga, spiritually focused individuals, or various other stereotypes.

People who've read my writing with any regularity have routinely commented on the harshness of my wording, which generates the opposite heuristic prediction and expectation in people. Another kind of stereotype is the expectation that harsh wording must flow from someone who is in a negative emotional state of some kind, such as irritation, because the two are often correlated.

However, the fact remains, that I'm still perfectly calm, or at least sufficiently calmer than the vast majority of people that many have been compelled to remark on it with regularity. Strong wording can be clinically accurate, but cognitive biases are also triggered more frequently and potently by strong wording, or what is perceived as such.

Another cognitive bias comes into play to mediate this, heuristic availability. For example, when 95 self-proclaimed "AI Experts" use very positive language and honey-coat problems as thinly veiled sales pitches, while 5 actual experts are critical of the same material and tear the things the 95 had to say to shreds, heuristic availability biases people against the 5. This is partly because of how humans "reason" with emotions, and the perception of a negative emotional influence, even when it is necessary to remove snake oil peddlers, meets with some emotional backlash.

This is one of the ways that humanity routinely face-plants into the pavement. Few cognitive biases are trickier to deal with than those that relate to the prediction and perception of emotional states in others, as any non-sociopathic individual will be prone to some degree of empathy, and online discourse leaves many blank spaces to fill in that humans didn't evolve for and haven't yet adapted to.

Recognizing our own predictions as such is a first step and a difficult one.