Anxiety is defined as “an emotion characterized by feelings of tension, worried thoughts and physical changes like increased blood pressure.” (American Psychological Association). Millions of people around the world suffer from anxiety, just as I do. It’s a common disorder that can affect our judgement and reasoning. Judgements and reasonings that make up our days, our life, and all our decisions.
We typically use inductive reasoning to make our judgements. We gather observations, or we can reach our own conclusions from evidence to form our own reasoning. These conclusions can be true in cases, but they are not definite. Typically gathering this information that leads to our decisions or judgements comes from either multiple observations that concluded in similar ways, or the quality of the evidence found is strong enough to base our beliefs on. (Goldstein, 2015). These methods can be useful in learning new information and understanding future rationalizations but contemplating old and new observations can take more thought and consideration than we may have the time and energy for every situation. That’s when we use a “shortcut” to gather just enough past experiences to come to a conclusion faster. This is called heuristics, “a rule of thumb that provides a best-guess solution to a problem.” (Goldstein, 2015). Our past experiences can help us make quick decisions or realizations that can help us at a moments notice, but for better or worse, they are not always precise or correct. Negative heuristics can lead to repeat negative behaviour or even worse, a domino effect in illusory correlation. Illusory correlations occur when two events exist that seemingly correlate but in reality, they do not. (Goldstein, 2015).
When I’m having anxiety about going to a large event my mind races on what could possibly happen or go wrong. For someone with no prior experience going to a large event, they may be excited or possibly dwell on what it would be like. However, I have had a negative past experience at a large event. So without being cognitive about my worries and reframing my thoughts, I automatically correlate the two events. Heuristics can be helpful in a multitude of situations but in anxiety-producing ones, that happen to have past experiences linked to them by illusory correlation, they can be harmful. My judgement and reasonings are clouded and influenced by the quality of evidence formed at the past event. Although the information provided was not quality in the sense it was good or well researched, it was the feelings surrounding it and the notable incident that make the evidence too strong to ignore in future situations.
Work Cited:
American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Anxiety. American Psychological Association. Retrieved November 22, 2021, from https://www.apa.org/topics/anxiety.
Goldstein, B. E. (2015). Cognitive Psychology (4th ed.).
I read your post and was gravitated towards it because I feel the exact same way you described regarding my anxiety. I empathize with you. I also wanted to say that your experience is valid, regardless.
As you mentioned, inductive reasoning is used for our daily judgements. Inductive Reasoning is defined as drawing a “probably true “conclusion from previously gathered evidence (Goldstein, 2015). In relation to your story, you described your experience in a big crowd as being associated with anxiety induction and your mind being clouded and unable to produce clear judgement. The good thing is, we can try to use our inductive reasoning to correct this.
Easier said than done, I know. Just speaking in terms of a plan, we can use our past experiences to identify our triggers and apply this new information. As the author in our book said, inductive reasoning conclusions can be more useful than deductive reasoning because it allows us to add new information to our thought process (Goldstein, 2015). As you noted, there are illusory correlations formed between your experiences and the crowd in which you were present for. The good news is the correlation is weak or nonexistent so once identified it has a higher chance of being eliminated.
References
Goldstein, B. E. (2015). Cognitive Psychology (4th ed.).
I felt immediate empathy when I read your blog post. Mild anxiety can act as a warning signal and makes a person think harder about making a decision or taking an action. It sends a message of caution, preparing the person to face a situation which they don’t feel comfortable about. Extreme anxiety is severely debilitating – it can arrest you altogether and is often accompanied by depression. Anxiety can occur instantaneously in reaction to a horrific shock, after which, it is difficult to lower physical manifestations like a thumping heart, feeling faint, raised blood pressure, vomiting, and inability to sleep and eat. Conversely, anxiety can build up over a period of time when you experience one setback after another, until the person feels it is all too much to deal with. In both cases, troubles and worries are magnified and feel out-of-control.
Inductive reasoning trains us to watch out for what may go wrong if we presume a set-up of events may lead to a similar outcome we have observed before. From our past experiences we can make an informed decision or judgement (Goldstein, 2015 p.399). Feelings of fear can be generated by a possible repeat of a previous unpleasant encounter which we may wish to avoid (representative heuristic). Naturally, a repetition of these bad feelings is an experience we do not want to suffer again and can lead to risk aversion (Goldstein, 2015 p.381 p.399-400). Whatever makes someone feel unwell – either mentally or physically – cannot be tackled by the added pressure and stress of forcing them to face up to it in a way that will only exacerbate the person’s condition. Anxiety and depression cannot be switched off like an electric light bulb – coping strategies have to be learned and will evolve over time (Goldstein, 2015 p.381). This is because decision-making and judgement can be impaired during feelings of both anxiety and depression – in effect the brain’s method of preventing possible further harm.
Episodic memories are those which we have personally lived through at a place and time remembered, and they have a very powerful bearing on the present and future. Episodic Specificity Induction (ESI) is a research method for evaluating a troubling experience and breaking it down in order to understand this previous experience better, therefore enabling the person to cope better when the next potential derailing challenge presents itself (Jing, Madore, Schacter, 2016; American Psychological Association Dictionary of Psychology).
Your insightful blog post inspired me to look deeper into prospection and episodic simulation where researchers look at how creating a fictional future scenario by way of “… planning, prospective memory, decision-making, problem solving, and emotion regulation” can generate possible approaches to ease facing future difficult situations capable of creating anxiety (Jing, Madore, Schacter, 2016).
Works Cited –
APA Dictionary of Psychology. (n.d.). In American Psychological Association. Retrieved December 5, 2021, from https://dictionary.apa.org/episodic-memory
Goldstein, B. (2015). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting mind, research, and everyday experience (4th ed., pp. 381-400). Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.
Jing, H. G., Madore, K. P., & Schacter, D. L. (2016, April). Worrying about the Future: An Episodic Specificity Induction Impacts Problem Solving, Reappraisal, and Well-Being. In National Institutes of Health. Retrieved December 5, 2021, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4792686/pdf/nihms-745740.pdf
Lesson 6: Long-Term Memory: Structure: Episodic Memories. (n.d.). In Penn State World Campus. Retrieved December 5, 2021, from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2130474/modules/items/33027100
Lesson 6: Long-Term Memory: Structure: Episodic and Semantic Memories in the Brain. (n.d.). In Penn State World Campus. Retrieved December 5, 2021, from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2130474/modules/items/33027102
Lesson 14: Reasoning and Decision Making: Decision Making. (n.d.). In Penn State World Campus. Retrieved December 5, 2021, from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2130474/modules/items/33027185
Lesson 14: Reasoning and Decision Making: Inductive Reasoning. (n.d.). In Penn State World Campus. Retrieved December 5, 2021, from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2130474/modules/items/33027184
Lesson 14: Reasoning and Decision Making: The Process of Making Decisions. (n.d.). In Penn State World Campus. Retrieved December 5, 2021, from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2130474/modules/items/33027186