Climate change. Inflation. Carbon tax. Gun control. My guess is you have opinions about them, whether for or against. My guess is also that your friends and family have opinions about them. Strong ones. We’re in a moment where strong opinions are not only felt, but also expressed. Frequently online. And the ways we express them are almost always polarizing.
When issues we care about are at stake, we tend to retreat into an either-or mentality. Yet, from a neuroscience perspective, we become more thoughtful and make wiser decisions when we open our mind to possibility. The types of cultural conversations that seem to never stop churning around these and other issues give the illusion that there are only ever two options to choose from—and only one right answer. They don’t leave much room for uncertainty or flexibility. As documentary- filmmaker Ken Burns said in a recent podcast, “We are in an age where everyone is certain about something.”
Your Brain on Binaries
Sometimes referred to as black-and-white, all-or-nothing, or dichotomous thinking, binary thinking is this tendency to view things through an “either-or” lens. It is a heuristic—a simple way to process and categorize complex ideas—whereby we perceive things as either good or bad, right or wrong, true or false.
