Genes 2 Brains 2 Mind 2 Me

OK, so we have some 20,000-ish genes to help build a brain with billions of neurons and trillions of synapses … and guess what … our brains don’t work as well as we think they might.  Surprised?

Current psychological scientists suggest that there are some 19 social cognition biases, 8 memory biases, 42 decision-making biases, 35 probability-belief biases. Wow! That’s a lot of skewed thinking, not to mention concomitant stress it can generate. As a starting point to probing your own cognitive biases, check out John Grohol’s article on the 15 most common cognitive distortions:

1. Filtering.
Taking negative details and magnifying them …
2. Polarized Thinking.
Things are either “black-or-white” …
3. Overgeneralization.
Coming to a general conclusion based on a single incident …
4. Jumping to Conclusions.
Anticipate that things will turn out badly …
5. Catastrophizing.
We expect disaster to strike …
6. Personalization.
Thinking that everything is some kind of reaction to us …
7. Control Fallacies.
We see ourselves as helpless victims of fate …
8. Fallacy of Fairness.
We feel resentful because life is not fair …
9. Blaming.
We hold other people responsible for our pain …
10. Shoulds.
Rules about how others and we should behave …
11. Emotional Reasoning.
We believe that what we feel must be true automatically …
12. Fallacy of Change.
Needing to change people because our hopes depend on them …
13. Global Labeling.
Generalizing one or two qualities into a negative global judgment …
14. Always Being Right.
Having to prove that our opinions and actions are correct …
15. Heaven’s Reward Fallacy.
Expect our sacrifice and self-denial to pay off …

Oh crap …  I’m loosing it … I do (think) all of these!  Will be fun to sort out what genes relate to what biases.

[Do you know what gene regulates the initiation of new synapses?]