Key points
- Many Internet posts and some self-help articles use negative labels as if they were explanations.
- On the Internet, negative judgments and inflammatory attributions masquerade as facts.
- Most posts are written to validate feelings and gratify the ego, rather than search for truth.
- It can seem like narcissism, but our selfie-culture is more a product of immature thinking than pathology.
An abundance of relationship books, articles, and blogs inadvertently contributes to monocular vision—in the name of validation. It thereby impairs the ability to see other perspectives alongside our own
Here are signs that you read too much self-help and too many Internet posts:
- Using labels like gaslighting, narcissist, microaggressions in disagreements
- Confusing judgments with feelings
- Confusing opinions with scientific findings
- Accepting citations as truth, without looking up the studies and noting their limitations
It’s hard these days to find an Internet post, or self-help article, or family dispute, much less a political speech, which does not pretend that labels are explanations and opinions are facts. In social and political discourse, all sides are likely to use identical or similar labels to devalue each other
Labels are terrible explanations. They omit more information than they describe, and obscure more than they illuminate. All labels oversimplify. Sadly, words that highlight serious social issues, such as racist and misogynist, are now widely used as slurs. We use labels because, as Carl Jung put it, “Thinking is hard, that’s why people judge.” It’s extremely hard to know something, but extremely easy to think we know
The Cult of “I Feel”
Perhaps recognizing that negative attributions make things worse, not to mention reinforce narcissistic tendencies, common relationship advice tries to hide negative judgments by expressing them as feelings. For example:
“I feel offended, disrespected, judged, dismissed, unheard….”
These are not feelings. They’re judgments, if not accusations, about other people’s attitudes or behavior, which is why they usually elicit counter judgments and accusations. Feelings are guilt, shame, sadness, interest, enjoyment, surprise. Expressing feelings can bring us closer together; negative judgments masquerading as feelings drive us further apart. Feelings are always real and valid, even when the perceptions, assumptions, and judgments that underlie them are inaccurate, false, or unrealistic. For emotional growth, validate feelings but question what underlies them.
The Cult of Opinion
Opinions expressed in the media (particularly on the Internet) are not facts. They may include interpretations of facts, but even then, they’re embedded with personal biases and supported by confirmation bias. Opinions are typically short-hand explanations of complex issues. Those who express them, when they bother to give reasons, never give alternative plausible explanations, of which there are almost always several. We’re more likely to accept the opinions of those who agree with our biases in comparison with those who present compelling evidence.
Appeals to Authority
It’s become fashionable for Internet posts to cite psychological studies as references, giving the false impression that they’re on a par with peer-reviewed professional journals. Many years ago, I sat on a peer-review committee of a professional publication. To this day, I remain shocked by the number of submissions citing studies that did not support, and sometimes contradicted, the points in their content. I would have thought they’d be more careful, knowing they were going to be reviewed. I now believe this faulty scholarship was a product of confirmation bias rather than sloppiness, narcissism, or dishonesty.
The most egregious examples of misleading citations do not occur in psychological research literature. For example, several articles published by prestigious medical journals purported that OxyContin was non-addictive. The “study” they cited turned out to be a letter to the editor, quoted out of context, about terminally ill patients who were too sick to exhibit signs of addiction
Alas, points made in popular literature far surpass professional submissions in misinterpreting or misrepresenting psychological research findings. Even when authors correctly cite studies, they rarely give the published limitations of the studies they cite, few of which are generalizable and replicated
Personal Perspectives Essential Reads
They Kept Me Safe, But They Never Knew Me
What a Jail Cell Taught Me About Mental Health Care
Toddlers Are So Cute
The self-obsession of toddlers, whose favorite words are Mine and No, is adorable. Not so cute are adults who think like toddlers, preoccupied with splitting and all-or-nothing judgments. Although it can seem like narcissism, the selfie-culture we live in is more a product of immature thinking, of wanting attention by seeming to be smart, morally attractive, or interesting
If you want to be interesting, be interested. Novelty stimulates interest, but that’s short-lived and superficial. Interest is sustained by depth, which you can find online if you persevere. Clickbaiting appeals to the autopilot toddler brain; depth of thinking occurs in the reflective adult brain
We become adults when being right is more important than sounding confident, being protective is more important than being protected, offering compassion is more important than receiving it, and loving is more important than being loved
