Sometimes, the most important mental activity is not what you think, but what you think about what you think. Let's unpack that contention.
Suppose you are walking along the avenue, and a friend drives past. You wave and your friend does not acknowledge you. Your automatic thought is "What's wrong with him?" You then proceed to thinking: "The last time we talked, he asked me to come over to his house to help him, and I declined. I bet he's still irritated about that” You then might think about something else while retaining the belief in your friend's irritation. You also could ruminate about your friend not-waving-to-you problem for minutes, hours, or days. When you see your friend again, you mention that you waved and he did not respond, and he answers, "Oh, I don't remember seeing you." At that point you could accept his explanation, be satisfied, and banish the not-waving-incident from your mind. However, it also is possible that you do not believe his "excuse" and consider him merely to be avoiding an uncomfortable discussion.
As I have written in several previous blog postings, psychologists use the termf "metacognition" to describe one's thoughts about their own thoughts. It is important for you to understand that metacognition can operate unconsciously and/or consciously. Most often it is unconscious, and, therefore, outside your deliberate control. So, when you wave to your driving-by friend you might not be aware of details of the thoughts that briefly raced through your mind. Instead, you might only experience a vague, negative, fleeting sensation. In that case, you are unlikely to be able to rationally process the experience. Even if you are conscious of the entire cognitive and emotional experience, your enduring or current personality condition could make rational processing difficult for you.
Those who are savvy about metacognition could be at an advantage in processing the non-waving-friend situation. Yes, no, maybe? As you might guess, that is a "maybe."
Although I, of course, cannot cite research directly relevant to your personal, idiosyncratic metacognitive style, I can mention a study that illustrates some important metacognitive considerations. First, let's think briefly about research by Sabnam Basu and Shikha Dixit (2022). Their study included139 male and female MBA students from top tier business schools in India. Analysis of their data underscored the importance of knowledge about cognition and regulation of cognition in explaining the decision-making styles. That is, whether knowing about decision processes and being able to control your cognition are singly or jointly important for decision outcome.
They suggested the while knowledge about cognition was positively associated with intuitive and spontaneous decision-making styles, regulation of cognition emerged to be positively related to rational decision-making style. Both knowledge and regulation of cognition could explain these decision-making styles over and above the demographic variables of age, gender and work experience. The maladaptive decision styles of dependent and avoidant decision-making, however, could neither be explained by knowledge about cognition nor regulation of cognition. For example, those with knowledge of cognition who usually depended on their intuition and spontaneous “feeling” performed better than other intuitive and spontaneous types who had poor cognition knowledge. And those with good regulation of cognition who usually depended on their rational analysis skills performed better than other rationally-oriented types who had poor regulation of cognition skills. In short, a strong regulation of cognition orientation was not enough; one needed to be able to actively apply rationality in ways directly relevant to the decision task at hand.
My point in introducing these ideas is to suggest implications for everyday interpersonal interactions and relationships. When someone says or does something that involves you substantively, at that moment you consciously or unconsciously decide how to respond. If you are more of an intuitive and spontaneous type, you are inclined to respond without much deliberation. Your intuition and/or spontaneity has the best chance of producing a constructive outcome when you have had a great amount of experience with the particular person and particular context present. On the other hand, if you are more rationally oriented, you will seek “data” on which to make your interpersonal decision. The critical issue then is whether there is data that is valid and reliable. You might think that you methodically have performed all the necessary “calculations “to decide rationally, but be sorely mistaken. Imagine that someone failed to deliver on what you perceived as their promise to you, and after parsing the available information, you conclude that they deliberately lied. However, they might never have made an explicit promise; your data was faulty.
So, whether you attempt to reach interpersonal decisions via intuition, spontaneity, or rationality, you will arrive at the most adaptive conclusions by first seeking feedback and testing your tentative conclusions before speaking or acting upon them. You must use internal and external metacommunication as effectively as possible. As for what Sabnam Basu and Shikha Dixit called the “maladaptive decision styles of dependent and avoidant decision-making,” you know that there are particular people and particular contexts when a dependent or avoidant strategy can be useful, if only in the short-term.
The bottom line suggestion is for you neither to presume you know what other people are thinking or why they are thinking what they are, in fact, thinking. An easy recommendation for me to make; a difficult behavior for you to enact. So, it might be an interpersonal strategy that you are willing to apply to interactions involving only the most important people and important people-oriented decisions. If you do, you will find it well worth the effort.
Reference
Basu, S. & Dixit, S. (2022). Role of metacognition in explaining decision-making styles: A study of knowledge about cognition and regulation of cognition. Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 185, February 2022, 111-318
