Explanations as Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

The human craving for explanations expands knowledge and enriches life. It also inhibits growth, creates illusions, and reinforces bigotry.

To satisfy the craving to understand, explanations don’t have to be right, they merely have to explain. Lack of explanation for negative experience raises anxiety. To keep anxiety in check, bad explanations are better than none. We’d rather think we feel bad because we’re losers (or married to losers) than not know why we feel bad. How terrifying is:

“My God, why is this happening to me?”

Bad explanations are narrow in scope, rigid in interpretation, oversimplified, or simply false. If supported at all by reason, the support is laden with confirmation bias — that is, we cherry-pick evidence that supports the explanation while ignoring that which contradicts it.

The worst offenders are categorical explanations of negative experience. These are the explanations at the heart of bigotry and chauvinism.

I can’t trust you because you’re a (male, female, person of color, white, gay, trans, conservative, progressive, Catholic, Muslim…)

The assigned class of the person explains the anxiety, discomfort, misfortune, or failures of those who buy into categorical explanations.

Most categorical explanations run on autopilot, outside conscious awareness. When brought to consciousness via challenges from others, they’re stubbornly defended with confirmation bias, if not met with aggression.

A more subtle form of categorical explanations derives from misinterpretations of psychological research. Research findings provide information about groups, not individuals. For example:

Men are more aggressive than women.

This means that if you were to select at random around 50 men and 50 women, the frequency of aggressive behaviors in the male group will likely exceed that of the female group. But there will be many non-aggressive men and aggressive women in the respective groups. Misinterpretations of psychological research reinforce stereotypes more than they enlighten.

Other Kinds of Bad Explanations

Some explanations justify and prolong self-defeating behavior:

I yell at my kids because my parents yelled at me.

I can’t eat or drink healthfully because I have the obesity or alcoholic gene.

Some inhibit growth and impair well-being.

I feel bad because:

I fear abandonment or intimacy

I’m a loser

No one understands me

My partner is unreasonable/selfish/pathological/doesn't know how to love

Life sucks

Most social and political explanations are mired in strong bias and over-simplify complex issues and problems.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

The standard of scientific explanations is their ability to predict. Predictions of subjective experience, if accurate at all, are most likely self-fulfilling prophecies, that is, the behavior of those who buy into explanations make them true. For example:

My partner’s troubled childhood explains our lack of intimacy.

The partner who believes this explanation may fear rejection and shield vulnerability from the partner who suffered adverse childhood experiences. This will exacerbate, if not cause intimacy barriers. The partner with the troubled childhood might not accept the explanation but will likely conform to the partner’s attributions.

There is research that links adverse childhood experiences with adult intimacy problems in groups of subjects selected for study. But that research predicts nothing about individuals. Lots of people with adverse childhood experiences have adequate intimacy in mutually satisfying relationships. In any case, intimacy problems can be corrected once the restraint of speculative explanations of their causes is removed.

A rich source of self-fulfilling prophecy is found in the symptom checklists abundant on the Internet, which encourage partners to do the impossible: objectively diagnose those with whom they have strong emotional ties.

I’m unhappy because my partner is a narcissist.

Many people hold a certain level of contempt for — and moral superiority toward — those they perceive to have personality disorders. It's hardly possible to hide contempt or moral superiority from intimate partners. The negative reactions to contempt and moral superiority only serve as evidence for the bad explanation.

Diagnosing your partner degrades relationships and predicts more undesired behavior. Diagnosing your partner with narcissistic personality disorder will not make him care about your feelings. Characterizing your partner as lazy will suppress any motivation to help. Judging that your partner is selfish will suppress your partner’s compassion. Explaining your partner's — or your own — intimacy problems is not an aphrodisiac.

The most insidious instance of bad explanation is using symptom checklists of anxiety, depression, unhappiness, or general discontent to surmise some sort of abuse, the memories of which you’ve repressed. This hapless practice led to a public mania and untold suffering near the end of the last century and still exists today, albeit on a much smaller scale. Symptoms have numerous plausible explanations that do not lead to false memories or self-fulfilling prophecies.

Beware of headlines such as:

Signs that You Might have Been Abused or Neglected.

How to Find Good Explanations

Good explanations expand knowledge, promote growth and well-being, and have at least a modicum of empirical support. But they’re not easy to find. Start by discovering your erroneous autopilot explanations of negative experiences.

• List your explanations of why you feel bad, fail, have a bad relationship, dislike certain individuals, or are uncomfortable around certain groups of people.
• List the reasons to believe each explanation.
• List the reasons to disbelieve each explanation. (You need to reflect hard on these to pierce through the inherent bias of explanations.)
• Describe how each explanation promotes your growth and well-being.
• Describe how each explanation inhibits growth and impairs well-being.

Suggest alternative explanations that promote growth and well-being.

• List the reasons to believe each alternative explanation.
• List the reasons to disbelieve each alternative explanation.

Form Hypotheses and Test Them

The only advantage a psychological explanation has for you is its ability to predict your life and relationships. Form hypotheses from explanations that appeal to you and test them.

For example, consider explanations of conflict in relationships.

Explanation: Communication techniques improve exchanges between partners.

Test: Use any of the dozens of communication strategies on the Internet and measure the relationship effect—that is, do you feel closer, more connected, or merely heard or appeased? Alternatively, don’t worry about how you’ll put it but focus on what you appreciate and love about your partner before you make a behavior request or complaint.

Explanation: Identifying your needs and clearly expressing them improves exchanges between partners.

Test: Clearly express your needs to your partner and measure the reaction. (This is one likely to evoke passive-aggressive behavior — your partner may seem to agree but “forget” to comply.) Alternatively, tell your partner what you prefer or desire and how you will appreciate cooperation.

Explanation: Negative judgments about partners, even when not verbalized, evoke a reciprocity of negative judgments.

Test: Make a negative judgment about your partner but don’t verbalize it and measure your partner’s reactions — cooperative or resistant. Alternatively, make a more compassionate interpretation of your partner’s behavior and note how you feel about yourself. Measure your partner’s reaction during negotiation.

Explanation: Blame makes things worse because people get defensive and sometimes angry when they feel blamed.

Test: Blame your partner for a problem and assess the reaction. Alternatively, describe a problem without blame and ask for input on possible solutions and measure the reaction.

Explanation: Couples may disagree about facts, but they fight about failure of compassion, that is, they don’t seem to care about each other’s feelings.

Test: Focus on facts in a disagreement and measure your partner’s reactions. Alternatively, show that you care about your partner’s feelings regardless of the facts and measure the reaction as you negotiate.

Crucial Hypotheses to Test

I feel better and like myself more when I’m compassionate, kind, and loving to my loved ones.

I feel more powerful (able to act in my long-term best interests) when I resist aggressive impulses and act on my deeper values.

I feel better and like myself more when I respect other people.

Practice the behaviors in the above hypotheses for at least two weeks and then evaluate their effects on your emotional well-being.