The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.— Bertrand Russell
An ancient school of thought known as Skepticism taught that nothing can be known with certainty; they advised us to suspend judgment so as to remain free of premature judgment [a phrase usually shortened to prejudice]. This applies not just to what other people tell is you is true, but to what you tell yourself is true. They believed that it is the certainty about one’s interpretations that prevents one from attaining happiness.
Marcus Aurelius—the last of the "good’ Roman emperors whose meditations on Stoic philosophy have profoundly influenced people’s lives to this day — recommended the art of “having no opinion. . . . Better to suspend judgment altogether," he said. While this makes sense, the flexibility to suspend judgment in threatening and high-stakes situations is hard to come by. Few of us have the courage and confidence of a successful military leader who was also emperor of Rome at the height of its power.
In addition to Marcus Aurelius, other wise fellows including: Socrates, Plato, Tolstoy, and Nietzsche would probably agree with my advice: "You don’t know the truth, be open to new information and be flexible. Try out new ways of looking a things. Act as if the people at the party like you and want you to show interest in them." But it is easier to be open to new ways of looking a things when the stakes are low than when they are high; it is easier to be flexible and try out different ways of responding in domains where you have high self-efficacy than in domains where it is low.
Curb your dogma with personal research
My claim is that Barry’s premise that others will see him as repulsive is no more valid than the premise that others have no opinion about Barry and will be attracted or repulsed by him depending on how he treats them. So I propose that he research the social outcome of acting as if different premises were true:
- Premise 1. The people at the party want me to show them attention.
- Premise 2. The people at the party are not going to like me.
To do this research, Barry would have to act as if each premise was true. This will be difficult for him because he has a prejudice [prejudgment in favor of his self-sabotaging appraisal]. His poor social performance in the past has resulted in outcomes that confirmed his handicapping belief. As his therapist, my goal is to help Barry to find the courage and flexibility to give novel ways of interpreting the things that happen a fair trial. That is where suggestion is most useful.
To overcome the advantages of the handicapping suggestion, we have to do something special: Suggestion [pretending or acting as if the suggested reality was true] is a rapid and effective method to do the research. But he would have to be pretty gullible to accept a fictional suggestion. . . wouldn’t he?
Barry doesn’t want to to see himself or be seen by others as gullible. Gullibility stresses being duped or made a fool of. But Barry is no fool. He is not the kind of guy who would fall for a salesman’s attempted manipulation of him. In fact, he is proud of his skepticism. He certainly does not believe that anyone has the power to read minds or to have pre-knowledge about what will happen in the future. Yet in the domain where he is weakest, he acts as if he has these super-natural abilities.
Gullibility is a problem of trust, but the two terms are not equivalent. Rather, gullibility refers to a foolish application of trust. For example, a gullible person accepts as true the patter of an unethical salesman. But acting on a suggestion to buy Apple stock in 2001 would not be considered gullible because doing so would have led to a good outcome.
Barry is gullible to the extent that his acceptance of suggestion causes him to act counter to his own interests. The term, "gullibility" is generally used when someone else is attempting to trick a sucker into an ill-advised course of action (for the sucker). However, in this case, Barry’s loyalty to his convictions [his resistance to accepting a more self-serving suggestion] is what makes a sucker out of him.
It is generally adaptive to be skeptical of suggestions
Barry is at a used-car lot where a salesman is showing him a shabby looking vehicle, saying: "It may not be much to look at, but it is actually worth much more than you think, whereas your trade-in vehicle is a piece of crap." The unethical salesman may attempt to reify the fiction by quoting false Bluebook values.
The salesman is acting in bad faith because he is asserting a self-serving fiction intended to cause Barry to act counter to his interests. Fortunately, Barry is competent in such matters and had access to the Bluebook values of these vehicles. So, he was not taken in by the salesman’s fiction. Unfortunately, there is no Bluebook value for Barry. Unlike the value of a motor vehicle of a particular make, model, and year, Barry’s social worth exists only in the mind of those who appraise him. According to some appraisal criteria Barry may be highly valued, according to others not so much. But since they are all subjective judgments, one appraisal of Barry’s worth is no more objectively valid than any other.
The salesman in this example has a self-serving motivation for trying to get Barry to act as if his distorted description of reality was valid. The fact that some salesmen are low-life’s who screw other people is regrettable but not surprising. What is surprising is that Barry screws himself. He acts as if his distorted description of reality was valid. In both cases the outcome of acting as if the suggested fictions were true is bad for Barry. The difference is the motivation of the one promoting the suggestion:
- The salesman is quoting fictional car values in the hopes that Barry is ignorant of their true values and will accept his suggested reality as true. Fortunately, Barry was prepared with the knowledge of their Bluebook values and so was not taken in by the salesman’s damaging suggestion.
- Barry is repeatedly taken in by the Soul Illusion. He accepts a fiction that he has created as the objective truth. He interprets the things that happen from the perspective that other people find him socially undesirable. His ignorance of the truth— that there is no external, authoritative source that can determine his social desirability; such judgments ares made by each appraiser based on what they observe—makes him vulnerable to accepting this damaging suggestion.
The car salesman is attempting to influence Barry’s to
act as if the suggested premise was true. In contrast, the conventional hypnotist does not bother convincing the subject that the suggested premise is true. Subjects give their tacit approval to "play along" and bypass the need for proof; they use their imagination to at least pretend the suggested premise is operative.
Why do people accept suggestion?
- They accept the suggestions of stage hypnotist for the fun of being in the show.
- They accept the suggestions of clinicians to relieve pain or other symptoms.
- They accept the suggestions of salesmen because they are gullible.
- They accept handicapping suggestions from themselves because they are taken in by the Soul Illusion that they see things as they really are.
Will & Hypnosis
Those who don’t know much about hypnotism are both skeptical and frightened of it . The understanding that there is no such thing as hypnosis because all experience is hypnosis will put an end to these popular misconceptions. What people call hypnosis includes one or both of these related phenomena, each of which is an intrinsic feature of the psyche:
- Suggestion— Acting as if something that elicits an experiential phenomenon is true, elicits that phenonmenon.
- Acting as if your leg feels heavy causes your leg to feel heavy
- Acting as if you felt socially inept causes you to feel socially inept
- Intentional Trance Formation— Emotional and motivational states are elicited by the target of your attention.
- Thinking about something that makes you angry, makes you angry
- Imagining the taste or smell of a deliciious food will cause you to desire it