DICHOTOMOUS THINKING

Engaging in dichotomous thinking, or thinking in black and white, often leads to adverse consequences. The ability to explore alternative options can serve as a safeguard against severe losses.

There is a certain way of thinking that can be called ‘Dichotomous Thinking.’ Dichotomous thinking is thinking in terms of rigid compartments of black and white. This way of thinking often becomes the cause of much harm and damage. A person who thinks in this way sees things in rigidly dualistic terms. It is as if there are only two options before him—black, or white. He is unaware that there is actually a third option available as well. On account of his unawareness of this third option, he is not able to avail of it even though it may be that his success actually lies hidden in it.

Consider the following case: Members of a certain community take out a procession. Raising slogans, the procession enters a locality that is inhabited by members of another community. Thinking the slogans to be directed against them, the people of this locality get agitated. As a result, there is a clash between the members of the two communities, which ends in enormous loss of life and property.

Reflect carefully on this example. Because of their particular way of thinking, the inhabitants of the locality through which the procession passed, see the matter in such a way that only two options seem plausible to them: either to tolerate the objectionable slogans or else to try to stop the processionists from raising the slogans. They think that tolerating the slogans would be tantamount to cowardice and accepting dishonour while trying to stop the processionists from raising the slogans seems to them an act of bravery. And so, they decide to take action to try to stop the sloganeering in order to attain their desired objective. But the result, in actual practice, of their not being willing to tolerate the sloganeering turns out to be that they have to tolerate bloody rioting instead, in which they suffer immense loss.

The cause for this devastating outcome is dichotomous thinking. Had the inhabitants of the locality been aware that there exists also a third option that is possible for them to avail of, they might have saved themselves from having to face the terrible loss caused by the rioting. This third option for them would be to simply ignore the sloganeering. Had the inhabitants of the locality availed of this third option and simply ignored the sloganeering, within five minutes or so they would have found that the procession had moved ahead in its path and that the provocative slogans had vanished into thin air as if they had never existed.