Parenting Beyond Our Biases
Social media and the constant flow of information have been revolutionary for our world. While continuous access to information has advantages, it added significant challenges to our cognitive processing, especially in the sphere of parenting.
The majority of parents hope to make informed choices in the best interest of their children, but many are left confused. We see competing ideas about what constitutes best practices in parenting. Should I be a tiger mom? Is helicopter parenting a bad idea? Should I go back to work or be a stay-at-home-parent?
There are no easy answers to these questions. Most are highly personal decisions with no correct solution. While navigating our parental decision-making, however, it is easy to get trapped in a cycle of thoughts influenced solely by our cognitive biases.
Our brains have remarkable difficulty processing conflicting information. A seminal study by Leon Festinger in the 1960s provided ground-breaking information to the psychology community and beyond. Our beliefs undergo fascinating transformations when they are divergent from our behavior or the surrounding world.
Festinger labeled this phenomenon cognitive dissonance. Specifically, cognitive dissonance is the process by which we change a previously held belief to match up with…
