Why is black and white thinking so common?

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Why is black and white thinking/binary thinking so common? Is it a flaw in intellectual development? Some people only take yes and no as answers such as my father and a cousin of mine. Many people as I have noticed only think that something is one way or the exact opposite. People choose to be certain about something rather than consider otherwise would be possible. Those people then falsely define bias as the antagonizing position as in "those who disagree are biased" rather than "I am probably biased but other who take a certain position are also biased".

In the US, we are taught early on to think in terms of black and white. We have a two party political system, for one thing. In school it's boys verses the girls and they are divided up and put onto teams.

Only recently have we become less segregated than in the past and attempting to be even less so now than we are at the moment.

The more challenging and diverse our surroundings, the more we will be able to respond in shades of grey, because it will develop our skill to do so. It's a skill much like anything else, thinking in shades of grey. People do not realize they must be taught skill sets, much like waiters and waitresses, who are trained to behave in a certain way on the job. Same with PR people. Those types of skills can work wonders if people will use them in varying situations and we can develop grey thinking skills, too, like, the possibility we can have more than two political parties in office. Of course, you can apply this to so many areas in life, too numerous to mention and it can help you to be more inventive and creative. You find that you don't have to stick to this exact framework to succeed in life, you can branch out and establish something new. You can be a mental explorer. So yeah, there is still plenty to discover besides land masses on the other side of the world.

'Black and White' Thinking is the 'child' of modern cultural ways of spoon feeding rules of culture with 'objective' tests to determine proficiency, as future 'cogs in the machine' of society, as is.

'Shades of Grey', and 'Colorful thinking' requires ART in empathic social cognition mind.

Black and White thinking is the systemizing science mechanics of machine mind.

And not only THAT; 'scaredy' cat human beings in an attempt to
escape existential angst without the 'trouble' of attaining
and maintaining mind and body balance
WITH NATURE making environment of order
from a natural environment of ART
AKA GOD, PER ALL THAT IS
Nature grown wild and free,
AS HUMANS ARE EVOLVED
TO BE TOO, LIKE ANY
OTHER ANIMAL
THAT
IS
TRULY
FREE.

'Sidewalks' of walking are a repetitive restriction of movement that end up
in all types of ergonomic injury later in life, from walking in a straight
line rather than flowing with nature's pattern 'invisibly' escaping
predator and capturing prey by a way of moving like the golden spiral
of 1.618 PHI in movement without a sound to alarm either predator or
prey.

I not only do this in the 'dance of
life'; I do this in the 'fuller
color' of human
writing
symbolically
too..

And yes, there are black and white dancers in life, as recently in a metro-wide dance
contest I attend the ballet students are extremely proficient in lessoned dance
practiced in advance
but when it comes to interpretive dance where the song is not known, the mind
is not fast enough to tell the body where to go AND the truly free dancers
in mind and body balance WIN, without 'a lesson' from 'Fred Astaire'.

Seriously, Black and White thinking is so common because humans
no longer, for a large part, have the ability to employ ISA's
Instinct, Skills and Abilities that are derived from all
Innate Intuitive ways of living.

Crystalized Intelligence is a 'new way' of 'thinking' past and
future but no it is not A 'REAL WAY' OF LIVING KNOWLEDGE
PER EXPERIENCE, EMOTIONS, AND SENSES
AS TRULY LIVING
'IN COLOR' NOW,
RATHER THAN EXTREMELY LIMITED
'ONE CHANNEL BLACK AND
WHITE
LIFE' IN AN ILLUSORY PAST AND
PRESENT OF LIFE
THAT NEVER
EVER
EXISTS
AT
ALL, IN THE 'REAL WORLD
OF FLESH AND BLOOD',
AT
LEAST..

Good point. And it really does take practice.

Probably because it is easy to do.
What is easy is likely to be common.

2 is is a number that is ubiquitous in reality and is significant in pretty much every culture; living and extinct. And being the smallest even number and the divisor for all even numbers it represents symmetry(which people find appealing). We have 2 eyes, 2 hands, 2 legs, 2 balls(if we're men) or 2 ovaries/breasts(if we're women), 2 brain hemispheres, and there are 2 biological sexes. Rotating objects can spin in 2 directions just as the hands on a clock can move in 2 directions, and there are 2 types of electric charge. 2 is the smallest number of elements in a set that is not a singleton(1 element) and is the smallest number of valuations for a deductive system(logic).

I am inclined to hypothesize that binary logic may be hardwired in the human brain which is why humans have a tendency towards black-&-white thinking. Dichotomous thought is not unique to western culture and every culture has the concepts of "right" and "wrong" or "good" and "evil". Non-binary thinking makes things much more complex and potentially ambiguous. So dichotomous thinking, when it does not result in inconsistency, is a way to keep things as simple as possible(think Occam's razor).

Thanks Janissy and yeah I agree with other posters, it also might be a tad bit easier to think in black/white terms because it is a simplified system of thinking. There's not as many details to keep up with when it's just either/or.

I would say physics, Newton's third law: For every action there is an equal opposite reaction. It translates into rhetoric as well: taking any stance on an issue means that there must be a counter stance; just as every word has a synonym, it will also have an antonym.

On a less philosophical level, humans are stupid. While virtually everything is gray area binary is but two options and it makes it easier for us stupid humans to process, therefore we gravitate towards it.

Polarization is a process.

The extremes, try to place stigma on wavering from the manifesto.

Manifesto politic is the most flawed unpragmatic approach, but it is born out of fear.

Politics is rarely about convincing people, it is more about appealing to existing perceptions and fears, or constant sound bites 'on message', which is a form of operant conditioning used in PR and marketing.

Having said it could be worse. We could be have less pluralism than we have, we have a degree of scrutiny. Democracy is not just about voting at the election, all the political fallout, scandals, etc, are better then an enforced "stability", where there is not scrutiny at all.

Changing your mind also caries a stigma.

They talk about the political 'U-turn'. Robert Peel on the other hand was renowned for changing position at the last minute. There is some debate as to why he did it. Whether he was a populist testing the waters, whether he was trying to get more scrutiny from Commons at the time when the Lord was firmly establishment, or if he was genuinely unsure of his position.

In the US you were profoundly affected by the cold war, and also Britain to some extent. You were subject to homegrown propaganda, the US in many respect as bad the USSR. You have your own freedom limited on several occasions for fear of subversion.

The biggest mistake the US made was treat communism as above all evils, when there were load to terrible regimes that US supported equally as deplorable.

So US politic was greatly stupefied by the cold war there is no doubt about that, and there is still is a legacy of that.

I'm neither a Communist sympathizer nor on the political left.

Sub-Normals are too simple to evolve past B&W thinking.
Most Normals are too poorly educated AND lazy to evolve past B&W thinking.
The rest of us do evolve past it and that is why the world functions at all.

Obviously I can't tell for sure but I'd say it's a very easy/simple way to understand things. Outside of things that are necessarily political, it's easier to understand stuff in general (and in my experience, remember them) if you associate them with either being good or bad. I would say it's a ''childlike'' way to think and as you grow up you take different, more complex answers although you may still want to unconsciously simplify them into good or bad.

It is very common among people, when they discuss, to say the other is biased or illogical, or is blinded by an ideology, as if they themselves were free of those things (and many do believe that they are). But it's normal to believe you're right and to want to see the opposing thoughts as if they were wrong not because you see them wrong but because there's something external to you that makes them wrong.

Ayn Rand and Ronald Reagan