Black and White Thinking

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I have some black and white thinking. I don't tolerate intolerance.

My only major bias is that I feel that driving uncourteously is reckless and inexcusable.

Examples -

-not signaling
-going as fast as you feel like
-trying to get around someone
-riding a dissolving lane as it goes away
-speeding and running the yellow light
-lazy training your way through the yellow/red transition when going left at a 4 way stoplight (following the legitimate intersection clearers) when you should have stopped
-rolling stop at stop signs
-entering the roadway when you don't have the right of way over people already in it (you come out of a parking lot in front of someone trying to go left across the same lane)

Car accidents are not accidents, they are the result of someone's failure to be courteous. Basically assuming you are elite and better than everyone else all the time, so you don't have to be careful on the road.

Whenever possible I attempt to get in these people's way and reduce their ability to do what they please on our roads. This is why I consider it a bias. Someday I'll probably get in someone's way who is taking a dying person to the emergency room. Perhaps.
It's actually impossible for me not to get in their way. My experience on the roads is a constant tornado of other traffic trying to get past and do everything they love to do whilst I'm just trying to drive carefully.

In my state, the bureaucrats equally love "Click it Or Ticket" seatbelt law as much as the "Yield to faster traffic in the leftmost highway lane" Law.

I can list several different types of "black-and-white" thinking.

1.) Thinking in Categories

This occurs when people want to classify things. It simplifies concepts so that they can understand them easier. However, a person's categorical "model" of thinking rarely corresponds to the real world. Some people don't like to admit that, though their understanding has merit, it's usually based on some simplification. They like to forget about the simplifying assumptions they've made and pretend their cognitive model of the world corresponds with reality 100% of the time.

2.) Literal Thinking

This occurs when people only see the most literal interpretation of a rule. It's being unable to accept nuances or exceptions. People who think this way often claim to be more logical than others but it really has nothing to do with logic. This type of thinking is common with aspies.

3.) Perfectionism

This one's pretty self-explanatory. Also a problem area for aspeis.

4.) Zero Tolerance for Unfairness

This is another problematic area for us. NTs seem more willing to have "flexible" ethics, or just plain don't recognize the inherent unfairness in a lot of systems. They are less willing to examine the status-quo because they accept a world view based on social hierarchies. They often condone or rationalize minor types of unfairness and injustice in lieu of challenging social hierarchies.

5.) Splitting

This usually happens in arguments. Each person will claim the other is entirely at fault to protect themselves from blame. It often takes the form of a "straw man" or "slippery slope" type of logical fallacy. One person will interpret any negative comment the other says in the most extreme fashion possible so they can justify an angry rebuttal.

Another example is when someone sees other peoples as either "all good" or "all bad". People are "good" when they defend/rescue the person and "bad" when they criticize/reject the person.

The main difference between this and the other kinds of black-and-white thinking is this is much more emotion driven. There might even be a disconnect between what people say in the heat of argument and what they're really thinking deeper down.

6.) Appeal to Emotions / Manipulation

This involves purposely framing an issues in black-and-white terms because it has a stronger emotional impact and riles people up. This is the realm of politics. The GWB "you're either with us or you're against us" quote is a great example.

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I think types 2,3, and 4 are more prevalent with aspies while 1,5, and 6 are just as prevalent (or more prevalent) in the NT population.

Let me know if I've missed any.

Thanks for your input.

I think #7 will apply to anyone with high anxiety. I bet research would show that anxious people tend to think about the worst case scenario more and put an unrealistically high likelihood on it occurring.

Harmless cases of #1 are probably common with children. It merely shows a preference for concrete thinking over abstract. With adults though there seems to be a kind of mutual attraction between #1 and #6. People who display #6 can manipulate people who display #1.

These are examples of black and white thinking that I engage in.

Either I go for a walk and burn my skin off, or I stay in an air-conditioned building and have my Afternoon Tea.

Either they bring back the old hours at my clubhouse, and Pizza Night, or else I won't play baseball.

I tend towards black and white thinking. I'm one of those nasty right wingers . One of the things I like about america is we tend to have 2 groups of people pulling in opposite direction but, we still keep a relatively strait line because of it.

Details are always black and white.
If they are not black and white, you're not detailed enough.

When you put all the details together to make the whole, all those blacks and whites become a shade of gray.

So, if you want to judge something as black or white, is or isn't, yes or no, in a binary classification... you'd best make sure you're viewing at the constituent level.

With this black and white thinking thing, don't most people have black and white thinking to a certain degree? There is nothing ''different'' about being stubborn on something. Does having black and white thinking mean you're not fickle or gullible on anything?
Because I change my views a lot. I moan about my boss at work because she's so judgemental on people like me, and she blames a lot of things on me, and if she's in one of her stressy moods, she sometimes takes it out on me. She also has favourites, and I know I am not one of her favourites. So sometimes I tell some of the colleagues (who I can trust) that I don't really like her, and that I'm adamant that I don't like her. But then sometimes when I am working alone with her and we get talking (even though she still can be quite judgemental), I walk out of work that afternoon thinking, ''oh, she ain't all that bad, when you get talking to her.''