Member-only story

Want to Communicate Effectively at Work? Eliminate These 5 Cognitive Distortions

Occasional errors in thinking make us form an inaccurate view of reality and stick with it, thereby impacting our behaviors and actions

Vinita

Published in

Better Programming

10 min readAug 2, 2022

cognitive distortions. Heaven’s reward fallacy — I must be rewarded for my hard work and sacrifice. curse of knowledge — why can’t others understand such simple ideas? fundamental attribution error — this who they are. fallacy of change — circle of influence, circle of concern that others need to change. bike shedding which has four quadrants trivial, easy, important, and hard. bike shedding is in the easy and trivial quadrant — Credit: Author

In part 1 on cognitive distortions, I wrote about the five cognitive distortions that impact your decision-making by impairing your ability to think clearly.

In this article, I will cover five cognitive distortions that impact communication:

Heaven’s reward fallacy
Curse of knowledge
Fundamental attribution error
Fallacy of change
Bikeshedding

Let’s get started.

Heaven’s Reward Fallacy

We all expect to be praised for our hard work and effort. We all want to be appreciated, noticed, and rewarded. But a large part of the work we do often goes unnoticed. Always doing good to others does not always come around. Working hard, sacrificing, and exhausting ourselves with endless work does not make success more likely.

Seeking external rewards and external approval only leads to disappointment with feelings of anger…

Curse of knowledge doesn't have a solution. The Feynman technique doesn't work because the worst side effect of the "curse of knowledge" is the inability to gauge the level of others.
Speaking to anyone with perceived less knowledge as a 5-year old…

Great content.

I've fall for a few of them to be honest. I think in some point we all get lost or fall for at least one of the examples you give.

An important point is to be able to recognise and assume that you were wrong(most difficult part among the ones who has a lot of knowledge).

Great article. My only caveat would be to suggest alternative solutions to the Heaven’s reward and fallacy of change cognitive biases. Toxic environments where you are not appreciated for your work / taken advantage of and abusive personal…