…is a skill – the cognitive ability (and its practice) of being open, curious, and adaptable to one’s life experience.
Why is it important? Because if there is an antidote to that dysfunctional conditioning we’ve inevitably acquired in our life’s journey, as well as the dark side of bias, it is psychological flexibility.
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Recall that we have “no choice” in our reactions – it’s something the Elephant does; it “creates” our feelings, those emotions that we sense physically and (often) give language to (e.g., “I’m sad, anxious, afraid, happy, confused…”). Recall also that, particularly when threatened, the “fight, flight, freeze” reaction “kicks in” – again, automatically…but then what do we do?
As children, of course, we go along with it; we haven’t yet learned that we may do otherwise. And we thus naturally develop beliefs (without being aware of such) about “how the world works”…and these become biases. And later on, into adolescence and adulthood, we hone our ability for self-justification – that need to explain, defend, excuse, and justify our beliefs and behaviors – for this “protects us” from a cognitive dissonance that could arise if our challenged beliefs are found to be wrong or untrue.
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Put simply, psychological flexibility is being open to, curious about, and amenable in…hearing, looking at, considering, questioning, examining what we know as well as what we know nothing about…! It is being called, or characterized as being, open-minded – something usually considered a rather positive, admired, even desirable personality trait.
Another “take” is that psychological flexibility2 is the ability – maybe more accurately the willingness – to consider our present experience from different perspectives. For example:
- Instead of “just going along” with our reaction (i.e., those emotions, feelings, and the “thinking” or self-talk that follows), we can step back to consider our longer term values.
- Instead of “mindlessly” (i.e., automatically) accepting emotions as unquestionably appropriate, justified, correct, and reliable guides to behavior, we can place them in a different context as the flipside of what really matters.
- Instead of running away “automatically” (a.k.a. avoidance) from certain unpleasant thoughts (i.e., here again, the flight in “fight,flight, or freeze”) we can come to recognize(!) and thus see them as just learned behaviour (i.e., conditioning) and not something we necessarily need to listen to or struggle with.
- Instead of – here again, “automatically” – accepting our reactions as always valid (as children can’t help but do), we can learn to recognize (or learn to assume) that bias is the “norm” but being open (i.e., psychologically flexible!) is the better, more preferred, more helpful, more rational, useful, constructive and appropriate response.
