Is it Possible to Stop being a Black and White Thinker?

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What a coincidence! I just read an article about researchers trying to develop the blackest paint in the world, i.e. overcoming the many shades of black:

Link to: BBC News Article - The Blackest Paint In The World

Kind of interesting article

When I said "I am right/she is wrong" and the reverse, I actually meant the choice or perspective I have advocated is right, personalizing it the way I did was intended as shorthand.

I agree, but I think the black/white part is the idea that you are applying logic to a set of variables constrained in some way by your imagination. Maybe my understanding of it is wrong. It would be interesting to know what your therapist means by this, if you talk about it again.

It's possible but difficult for many. First off, black and white thinkers think all questions have "yes" and "no" answers or certain positives and certain negatives. Black and white thinking means you are often unwilling to compromise or unable to think outside of agreeing or using the exact opposite of the topic to agree to. There are alway options between absolute opposites.

Example:

Person A: I believe in god.

Person B: I am an atheist.

A black and white thinker will only choose one of the two options above.

Person C: I am an agnostic atheist/agnostic theist/certain agnostic.

Person C interacts outside of an absolute spectrum, so he may not be a black and white thinker.

However it doesn't mean Persons A and B are necessarily black and white thinkers as they could possibly not think in absolutes when discussing other matters.

So for a black and white thinker there are only two options. People who aren't black and white thinkers consider more than two options and also consider options that aren't absolute.

I think it's possible, but not likely that you will completely stop. At the core your thinking will probably always be binary in nature, but you can expand your thought processes to incorporate more permutations and possibilities.

The express checkout example was a good one. I have gotten in the express line before when I was a little over the limit, but the whole time I felt uneasy about it and kept wondering if someone would tell me I shouldn't be in that line. lol

It might be more properly called "all-or-nothing" or "either/or" thinking. Or just binary thinking. I see lots of examples of it here on the forum in the way people talk about things.

I don't believe either/or thinking is really problematic in and of itself...the problem lies in making assumptions and then not continuing to examine further possibilities. It's like if you were using a flowchart, and just stopped at the first yes/no answer instead of continuing to go further down the flowchart.

The key to expanding black/white thinking is to examine underlying assumptions (such as, in the checkout example, the assumption that a rule is always a rule no matter what the circumstances).

This appears to me to be an example of black and white thinking. You're not necessarily wrong, but just leaving little room for the many alternatives. Plus, being black and white in one's thinking is sometimes more accurate, sometimes useful, sometimes even essential, yet the term has become a way to discredit the person so described.

I'm not sure it's the same but the term black and white thinking seems related to cognitive rigidity and cognitive inflexibility.

I don't think what I said is an eggsample of black and white thinking, because you don't know what I thought, only what I posted, so it is impossible to tell if I considered multiple options. I never post all my thoughts on a topic, only the most relevant or salient at the moment.

I was describing how I see the term used, what I think it means. How you actually think, you're correct, I don't know.

If I had to characterize how you think, I would characterize you as literal and concrete rather than black and white. Nonetheless what you wrote is I think covered by the term as it is generally used.

Professionals seem to call me a black and white thinker when I see many possibilities and try to choose which seems most likely to be relevant and accurate, and my choice is not the one they would have made, and then they try to talk me out of what I think by arguing (called cbt). It's quite annoying, it's upsetting, and it doesn't seem accurate. Nonetheless, so many people have said I'm black and white in my thinking that I've decided they're not likely all crazy.

I was ROTFLMAO about the part in blue above. I was actually wondering the same thing (that probably I should ignore her). One thing I know for certain is I cannot turn off my thinking process. It just doesn't work that way (at least for me).

BTW - We had a discussion about emotions that, now that I think about, I need to post about over the weekend.

Most analytical thinkers would recognize what Rocket wrote in the opening post as detail-oriented, analytical thinking. I think it is mostly the vague, fuzzy-wuzzy thinkers who confuse analytical, concrete thinking with black and white thinking, which seems like it would be more irrational and less accepting of integrating new information.

Black and white thinking is not something I could change about myself, because it is part of how my brain operates. I am never conscious of the fact that I am thinking in black and white terms, unless something provokes me to realize that it was in fact, how I had been thinking about the subject at hand. I simply, naturally think in black and white terms. Ironically, I am a person who is very much open to other peoples points of view, and I am interested in viewing things from different perspectives.

Analytical thinking doesn't produce black and white thinking, ignorance and pride do.

I agree but for good or bad, fuzzy thinkers are in the majority. And I've been beaten down enough when I'm analytical to realize sometimes it's best to analyze quietly, other times out loud. There is a cost to either mode and understanding as much as possible what the cost will be either way can sometimes be useful.

Try Seroquel. It works wonders for seeing the greys.

When I was out in the big bad business world, I was sometimes the Facilitator of teams charged with solving some problem. In coming up with possible solutions it was always apparent who were the analytical thinkers and who were not. This difference could readily deadlock team progress.

What I found helped was to recognize these differences as probable manifestations of Myers-Briggs "P"s versus "J"s. Input from both was beneficial; the challenge was to let this happen with a minimum of individuals becoming frustrated and mentally checking-out during the process. Or fist fights.

I will ask next time she mentions it.


This makes a lot of sense.


This describes my thinking pattern precisely.