Cognitive Theories of Negative Interpretation(misinterpretation ) -in relation to Who You Are
Misinterpretation has always been a personal issue for me. But then who cares right? What’s the big deal when you can easily seek clarification.
Well, bad news, it’s a problem. A cognitive disorder for that matter, called cognitive biases.
This is described in a situation where there’s inefficient information processing within the brain regions that are involved in working memory and executive functioning.
In simpler terms, where the brain chooses to hear and interpret something based on how you feel but not necessarily by what it is.
Commonly referred to as selective hearing or jumping to conclusions
Misinterpretation has always served as an escape route for me where I don’t necessarily have to take the whole time in the world (or so I presume) to understand what the other person truly meant by what they said or what that information or vibe I got truly means.
This is in accordance with a review journal titled “Schizophrenia and Functional Imaging” where the authors described misinterpretation as being relative to delusion. When the affected individual portrays strong tendencies of unrealism in the way they understood a piece of information — be it a piece of advice, joke and/ or formal conversations — without first seeking clarifications or researching sufficient information to back up those misinterpreted thoughts.
In line with a lot of information by many psychologists, it’s been found that this kind of misinterpretation has more to do with you that it is to deal with the other person on the other end and hence, why it’s called cognitive bias. There’re several ways to correct this cognitive disorder but first, you must be willing to accept that you have the problem of constantly misinterpreting words and exhibit symptoms such as fear, anxiety and panic during those times.
Now that you may have accepted it, let’s discuss how misinterpretation and how you do so may define you
Misinterpretation Usually Stems from How You See Yourself
As initially stated, cognitive bias starts and ends with you more than it does with the other person.
Fact established? Okay.
Personality disorders are complex mental disorders with relative maladaptive traits which usually affects the way you feel or think about yourself— like lack of self-esteem and sense of security which may explain why you choose to dwell on the negative aspects of something heard or read thus, misinterpreting it to mean something else. It serves as an unconscious confirmatory tool to having one or all these traits above, each time you keep missing the point — for example when someone is advising you or giving you their opinion about something about you (which you asked for) or a constructive criticism.
Misinterpretation in this case, therefore, can project who you are and how you regard yourself in the first place.
To manage misinterpretations due to personality disorders, healthy cognitive coping skills can be learned from a professional help through cognitive behavioral therapy, psychodynamic/psychoanalytic therapy (click here to learn more) or on your own by inculcating helpful specific personal development skills such as self-reflection/self-awareness which would help identify that you have these negative traits in the first place — these in conjunction with self improvement skills like listening, mindfulness will also help specifically in detecting when the negative traits rear their ugly heads up during your processing information and call you to order each time you derail to misinterpretation and finally, consistency in practicing these techniques and more.
The self-reflection process should go as follows; Questions such as — why do I tend to misinterpret people’s words to mean what I want them to? Could it be feeding a particular negative trait of mine? How can I better understand what is being said or meant, or instead ask for clarity when I don’t?
Honest answers and/ or solutions to these questions will do.
Misinterpretation could be due to Emotional Biases
Let’s take relationships for example.
Often in relationships, we tend to display exaggerated forms of misinterpretation relative to emotional biases.
When you experience emotional distress such as panic, anger or anxiety etcetera, these can lead to irrational conclusions from something that is completely different. Misinterpretation in this case, becomes an escape route to temporarily resolving how you are feeling at the said moment — sort of therapy.
When you find yourself distorted by any of these aforementioned states of mind, it’s best to desist from making hasty conclusions but rather endeavor to match the words and situations with them by what they truly are and not by how you feel — otherwise known as emotional regulation.
Emotional regulation is a skill under cognitive restructuring which many psychologists and scientists agreed that it helps differentiate thoughts and feelings and gently aids one in thinking differently. But in order to achieve this, trust, strong rapport and sometimes humor (which are necessary ingredients in a healthy relationship anyway), are exact words by Kimberly Walitzer et al. in “Cognitive Coping Skills” needed to achieve this.
Misinterpretation Could Come from Attention-avoidance Biases
This is not always as simple as paying close attention (although it counts) to what is being relayed to you by someone else. This is because sometimes, even when you want to listen carefully to what is been communicated to you, you may end up just hearing and interpreting it thus, misinterpreting it.
Luckily, a group of intellectuals in the form of psychologists/scientists has helped with getting to the roots of this problem by first describing attention biases as evolutionary in the sense that it usually ensues during the early stages of information processing. This means that it’s not always the fault of the affected individual as these early distortions can be due to environmental or social factors as provided by Kendra Cherry, author of “ How the Attentional Bias Influences the Decisions We Make”. She further postulated that this type of bias could be due to the fact that our ancestors were more keen on things that they considered risky or dangerous and ignored anything else that posed as non-threatening. This is similar to selective hearing as aforementioned, and this can ruin relationships or the concept of anything that feeds you with any information for that matter— as you’ll be more prone to capitalizing on the negative stimuli and ignore the other aspects of the information or situation as the case may be hence, distorted perception leading to misinterpretation.
These can lead to bad decision making or inaccurate choices.
Psychological interventions such as attention training or attentional bias modification training have proven effective by different psychologists as shown in “Attention Training to Reduce Attention Bias and Social Stressor Reactivity”. Authors of this peer-reviewed journal performed a research which proved that attention training helps affected individuals make a shift or dissociate from dwelling on negative stimuli and focus on overall aspects of what they’ve been communicated or presented with.
In essence, misinterpretation is not necessarily a bad thing and can be regarded as common errors humans make when it comes to listening and understanding something — when engaged in a conversation or communicated to via various other means. The problem, however, is when the reverse is the case.
If you suffer from a cognitive bias of any kind leading to misinterpretations of words/information, you need to seek clarification on many levels to determine whether it’s because of who you are or just what it is. If the former is the case, it’d be helpful to evaluate ways misinterpretation may be feeding the negative aspects you and take a detour by identifying them accordingly using the healthy personal development, self-improvement techniques and/ or psychotherapies as aforementioned.
If this is not properly done, it can lead to a lot of damages to many related areas of your life such as personal relationship with yourself, with others and your work life. It’s important to get to the bottom of your constant misunderstandings and misinterpretations in order to better understand and start interpreting accordingly.
