Cognitive Complexity vs Simplicity & the Value of Mental Flexibility
Modern life can be overwhelming. Politicians and social media feed polarized points of view, leading to a proliferation of conflicting facts, beliefs, and values.
Many of us react to the confusing array of conflicting information in one of two ways: by seeking to simplify the world to reduce complexity while holding tenaciously to our preferred beliefs and values or by opening our minds, becoming curious about different points of view, and appreciating the complexity of our experiences and those of others.
Cognitive Complexity versus Cognitive Simplicity
The two approaches are called Cognitive Complexity versus Cognitive Simplicity. Both involve styles of information processing––what to attend to and what to ignore––and decision-making.
In their 1993 book Handbook of Individual Differences, Learning, and Instruction, Jonassen and Grabowski wrote a chapter titled “Cognitive Complexity/Simplicity,” which describes how different individuals perceive, understand, anticipate, and predict events in their environments. Complex and simple individuals tend to differ in terms of:
a) the number of distinct characteristics or concepts used to describe an idea
b) the number of discriminations within those characteristics or concepts
c) the complexity of the interrelationships of the characteristics or concepts. (Tiedemann, 1989).
Let’s consider cognitive complexity and simplicity’s benefits and limitations.
- Cognitive Complexity involves approaching problems from different vantage points and taking into consideration a range of perspectives in analyzing and interpreting situations.
Related cognitive skills include differentiation, integration, and tolerance of uncertainty.
Cognitive complexity involves managing complex information and appreciating diverse viewpoints, promoting awareness of nuances in social relationships. Cognitively complex individuals embrace the “shades of gray” in life.
- In contrast, Cognitive Simplicity describes a style of perceiving and thinking which prioritizes simple, straightforward, observables, preferring set answers to reduce uncertainty and maximize certainty.
Cognitive simplicity tends to discount multiple, competing explanations and instead, to reduce them to discrete categories. As such, cognitive simplicity may lead to rigidity and rejection of nuanced or relativistic considerations.
When this becomes a dominant mode, individuals are prone to black and white or all-or-nothing thinking, which focus on extremes or absolutes. Such thinking is commonly viewed as a cognitive distortion.
Consider the example, “Oysters are terrible. Yuk. I hate them!” This is a categorical and absolute statement. However, one could say, “Oysters have a gross consistency but a great salty flavor, especially when eaten with cocktail sauce or vinegar.”
The first is an example of a simple, all-or-nothing, unnuanced statement. The second shows how different, even opposing characteristics or concepts can be true simultaneously. If you still don’t like oysters, a more complex response would be something like, “I know some people love them, and I do like cocktail sauce and salty flavors, but I just don’t like the consistency and taste of oysters. Yuk.”
Cognitive maturity is often linked to a greater appreciation of complexity, whereas Cognitive immaturity reflects a narrow, one-dimensional focus on single elements, characteristic of earlier modes of thinking.
Adults think differently than children. Mature cognition weighs multiple factors, while immature thinking focuses on single factors to the exclusion of others.
But Wait a Minute…
The contrast between complexity versus simplicity may lead some to conclude that Complexity is always good, and Simplicity is always bad. However, this would be an example of a simplistic, black-white dichotomization.
In some situations, focusing on complexity may waste time and mental energy, especially when there is a need for a straightforward assessment and simple course of action. Knowing when to think in broad and integrative ways and when, for efficiency’s sake, to view things in a simpler, more straightforward manner is itself an example of cognitive complexity.
We can become biased in viewing one cognitive approach as better than the other. For example, a “simplicity bias” can be characterized by the belief that simple explanations are always better than complex ones.
Consider Occam’s Razor, which holds that simpler explanations of observations should be preferred to more complex ones.
On the other hand, it is also true that a “complexity bias” can result in weighing all factors and considering peripheral details before making a decision, even when a more linear, straightforward assessment is called for.
A simplicity bias would say, “Don’t just sit there, do something.” Sometimes, it’s best to act quickly and not think. However, a complexity bias would urge the opposite: “Don’t just do something, sit there,” or think before you act.
Both approaches have their place depending upon circumstances.
Which Cognitive Approach is Better?
Complexity allows us to grapple with multiple motivations and diverse forces operating within a person and social group (as opposed to reducing complex factors to only one feature, trait, or incident). While simplicity can lead to oversimplification and a failure to see the bigger picture, it can also be a valuable tool for problem-solving.
There is an argument to be made that, at some point, one needs to ignore the diversity of factors, take a stand, and decide. For example, one can appreciate complexity and ambiguity, but when it comes to specific issues, one is often forced to choose when something is right or wrong.
Otherwise, we become lost in inefficient rumination, paralyzed by competing explanations, moral relativism, or “both-sides-ism,” and lose the forest through the trees.
Take the recent example of the killing of the CEO of United Health Care, Brian Thompson. Was Luigi Mangione a stone-cold killer or a folk hero? Has United Health Care engaged in calculated and unethical decisions affecting people’s lives?
Yes.
Did Mangione gun down the CEO of UHC? Absolutely.
Grappling with this both–and/either-or dilemma poses uncomfortable questions. Can both be true? And are both points of view equivalent? Put differently, is murder the same thing as callous, impersonal decisions of a corporation that affect people’s health? People disagree.
Reducing complexity can help us move from uncertainty to taking a stand on issues that demand moral clarity. But at the same time, complexity can also slow us down from making impulsive decisions and cutting corners when dealing with complex situations.
The key is not getting stuck in one’s bias for simplistic versus complex analysis and decision-making. This brings us to the importance of mental flexibility and knowing when to shift from a simple to a complex position and vice versa.
Psychological Flexibility
People with high levels of Mental Flexibility thrive on tinkering with contrasting points between different ideas. They seek out alternative perspectives, meet challenging demands creatively, and often find opportunities hidden within the tension.
They feel comfortable with contradictions, ambiguity, and paradoxes and appreciate or even learn from the discomfort of working on multiple objectives simultaneously. They discover new ways of learning and adapting and can effectively flex between competing goals with relative ease.
Most importantly, they are open to being wrong and can change their minds.
A lack of flexibility may lead us to develop fixed orientations that can lead to personality styles that are either rigid, on the one hand, or overly fluid and indecisiveness, on the other. Inflexible individuals may find themselves sticking with what they know and, like “Groundhog Day,” repeating patterns that may be inappropriate to changing circumstances.
To their credit, they may doggedly persevere, pursuing one clearly defined objective and strategy only to face one setback after another, but in doing so, they may demonstrate the Einstein quote that “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
In some respects, the flexibility–inflexibility distinction shares similarities with Carol Dweck’s concepts of “fixed” versus “growth” mindsets.
Growth mindsets are more flexible to changing circumstances. They are open to experience and see feedback and mistakes as guides to change.
Fixed mindsets are, as the term implies, melded to a belief that one’s qualities, abilities, and patterns cannot be changed.
Where the individual with a fixed mindset views things as etched in stone and unchangeable, those with a growth mindset embrace change. Like the cognitively complex and flexible person, they know that a single factor or outcome does not define one’s abilities or potential.
Mental Flexibility: Consequences for Psychological Health
Professor Todd Kashdan wrote about the health consequences of mental flexibility.
Dr. Kashdan noted that
“Psychological flexibility spans a wide range of human abilities to recognize and adapt to various situational demands; shift mindsets or behavioral repertoires when these strategies compromise personal or social functioning; maintain balance among important life domains; and be aware, open, and committed to behaviors that are congruent with deeply held values. In many forms of psychopathology, these flexibility processes are absent.”
Kashdan described the relationship between flexibility and psychological well-being and the connection between inflexibility and mental health difficulties.
Psychologically flexible people tend to be more open to experiences.
They are more receptive and curious about the world and their personal experiences. In fact, Openness to Experience is one of the key traits in the Big Five model of personality (McCrae & Costa, 1997). Specific response patterns on assessment methods like the Rorschach test also provide information about mentally flexible versus rigid mindsets.
Flexibility enables us to adapt to positive and negative feelings when dealing with novel, complex, and uncertain events, leading to engagement rather than avoidance. When a person remains flexible, he/she wishes to explore and widen the boundaries of their self-experience. Studies show how mental flexibility can be critical to success in professional settings.
Conversely, inflexibility is associated with a range of mental health conditions. Kashdan states, “a signal feature of many disorders is that a person’s fluid transactions with the environment break down and responses become stereotyped and invariable.”
Depression, anxiety, and a host of personality disorders may share inflexible mindsets and problem-solving strategies that lead to maladaptive symptoms and crystalize fixed patterns of responding to stress and dealing with others.
Authoritarian Personalities and Conspiracy Theories
Independent of diagnostic categories of mental health disorders, there are some interesting links between a lack of flexibility and socially and politically relevant personality types.
For example, there is a link between mental simplicity, inflexibility, fixed mindsets and Theodore Adorno’s concept of an authoritarian personality. In The Authoritarian Personality (1951), studied the origins of antisemitism that gave rise to Nazi Germany.
Adorno’s thesis was that certain personality traits make people more susceptible to authoritarian and fascist ideologies. He and colleagues developed the F-Scale (Fascism Scale) to identify authoritarian features.
They argued that individuals with rigid thinking, aggression to outgroups, intolerance for ambiguity, resistance to introspection, and submission to authority were more likely to support fascist regimes. Thus, individuals who exhibit a simplicity bias and lack of mental flexibility are more prone to view the world through the prism of all-or-nothing mindsets.
Adorno’s words in this regard are telling and fit with concepts of mental flexibility/complexity versus rigidity/simplicity. Consider his simple quotes:
“Freedom would be not to choose between black and white but to abjure such prescribed choices.”
And my favorite
“Intolerance of ambiguity is the mark of an authoritarian personality.”
Current interest in understanding conspiracy theories is relevant to cognitive complexity/simplicity and flexibility/rigidity discussions.
Conspiracy theories require cognitive closure and reduction of uncertainty or competing explanations. Such processing styles are related to well-studied cognitive distortions such as confirmation bias and jumping to conclusions.
How To Increase Mental Flexibility
There are strategies you can use to build and maintain your mental flexibility. Here are some strategies that help:
- Practice mindfulness meditation
- Mindfulness is all about being present in the moment. It helps us become more aware of our emotions, thoughts, sensations, and perceptions of our environment.
- Set aside time daily to focus on mindfulness-based activities like yoga, deep breathing, or other activities.
- Acknowledge and embrace your thoughts.
- Accept the notion that discomfort and uncertainty are part of life. Instead of trying to avoid or resist difficulties, find ways to acknowledge them. Remind yourself that discomfort and distress are temporary. You will survive.
- Allow yourself a full range of emotions without judging these feelings as bad or wrong. Instead, view them as a part of life. Understand that your feelings belong to you but do not define you. All emotions, even the painful ones, can help us learn and adapt to changing circumstances.
- Don’t just accept negative thoughts. Challenge them. Are they helping you?
- Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), a form of psychotherapy that helps people learn to adapt to changes in the world and themselves while staying true to their values and goals, can increase psychological flexibility.
Writing About Flexibility and Complexity
In our fraught social and political climate and with authoritarianism on the rise, my thoughts turn to creating stories that depict the tension between simplicity and complexity, rigidity and flexibility.
Art and creativity can express flexible and fluid boundaries that push us beyond the fixed and predictable.
For my next novel, I plan to resurrect the protagonist from my first novel, The 11th Inkblot, and write a story that explores the tension between cognitive complexity/flexibility, conspiracy theories, and authoritarian mindsets.
Stay tuned!
Novels by J. Herman Kleiger
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