Avoiding Narrative Fallacy to Optimize Decision-Making

Recently I've been deep-diving into a model of brain, mind, and behavior—active inference and the free energy principle—developed by a leading neuroscientist and computational psychiatrist Karl Friston.¹ Through these investigations, I had the pleasure of meeting Alexey Tolchinsky, a clinical psychologist and researcher who originally studied physics in his undergraduate program and later on pursued a doctorate in clinical psychology. He is one of the authors investigating the clinical practice of psychology and psychiatry using the framework of dynamical systems, including Chaos Theory. He currently is working on papers exploring depersonalization and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

In this interview, we focus on "narrative fallacy," which helps explain a common way people create misleading inferences by filling in the blanks in the data too quickly. Stated differently, narrative fallacy happens when people prematurely create a coherent story from disconnected bits and pieces of information. This is one of the ways we often get ourselves into avoidable trouble, going beyond "jumping to conclusions" to become a way of approaching the world. Conversely, finding ways to mitigate the effects of narrative fallacies may lead to more accurate and adaptive inferences, and, in turn, to better clinical outcomes, and more generally to think through key decisions with greater clarity.

GHB: What is narrative fallacy?

AT: Narrative fallacy is connecting the details or events into a coherent story form while we do not know if these details are connected. Often, we come up with a causal story. For example, let us imagine that John’s common cold symptoms disappeared one week after they started, and he has been washing his hands every day. If he ends up thinking that his handwashing cured the common cold, that would be an example of a narrative fallacy. The relationship inferred between A and B in a narrative fallacy is not always a causal one; it can be any kind of relationship. Consider a story that the purpose of our lives is to make enough money for a comfortable retirement—this is a “functional” or “teleological” relationship, describing our destination (purpose) rather than the past causes of our behavior.

Conspiracy theories are based on narrative fallacy. They typically assign blame to one person or country in a simple manner. We see many examples of narrative fallacy in our lives – in politics, in journalism, in daily conversations with each other, and in clinical practice.

The examples of narrative fallacy need not be extreme; we are all prone to this phenomenon. It’s a human proclivity to connect the dots quickly, which is likely related to the limitations of our minds—it is effortful for us to hold on to multiple unconnected details. By default, when we are not paying attention to how we draw conclusions, we tend to avoid the effortful forms of thinking, such as probabilistic statements [GHB: Probabilistic thinking would require us to spell out all the relevant factors, assign significance to each one, consider their complex relationships, and arrive at a reasoned decision. There isn't always time to do that for any given decision, but often there are missed opportunities to make better choices.]

GHB: What makes narrative fallacy critically important for not only therapy but also how we approach life?

AT: Stories are powerful. Throughout history, various stories have compelled people to sacrifice their lives, murder others, and start wars.² A well-crafted story is a powerful mechanism of controlling people, manipulating people’s opinions and behaviors. We see this playing out now in the U.S. presidential election campaigns, where the new catchy stories pop up every week often to attack or blame the opponent. Stories based on narrative fallacy tend to be short, simple, and emotionally evocative, which makes them accessible and believable for many people. For example, a blame-based story that the inflation is the past president’s fault is far more popular than a story that the inflation is a complex macroeconomic phenomenon that depends on many factors.

When we face important decisions, we need to carefully examine the stories we come up with to explain things. We can keep the alternative explanation questioned, criticized, held in a tentative state until we collect enough data that the elements that we have preliminarily connected into a story form are indeed connected to each other.

GHB: What are some of the best ways to avoid or remedy narrative fallacy?

AT: The most important factor is the awareness of narrative fallacy. While we remain in denial that it exists and is common, we are more likely not to notice it. It takes effort and practice to avoid the temptation of connecting the dots prematurely. When tired, stressed out, or emotionally activated, we are more likely to fall back to the regime of creating simple stories and holding on to them. Other measures to minimize the effects of narrative fallacy may be helpful, such as subjecting our preliminary stories to an independent review by others with expertise in the field or augmenting the narratives with other forms of data, such as images or video documents. Finally, as applied to clinical practice, we can update the methodology of how we work to minimize the probability of narrative fallacy leading us astray.

GHB: Are there any times when narrative fallacy is useful, or is it always dysfunctional?

AT: One of the reasons why we tend to gravitate to storytelling is that this process allows us to minimize the state of uncertainty, which is a stressful regime for us. When things “make sense” to us, we are less anxious, as opposed to facing the unexplained and possibly threatening uncertainty. In some circumstances, therefore, a false story can lead to a decrease in anxiety, or even to a mild symptomatic improvement, as in a placebo effect. What matters in these circumstances is not the accuracy of the story, but its side effect of soothing the anxiety. Therefore, challenging or refuting a false story that usefully works for a person is not always a good move (e.g., taking away a placebo story that helps the person feel better).

If we are aware of the narrative fallacy at play, we need to use critical judgment to decide what to do with that in specific circumstances. For example, when a conspiracy theory allows to reduce uncertainty in many people who fell prey to it, but it also leads to their violence against a minority group, then it’s a harmful effect.

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GHB: Is there anything else you'd like to add?

AT: I am hopeful that an honest discussion about the narrative fallacy in clinical practice³ can help us introduce the necessary updates and countermeasures that would allow us to increase the efficacy of treatment for hard-to-treat clinical conditions.