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Breaking Down Black-and-White Thinking: How Does It Affect You?

black and white thinking

Our brains and patterns of thinking are incredibly unique — we all have our own ways of doing things. Just one of these is black and white thinking. Also known as splitting or polarized thinking, black and white thinking is one of the simplest, most common, and potentially most damaging distortions of human thinking there is.

For those who think about things in black and white terms, it’s often difficult to see anything other than the best or worst possible outcomes, even though the reality is usually something in between the two.While some people with certain conditions or in certain situations are more likely to be affected severely by splitting, we all engage in it at some level, whether we’re aware of it or not.

What Is Polarized Thinking?

At its core, black and white thinking is all about believing that things can only be one of two ways. It’s often associated with psychological inflexibility and extremes in thinking: people engaging in polarized thinking normally see something as either good or evil, perfect or worthless, inevitable or impossible. Normally this perception forms around outcomes of a given situation, or judgements about a particular person or thing, and often it boils down to someone or something being either very good or very bad.

Black and white thinking is often linked to perfectionism. Perfectionism and a fear of trying new things are two symptoms of this thinking pattern. It’s easy to observe black and white thinking in students; for example, students completing accelerated nursing programs online will try to ensure every aspect of an endeavor is completed perfectly, or simply avoid undertaking projects altogether. 

What Causes This?

Polarization is a natural assessment of value or danger that our brains engage in at a variety of levels in order to assess whether or not we think a particular thing or situation will be good or bad for us, and whether we should seek it out or avoid it in the future. This process is mediated, in part, by a chemical called dopamine, often referred to as the ‘reward’ chemical. Dopamine plays a crucial role in determining how behaviors we engage in are reinforced, and whether or not our brains believe that we should repeat a behavior in the future. On the surface, it works quite simply: when we do things that fulfill our needs, our brain releases dopamine, and that dopamine creates neural connections that make us want to do those things more in the future. Dopamine plays a wide variety of roles in our biochemistry, but this function of acting as a reward for beneficial behaviors is one of its most important functions.

While dopamine plays a crucial role in helping us make good decisions by reinforcing good behaviors and deterring harmful ones, it needs to work properly in order to do this well. Just as oil lubricates a car engine when distributed through the system appropriately, but can cause problems when it leaks into places it’s not supposed to be, so too can irregularities in dopaminergic activity cause issues with decision making. Black and white thinking in the extreme is associated with personality and mood disorders that are linked to dopaminergic dysregulation.

black and white thinking

Who Is Affected?

People who frequently engage in extreme black and white thinking are often suffering from some form of mental health issue, and not infrequently a personality disorder. Personality disorders are conditions that cause pervasive irregularities in someone’s behavior that are normally persistent across their lifetime, and cause patients to react to others in ways that cause serious disruptions in their daily lives.

The most common conditions associated with heavily polarized thoughts are Cluster C personality disorders. This particular group of disorders is associated with anxious thinking and behavior. Cluster C disorders include avoidant personality disorder, dependent personality disorder, and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. These disorders have all been found to be associated with genes that cause or correlate with dopaminergic dysregulation, causing persistent disruption in the brain’s reward system. Even a cursory review of the symptoms of these disorders reveal polarizing tendencies. People in this cluster tend to be extremely sensitive to criticism, have very rigid behaviors, and often have issues with self esteem — in general, their perception of themselves and others tends to be very black and white, either judging people to be substantially more or less competent or desirable than themselves.

Sufferers of other personality disorders frequently engage in polarized thinking, too. Two of them, narcissistic personality disorder and borderline personality disorder, fall into cluster B. Sufferers of these disorders often engage in extreme and potentially very harmful polarized thinking: cluster B patients are more likely than average people to engage in violent and criminal behavior, and it’s not uncommonly a result of extreme black and white thinking. 

Borderline personality disorder is characterized by extreme fears of loneliness and abandonment. People with this condition often see themselves as inherently weak, and tend to have tempestuous, unstable relationships as a result of their tendency to alternate between psychologically idealizing and devaluing people close to them. While borderline personality disorder has not been directly correlated with the same genes that are associated with dopaminergic dysfunction in cluster C, it is nonetheless commonly thought to be at least in part related to irregularities in dopamine activity. Borderline personality disorder is known to correlate with a specific combination of genes known to regulate serotonin and dopamine, and borderline patients respond to medications that regulate dopamine as would be expected from patients that have conditions that such medications are designed to treat.

Narcissistic personalities are often seen as the “other side of the coin” of borderline personalities. Narcissists view themselves as inherently unique, important, powerful, or intelligent compared to others. As a result, they tend to view others as either inherently inferior to themselves, or be extremely envious of others who they perceive as having traits, achievements, or property that they feel they are entitled to. 

black and white thinking

What Can We Do?

Please keep in mind that everyone engages in black and white thinking to some degree, and not everyone with even an above-average tendency to do so will necessarily have diagnosable mental health issues. For those that do, there are a wide array of treatments that have the potential to ameliorate negative thought patterns.

For the rest of us, excessively polarized thinking might simply be the result of a temporary environmental condition: extra stress at work or school or in our personal lives, lack of exercise or healthy diet, or other external factors. The best path in this case is normally to find and address the source of stress in a healthy way, but sometimes that can take a while. In the meantime, there are plenty of strategies to overcome harmful thought patterns. The first step, and arguably the most important one, is to be mindful of these tendencies, and use that awareness to make sure that your behavior is not affecting you or anyone around you negatively.

Black and white thinking is typically not a productive way to think. While it stems from deeply ingrained neurological behaviors that are designed to help us protect ourselves and seek out the things we need, the timeless adage remains true: there is always such a thing as too much of a good thing!