Mental Models LXIII (Limitations VIII)

"Beliefs are generalizations about the past projected onto the present and future to shape it in the image of the past. [...] When we generalize from incomplete or unrepresentative experience, we form mental models that make the wrong predictions, but because beliefs act as self-fulfilling prophecies it is hard to find out, because we are less open to counter examples." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)

"People’s mental models are apt to be deficient in a number of ways, perhaps including contradictory, erroneous, and unnecessary concepts. As designers, it is our duty to develop systems and instructional materials that aid users to develop more coherent, useable mental models. As teachers, it is our duty to develop conceptual models that will aid the learner to develop adequate and appropriate mental models. And as scientists who are interested in studying people’s mental models, we must develop appropriate experimental methods and discard our hopes of finding neat, elegant mental models, but instead learn to understand the messy, sloppy, incomplete, and indistinct structures that people actually have." (Donald A Norman, "Some Observations on Mental Models" [in "Mental Models", Ed(s). Dedre Gentner & Albert L Stevens], 1983)

"To begin with, we must understand that any mindset consists of mental models, or concepts, that influence our interpretation of situations and predispose us to certain responses. These models, which are replete with beliefs and assumptions, thus strongly determine the way we understand the world and act in it. The irony is, they become so ingrained in us, as tendencies and predispositions, that we seldom pay attention to them." (Stephen G Haines, "The Manager's Pocket Guide to Strategic and Business Planning", 1998)

"Our mental maps are often not terribly accurate, based as they are on our own selective experience, our knowledge and ignorance, and the information and misinformation we gain from others; nevertheless, these are the maps we depend on every day." (Peter Turchi, "Maps of the Imagination: The writer as cartographer", 2004)

"The most serious problem in applied ethics, or at least in business ethics, is not that we frame experiences; it is not that these mental models are incomplete, sometimes biased, and surely parochial. The larger problem is that most of us either individually or as managers do not realize that we are framing, disregarding data, ignoring counterevidence, or not taking into account other points of view." (Patricia H Werhane "A Place for Philosophers in Applied Ethics and the Role of Moral Reasoning in Moral Imagination", Business Ethics Quarterly 16 (3), 2007)

"Although good ethical decision-making requires us carefully to take into account as much relevant information as is available to us, we have good reason to think that we commonly fall well short of this standard – either by overlooking relevant facts completely or by underestimating their significance. The mental models we employ can contribute to this problem. As we have explained, mental models frame our experiences in ways that both aid and hinder our perceptions. They enable us to focus selectively on ethically relevant matters. By their very nature, they provide incomplete perspectives, resulting in bounded awareness and bounded ethicality. Insofar as our mental modeling practices result in unwarranted partiality, or even ethical blindness, the desired reflective process is distorted. This distortion is aggravated by the fact that our mental models can have this distorting effect without our consciously realizing it. Thus, although we cannot do without mental models, they leave us all vulnerable to blindness and, insofar as we are unaware of this, self-deception." (Patricia H Werhane et al, "Obstacles to Ethical: Decision-Making Mental Models, Milgram and the Problem of Obedience", 2013)

"Mental models serve to conceptualize, focus and shape our experiences, but in so doing, they sometimes cause us to ignore data and occlude critical reflection that might be relevant or, indeed, necessary to practical decision-making. [...] distorting mental models are the foundation

or underpinning of many of the impediments to effective ethical decision-making." (Patricia H Werhane et al, "Obstacles to Ethical: Decision-Making Mental Models, Milgram and the Problem of Obedience",  2013)

"We identify and analyze distorting mental models that constitute experience in a manner that occludes the moral dimension of situations from view, thereby thwarting the first step of ethical decision-making. Examples include an unexamined moral self-image, viewing oneself as merely a bystander, and an exaggerated conception of self-sufficiency. These mental models, we argue, generate blind spots to ethics, in the sense that they limit our ability to see facts that are right before our eyes – sometimes quite literally, as in the many examples of managers and employees who see unethical behavior take place in front of them, but do not recognize it as such." (Patricia H Werhane et al, "Obstacles to Ethical: Decision-Making Mental Models, Milgram and the Problem of Obedience",  2013)