How the Tip of Your Tongue Deceives You

Before we believe in anyone else, we believe in ourselves. Not intentionally and not consciously, but, when in doubt, we defer to our own abilities. If a thing doesn't make sense to us quickly, then we conclude that either the thing is wrong or the thing doesn't matter. 

We can slow down and think through how we might be wrong, but that will be a second thought. Our first though is how we are right the the thing is wrong. That's not a criticism of humans as much as it just a recognition of how we operate. 

One of our foremost tools for determining whether something is right or wrong - or important or not - is how quickly we can remember certain details. We feel like if we can remember something quickly, it must be important. We tend to give information we can recall quickly more weight than information we have to really think about before we can recall it. 

This is called the availability heuristic. 

A heuristic is rule of thumb we use to wade through information quickly. On the whole, heuristics are great! The world is so full of information that not having a way to quickly sort and prioritize that information would be debilitating. Instead, our minds ability to determine which heuristic to use and apply it to a situation means that we can process information and make decisions relatively quickly. In short, we can function without being absolutely overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of information we have access to. 

But sometimes the speed with which we use a heuristic leads to errors in judgment - errors that if we paused and thought about a little longer, we might have been able to avoid. This is where the availability heuristic comes into play. 

Your ability to recall a piece of information quickly probably says more about your memory than it does the piece of information. Is that the best information available with which to make a decision? It very well could be, but that can't be determined simply by whether your remembered it quickly or not. 

What if your memory recall is better or worse than another person's? The fact that you have better or worse recall abilities tells us nothing about the kind of information you retain and how useful and accurate that information may be. 

When we try and remember something, but we can't quite pull the thought to the front of our minds, we often say, "It's on the tip of my tongue." The expression conveys a vague sense that we have the information stored in our minds somewhere. We know it's there, it's just hiding in our memory somewhere. We rely so heavily on readily available information that we feel a little embarrassed when we can't remember something we feel we should. 

Easily accessible information, however, cannot be the only information we use to come to a conclusion. Sometimes things need to be mulled over and examined. Sometime problems need to be broken down and analyzed, and not just reacted to. Sometimes we need more information than we have in the moment. We may even need guidance from another person. 

And that's okay.

It's okay to look for more information than just what is on the tip of your tongue.