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   Cat Hicks (grimalkina@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 12-Nov-2025 02:45:26 JST Cat Hicks

   RE: https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina/115532267025434060

   long story short, we have a "psychological immune system" to protect the self from threat, but just like the real immune system can become damaged by persistent viral threat and become an autoimmune reaction... so too, people facing chronic psychological threat can develop maladaptive internalization of how they've been treated.

   This is why "tough love" interventions might work for privileged students and not for marginalized ones. An entirely different belief structure is in place

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 12-Nov-2025 02:45:26 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     @grimalkina
     Oh wow.

   • Embed this notice
     Cat Hicks (grimalkina@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 12-Nov-2025 06:45:44 JST Cat Hicks

     in reply to

     This is also why putting people in a state of threat massively changes the type of conversation you can have with them, the type of inferences they will make, and the type of problem-solving their minds do.

     It is a core thesis of my work that making technical environments less threatening = better technical work

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
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     Cat Hicks (grimalkina@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 12-Nov-2025 06:45:45 JST Cat Hicks

     in reply to

     Cognitive biases are a piece of the picture, but only a piece, and what emerges as an average effect across a population can be a real effect but can also lose explanatory power in specific circumstances and for specific populations. This is a difficult thing to remember but very important for all psychological and cognitive science findings.

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     Cat Hicks (grimalkina@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 12-Nov-2025 06:45:45 JST Cat Hicks

     in reply to

     We also differ in how we get these beliefs *activated* by specific environments which is why I am essentially focused on environments, as a researcher much more interested in producing change over time than I am interested in describing static group differences

     Paul Cantrell repeated this.
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     zenkat (zenkat@sfba.social)'s status on Saturday, 15-Nov-2025 00:28:47 JST zenkat

     in reply to

     @grimalkina Great thread, but I especially want to +1 this point.

     A lot of my success in running software teams comes from being very mindful about keeping people's psychological defense systems from kicking in.

     As soon as people get on the defensive, they are no longer working together to find the objectively best engineering solution -- you are fighting over semantic territory. We're hard-wired for it, when egos are threatened they will fight to win.

     But threatened minds are not open or curious. They aren't taking in new data, they are defending what they already know. Listening stops, synthesis stops, creativity stops. And team dynamics go to shit, too.

     It's not easy to get folks to engage and debate without feeling threatened, but it can be done. Takes a good amount of finesse at first, but if you can get it established as a cultural norm it can make magic happen.