The other day our five-year-old Ethan was dancing around the house singing. (NOT an uncommon thing.) I was busy doing something at the time, but suddenly became aware of what he was singing. It was the Spiderman theme, but not really. He was singing, and I quote:
Spiderman, Spiderman,
Does whatever a spider can,
Shoots a web - any size,
Catches leaves just like flies, (supposed to be “thieves”)
Look out…here comes the Spiderman.
Ethan, at five years old, was making an assumption of what the song lyrics were based upon his five-year-old experience. He has no context for what a “thief” is, so when he hears the song he only hears what makes sense to him.
As grown-ups with jobs and responsibility we’re much better about not weeding out important data, right?
Actually, study after study has shown that we tend to look only for confirming information. We always look for ways to make things fit into our existing schema. We only deal with dis-confirming info when we are forced to.
This means that we must be intentional (and systematic) about weeding out improper assumptions in our life and creating. We need to ask difficult questions, and make it a regular part of our work flow to ask whether or not our decisions are based on improper assumptions.
(By the way…I didn’t tell Ethan the real lyrics…the assumptive version is much more fun…)
In this interview, 
Leave a Reply