We like to imagine we’re rational adults walking around with opinions and principles, carefully making choices based on facts. But most days, what we’re actually doing is navigating noise, risk, social signals, and incomplete information and trying not to get hurt (emotionally, socially, physically).
The most uncomfortable thing for the human brain isn’t being wrong. It’s being uncertain. Uncertainty is the state where you can’t predict what happens next, can’t read the room, can’t estimate the risk, can’t settle the story. And when the story is unsettled, the body feels it, because the brain treats ambiguity like a low-grade threat. So we don’t simply “think” our way through life; we keep trying to close loops. We label people quickly, judge situations fast, cling to first impressions, defend our old beliefs, and search for patterns even inside randomness.
That’s why human behaviour often looks predictable in hindsight: not because people are simple, but because the brain keeps reaching for the same shortcuts when it’s overloaded. The brain is expensive to run, in an average adult it’s about 2% of body weight, yet it consumes roughly 20% of the body’s energy at rest. That’s not a small detail; it explains why the mind loves efficiency, why it hates ambiguity, and why it grabs patterns even when they’re imperfect.
Why we follow these psychological patterns
From an evolutionary lens, the brain didn’t evolve to help you “see objective truth.” It evolved to help you survive long enough to matter: avoid threats, secure resources, maintain allies, protect status, and make fast calls with limited data.
That asymmetry shaped a brain that leans toward speed, pattern-recognition, and social alignment. It also shaped a brain that constantly scans for: “Is this safe?” “Who is with me?” “What does this mean for my status?” “What happens if I choose wrong?” Many of our biases are just modern expressions of old problems: deciding with partial information, under time pressure, inside social groups where belonging mattered, and where hesitation could look like weakness. In that sense, biases aren’t glitches, they’re features that became costly only after the world changed faster than our wiring.
In a world where hesitation could be costly, the mind learned to privilege speed over accuracy, and safety over novelty. Even our social wiring carries those old constraints: we’re built for tribal life, and there are proposed cognitive limits on how many stable social relationships we can truly track (popularly discussed as ~150, though researchers debate the strength and interpretation of that number). The point isn’t the exact count, it’s the principle: human attention and social bandwidth are finite, so the brain relies on heuristics to keep life manageable.
Human brain and Closure
A powerful way to understand real-life behaviour is through the lens of closure. In psychology this is often discussed as the need for cognitive closure a tendency to desire a firm answer and to feel discomfort with ambiguity.
When closure is high, we don’t just prefer answers; we prefer final answers. We become impatient with nuance, allergic to “it depends,” and we overvalue simple stories because simple stories feel stabilizing. Closure reduces mental load. It helps us act. It lowers the internal noise. But it also has a shadow: it pushes us to prematurely lock a story before the evidence deserves it, and then defend the story like it is identity. If you’ve ever noticed yourself getting strangely certain, strangely fast especially when you’re stressed that’s often not confidence. That’s closure.
10 Cognitive bias we live with
1) Confirmation bias: You like information that agrees with you. You ignore what doesn’t. Example: If you think a person is “bad,” you notice every small mistake they make and overlook their good actions.
2) Negativity bias: One bad thing hits harder than many good things. Example: Ten people praise you, one person criticizes you — you keep thinking about the criticism all day.
3) Loss aversion: Losing feels worse than winning feels good. Example: You feel more pain losing ₹1,000 than happiness gaining ₹1,000.
4) Availability bias: If you can remember it easily, your brain thinks it’s common or likely. Example: After hearing about a robbery, you suddenly feel the city is unsafe even if crime hasn’t increased.
5) Anchoring: The first number or first idea sticks in your head and affects everything after. Example: If someone says “This phone is usually ₹80,000 but today ₹60,000,” ₹60,000 feels like a deal because ₹80,000 became the reference.
6) Fundamental attribution error: When others mess up, we call them “bad.” When we mess up, we say “situation was bad.” Example: If someone is late, you think they’re careless. If you’re late, you blame traffic.
7) Status quo bias: You prefer the current situation because change feels risky.
Example: You keep using the same service or staying in the same job because “at least it’s familiar.”
8) Sunk cost fallacy: You keep going because you already spent time/money — even when it’s not worth it anymore. Example: Watching a boring movie till the end because “I already paid for it.”
9) Authority bias: If an important person says it, you believe it more — even if it’s wrong. Example: You accept advice blindly because it came from a senior person or a “famous expert.”
10) In-group bias: You support “your people” more and judge outsiders faster.
Example: You forgive mistakes of your friend easily, but if a stranger does the same thing, you get angry.
The simple truth: what’s common in most biases
If you zoom out, most biases share a single purpose: reduce uncertainty fast. They simplify the world into something actionable. They compress complexity into a story. They protect identity. They preserve emotional equilibrium. That’s why biases get stronger under stress, fatigue, and threat because the brain’s appetite for closure rises when your internal resources fall. It’s also why arguments rarely change minds when identity is involved: you’re not debating facts; you’re threatening someone’s closure. The bias is doing its job keeping their world coherent, even if that coherence is built on a fragile story.
Also Read: How people choose to buy
Conclusion
Here’s the uncomfortable, liberating reframe: human behaviour becomes easier to understand when you stop asking, “Why are people irrational?” and start asking, “What uncertainty are they trying to close?” Biases are not random flaws scattered across personality types; they are predictable strategies for managing a noisy world with a metabolically expensive brain.
The practical upgrade isn’t becoming bias-free (that’s fantasy). The upgrade is noticing your own “closure moments” the moments you feel suddenly certain, suddenly judgmental, suddenly unable to hold nuance.
In those moments, the most powerful question is not “what do I think?” but “what story did my brain just lock in to feel safe?” When you learn to spot that lock, you get something rare: the ability to stay open a little longer. And that is where better decisions, better relationships, and better leadership quietly begin.
