The Either-Or Trap
On the nature (and nurture) of dichotomous thinking, why it harms us at work, and why we all need a bit more grey in our lives.
Nature or Nurture?
There is something very human about the impulse to sort. To divide into two. Good or bad. Right or wrong. Works for me or doesn’t. This approach or that one. The human brain, faced with a world that is increasingly complex—chock-full of ambiguity and competing priorities and situations that resist any kind of clean resolution—reaches instinctively for the simplicity of two options. Two options are manageable, while a spectrum of choices produces profound tension.
The phenomenon is what psychologists often call dichotomous thinking, otherwise known as black and white thinking or all-or-nothing thinking. Dichotomous thinking is formally defined as the propensity to understand things in the context of opposites, in a binary way. Either you’re stuck or not, or as one researcher put it, in either the thesis or the antithesis, unable to move toward synthesis. It is, in the truest sense, either-or thinking rather than both-and thinking, and it is (at least in my opinion) one of the most fascinating patterns in human psychology.
A bit of biological perspective always does us wonders, so let’s start there. Some scientists believe that because our brains evolved under conditions where quick categorization was necessary and adaptive, our ability to engage in this kind of thinking became a survival advantage, especially in the midst of human discomfort of uncertainty. Think about it…when we’re facing the need to choose, a kind of mental shortcut that quickly categorizes things that feel ambiguous or unresolved helps reduce our sense of being threatened. We seek out immediate relief, even if it dilutes space for perspective and nuance. And if we can blame it on nature, what’s there to do about it?
There’s also a case for nurture, as is evidenced by the belief that dichotomous thinking is a cornerstone of Western philosophy with its penchant for binary and dualistic thinking. As philosopher Thorsten Pattberg points out, philosophies of “the Orient” and more specifically, China, reflect formulas of balance, harmony and/or equilibrium, whereas the West relies more on opposition and contradiction as our primary engines of understanding. If the tendency toward either/or thinking were indeed innate and universal, we could safely expect it to show up across cultures, right? In the interest of time, I won’t dive too deeply into this (neither am I an expert in the domains of biological psychology and philosophy nor is that the purpose of this post), but I do think some framing is important.
I also want to name that dichotomy isn’t all bad. The same cognitive pattern that creates problems in our thinking and relationships and, more relevant to this piece, our organizations, is also, in certain contexts, quite useful. The ability to simplify, make quick decisions, cut through ambiguity, and reach a clear conclusion are not trivial capabilities, but moments in organizational life where decisiveness is exactly what we often want and need, mostly because there’s a cost (financial or otherwise) to extensive deliberation.
The problem though is that this approach to thinking and decision-making often becomes the default. Our brain’s preference for two clean categories starts shaping decisions, teams, policies, and cultures in ways that we’ve hardly taken the time to examine, make conscious, or question, even if it harms us in not doing so.
For this reason, my focus for this week’s post is the innately human tendency to engage in dichotomous thinking, and why we need to get a bit more comfortable with the grey.
It Always Starts With You and Me
Before dichotomous thinking shows up in organizational systems and policies, it shows up in you and me, everyday people. Take a moment to think about the subtle yet almost immediate assumptions and judgements we make about the situations, people, and ideas we encounter in our everyday workflows. I like this person or I don’t. This approach works for me or it doesn’t. This meeting was productive or it was a waste of time. That feedback was fair or it wasn’t. These reactions can feel like grounded and true assessments, and perhaps they are at times, but more often than not they tend to represent moments in which a complex situation is flattened into a verdict without thoughtful care and examination.
This is significant in the context of organizational life because judgments hardly remain personal and individualized for very long. There are managers who decide quickly that a new employee “gets it” or doesn’t (usually within the first few weeks, often on the basis of relatively sparse evidence), thus making a binary call that will surely inform how much investment, opportunity, and developmental feedback that person receives moving forward forward. There are colleagues who decide that a proposed change is good or bad, for or against their interests, even before the full picture has been shared, in turn setting up a defensive posture that makes the prospect of engaging in dialogue considerably harder for everyone else.
In many of these cases our actions aren’t entirely conscious. Our brains are simply doing what they do: assessing threat, pattern-matching, categorizing, and reaching for the nearest available label to choose from. This also happens quickly, so by the time our conscious minds catch up and begin to account for the possibility of nuance, a mere thought or perception can turn into a settled fact. And this is precisely why we need to slow down.
From Individuals to Systems
Once I started looking for binary thinking in organizations, I began to uncover it in a lot of different places. For example, I found it encoded in language, embedded in processes, institutionalized in policies, and captured in diverging stances across teams. From my perspective, the most interesting thing about dichotomous patterns in organizational behavior is that they become so hardened that people feel totally and utterly dictated by ways of seeing and doing that they themselves didn’t choose.
One of the ways in which this manifests is in how we talk about a specific approach or method. We often believe we need to do it this way or that way… choosing this framework or that one…this strategy or the alternative. The funny thing is that the real world of organizational happenings is hardly ever a clean either-or paradigm, but the language of meetings, strategy sessions, and cultural norms often is. This is, in part, because it’s easier to debate two options than to hold five in mind simultaneously, but it also has to do with the fact that we crave immediacy and productivity in a way that sitting with complexity comes into tension with, even if it’s what many situations actually require.
Binary thinking also tends to emerge in conversations about change. The old way or the new way. The way we’ve always done it or the disruption. I think that just as we can remain far too attached to the old way, we can become far too excitable about the new way, and both are relevant. From my lens, the biggest issue within dichotomy in the context of organizational change is that we often see shifts as swaps rather than evolutions. We often don’t see change as progress, which in some cases mean we hold on far too tightly to what once was, and conversely, we sometimes dismiss the importance of what will be. We need not discard rather than build—we need not always choose a side. Oftentimes what we need to do is integrate what’s working from the past with what we need for the future.
Space for Grey
In almost every case, the binary thinking that shapes many of the organizational mindsets, norms, and policies you and I carry forward in our everyday work have emerged from perhaps a genuinely human impulse towards the principles of clarity, efficiency, and resolution. Still, I believe we have both the ability to trace these back to the source and the responsibility to see things not from a mere black and white lens, but one that also honors the grey.
When we frame decisions as either-or, we foreclose the both-and options that often turn out to be more generative than either pole can offer on its own. In the spirit of statistical analysis, when we write binary policies, we create systems that fit the average case reasonably well but serve the edges of the distribution poorly, which is often where transformative talent and opportunity live. And when we let dichotomous thinking operate without awareness, we end up perpetuating the kinds of organizations that pain us most—those that don’t know how to respond to nuance, adapt to new market conditions, or cultivate the kind of transparent work environments we all crave.
I’m not proposing that we eliminate binary thinking, because that’s neither possible nor entirely desirable. Besides, in the words of 90s music queen Alanis Morissette, recommending this would be ironic, don’t you think?
What I am suggesting is the practice of noticing—of developing enough self-awareness to catch ourselves in moments of harmful bifurcation. Is a two-bucket framing actually serving the situation at hand? What’s being lost when we limit our options to only two? What would it look like to hold a spectrum rather than a binary?
These are the kinds of questions that tend to open up possibility, and in most organizations, we surely need a bit more of that. People deserve more of that. We might be accustomed to the ease and temptation of black and white thinking, but we mustn’t forget about the power that lies in the grey.
How does dichotomous thinking show up most for you? Do you see it somewhere in yourself? With your team? In the systems and policies around you? I'd love to hear more about how you experience it! Share your thoughts in the comments below.