The Scout vs Soldier Mindset
How to have a clear perspective.
In any military unit there are soldiers and scouts. It’s the scouts that will go out and gather information about the enemy so that the soldiers can make a battle plan basing on that information.
The scout or soldier mindset is a framework for how we process information or ideas in our daily lives.
Understanding the difference between the scout and soldier’s mindset helps us to make good judgments, make the right decisions and make accurate predictions.
The scout’s job is to understand, to have the facts as accurate as possible, regardless of how unpleasant or inconveniencing this information might be.
Being a scout, however, does not mean that your ideas are always based on facts — sometimes it will be just a gut feeling. This is especially so when we are in a time-constrained scenario of making a decision before we have all the facts available to us.
According to researchers, having a scout mindset is not at all related to how smart one is or how much one knows, but to what someone feels (is right).
On the other hand, the soldier is trained to take reflexive (and unconscious) actions, to act in the heat of the moment or to do what feels right to him at that time.
One of the qualities of the soldier mindset is ‘motivated reasoning’. This is basically the drive to defend or attack ideas, the need to make some ideas win and others lose. This is common with football fans. They’re usually urging in favor of the team they support, and often find it hard to accept negative information about their team.
For a soldier, you’re weak if you change your mind. If another person challenges the soldier’s opinion, they’re perceived as an enemy.
The soldier is prone to self-denial, wishful thinking, and rationalizing his decisions to defend his beliefs.
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” — Mark Twain
What makes one a scout is curiosity, or having an open mind. For example, a scout doesn’t believe that changing one’s opinion (when presented with new and accurate facts) is weak. A scout doesn’t associate his opinions with the sort of person he is.
The scout knows that the truth sometimes is unpleasant, but most importantly that it’s the truth.
Instead of being defensive, the scout is more likely to feel intrigued when they’re challenged with a different opinion or when they encounter something that contradicts their expectations.
Facts are important in decision making, but they don’t beat intuition or how one feels. Feelings are an important part of our decision making, and usually guide us to make the best decisions.
Being a scout is often challenging because more often than not we’ll have to go against the herd. You don’t want to be the only person that objects to a new system/law/opinion that the rest of your group are okay with. After all, the need to belong and be part of a group is what has made humans thrive for centuries.
The scout isn’t inclined to motivated reasoning, to believe in something or go with the popular opinion just because it makes us look good before the others.
Ask yourself: Are you someone who holds onto your hardcore beliefs or do you want to see the world as clearly as you possibly can? Do you argue to win or to learn?
A scout mindset is what we need to have a clearer perspective and judgement. We should be fascinated instead of feeling ashamed when we’re wrong, and defensive when we receive information that contradicts our strongly held beliefs.
Here’s the summary of this topic in a tweet.
Sources:
- Julia Galef’s The Scout Mindset, and her TED Talk.
