Tunnel vision is having a belief that is not always correct. In some cases there is good evidence to the contrary, which the person with tunnel vision does not want to see or cannot see. People with tunnel vision are sometimes known for always wanting to be right. They are often convinced of their own right without being able to change their minds.
What is tunnel vision?
Tunnel vision is the failure to perceive things that one could logically perceive, resulting in an incorrect calculation, result or belief. Failure to observe these things can arise from ignorance, impossibility or unwillingness. A position once taken is difficult to let go.
A person with tunnel vision is convinced of his own thinking, sometimes even when there are other clues that prove his belief is incorrect. In legal cases, for example, the judge and lawyer may be convinced that someone is the perpetrator, even if he or she contradicts this. In some cases, the innocent suspect is only heard again after years, after new hard evidence has been presented.
In everyday life, someone with tunnel vision is also known as a person who always wants to be right.
I am always right
Tunnel vision is not a strange phenomenon. Our brains work very complexly and have to process a lot of information. The thinking system can become quite overloaded. To combat this, only the important information is filtered out and remembered. The unimportant information fades into the background. If we had suspicions before and information comes in that confirms these suspicions, we quickly accept these observations as correct. This means that a problem can be solved more quickly and the thinking system no longer needs to be burdened.
Example: A mother discovers that five euros are missing from her wallet. She suspects her teenage son because he has taken money from her wallet before. However, son says he really didn’t take any money from her wallet this time. Mother has her doubts. When she cleans his room the next day, she finds five euros on his desk. This confirms her suspicion and accuses her son of theft. It doesn’t matter that the son says he got these five euros from grandma. Mother has tunnel vision: her suspicion is confirmed and this quickly solves the whole problem. A week later she hears from grandmother that she has given five euros to her son. It will now be very difficult for mother to admit her mistake. The position taken is almost impossible to reverse. Most people would rather remain silent than admit the mistake.
Some people suffer more from tunnel vision than others. Stress can cause and strengthen tunnel vision. Tunnel vision is not a conscious choice but an unconscious mechanism of the brain. Trying to suppress tunnel vision often has the opposite effect: people are inclined to focus more on their own point of view.
Tunnel vision in politics
Tunnel vision often occurs in politics. Politicians may have an opinion or way of thinking that they are convinced is good for society. Often this opinion is ultimately translated into action in the form of a project. Even if it turns out afterwards that this project is not good for society at all, it will still be continued. On the one hand because the project has already started and people cannot or do not want to turn it back, and on the other hand because they do not dare or do not want to admit their own mistakes.
Tunnel vision also occurs in criminal cases, where everyone involved and society focuses so much on a single suspect that the real suspect sometimes goes free without being noticed . Tunnel vision sometimes leads to innocent people being wrongfully imprisoned.
Dealing with tunnel vision
It is difficult to convince someone with strong tunnel vision that he or she is wrong. It often helps when there is hard evidence, not stories from other situations. Hard evidence is, for example, a witness statement, images, tangible evidence. Someone who sleepwalks a lot may be very convinced that this is not true. His suspicion is confirmed because the door is left exactly the same ajar in the morning as it was before going to sleep. By filming the sleepwalker, the tunnel vision can be broken.
Someone who always wants to be right sometimes cannot be convinced that he is wrong. Tunnel vision can also be learned or habituated as a result of stress, trauma or illness. In some cases help is necessary.
In politics it is very difficult to break through tunnel vision. Politicians have much more power than ordinary citizens. For this reason, citizens have the right to vote: whereby he or she can join a specific political party. Mistakes are often not admitted by the government but simply concealed. Previously made decisions are reversed or revised without being discussed. Citizens are more inclined to believe a good but lied story than to believe a true but poorly told story. Politicians take advantage of this during elections.