Black and White Thinking: The burden of a binary brain in a complex world

by Professor Kevin Dutton

possible answers. Well, if you’re not top or bottom you’re obviously in the middle. So no prizes for nailing that one. If you’re not good or bad then you might be described as mediocre. If you don’t take a large or a small then you might fit into a medium. If you’re not left or right then politically you might be a moderate. And if you’re not tall or short then you might be of average build. Did you get any of those? I’m sure you got one or two. But let’s just pause there for a moment and take a brief look at those five words. Middle. Mediocre. Medium. Moderate. Average. Not exactly inspiring, are they? In fact, in the worlds of PR and advertising they’re pretty much taboo. Another thing. Did you start to run into difficulty on the even-numbered pairs? If so then, again, you’re in good company. None of the students I tested could plug the gap between passive and aggressive or between rough and smooth with just the one, single word. Some of them couldn’t do it with a hundred. This is worrying. If there exists no expedient, readily available terminology in the English language to adequately describe the grey zone between certain pairs of black and white adjectives then, thanks to this linguistic famine, we are being forced to both speak and think in polarized, black and white terms. With unseen and far-reaching consequences.