We Take One Piece of Information and Run with it

   He told me his store was north of where I was at, and across from Walgreen's at about 4700 South. My mind seemed to remember a Walgreen's to the north, so I locked on that location without processing the rest of the information -- that it was about 4700 South.
   As it ended up, the store was not to the north, but the south. There was not a Walgreen's to the north, as I envisioned. Rather, Walgreen's (and thus also the store I was looking for) was on the southeast corner of the very intersection I had turned to the north on.
   I would spend much of the rest of my trip reflecting on the cognitive process, and of how we latch onto one piece of information at the exclusion of all other, sometimes just missing making the right decision for not processing information right in front of us.
   I turned north on the very intersection where my True Value Hardware store was. I was so close.
   So it is with all our decision-making. We are limited by the information we have, and the information we choose to process. Often (perhaps, usually), we lock on the information we first get. It becomes what I shall call our proprietary information, the information we "own" and accept. We have a bias toward it.
   I submit to you that we judge other people with a mindset that runs down this very path I have outlined. We hear bad of another, or get a bad piece of information about another, and we claim the information. It becomes a part of us. Our search for more information stops. That which we have is often information that comes from someone we want to believe.
  Often, gossip is this information that sparks our decision. We don't usually back down from it. That which is passed to us through gossip is often all we think we need to know.