Your Brain Decided What Happened Before You Pressed Play
- Mike Mason
- Jan 27
- 5 min read
In the aftermath of tragedy, one thing happens almost immediately these days: video footage appears. Phone recordings, CCTV clips, body-worn cameras; all fragments of reality, replayed millions of times. And almost just as quickly, opinions harden. People watch the same footage and arrive at radically different conclusions about what they’ve seen, what it means, and where to point fingers.
The recent fatal shootings of Renée Good and Ryan Pretti in Minneapolis are stark examples. The events themselves are deeply tragic. But what is equally striking is how the same visual evidence has been interpreted in completely different ways depending on the viewer’s prior beliefs, values, and trust in institutions.
This isn’t a failure of intelligence. It isn’t a failure of empathy. It’s a demonstration of something far more powerful and universal: confirmation bias.
If we want to move forward, as organisations, communities, and societies, we need to understand how bias shapes perception, why dialogue breaks down under pressure, and how trust and checks-and-balances allow accountability without deepening division.
Seeing Isn’t Believing
We often assume that video is objective and that “the footage speaks for itself”. But cognitive science (and the completely opposite conclusions drawn from the recent incidents in the USA) tells us something very different.
Human perception is not a camera. It is an interpretive process. When we watch potentially ambiguous, fast-moving, emotionally charged events, our brains fill in gaps using expectations formed long before the video started.
That’s why:
One person sees reckless aggression
Another sees justified self-defence
A third sees confusion, fear, and chaos
All of them are watching the same footage. This is confirmation bias in action: our tendency to notice, interpret, and remember information that aligns with beliefs we already hold, while discounting information that doesn’t.
Importantly, confirmation bias is not deliberate. It operates automatically. The brain is trying to reduce uncertainty, not mislead us. But the result is that evidence rarely changes minds, it often reinforces them.
Why These Events Become So Divisive
When confirmation bias meets high emotion, identity, and distrust, disagreement escalates quickly. In these cases, people aren’t just interpreting an incident, they’re defending:
their values
their worldview
their trust (or lack of trust) in institutions
Once an interpretation becomes tied to identity (potentially fuelled by the media or people wanting to support their own agenda), questioning it feels like a personal attack. Dialogue collapses into debate which can turn aggressive. This aggressive debate becomes tribal. And tribalism eliminates nuance.
This is why discussions around these incidents often feel so hostile: people aren’t arguing about facts, they’re arguing about what those facts mean, and what they imply about the world they believe they live in.
The Cost of Losing Dialogue
When dialogue breaks down, two things happen: First, people retreat into echo chambers; spaces where interpretations are affirmed rather than tested. Algorithms reward certainty and outrage, not humility or complexity. Second, accountability becomes distorted. Instead of being handled through agreed processes, it becomes performative; driven by public pressure, social media narratives, and instant moral judgement.
Dialogue doesn’t mean agreement. It means being able to ask:
What are you seeing that I might be missing?
What assumptions are shaping my interpretation?
What don’t we yet know?
Without dialogue, we stop learning from one another. We stop correcting error. We stop building shared understanding.
Trust, Evidence, and Process
Trust plays a critical role in how people interpret information. When trust in institutions is high, ambiguity can be tolerated while facts are gathered. When trust is low, every gap in information is filled with suspicion. In situations like these shootings, trust is strained on all sides. Official statements, independent footage, witness accounts, and expert analysis are filtered through pre-existing beliefs about legitimacy and intent.
This is where checks and balances matter. Independent investigations, transparent evidence release, and clear legal processes exist not to eliminate disagreement, but to provide a shared framework for making sense of complex events. They slow things down. They resist certainty. And they protect society from decisions driven purely by outrage or allegiance.
Accountability without process isn’t justice, it’s just a knee-jerk reaction.
Holding Two Ideas at Once
One of the hardest skills in emotionally charged events is holding two ideas at the same time:
That people deserve to be held accountable under the law
And that human behaviour must be understood in context, not judged solely through hindsight
These are not opposing ideas and in fact, they depend on each other. Without understanding, accountability becomes blunt and unfair. Without accountability, understanding becomes toothless. Mature systems, whether they be legal, organisational, or societal, require both.
What This Means for Business Leaders and Teams
While the examples in this article come from public tragedies, the underlying dynamics are deeply familiar inside organisations.
1. Confidence Is Not Objectivity
When everyone agrees quickly, bias is usually present, not clarity.
Leadership takeaway: Actively invite alternative interpretations of the same data, especially when consensus forms too fast.
2. Dialogue Beats Debate
Debate defends positions. Dialogue explores how positions were formed.
Leadership takeaway: After incidents or failures, ask (don't tell):
What made this make sense at the time?
What were we assuming?
What were we not seeing?
3. Bias Is a System Issue
Bias doesn’t disappear with experience or seniority. In fact, authority often amplifies it.
Leadership takeaway: Build structured challenge into decisions with pre-mortems, red teams, independent reviews.
4. Trust Shapes Interpretation
Low trust leads people to question motives instead of evidence.
Leadership takeaway: Psychological safety enables disagreement before people entrench.
5. Checks and Balances Prevent Overconfidence
Strong systems don’t rely on one person being right.
Leadership takeaway: Independent oversight and peer challenge are safeguards, not bureaucracy.
6. Sequence Matters
Accountability without understanding creates fear, not learning.
Leadership takeaway: Understand → Learn → Improve → Then hold accountable. Note that holding people accountable doesn't mean punishment. The process will be far more successful if people are held accountable to incorporate change.
The Bottom Line
If you believe that simply “showing the footage” will lead people to the same conclusion, you are underestimating the power of the human mind. Bias is not a flaw to be eliminated. It’s a reality to be managed. Dialogue, trust, and transparent processes don’t make disagreement disappear but they do make it productive.
And in a world where our brains decide what happened before we hit play, that may be the most important skill we can develop.
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Mike Mason and Sam Gladman are the co-founders of On Target, a leadership and team development company that brings elite fighter pilot expertise into the corporate world. With decades of combined experience in high-performance aviation, they specialise in translating critical skills such as communication, decision-making, and teamwork into practical tools for business. Through immersive training and cutting-edge simulation, Mike and Sam help teams build trust, improve performance, and thrive under pressure—just like the best flight crews in the world.
If you'd like to learn more about how On Target can help your team, contact Mike and Sam at info@ontargetteaming.com
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