Ask What, Not Why

In truth, introspection can cloud our self-perceptions and unleash a host of unintended consequences. Sometimes it may surface unproductive and upsetting emotions that can swamp us and impede positive action. Introspection might also lull us into a false sense of certainty that we’ve identified the real issue. Buddhist scholar Tarthang Tulku uses an apt analogy: when we introspect, our response is similar to a hungry cat watching mice. We eagerly pounce on whatever “insights” we find without questioning their validity or value.

The problem with introspection isn’t that it’s categorically ineffective, but that we don’t always do it right. When we examine the causes of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors — which we often do by asking ourselves Why? questions — we tend to search for the easiest and most plausible answers. Generally, once we’ve found one or two, we stop looking. This can be the result of our innate confirmation bias, which prompts us to lean towards reasons that confirm our existing beliefs.

Asking “why?” in one study appeared to cause the participants to fixate on their problems instead of moving forward.

Asking why can sometimes cause our brains to mislead us. Let’s say I ask you to list all the reasons why your relationship is going the way it is. And let’s say that last night, your spouse stayed out at the office happy hour later than planned, leaving you alone to cook dinner for your visiting, rather dull in-laws. Because of something called the “recency effect,” this could be your most salient thought about your relationship, so in reply to my question, your brain may misdirect you to the first available explanation — he doesn’t spend enough time at home and leaves me to deal with his parents — even though that behavior is quite rare. Likewise, let’s say your spouse had gone to happy hour and then came home and surprised you with a weekend getaway, your brain could mislead you to think your relationship is in better shape than it really is.

Another reason that asking why is not always so beneficial is the negative impact it can have on our overall mental health. In one study, after British university students failed what they were told was an intelligence test, they were asked to write about why they felt the way they did. Compared to a control group, they were more depressed immediately afterward, and these negative effects persisted 12 hours later. Asking why appeared to cause the participants to fixate on their problems and place blame instead of moving forward in a healthy and productive way.

So if asking why isn’t so helpful, what should we ask? A study by psychologists J. Gregory Hixon and William Swann arrived at a simple answer. The researchers told a group of undergraduates that two raters would evaluate their personality based on a test of “sociability, likeability and interestingness” they’d taken earlier in the semester, then they asked the students to judge the accuracy of their results. What the students didn’t know was that everyone’s results were the same: one rater gave a positive evaluation, while the other gave a negative one. But before making their accuracy judgments, some of the participants were given time to think about why they were the kind of person they were, and others were asked to think about what kind of person they were. The why students, it turned out, were resistant to the negative evaluation. As the paper’s authors muse: “Presumably, participants who focused on why used their reflection time to rationalize, justify and explain away the negative information.” The what students, on the other hand, were more receptive to the same data and to the notion that it could help them understand themselves. The lesson here: Asking what could keep us open to discovering new information about ourselves, even if that information is negative or in conflict with our existing beliefs. Asking why might have the opposite effect.

In the course of my research on insight, my team and I compiled a group of 50 self-awareness unicorns: people we found who were rated high in self-awareness (both by themselves and by others) but who had started out with only low to moderate self-awareness. When we looked at their speech patterns, our unicorns reported asking what often and why rarely. In fact, when we analyzed the transcripts of our interviews, the word why appeared less than 150 times, but the word what appeared more than 1,000 times. One unicorn, a 42-year-old mother who had walked away from a career as a lawyer when she finally realized that there was no joy for her in that path, explained it this way: “If you ask why, you’re putting yourself into a victim mentality …. When I feel anything other than peace, I say ‘What’s going on?’; ‘What am I feeling?’; ‘What is the dialogue inside my head?’; ‘What’s another way to see this situation?’ or ‘What can I do to respond better?’”

“Why” questions trap us in our past; “what” questions help us create a better future.

So when it comes to developing internal self-awareness, I like to use a simple tool that I call What Not Why. Why questions can draw us to our limitations; what questions help us see our potential. Why questions stir up negative emotions; what questions keep us curious. Why questions trap us in our past; what questions help us create a better future. In addition to helping us gain insight, asking what instead of why can be used to help us better understand and manage our emotions. Let’s say you’re in a terrible mood after work one day. Asking “Why do I feel this way?” might elicit such unhelpful answers as “Because I hate Mondays!” or “Because I’m just a negative person!” Instead, if you ask “What am I feeling right now?” you could realize you’re feeling overwhelmed at work, exhausted and hungry. Armed with that knowledge, you might decide to fix yourself dinner, call a friend or commit to an early bedtime.

At times, asking what instead of why can force us to name our emotions, a process that a strong body of research has shown to be effective. Evidence shows the simple act of translating our emotions into language — versus simply experiencing them — can stop our brains from activating our amygdala, the fight-or-flight command center. This, in turn, seems to help us stay in control.

However, there is one important exception to What Not Why. When you’re navigating business challenges or solving problems in your team or organization, asking why can be critical. For example, if a member of your team drops the ball on an important client project, not exploring why it happened means you risk recurrences of the problem. Or if a new product fails, you need to know the reason to ensure that your products are better in the future. A good rule of thumb, then, is that why questions are generally better to help us understand events in our environment and what questions are generally better to help us understand ourselves.