Why We Stop Seeing Difference: The Psychology of Market Myopia

1. The Brain’s Shortcut System

Our brains are constantly overwhelmed with information. Every new environment — especially one in a different country — bombards us with unfamiliar sights, rules, and signals.

To cope, the brain takes shortcuts. It looks for patterns it already understands, comparing new situations to past experiences.
Psychologists call these heuristics — mental rules of thumb that help us make quick decisions without being paralysed by complexity.

In familiar settings, heuristics are useful. They allow us to navigate daily life efficiently. But when we move into unfamiliar cultural or market environments, they can backfire — badly.

We see what we expect to see.
We fit new information into old categories.
We assume that what worked before will work again.

In short, we stop noticing differences.

2. Experience: The Double-Edged Sword

Ironically, the more experienced a leader is, the more vulnerable they may be to this kind of blindness.
Years of success at home build strong internal models — beliefs about how markets, customers, and systems work. Those models give confidence, but they also create cognitive entrenchment — the tendency to rely on familiar ways of thinking, even when the context has changed.

Executives who have been right many times before can become too confident in their intuition.
They see similarity where none exists, and when locals tell them “it’s different here,” they quietly assume the locals just don’t understand.

This is not arrogance so much as habit — the mind’s natural effort to simplify the unknown.

3. The Illusion of Understanding

Many global missteps start with what could be called the “two-week visit illusion.”
A senior executive spends a short time in a new region — perhaps attending meetings, touring factories, and visiting a few customers. Everything looks modern and familiar: the same brands, the same smartphones, the same coffee chains.
It’s easy to conclude that the market operates like home.

But beneath the surface, things often work very differently — purchasing habits, trust networks, payment systems, even the emotional meanings attached to brands.

As cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand puts it, “Surface similarity hides deep difference.”

Short visits create illusory familiarity — the feeling that we understand a place because we’ve seen fragments that look like what we already know.

It’s comforting. But comfort isn’t knowledge.

4. The False Consensus Trap

Another powerful mental bias that fuels assumption blindness is the false consensus effect — our tendency to believe that other people think, feel, and act the same way we do.

In business, this might look like:

• “Of course customers will pay extra for quality — they do at home.”

• “Everyone prefers convenience to authenticity.”

• “If we offer good value, they’ll switch to us.”

These statements are projections of our own cultural norms — not universal truths.

In one INSEAD study, executives who visited emerging markets for short periods consistently overestimated the similarity between local consumers and Western middle-class buyers. They didn’t intend to be dismissive; their brains simply filled in the gaps with what felt logical to them.

5. Why We Prefer Sameness

Difference is hard work.

It demands we slow down, observe, ask questions, and — most importantly — admit that we don’t know.
That humility is uncomfortable for successful professionals who are used to being experts.

So the mind protects us from discomfort by reframing difference as sameness.

We tell ourselves:

• “They’re just a few years behind.”

• “The market isn’t ready yet.”

• “Once they experience our product, they’ll see the value.”

These statements are soothing — they allow us to continue using the frameworks that worked before.
But they also stop us from learning.

The moment we assume a market is “just like home,” we stop seeing it as it really is.

6. When Organizations Reinforce Blindness

Even when individuals sense that a market is different, organizations can unintentionally reinforce the perception of sameness.

Headquarters expects updates in familiar formats.
Reports must fit the template.

KPIs are imported directly from the home market, even when local conditions make them irrelevant.

Local managers who highlight misalignment risk being seen as “negative” or “not on board.”
Consultants may repeat what executives want to hear.

Gradually, the company builds its own echo chamber of confirmation, where home assumptions are validated and inconvenient local truths are filtered out.

This explains why many multinationals only realize their strategy doesn’t fit after several years of underperformance — by which time they’ve lost money, credibility, and staff morale.

Seeing with New Eyes

French novelist Marcel Proust once wrote, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

That’s exactly what successful international entrepreneurs learn to do.

They develop the discipline to notice what others overlook — the nuances, contradictions, and subtle cultural logics that shape local demand.

Global expansion isn’t just about entering new markets; it’s about expanding your perception of what a market can be.

When you learn to see difference clearly, you also start seeing opportunity more clearly

Key Takeaway

The greatest threat in international business isn’t what we don’t know — it’s what we think we know but don’t question.
Curiosity, humility, and observation are the entrepreneur’s best defences against market myopia.