Mind Archives - Page 13 of 30

Is What You See All There Is?

December 11, 2015 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

rainbow eye

As you move through the world, you probably have the sense that you’re aware of whatever there is to be aware of as it is. This applies not only to the sensory world, but also to events, situations, interpersonal interactions—actually to everything that exists or occurs within your world. But the capacity of conscious attention is much too limited for this to even be possible. The 11,000,000 bits of information being processed by the unconscious part of the brain at any given moment need to be considerably (and swiftly) condensed and summarized into the 40 bits you can process consciously.

Consciousness is a way of projecting all the activity in your nervous system into a simpler form. [It] gives you a summary that is useful for the larger picture, useful at the scale of apples and rivers and humans with whom you might be able to mate. —David Eagleman, Incognito

What You See Is All There Is (WYSIATI)*

Your brain maintains a model of the world that represents what’s normal in it for you. The result is that you experience a stripped-down, customized version of the actual world. To a great extent, each of us really does inhabit our own world. But it would be incorrect to say that we create our reality; rather, our brain creates our reality for us.

Much, if not most, of what you do, think, and feel consists of automatically generated responses to internal or external stimuli. And it isn’t possible to consciously mediate all of your responses. It wouldn’t even be a good idea to try.

In addition to helping you navigate the world, your mental model gives rise to your sense of the way things should be. It generates expectations (that are either confirmed or denied), assumptions, biases, etc. that determine what you pay attention to, what you perceive (even what you are able to perceive), how you interpret and respond to what you perceive, and the meaning you make of it all. Your mental model is the result of your genes and your experiences, of both intention and accident. Your brain has been constructing your particular model of the world since your birth, and it is continually updating and modifying it—most of the time entirely outside your awareness.

But while the contents of your particular mental model determine what you think, feel, do, and say, you can’t search them—or follow a bread-crumb trail backward through them—to find out precisely which aspects (and when and how they came to be) give rise to any specific facet of who you are and how you react now.

The significance of your mental model in your life can’t be overstated. Although you aren’t consciously aware of it, your mental model circumscribes not only every aspect of your present experience but also what is possible for you to do and be. It determines what you see and how you see the world, both literally and figuratively, as well as how you see yourself.

But…Your Brain Can Get It Wrong

System 1, the unconscious part of your brain, uses associative thinking to develop and maintain your model of the world. However, there are some problems with associative thinking. For example:

It sacrifices accuracy for speed.
It doesn’t discriminate very well.
It takes cognitive shortcuts (aka cognitive biases).

Your mental model can—and sometimes does—lead to erroneous conclusions and inappropriate responses. It’s the job of consciousness (System 2) to check the impulses and suggestions it receives from System 1, but consciousness is slow, lazy, and easily depleted. Most of the time, it’s content to go along with System 1, which means it’s susceptible to cognitive biases. By definition, cognitive biases are distortions or errors in thinking. They actually decrease your understanding while giving you a feel-good sense of cognitive ease.

Confirmation bias is the easy acceptance of information that validates what you already believe. It causes you to selectively notice and pay attention to what confirms your beliefs and to ignore what doesn’t. It underlies the discomfort you feel around people who disagree with you and the ease you feel around people who share your beliefs.

Information that confirms what you already believe to be true makes you feel right and certain, so you’re likely to accept it uncritically. On the other hand, you’re more likely to reject information that is inconsistent with what you already believe or at least you hold inconsistent information up to greater scrutiny. You have different standards for evaluating information depending on the level of cognitive ease it generates.

Evidence has precious little impact on any of us if it conflicts with what we believe simply because the cognitive strain of processing it is too great. To a very real extent, we don’t even “see” conflicting evidence. While total commitment to our particular worldview (mental model) makes us feel more confident, it narrows—rather than expands—our possibilities. That means it limits our powers of discernment, our ability to increase our understanding of the world around us, and our creative potential. It closes the world off for us instead of opening it up.

The often-quoted statement is true: we don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are. If we want to live fuller lives, if we want to be more effective or useful or loving in the world, we first need to recognize that our greatest constraints are imposed by our own mental models.

It’s important to remember that what you see is not all there is.

*Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

Distractibility, Procrastination, and Focus: Look, a Bird!

December 4, 2015 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Everyone procrastinates at one time or another. Two big contributing factors to procrastination are straightforward: low self-confidence and the aversiveness of tasks. If we doubt our ability to complete a chore and find it as exciting as watching concrete set, we are more likely to put it off. It is no wonder that calculating our taxes, which is both difficult and boring, is famous for making procrastinators out of almost all of us. However, not everyone is a habitual procrastinator.

Procrastination is a characteristic often associated with perfectionism, as if perfectionism is a direct and quantifiable cause of procrastination. But it turns out that perfectionists actually tend to procrastinate less than other people do, which makes sense when you think about it.

Anxiety is another tendency that is frequently associated with procrastination. However:

According to analysis of about a hundred studies involving tens of thousands of participants, anxiety produces a negligible amount of procrastination at best—and even that tiny amount disappears completely after you take into account other personality characteristics, especially impulsiveness. –Piers Steel, Ph.D., author of The Procrastination Equation

This research suggests that the anxiety people feel when a deadline is staring them in the face and they aren’t sure they can meet it is the result of having procrastinated.

According to Piers Steel, it’s impulsiveness that is “the nickel-iron core” of procrastination:

[I]mpulsiveness creates procrastination because it makes small but immediate temptations, like playing Minesweeper or updating your social network status, especially attractive. The reward might be small but the delay is virtually nonexistent. On the flip side, large but distant rewards, like graduating or saving for retirement, aren’t valued much at all. Despite their importance, these long-term goals don’t motivate us until the march of time itself eventually transforms them into short-term consequences. Only in those final hours do we frantically try to catch up on what we really should have addressed long before. The more impulsive you are, the closer to deadlines you need to be before you’ll feel fully motivated.

I understand what he’s saying about impulsiveness, but I wonder if distractibility—which means to turn away from the original focus of attention or interest—might not be a more apt term for this than impulsiveness—which means to act suddenly on impulse without reflection.

Focus

A distraction is something that keeps us from giving 100% of our attention to what we’re doing or attempting to do right now. By diverting our attention, it dims our focus. Being distracted isn’t the same as choosing to take a break. Allowing ourselves to be distracted is rarely a conscious choice.

The path to anywhere is booby-trapped with an unrelenting blitzkrieg of tempting distractions so magnificent and horrible—and insistent—they may even invade our dreams.

These distractions tempt us because they include:

things we’re naturally interested in
things we’re convinced we need to know (every single thing there is to know) about
things we have to be on top of or take care of
things we suddenly remember we forgot to do
things that are simply so compelling we can’t not be distracted by them
things that take our minds off whatever we’re doing that we don’t want to be doing
things that seem better (more interesting, easier, or maybe just newer) than whatever we’re doing now

The internet is a major—and obvious—source of distraction, but it is an amateur compared to the source of distraction inside our own heads.

Attention is notoriously difficult to keep focused. One reason is that conscious attention requires, well, consciousness, and conscious (System 2) attention is a limited resource that can’t be easily or quickly renewed. It definitely can’t be renewed on command. If we squander it early in the day, we may not have enough left for another task that requires it later on. And squander it we do, on all kinds of things that are not worth actually thinking about.

When it comes to maintaining focus on a long-term goal—keeping our eyes on a distant prize—we often trip ourselves up at the outset by not accounting for the inevitable flagging of conscious attention. All evidence to the contrary, we’re convinced we will maintain the same level of enthusiasm and focus through the entire extent of a project that we had at the beginning of it. We count on our interest and enthusiasm to carry us through. It can’t and it won’t.

The sane thing to do, then, would be to assume that our interest, enthusiasm, and attention are going to flag and to create a plan that doesn’t rely solely on will power, self-discipline, enthusiasm, interest, or anything else that comes and goes.

Use Your Brain

If you want to use your brain to help maintain your focus, one thing you can do is set up checkpoints along the path to monitor your progress and to reward yourself for your achievements. The hits of dopamine your brain releases when you reward yourself will not only make you feel good, they will also activate emotional and learning circuits to increase the likelihood you will remember what you did and will want to do it again. As you get closer to reaching your goal, your brain will actually increase the amount of dopamine it releases each time you pass another checkpoint.

Achieving a distant goal—which could mean two months, two years, or two decades from now—requires detailed planning in order to get your brain to get with the program. Imagining the outcome—so you know what you’re aiming for—is important. But if you don’t identify all the steps it will take to get to the finish line and claim the prize, your brain will not be on board. Your brain, in fact, will be looking to board any passing train it catches sight of, and it will be taking you right along with it.

Just as everyone procrastinates from time to time, anyone can become distracted. The trick is to not allow chasing squirrels to become a habit.

How much do you procrastinate? Here’s a link to a procrastination survey you can complete. It might be an interesting distraction.

You’re Not Sabotaging Yourself

November 13, 2015 by Joycelyn Campbell 1 Comment

Following right on the heels of a lack of will power, the number two reason people come up with for not following through on what they set out to do is self-sabotage. This is a catchall phrase that seems to refer to any behavior that is inconsistent with one’s conscious intentions or goals. As such, it’s completely meaningless.

You may routinely do things that you regret doing:

Overeat when you’re trying to lose weight
Sleep in when you want to go to the gym
Fail to study for an exam you want to pass
Put less than your best effort into a project that matters

But that doesn’t mean you’re sabotaging yourself.

Here’s the Merriam-Webster definition of sabotage: “the act of destroying or damaging something deliberately so that it does not work correctly.” Dictionary.com defines it as “any underhand interference with production, work, etc….as by enemy agents during wartime or by employees during a trade dispute.” Vocabulary.com says sabotage occurs “when you ruin or disrupt something by messing up a part of it on purpose.”

What these and all other definitions of the word sabotage have in common is the element of deliberateness. Sabotage, by definition, isn’t accidental or an unfortunate side-effect. It is intentional. So in order for us to be sabotaging ourselves, we would have to be engaging in counterproductive behavior on purpose.

This gets dicey right off the bat because we’re told our counterproductive (self-sabotaging) behavior originates in the unconscious. It is “hidden from our everyday thoughts,” according to one self-help author. But if we do something because we’re “unconsciously compelled” to do it, as a psychologist wrote, then it can’t possibly be intentional or deliberate.

Yes, it’s true—and inevitable—that we have competing or conflicting beliefs, goals, and intentions. In Incognito, David Eagleman says:

Brains…are built of multiple, overlapping experts who weigh in and compete over different choices. As Walt Whiteman correctly surmised, we are large and we harbor multitudes within us. And those multitudes are locked in chronic battle.

When the hostess at a party offers chocolate cake, you find yourself on the horns of a dilemma: some parts of your brain have evolved to crave the rich energy source of sugar [System 1], and other parts care about the negative consequences, such as the health of your heart or the bulge of your love handles [System 2]. Part of you wants the cake and part of you tries to muster the fortitude to forgo it.

Brains can be of two minds, and often many more. We don’t know whether to turn toward the cake or away from it, because there are several little sets of hands on the steering wheel of our behavior.

This is relatively straightforward and in no way implies that the part of our brain that craves sugar, System 1, has an intention to undermine System 2’s attempts to manage our health. The brain just doesn’t work that way.

Eagleman proposes that the brain is best understood as a team of rivals and adds:

Remember that competing factions typically have the same goal—success for the country—but they often have different ways of going about it.

How we frame a problem determines where and how we go about looking for its solution. If we view our counterproductive behavior as resulting from self-sabotage, we’re likely to divert our attention to trying to figure out why we’re sabotaging ourselves. But we don’t have direct access to the unconscious, which is where our so-called sabotage originates, so even if we were sabotaging ourselves we could never actually get to the bottom of things.

We harbor mechanical, “alien” subroutines to which we have no access and of which we have no acquaintance. Almost all of our actions—from producing speech to picking up a mug of coffee—are run by alien subroutines, also known as zombie systems.

Looking back into the past to find the trail of breadcrumbs that leads to the behavior of today amounts to a whole lot of wheel-spinning. It can’t succeed, and even if it could, it wouldn’t make any difference in regard to solving the problem at hand: getting our behavior to line up with our conscious intentions.

That’s because it isn’t the unconscious part of the brain that’s the problem; it’s the conscious part. If we don’t know what we want, we don’t have a clear direction. If we aren’t fully committed to what we set out to do (or claim to be setting out to do), we have no urgency. Without both direction and urgency, our best laid plans are dead in the water.

We can retrain System 1 to do more of what we want it to do and less of what we don’t want it to do. But that requires repetition and persistence. Lots of repetition. And lots of persistence. It isn’t easy—and it isn’t as sexy as searching for our inner saboteur—but it’s both straightforward and effective.

Self-sabotage is nothing more than a good cover story.

Hooked on The Brain with David Eagleman

October 30, 2015 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

I’ve just finished watching the third episode of this PBS series and I think I’m more hooked on David Eagleman and the brain than I was on J.R. Ewing and Dallas back in the 1980s. I’ve spent the past three and a half years intensely focused on learning as much as I can about brain, mind, and behavior, so I’m not really surprised that so far I’m familiar with everything that’s been presented in the first three episodes of The Brain. However, that hasn’t dampened my enthusiasm for the series. Quite the opposite. I’ve pre-ordered the DVD and look forward to many future viewings and to sharing the episodes in my classes. I’m thrilled to see this information put together so beautifully and made so widely available. Not everyone is hooked on the brain—at least not yet, anyway. Maybe more people will be after watching.

When I look back on the path to creating Farther to Go! a number of moments stand out. Of course, memory is a bit of a crapshoot when it comes to accuracy, but I do have physical evidence that these things actually happened when I recall them happening.

More than 20 years ago, when I was working as a substance abuse counselor, I came across a book by Richard Restak, The Brain Has a Mind of Its Own. The chapter of the same name described experiments in the 1980s by Benjamin Libet that identified a readiness potential that was observed in the brain prior to the subjects’ awareness of their desire to take a specific action. Quite a few people in a number of different disciplines seemed disconcerted by these findings, concerned about the fate of our so-called free will. I was fascinated. The implication was that things are not as they seem—or as we feel them to be. Restak’s a good writer and the rest of the chapters in his book were no doubt interesting, but all I recall is the information on Libet’s experiments. If you watched Episode #3 of The Brain, you saw some of the current research in this area.

A few years later, I took a biological psychology class that further whetted my interest in how the brain and mind (if they are indeed separate from each other) actually work. That’s where I first encountered the split-brain research of Michael Gazzaniga and Roger Sperry. I don’t know whether the instructor made a point of this particular research or whether I was particularly fascinated by it. But Gazzaniga’s name and research clicked into place for me when I came across them again several years ago. He’s the person who came up with the concept of the Inner Interpreter, which Eagleman alluded to when he mentioned how the conscious part of the brain comes up with a good story about why we’ve just done something.

In 2011, The New Yorker ran an article, titled The Possibillian, about a neuroscientist named David Eagleman, who had spent time living in Albuquerque, which is where I live. He had attended Albuquerque Academy, which is practically within walking distance, and lived in roughly the same part of town. At the time, he was studying “brain time”—essentially how and why our experience of time differs from the actual passage of time. I found the article interesting enough to have torn it out of the magazine and saved it, which isn’t something I do very often. A year or so later, I was browsing the shelves of a local bookstore and saw Eagleman’s name on the spine of a book titled Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain. Had I not known who he was, I might not have pulled the book off the shelf. And had the book I was actually looking for been available, I doubt I would have purchased Incognito.

The first chapter in Eagleman’s book, titled “There’s Someone In My Head, But It’s Not Me” (a tip of the hat to Pink Floyd), had enough references to things I already knew about, but expanded beyond anything I had previously been aware of, that I read all 19 pages standing next to my dining table without even taking my jacket off. I’ve since learned he studied literature before turning his full attention to neuroscience, which may explain his talent as a writer.

Just glancing through the pages of the book now and noting what I highlighted or earmarked reminds me of how excited I was to read and think about some of these things for the very first time. Concepts that seemed new or difficult to comprehend or somewhat improbable have become part of my mental model of the way the world—and my brain—work.

He closes the book with these words:

What a perplexing masterpiece the brain is, and how lucky we are to be in a generation that has the technology and the will to turn our attention to it. It is the most wondrous thing we have discovered in the universe, and it is us.

That’s exactly how I feel. I’m definitely hooked on the brain, with or without David Eagleman, but he’s a most excellent tour guide. Everyone should be watching this series!

Brain Dead: Is Your Mind Temporarily Offline?

September 4, 2015 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Your brain has two systems for processing the stimuli and experiences of your life and determining how you act upon them.

Conscious: The processing system you’re aware of is called System 2. It is logical and intentional and sometimes referred to as “true reasoning.” (A formal outline is a good example.) It is also slow, limited, and easily depleted. It processes about 40 bits of information at a time.

Unconscious: The processing system you’re not aware of is called System 1. It is associative, which means it sees patterns and connects dots. (A mindmap is a good example.) It is fast, vast, and always on. It processes about 11,000,000 bits of information at a time.

If System 1 were to go offline, you would, too. Game over! But you can still function when System 2 is temporarily offline, even for long periods of time, such as when you’re asleep. So when you think or talk about being temporarily brain dead, you’re talking about exhausting System 2 attention.

If you’re in good health, there’s not much you can do to tax or exhaust the capacity of System 1—and there are things you can do to enhance its functioning. However, your supply of System 2 attention is always limited, and anything that occupies your working memory reduces it. Some examples of things that tax System 2 attention are:

Physical illness (even minor), injury, or lack of sleep
Making numerous trivial decisions throughout the day
Stress, anxiety, and worry
Exercising will power (forcing yourself to do something you don’t want to do or to not do something you do want to do)
Monitoring your behavior
Monitoring your environment if it is new or you consider it unsafe
Learning something new, traveling an unfamiliar route, etc.
Completing a complex computation
Trying to tune out distractions
A long period of concentrated or focused attention
Trying to remember dates, numbers, or unrelated facts
Listening to me talk

Since System 1 is fast, vast, always on, and has an answer for almost everything—and since you don’t need System 2 attention for most of what you do when you’re awake—what’s the big deal if you run out of System 2 attention from time to time?

Three Categories of Errors

Optimally, the two systems work together, and neither type of processing is superior. However, System 1 is more useful in some situations, while System 2 is not only more useful but also required in other situations.

System 1 is pretty good at what it does because its models of familiar situations are accurate so its short-term predictions tend to be accurate. But that’s not always the case. System 1 sacrifices accuracy for speed, meaning it jumps to conclusions. It also has biases and is prone to making logical errors.

One of System 2’s jobs is to detect System 1’s errors and adjust course by overriding System 1’s impulses. As Daniel Kahneman says in Thinking, Fast and Slow:

There are vital tasks that only System 2 can perform because they require effort and acts of self-control in which the intuitions and impulses of System 1 are overcome.

Bear in mind that System 1 is not rational. If System 2 is depleted and can’t veto or modify the non-rational impulses of System 1, those impulses then turn into actions (or speech).

There are three categories of errors you tend to make when System 2 is depleted.

Logical Errors

System 1 thinking uses shortcuts. System 2 thinking takes the long (logical/linear) way home. So when you’re out of System 2 attention, you’re more prone to making mistakes in anything that requires logical, linear thinking. Errors of intuitive thought can be difficult for System 2 to catch on a good day. When System 2 is offline, you automatically assume them to be correct. As a result:

You will have trouble making, following, or checking the validity of a complex logical argument. You’ll be more likely to be led by the cognitive biases and distortions System 1 uses because they don’t require any effort and give you a comforting sense of cognitive ease.

You will have difficulty comparing the features of two items for overall value. If you have to make a choice, you’ll be more likely to go with what intuitively feels right or the item that has some emotionally compelling attribute (it reminds you of the one your mother had, for example, or reminds you of your mother).

You will be more gullible. You’ll be more likely to believe things you wouldn’t otherwise believe or be persuaded by empty messages, such as in commercials. System 2 is the skeptic, so the best time for someone to take advantage of you is when it is offline.

Intention or Response Errors

System 1 continuously picks up on cues and triggers in your environment to determine what situation you’re in and to predict what’s next. Any deviation from the norm requires System 2 attention. If it isn’t available, you’re likely to do not what you intended to do but whatever is normal for you in that situation. And without System 2 attention, you’re much more likely to respond automatically (habitually) to the stimulus (cue or trigger).

System 2 is in charge of self-control, continuously monitoring your behavior, keeping you polite, for example, when you’re angry. In the heat of the moment, when you’re out of System 2 attention, you’re much less likely to be able to suppress your immediate emotional reactions to people and situations.

System 1 has an answer for almost everything. But when it encounters a surprising situation (something it hasn’t previously encountered or that is unusual in that situation), it notifies System 2. You don’t need System 2 attention to drive a familiar route, but if you encounter an obstacle along that route, you need System 2 to figure out what it is and to respond appropriately to it.

System 2 is also in charge of will power. If you are in the process of trying to stop doing something you habitually do (such as raiding the refrigerator in the evening), you need System 2 to belay the impulse from System 1 to see if there’s more pie. Without System 2, you’re more likely to give in, look for the pie…and eat it.

You need System 2 if you want to take a different route from your usual one or make an extra stop you don’t normally make. Without adequate System 2 attention, you’re likely to find yourself taking the usual route and forgetting to make that stop.

Gatekeeping Errors

We all have biases, whether or not we’re aware of them and whether or not we want to admit it. While it’s easy to spot overt biases and prejudices in other people, most of your own biases are hidden even from you. In the case of biases toward specific groups of people, you’ve likely come to a reasoned conclusion they’re wrong and have chosen not to think about and treat other people based on stereotypes. But that doesn’t mean the biases have disappeared. They’re still part of System 1’s associative processing operations. It’s just that when System 1 suggests a biased response to System 2, System 2 normally overrides it. Per Daniel Kahneman:

Conflict between an automatic reaction (System 1) and an intention to control it (System 2) is common in our lives.

When System 2 is depleted, there is no one at the gate to keep the biased or prejudiced responses from getting through. You may simply have a biased thought. You may say something in the presence of others that you wouldn’t normally say. Or you may respond to another person based on a group stereotype. The thought, comment, or behavior may be something you later regret. If you were to claim it doesn’t represent what you believe or the way you really feel or think, you’d most likely be right.

But when you see a blatant expression of bias or prejudice in someone else—especially a celebrity—you might have a different reaction. You might assume their true colors are showing. We think that what we see in other people when their guard is down and they’re pushed or stressed reveals the truth about them. But the actual truth is that to the extent we have any civility at all, it’s because System 2 maintains it. Without System 2 you and I would have no ability to question our biases or prejudices, no ability to come to reasoned conclusions about them, and no ability to monitor and veto System 1’s automatic reactions.

Conclusion

It isn’t always necessary, advisable, or even possible to override System 1. But when you deplete System 2, you can’t override it even when you want or need to. Without System 2, you can’t think straight (logically and linearly). So:

Don’t try to make important decisions of any kind when you feel brain dead.
Don’t assume you’ll feel or think the same way about something the next day as you do when you’re stressed, sick, just completed your annual tax return, or have recently fallen in love.
Don’t stay up late to watch the QVC channel unless you have a lot of money you’re trying to unload.
Don’t keep pie around if you’re trying not to eat it.
Don’t get into debates about complex issues after you’ve had a few beers.
Don’t tax your working memory with details you can keep track of some other way.
Don’t take System 2’s censoring of your biases and prejudices for granted. And don’t assume other people’s mental lapses reveal deep-seated truths about them.