Mind Archives - Page 24 of 31

Challenging Conventional Wisdom

April 7, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

Remember that we treat ideas like possessions, and it will be hard for us to part with them. —Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan

Many of our ideas are based on what could be called common sense or conventional wisdom. They just seem so obvious we never consider questioning them. Because they make sense to us, we operate as if they are factual. We don’t need to know if there’s any evidence to support them. But those kinds of ideas are actually beliefs: things we accept or trust to be true. And when it comes to beliefs, trust generally trumps the need for evidence.

Here are two recent examples where evidence doesn’t support the conventional wisdom. Both involve children and child-rearing attitudes.

The conventional wisdom is that parents’ involvement with their children’s schooling is advantageous to their children’s education. That just seems like common sense. But this belief had never actually been tested or measured until recently. And it turns out that the conventional wisdom is not all that wise.

Don’t Help Your Kids with their Homework and other insights from a ground-breaking study of how parents impact children’s academic achievement: Parents can impact their kids academic success, but not by helping them with their homework, especially when the kids get to middle school.

Other conventional wisdom in regard to kids is that the world is a more dangerous place than it used to be, and the primary job of adults is to keep kids safe. This also seems obvious. But it’s also a belief that isn’t often examined. It turns out that the world may not be that much more dangerous than it used to be, and the zealous overprotection of kids may be doing them more harm than good.

The Overprotected Kid: A preoccupation with safety has stripped childhood of independence, risk taking, and discovery—without making it safer: Kids need to have time away from the watchful eyes of their parents or other adults, and they need to experience a feeling of being in danger in order to develop into competent adults.

There are many more examples of evidence not supporting the conventional wisdom in other areas, especially aging and behavior. In the two instances cited above, I think it’s interesting to consider how these beliefs may have been formed and how they became so widely accepted. It’s generally harder to find a middle ground when beliefs are involved because beliefs have such a strong emotional component.

And that’s another area in which common sense or conventional wisdom fails us. We think the level of confidence we have in a belief has some positive correlation with the accuracy of the belief. But it doesn’t. In fact, there’s probably little evidence to support many of our beliefs.

Declarations of high confidence mainly tell you that an individual has constructed a coherent story in his mind, not necessarily that the story is true. —Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

The bottom line is that our brain craves certainty, and beliefs provide us with a feeling of certainty. If we want to use our brain, however, we need to challenge some of our own deeply-held beliefs instead of doing everything we can to shore them up. That’s easier said than done, of course.

Thinking Is Difficult

April 5, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

Mindfulness vs. Habits: Game On?

April 3, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 1 Comment

According to the respective press they receive, habits are bad, and mindfulness is good. We ought to be as mindful as we can, as much of the time as we can, and do what we do as thoughtfully and mindfully as possible. This is a nice idea, but it doesn’t actually jibe with the way the brain works—or with the world in which most of us live.

Mindfulness, the conscious direction of attention or awareness, is a generally a positive thing. Certainly, most of us could use more mindfulness in our lives. Mindfulness training helps us pay attention to our own thoughts, feelings, and experience without judgment. It helps us focus on the present moment, on what we are taking in through our senses.

A few of the benefits claimed for mindfulness are:

Decreased stress levels
Decreased ruminative thinking
Decreased cell damage
Bolstering of the immune system
Increased longevity
Improved concentration

This is unquestionably great stuff.

However, when it comes to habits, mindfulness both helps and harms. It is beneficial in terms of helping us focus our attention on our behavior, specifically on those habits we want to start or change. Since habitual behavior, by its nature, is unconscious, in order to change it, we have to become conscious of it.

On the other hand, being too mindful—yes, apparently there are scientific measures for this—can get in the way of forming new habits, both bad and good. The formation of habits involves implicit learning, learning that is not consciously acquired. We have to let the unconscious part of our brain do its thing if we want to create and strengthen good habits. Too much mindfulness can impede that process.

In two studies of adult participants presented at the 2013 meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, people who scored high on a gauge of mindfulness (and were less distracted) performed poorly on sequenced learning tasks, which involve implicit learning—in this case, pattern detection. People who scored low on the gauge of mindfulness (and were more distracted) had quicker reaction times and performed much better on the same tests.

The very fact of paying too much attention or being too aware of stimuli coming up in these tests might actually inhibit implicit learning. That suggests that mindfulness may help prevent formation of automatic habits—which is done through implicit learning—because a mindful person is aware of what they are doing. –Chelsea Stillman

This sounds like good news for dealing with bad habits. The problem is that when we think of habits, those are the only ones we tend to think of: the ones we wish we didn’t have. But habits are a device the brain uses to conserve precious energy. In general, habits are not only useful, they’re essential. In fact, the more good habits we create, the more conscious attention we have available for other mental activity, such as mindfulness.

So, no, habits are not always bad. And yes, you can have too much of a good thing, in this case mindfulness.

The Forward “Why?”

March 31, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 4 Comments

why-is-the-new-because — (Photo credit: screenpunk)

After years, probably decades, of dismissing why? questions as irrelevant and pointless—especially in regard to human behavior—I’ve finally found a use for them!

The problem with why? questions is that we almost always ask them in the wrong direction. We ask them backward instead of forward.

We ask why something that happened happened the way it did. We ask why people are the way they are or behave the way they behave. We ask why we are the way we are. We’re looking for explanations, rationales, reasons, or maybe even excuses. But those questions can’t really be answered, at least not with any degree of certainty. We simply don’t have, and never will have, all the information. We don’t even have all the information about what’s going on right this second, let alone anything that happened in the past.

The other problem with asking why? about what already happened is that it involves spending a lot of time looking backward. Our heads get stuck in the past searching back there for answers to questions about our present or even our future. All we can expect to come up with is a facsimile of an answer and not even a reasonable one.

Asking “Why?” forward instead of backward, however, is actually useful. More than that, it can be revelatory.

Is there something you want to do or someplace you want to go? Why?
Is there a decision you’re trying to make? Why are you considering it?
Is there a goal you’re working toward? Why?
Is there a habit you’re trying to start? Why?
Is there a change you’re thinking about making? Why?
Is there something you want to get or have? Why?

The list goes on.

Don’t stop with asking why? just once. If you keep asking why? repeatedly, you’ll eventually get to the last answer. Then you’ll know something you may not have known before. You’ll get closer to the heart of what’s at stake. You’ll be in a better position to decide what to do.

The backward why? is just a habit of thought. It can’t take us anywhere new. It has no surprises. The forward why? is where all the action is. It can dissolve limits and barriers. It can open up our world.

The State of a Mind

March 27, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 1 Comment

Mind Games no.171 — (Photo credit: dek dav)

State of mind—the state of our cognitive processes—is a kind of framework within which we operate any time we’re awake. Some basic states of mind are:

Distracted
Mindful
Focused
Autopilot
Flow
Wandering/Daydreaming
Meditative
Ruminative
Reflective
Anxious

There are more states that could be added to this list, but these 10 cover a pretty wide swath of the territory. Obviously our minds are important to us. Where would we be without them? They are running at one speed or another, in one direction or another, all day long. And yet I doubt we pay much attention to the state our mind is in from one moment to the next.

When I started writing this post, I was somewhat distracted, but now I’m more focused. Focused seems like a more appropriate state of mind for composing a post on states of mind—or on anything, really. Anxious or meditative wouldn’t help get the post written, nor would daydreaming or being on autopilot. Some reflection would be helpful; in fact, I’m going to slip into a reflective state of mind in a minute. Rumination, on the other hand, would just slow the whole process down.

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During my reflection, I realized that I engage in a lot of activities that require my mind to be focused. I find many of these activities enjoyable, but whether or not I enjoy being focused, focus and concentration use more energy than some other states of mind do. Being on autopilot is much easier, as is daydreaming and being in flow. It’s no accident that autopilot is the default state of mind; it consumes a pretty insignificant amount of energy.

Mindful and meditative states of mind, while unarguably and demonstrably beneficial, can’t be maintained indefinitely, which means they fall toward the high energy-using end of the spectrum.

Our states of mind come and go, ebb and flow, throughout any given day. Occasionally they do so by our bidding, but more often they shift on their own. We are not in charge of our brain, says Michael Gazzaniga, and this is simply more evidence of that.

If we were to pay attention to our state of mind to try to identify what it is, we might discover whether or not it’s a good match for what we’re trying to do in the moment. If it isn’t, maybe we could do that thing later, when our state of mind is a better match. Or maybe we could take a few minutes and change not our mind, but our state of mind. Simply recognizing that we are always operating within one state of mind or another—as is everyone else—might help to eliminate some of our inner and interpersonal conflict.

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