Unconscious Archives - Page 15 of 19

Anger, Adrenaline, and Arrogance: Addiction to Certainty

September 21, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 8 Comments

Strong emotions—the ones that amp up adrenaline and cortisol levels—increase our confidence. When we’re angry, for example, we’re more likely to feel certain about whatever position we’ve taken. We’re sure we not only know what we’re talking about, but also that we’re right and any other parties involved are wrong.

This feeling of certainty is an illusion, generated by the amphetamine-like effects of anger, which include kicking our metabolism into a higher gear while narrowing our mental focus. The unconscious part of our brain has a natural tendency to discount anything that doesn’t jibe with what we believe. It already automatically narrows our focus. Adding anger (or actual amphetamines, for that matter) to the mix further constricts our focus, sometimes closing our mind altogether.

When we’re angry, we filter out anything that doesn’t support our position. We focus on one or two aspects of a situation, sometimes taking them entirely out of context, and ignore the rest. Our confidence swells, bolstered by the boost of adrenaline, into over-confidence, even arrogance.

Our brain craves certainty and being right. This can be difficult to compensate for under the best of circumstances. When we’re emotionally aroused, it can be impossible—especially when we don’t recognize what’s going on. We’re used to thinking that the level of confidence we have about something is an accurate indicator of whether or not we’re right about it. Sometimes we are right. But the unconscious part of our brain isn’t concerned with such petty details. It’s less interested in whether we’re actually right and more interested in whether we feel right.

The illusion of certainty can be hard to let go of. Who wants to feel uncertain? Who wants to admit they’re wrong? Who wants to think the powerful sense of confidence they feel isn’t altogether reliable? Too often, we do whatever we can, whatever we have to do, to maintain the illusion of certainty. We refuse to give up the fight, no matter what damage it causes to us or to other people. We’d rather be right than happy. We’d rather be right than free. We’re so addicted to certainty that instead of using our brain, we’re willing to let our brain use us.

Why All the News Is Bad: Our Negativity Bias

September 16, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

negativity-bias

Our brain’s own hardwiring for survival makes us vulnerable to stress and anxiety. It evolved to quickly detect threats in the environment and sound the alarm: time to fight or flee now! When we were facing multiple life-or-death threats a million years ago, it was definitely better to err on the safe side. If we reacted to something that didn’t turn out to be a real threat, no significant harm was done. But if we failed to react to something that did turn out to be a serious threat, it could mean the end of us.

The unconscious part of our brain was all about survival a million years ago, and it’s still all about survival today. Although the world we live in has changed radically, our brain has a ways to go to catch up. Operating at a much faster speed that we can consciously keep up with, making connections and seeing patterns that might or might not be there, the unconscious brain signals red alert at the slightest indication of trouble, setting into motion a cascade of physiological effects.

Sometimes this works for us, keeping us safe from actual harm; however, there are far more false alarms than real ones. And we pay a heavy price when this threat-detection system runs unchecked. It’s at the root of what is called the negativity bias. It’s why we notice, react to, and remember negative events to a much greater degree than we do positive ones.

The brain is like Velcro for negative experiences but Teflon for positive ones. –Rick Hanson, Ph.D.

System 1: Danger, Danger, Will Robinson

Our unconscious shrugs off neutral or positive news or experiences, sometimes barely registering them, and hones in on the negative stuff. We have a stronger emotional reaction to negative stimuli, which increases the likelihood we’ll remember it. It takes less time for negative experiences to get stored in memory than for the positive experiences, which means our unconscious has more negative memories to draw on than positive ones when it’s evaluating information. And negative experiences affect us longer.

As a result, we are extremely sensitive to perceived or apparent threats. These days, those threats are less likely to be to our immediate survival. But that doesn’t make any difference to our brain. We react just the same whether the threat is to our ideas and beliefs, to our physical or emotional well-being, to our self-esteem, or to a freedom we hold dear.

We all have the same hardwiring. We are all primed to pay attention to the negative. At this point in time, the danger we’re facing is less a result of threats from the environment and more directly a result of our negativity bias. Whether in our intimate relationships, our international relations, or our personal health and well-being, the actual and potential costs of operating from the negativity bias are enormous.

So what can we do?

System 2: Belay that Order

One thing we can’t do is eliminate the negativity bias. It’s up to evolution to modify our perception of and reaction to threats. Hopefully that will happen before it becomes a moot point.

What we can do is develop an awareness of our predisposition to pay attention to and accentuate the negative. We can use System 2—our conscious attention—to:

Notice the negativity bias in ourselves. It’s not easy to be aware of a cognitive bias in the moment, so often the noticing occurs after the fact. But that’s OK. If we continue paying attention, we’ll get faster at spotting the negativity bias in action. We’ll be less at the effect of it.
Notice the negativity bias in others. The point isn’t to call other people out on it. We’re all operating on autopilot most of the time, and when we’re on autopilot we don’t think things through. If we’re aware that someone else is operating from the negativity bias, we don’t have to get caught up in the fear. We don’t have to react.
Ask: Is there a real threat here or only a perceived threat? Once we become familiar with how the negativity bias works, we can develop the habit of evaluating our reactions and calming ourselves.
Intend to pay attention to positive events and experiences. Yes, our attention naturally goes to the negative, but we can train ourselves to focus on positive things. We can intentionally include more pleasure, joy, and laughter in our lives.

Just because we have a negativity bias doesn’t mean we have to give into and continue feeding it. Let’s keep reminding ourselves that more often than not the threat really is all in our head.

How Can You Live Passionately?

September 11, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

passion

We don’t go looking for a solution until we have a problem to solve.

This is one of those things in life that seems pretty straightforward—and sometimes it is. But surprisingly often it isn’t. It’s more likely to be straightforward when the problem or issue at hand is small or simple and less likely to be straightforward when the problem is big or complex.

Complex problems can be difficult to see clearly. The unconscious part of our brain has a couple of habits that prevent us from seeing and defining complex issues of any kind. For one thing, it’s quick to jump to conclusions and to treat those conclusions as facts. For another, it craves certainty and being right, so it’s more comfortable with things that are easy to understand and that it already knows something about.

The result is that from time to time we go off on wild goose chases seeking a solution to the wrong problem because we asked the wrong question. No matter how good the solution, it won’t solve that particular problem.

Recently, I’ve been reflecting on the idea—or problem, if you will—of living with passion. If I believe passion means a passion, such as a calling—what and who I am meant to be—then the question I might ask is “What is my passion?” or “How can I find my passion?” That’s not an uncommon way to define the problem. Those are not uncommon questions to ask. And numerous roadmaps and processes are available to assist me—purportedly—in finding and following my passion.

But that’s not the only way to define the problem. In fact, it’s fairly narrow in scope and definition. If I believe living with passion requires finding my passion that makes me an arrow in search of a target, hoping I can hit the bull’s eye. What if I fail in my quest? Am I doomed to the booby prize: a passionless life?

If instead I ask, “How can I live a passionate life?” of “How can I live passionately?” that leads me down an entirely different path and to a much more interesting question: “What gets in the way of living passionately?” Now this is a worthy question to ask.

What gets in the way of living passionately?

I suspect the answer is the same for everyone. What gets in the way is us, specifically the things we tell ourselves, our considerations, our expectations, the preconditions we demand of life, or fear of feeling fear (occasionally known as excitement), and on and on. We’re afraid of stepping up, taking a risk, facing uncertainty, getting hurt or burned, failing, caring too much, or exceeding our reach. The unconscious part of our brain is wired for survival. Passion is definitely not part of its plan.

What gets in the way of living passionately is not our circumstances. It’s our own non-stop mental blah, blah, blah that keeps passion at arm’s length. If we want to live passionately, we can start doing it any time. There’s nothing to search for or to find, either within or without. There’s nothing stopping us from living passionately this very moment but ourselves.

What’s getting in the way of living passionately for you?

A Case for Lucid Waking

September 7, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 4 Comments

lucid dreaming

You have to hand it to humans. As a species, we are seriously and committedly wrong-headed about so very many things. And we have a high level of confidence about our beliefs and convictions regardless of how much or how little that confidence is warranted.

For example, we think we’re aware (we understand what’s going on) while we’re awake, so it isn’t that much of a leap for some of us to want to be aware of our dreams while we’re dreaming. A Google search for “lucid dreaming” brought up about 673,000 hits, whereas a similar search for “lucid waking” brought up about 10,200. I’m surprised there were that many.

Reportedly, the person who coined the term lucid dreaming—Frederik van Eeden—considered lucid to be synonymous with mental clarity. And therein lies one of the problems. Mental clarity is sorely lacking in the waking lives of most people. This is a fact, not an indictment. We spend most of our days operating on autopilot, at the effect of biases, triggers and cues, and mental processes we have no conscious knowledge of. Most of what’s going on around us is happening outside our awareness. However, we don’t let that diminish our sense of certainty.

We’re very good at coming up with plausible sounding explanations for behavior and events. But just because we can come up with explanations doesn’t mean they’re accurate. Our stories and explanations are developed after the fact to create a cause-and-effect stream that feels like real life. We don’t do it intentionally—at least not usually. It happens automatically, with no effort on our part. It’s how we make sense of the world. Our stories and explanations provide us with a false sense of complacency, comfort, and security. They give us the illusion of mental clarity but not much of the real thing.

And it’s from this vantage point that we set out to develop mental clarity—or the illusion of mental clarity—about our dreams.

My thought is that we might want to redirect our efforts toward lucid waking. If, as a species, we developed greater mental clarity about how we operate while we’re awake, we might be able to take a stab at solving some of the serious problems we face. That seems like a more practical and worthwhile focus for our attention.

How Free Is Your Will?

September 4, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Here are links to a few articles and videos by some of my favorite scientists, researchers, and writers who focus on the brain—specifically on the part of the brain we’re not aware of but which so strongly affects every aspect of our lives.

Of course, much of what is being discovered about how the brain actually works is revolutionary in and of itself. But the access we have to it is no less revolutionary. An internet connection is all it takes to read, watch, or listen to the latest developments. By now, I take that access for granted. But that doesn’t stop me from appreciating it.

Click on the titles to get to the articles.

The Possibilian

David Eagleman, author of Incognito

The brain is a remarkably capable chronometer for most purposes. It can track seconds, minutes, days, and weeks, set off alarms in the morning, at bedtime, on birthdays and anniversaries. Timing is so essential to our survival that it may be the most finely tuned of our senses.

When I came across Incognito on a bookstore shelf, I picked it up because I had read (and torn out) this article from The New Yorker. There’s a local connection, too. Eagleman attended Albuquerque Academy, which is only a few minutes away from where I live. So far, he’s the only scientist I’m aware of who uses the terms alien subroutines and zombie systems to describe our unconscious processes.

How Your Mind Works

Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking, Fast and Slow

Any video with Daniel Kahneman in it is worth watching. Thinking, Fast and Slow can be a bit of a slog to get through in places (at least if you’re mathematically challenged like I am). But Kahneman’s spoken explanations are disarmingly clear and straightforward.

How Free Is Your Will?

Michael Gazzaniga and Joseph LeDoux

Philosophers have debated for years whether we deliberately make each of the many decisions we make every day, or if our brain does it for us, on autopilot. Neuroscientists have shown, for example, that neurons in the brain initiate our response to various stimuli milliseconds before we’re even aware that we’re taking such an action.

This link includes the video conversation between Gazzaniga and LeDoux along with the song “How Free Is Your Will?” performed by Le Doux’s band The Amygdaloids. The concept of a rock band composed of neuroscientists is mildly mind-bending. But they’re not bad.

Gut Feeling: How Intestinal Bacteria Could Manipulate Your Brain

David DiSalvo, author of What Makes Your Brain Happy, and Why You Should Do the Opposite

We’ve all heard about the bacterial universe within our bodies, but what’s less well known is just how vast this universe is in comparison to the rest of us: bacteria outnumber all of the cells in our body 100 to 1. And just like us, certain bacteria have a taste for certain nutrients, and they’ve developed ways of influencing their hosts to deliver more of their preferred vittles to the dinner table.

Yes, DiSalvo says, your brain may have made you eat that huge piece of chocolate cake. But apparently “the nervous system superhighway that runs from the digestive system all the way to the base of the brain” is a two-way street. What you eat can influence your brain in constructive–or non-constructive–ways.

The Invisible Gorilla (featuring Daniel Simons)

If you haven’t seen this one yet, just watch it.