And THAT’s a problem.
All problems are not created equal. If they were, we would have come up with a solution algorithm that was effective across the board. Maybe we would have figured out how to nip problems in the bud or even eliminate them completely. Clearly, we don’t have one of those algorithms. Instead, being best by problems seems to be part of the human condition.
Perhaps one reason for this is that we have problem-seeking brains—brains actively on the lookout for problems to solve. If your brain is looking for something, chances are good it will find it (or a reasonable facsimile). You might even say that in some cases, our problem-seeking brain just doesn’t know when to quit.
Moving the Goalpost
Research involving subjects as varied as neighborhood crimes, colored dots, threatening faces, and unethical research, confirms that some problems are definitely in the eye of the perceiver.
In the case of neighborhood watchers, as instances of crime decreased, people tended to expand the range of what they considered to be suspicious activity to include things like jaywalking or loitering in the evening. People who were asked to identify threatening faces expanded their definition of “threatening” when fewer such faces were shown to them.
The same thing happened with people asked to determine whether dots on a screen were blue or purple. As fewer blue dots were shown, they began identifying slightly purple dots as blue. This was the case even when they were told blue dots would become rare and offered incentives to remain consistent over the course of the study.
Researchers conclude that this behavior isn’t under conscious control.
The last study in the series involved making moral judgments. The task was to read about some scientific studies and determine if they were ethical or unethical. Researchers did not expect to find the same pattern of behavior in this case—but they did. As the subjects read about fewer unethical studies, they became harsher judges of what was unethical.
Blue dots and threatening faces are not actually problems, of course. But neighborhood crime and unethical research certainly are. If neighborhood watchers continue to redefine suspicious activity to include more and more innocuous actions in the definition, they won’t recognize that incidents of potentially criminal activity have decreased. If we’re unclear about the definition or parameters of a problem, how can we hope to determine how to solve it or even recognize when it has been solved?
Continuing to focus on a nonexistent problem is nothing more than busywork for the brain. It leads to the development of an even more warped sense of reality than we already have and keeps us from turning our attention to actual problems that do need solving.
relative: considered in relation or in proportion to something else
Taking the Path of Least Resistance
The associative brain, which could be said to operate our “search” function, is not interested in absolutes—as in finding the best or most accurate match—but in finding the fastest match. In order to do that, it processes information by comparing what it sees now to what it has seen recently. That means it doesn’t evaluate a face by comparing it to all other faces. Instead it makes a relative comparison based on:
- faces it has seen recently
- an average of faces it has seen recently
- the most and least threatening faces it has seen
Relative comparisons use less energy, provide a faster response, and are often “accurate enough.”
Interestingly, the brain does the same type of thing when it’s trying to understand something. It searches its internal index to find a match. Again, instead of looking for the best or most accurate match, it looks for a similar experience and stops as soon as it finds something relatively similar.
These relative matches occur at the unconscious level, so we aren’t aware that our brain is skimming the surface so it can quickly dispense with the task and go lay out on the beach. We assume our perception is reality—or our understanding is correct or accurate. In many more cases than we imagine, we’re just plain wrong.
We might not even be aware of what our brain is searching for. The brains of two people looking at the same set of circumstances may be looking for entirely different things, so of course they are not going to have the same perceptions.
The brain also wants to be right because being right doesn’t require any mental heavy lifting. But solving problems, especially complex—or wicked—problems, and truly understanding both ourselves and others requires more than superficial perception and comprehension.
When we come across something new—something not already indexed—we have to access a different part of the brain to assess it. Because the other part of the brain prefers to pretend we already know it all and understand it all, we have to use what I call contrivances in order to explore or examine something as if it were unknown. One of the best contrivances in the world is asking questions instead of looking for answers.
Homo erectus, our most distant human ancestors who lived between 1.9 million and 110,000 years ago, developed a language and figured out how to travel across the water to expand their settlements.
They were around approximately nine times longer than Homo sapiens has been around so far. It’s doubtful they survived that long by taking the path of least resistance, believing they knew it all. Complacency is ultimately a losing proposition.