Being Smart or Being
Tricked?
In part
two of our discussion, The Brain/The Mind, we are going to consider some
additional points about our amazing brain.
The old adage of humans only using 10% of their brain is NOT TRUE! Every part of the brain has a known
function. But, believe it or not, there
are some things a person could do to help their brain function better. A study of one million students in New York
showed that students who ate lunches that DID
NOT include artificial flavors, preservatives, and dyes did 14%
better on IQ tests than students who ate lunches with these additives.
Thinking,
reading, and learning all add
to the growth potential of our brains.
Every time you recall a memory or have a new thought, you are creating a
new connection in your brain. Memory is
formed by associations, so if you want help remembering things, create
associations for yourself. But even with
your best education and a constant effort to continually make new memory
connections by creating associations, situations, either occurring normally or
artificially created, can manipulate your mind.
This is being done on a daily basis by advertisers and others.
A
single descriptive word can manipulate how the mind remembers an event. For example, in a 1974 experiment, 45 people
watched a film of a car accident.
Different groups of people were asked how fast the cars were going using
different trigger words, such as “hit,” “smashed,” “collided,” “bumped,” and
“contacted.” The group whose question
included the word “smashed” estimated the cars were going 10 mph faster than
the group whose word was “contacted.” A
week later, when participants were asked about broken glass, those who were
asked more forceful trigger words reported that there was broken glass,
even though there was NONE!
Research
has proven how easy it is to create false
memories through the force of suggestion. Psychologists found that if they repeated
questions (e.g. about hugging Bugs Bunny at Disney World – an impossibility)
and invited the mind to imagine sensory detail (do you remember stroking Bugs Bunny’s
velvety ears), a person would begin to believe it was an actual event. The mind’s power of expectation can blind
people to facts and lure them into unwitting conjecture in virtually every way they
perceive the world. This is how
“magicians” create their craft. This is
a tactic often used in the legal profession. And it is why we can sit in movies
for hours believing we are visiting another planet or why we believe a man can
fly!
Your
mind is an exceptional thing, but it has its shortcomings. Let’s look at TWO situations that were
previously discussed in an article by Kendra Cherry. I will quote her report here:
1. Your
Brain Likes to Play the Blame Game
When something bad happens, it is
only natural that we look for an underlying cause to blame. The problem is that we often place the blame
on the wrong person, event, or object and frequently distort reality in order
to protect our own self-esteem.
Imagine for a moment that you just bombed an
important test in your “math” class.
Who’s responsible for your failure?
If you are like many people, you might explain away your poor
performance by blaming situational factors (“The room was so hot I couldn’t
concentrate!”) or on your instructor (“We didn’t learn any of this in class!" "There were too many trick questions!”). In psychology, this is what is known as the
actor-observer bias. When it comes to
our own behavior, we are often too quick to place the blame on external forces
rather than on personal choices or characteristics.
So why do we engage in this blame
game? Researchers believe that many of
our attributional biases function as a way to protect our self-esteem and guard
ourselves from the fear of failure.
According to this way of thinking, bad things happen to other
people because they do things that you would never do, bad things
happen to you because of things outside of your control, and your
successes are the result of your traits, skills, efforts, and other internal
characteristics.
2. Your
Memory Isn’t as Great as You Think
While we often believe that our
memory works like a video camera, carefully preserving events exactly as they
occurred, the reality is that our memory is much more fragile, inaccurate, and
susceptible to influence than we would like to believe.
For example, experts have found
that it is surprisingly easy to induce false memories of events that did
not really occur. In one study,
researchers found watching a video of other people performing an action
actually led participants to believe that they had performed the task
themselves. Your memory might be good,
but it is worth remembering that it is not perfect and certainly not always
dependable.
And in conclusion,
your brain is capable of remarkable things, from remembering a conversation you
had with a dear friend to solving complex mathematical problems. But, it certainly isn’t perfect. There’s no way to avoid all of these
potential problems, but being aware of some of the biases, perceptual
shortcomings, and memory tricks that your brain is susceptible to can
help. Remember, we’re only human!
In
part three we will consider “The Subconscious Mind.”
QUOTE TO CONSIDER
THOUGHTFUL GEM
"If you could change ONE thing in the world,
why not DO IT!
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