by Bruce Hood
These differing ways of categorizing the world reflect the way that children can learn to adopt the prevalent social norms. But this learning is not set for life as are other critical-period phenomena. These ways of processing the world do not satisfy the biological imperatives that require hard-wiring. It seems unlikely that there are going to be significant permanent differences between individuals who view the world from collectivist or individualistic perspectives. More importantly these differing perspectives are easily reversible, suggesting that they are not cast in stone. For example, European/American students were asked to circle either independent pronouns (‘I’ or ‘mine’) or interdependent pronouns (‘we’ or ‘ours’). Those primed with independent pronouns gave higher endorsements to individualistic statements, whereas those primed with interdependence gave higher endorsement to collectivistic values.71 Clearly, such manipulations reveal that we are much more malleable to conforming to group norms rather than holding deep-seated notions about group and self-identity.
Also, if you prime Hong Kong residents who have grown up under the influence of both Western and Eastern cultural perspectives, you can shift their attitudes toward a collectivist perspective if you show them an image of the Chinese dragon, or shift them toward individualism with a picture of the US flag. In one study, groups of bicultural Hong Kong Chinese were primed with either Eastern or Western attitudes and then told about an overweight boy who cannot resist the temptation to gorge on food.72 They were then asked to rate how much of his weight problem was due to his own disposition and also how much was due to his social circumstances. Both groups were equal on rating the boy’s obesity as due to his own problems of self control, but those primed with the Chinese icons rated his situational circumstances significantly higher than those primed with the US flag.
Who Am I?
These studies reveal that the vast body of evidence undermines the notion of a core self, but rather supports the self illusion. If we are so susceptible to group pressure, subtle priming cues, stereotyping and culturally cuing, then the notion of a true, unyielding ego self cannot be sustained. If it is a self that flinches and bends with tiny changes in circumstances, then it might as well be non-existent. Most humans entertain some form of a self illusion, but it is one that is shaped by context. For many in the West, their self illusion is characterized by the individual fighting against the odds, whereas in the East, the most common form of the self illusion will be the team player. If these different types of selves were intrinsic, then they should not be so easily modified by context. Note that both ways of seeing the world, and more importantly one’s self illusion, require some form of public validation. Both require the presence of others.
It is worth pointing out a lesson to be learned. In this day and age where we increasingly need to share our limited living space on the planet, most people entertain a belief that they are considerate, reasonable and fair. Not many would readily accept that they are prejudiced, unreasonable and racist. However, we can easily harbour many stereotypes and distortions that shape the way that we behave and think. We are certainly more pliable through the influence of others than we ever thought. If we wish to be fair and just individuals, I think a good starting alternative is to accept that prejudice may be the norm, and not the exception, and is inherent in group psychology as Tajfel and others claimed. The first step to fixing a problem is acknowledging that you have one to begin with and so long as we entertain a self illusion, we are not going to accept just how much external circumstances have shaped us in the past and continue to exert an influence throughout our lives. We don’t see this because our cognitive dissonance is constantly shielding us from our failings by trying to maintain an integrated self belief – an idealized story of who we think we are.
Answer to Figure 9: There is a gorilla next to the pencils.
7
The Stories We Live By
I looked around, it was like a horror movie, people were mounted on each other, the smell of burnt skin and people’s insides was gagging. I kept thinking about my fiancé, about our wedding, I wanted to wear that white dress and swear my love for him. Something gave me the strength to get up. I believe today that it was my fiancé on his way to heaven.
Tania Head1
Who can forget the day they saw the attack on the Twin Towers? You didn’t even have to be there. It was the first live televised terrorist atrocity witnessed by the world. I was at work in Bristol, England, and recently had a television mounted on my office wall that I used to review research videos, but that afternoon I had it turned it on to watch the horror unfold on that crisp, sunny September morning in New York. It was surreal – it couldn’t be happening. I remember trying to be disconnected from it – as if it was just another piece of news. I did not want to think too hard about what I was seeing. And yet I will not forget that day. It is seared into the memories of all who witnessed the events that have simply become known as 9/11.
As discussed, memories are not recordings but stories we retrieve from the compost heap that is our long-term memory; we construct these stories to make sense of the events we have experienced. They change over time as they become distorted, merged, turned over, mixed in and mangled with other experiences that eventually fade. But some memories remain as vivid as the day they happened or at least they seem so – those episodes that refuse to decompose. These are the events that we can’t forget. When we witness something that is truly terrifying, then a memory can be branded into our brain, like a hot searing iron that marks our mind forever. This is because emotionally charged memories are fuel-injected by the electrical activity of the limbic system.2 Arousal, triggered in the amygdala, produces heightened sensitivity and increased attention. The dilation of our pupils reveals that our vigilance systems have been put on high alert to look out for danger. The world suddenly becomes very clear and enriched as we notice all manner of trivial details that we would not normally care about. It’s like the scene has suddenly been illuminated by bright light – as if some paparazzi photographer has lit up the world in a brilliant blaze of light during our moments of terror – which is why these recollections are called ‘flashbulb’ memories.3 And we experience the emotion – we feel the past. It is the heightened arousal and emotional significance that seems to lay down the life-track in the brain that becomes a flashbulb memory.
We usually lament our loss of memory as we age but sometimes it is better to forget. While many flashbulb memories are associated with the more joyous events in life such as births and weddings, most are generated by the horrors. Victims and survivors typically experience traumatic memories that they can’t erase – a common symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Following 9/11, one in five New Yorkers living in the vicinity of the Twin Towers developed PTSD.4 They were haunted by nightmares and constantly ruminated on the events of that terrible day. Our emotional systems seem compelled to never let us forget the worst things that can happen to us. In truth, details of flashbulb memories can be as false as any other memory, but they just seem so accurate. For example, many people (including George Bush) remember seeing the plane hit the first tower on 9/11 even though video footage did not emerge until much later. Maybe flashbulb memories serve some form of evolutionary value to always remember the worst case scenario. When it comes to surviving, it would seem that Mother Nature has decided that it is more important to remember how we felt when endangered compared to the pleasures of life.
One way to combat PTSD is to administer a beta-blocker such as propranolol immediately after the event.5 Beta-blockers dampen the arousal of the limbic system so that events are not encoded with the same degree of emotional kick. People still remember what happened but feel less upset. Currently, there is research underway at Yale Medical School by Deane Aikins to determine whether propranolol alleviates PTSD in combat troops but some have even suggested that the drug should be given to all soldiers. This raises concerns. Do we really want to have a moral morning-after pill that shuts do
wn a system that usually prevents us from doing things that might lead to remorse and regret? 6 Some have even suggested giving propranolol to soldiers before they go into battle as a prophylaxis. If you have no pangs of guilt then you could become immune to suffering. But do we really want blind obedience without a moral compass in our solders? Remember the lessons of Milgram and Abu Ghraib. There is a big difference between inoculating against PTSD and helping those to overcome events out of their control and no fault of their own. This future of the psychopharmacological treatment of PTSD is a moral minefield.
In any event, the scale of the emotional devastation created by 9/11 was unlikely to be solved so easily with a pill, and certainly not for those who had managed to escape the collapsing towers. The survivors of 9/11 were left traumatized and tormented by their flashbulb memories. Initially, the nation joined them in their grief as everyone tried to comprehend the sheer horror of 9/11 but, eventually, things started to return to normal. Memories started to fade and people wanted to move on, but not those who had been there. Two years after the event, survivors sought each other out and met up in small meetings to share their experiences, nightmares and pain. There was a lot of guilt that they had survived and they needed to talk. Gerry Bogacz, who co-founded the Survivors’ Network, explained: ‘After a while, you can’t talk about this anymore with your family. You’ve worn them out. Your need to talk is greater than their ability to listen.’ The Survivors’ Network began to expand their meetings across Manhattan. More and more sought the solace and comfort of fellow survivors because only those who had undergone the same ordeal themselves could relate to the legacy left by 9/11. At these meetings, they would exchange stories and, with each retelling, it seemed to help unleash or ease the feelings and emotions that had been bottled up.
Very soon, one particular story started to spread among the groups. It was the story of Tania Head who had survived the attack on the South Tower. She had been on the seventy-eighth floor, waiting for an elevator, when United Airlines flight 175 slammed into her tower. Tania had been badly burned by aviation fuel but managed to crawl through the rubble and even encountered a dying man who handed her his wedding ring, which she later returned to his widow. She would be only one of nineteen above the impact point who would survive that day. Tania recalled how she was rescued by twenty-four-year-old volunteer firefighter, Welles Crowther, who always wore a red bandanna. Witnesses say he was later killed making his fourth return to the collapsing tower to save more victims trapped in the debris. But Tania was not entirely without loss. Though she was saved, she later discovered that her fiancé, Dave, who had been in the North Tower had been killed. The wedding, for which she had bought her dress only weeks earlier, was never to be.
Like other survivors, Tania needed to do something to deal with the emotional aftermath. She started an internet group for survivors and eventually news of her efforts reached Gerry Bogacz who invited her to join the Survivors’ Network. Tania’s story was noteworthy. She had lost more than most others but somehow she had found the courage and conviction to overcome adversity. Tania’s tale was a story of triumph. She offered hope to those who had been lost in the pits of despair. How could anyone wallow in self-pity when Tania had managed to overcome her own loss?
Soon Tania was campaigning for the survivors. Their voice had to be heard. She championed the group’s right to visit Ground Zero, the site of the collapsed towers, which up to that point had been off-limits to all. She became the spokesperson for the Survivors’ Network and then their president. She gave the inaugural guided tour of the Tribute W.T.C. Visitor Center in 2005 when she showed New York City Mayor Bloomberg, former Mayor Giuliani, former New York Governor Pataki and other important dignitaries around the facility, regaling them with her experiences during that fateful day.
Tania Head had become the figurehead of 9/11 survivors. Except … Tania had never been there. She did not have a false memory. She was a fraud. Like me, Tania had watched the events on television back in her native Spain. She had not been in the South Tower. She did not work for Merrill Lynch. She had not been on the seventy-eighth floor of the World Trade Center. She had not crawled through rubble to retrieve a dying man’s wedding ring. She had not been saved by a real hero, Welles Crowther. And she did not lose her fiancé, Dave, in the collapsed North Tower. Tania was really Alicia Esteve Head who only arrived in United States in 2003 – two years after 9/11. She had made everything up.7 However, the authorities could not arrest Tania because she had not broken any law. In 2007 she disappeared and, in February 2008, a telegram was sent from a Spanish account to the Survivors’ Network informing them that Alicia Esteve Head had committed suicide. Not surprisingly, very few believe this.
Alicia Head came from a wealthy Spanish background but something must have been missing in her life that money could not buy. She needed the attention and sympathy from others, and saw herself as the victim in a romantic tragedy set against the backdrop of the world’s worst terrorist attack. As Tania, Alicia would have lived out this lie if she had not been exposed. We will probably never know exactly why she created this charade but we must assume that this was the story she wanted to live. She may have come to even believe her own false memories, locked in her own fantasy world where she recast herself as a survivor against the odds.
We Are Our Memories
What is a memory? Can you hold one? Can you make one? Can you copy a memory? If we are our memories, can we be re-created? Memory is information stored as a pattern of electrical activity that ‘re-presents’ the original pattern at the time it was formed. This representation is what memories are – although human memories are not rigid but dynamic and continually changing as new information is encountered. If we are our brains and our brains are a network of physical cells connected together in a pattern of weighted electrical activity, then it really should be possible to copy a memory in the same way we can copy any information. We should be able to copy our selves.
The possibility of copying memory is at the heart of what it is to be unique. Imagine a machine that can copy any physical object right down to its basic atomic structure. It can perfectly duplicate any material thing irrespective of what it is made of or how complicated it is. Remarkably, engineers are working on precisely this type of machine known as a 3D printer. They typically work using a laser to scan a target object to calculate its dimensions and then relay that information to a jet-moulding device where liquid plastic is squirted to gradually build up a reproduction of the object. It’s the sort of technology that would make constructing colonies on distant planets more feasible without having physically to transport every object. At the moment the technology is fairly crude and solving how to build the internal structures of complicated objects made of different substances presents considerable challenges. However, just like the wooden block printing press of Johannes Gutenberg was considered a technological marvel of the fifteenth century and yet seems so primitive by today’s standards, it may simply be a matter of time before we can reliably manipulate matter to create accurate duplicates.
Whatever way we achieve it, let us assume that we have the technology to reliably duplicate anything. Imagine now that you step into the machine and an identical physical copy of you is created. What would this new you be like? Let’s also assume that you accept that there is no immaterial spirit or soul that cannot be reproduced. Would this identical copy be you? It’s the sort of question that has entertained philosophers and writers8 in one form or another for centuries though in recent years it has enjoyed a resurgence of interest because of rapid developments in technology such as gene sequencing and 3D printers. In all of these different scenarios, the same fundamental question of identity is raised: what makes us unique?
John Locke thought about this issue in the context of reincarnation9 – something that was of interest in the seventeenth century when it came to the notion of the immortal soul. Locke was of the opinion that conscious awareness of one’s own history was important w
hen it came to unique personal identity. In short, he was thinking about the role of autobiographical memories in defining the self. Even if one does not believe in the immortal soul, modern adults also regard personal memory as the most important thing that defines who we are. In one study, adults were told about the unfortunate Jim who was in a serious accident where his body was irreparably damaged so that he needed a transplant.10 Only this was a science fiction story where the transplantation was very advanced. In one version of the story, Jim had lost all his memories but they could transplant his amnesic brain into either a robot or genetically engineered biological body. In another version of the story, doctors had managed to download all of Jim’s life memories before his brain died and could transfer them to the replacement body. After the transplantation, Jim’s original body was cremated. Adults were then asked if each operation was a success – was the patient still Jim?
The most important thing that determined whether adults considered the patient to be Jim was whether his memories had been saved irrespective of whether they were now stored in a mechanical body or a biologically engineered one. In fact, the biologically engineered body that contained Jim’s original brain was considered less Jim than the robot with his memories. In the absence of his memories, Jim was gone.
The relationship between memory and identity is an intuition that starts to emerge in children from around four to five years of age. We used duplication machine studies11 to see if children would think that a live hamster could be copied exactly and whether its doppelganger would have the same memories.12 To achieve the illusion of duplication we used two identical-looking Russian hamsters that were indistinguishable to the untrained eye. Once children had been convinced by the power of the machine to faithfully duplicate any toy, we introduced our pet hamster and proceeded to tell children about some of the unique physical properties the hamster had that could not be directly seen. We said it had swallowed a marble in its tummy, had a broken back tooth and had a blue heart. We then created some memories that were unique to the hamster. Of course, memories are also invisible but they are not physical like marbles and blue hearts. We showed the hamster a drawing by each child, whispered the child’s name into the hamster’s ear and got the child to tickle the hamster. These are all episodes that can be stored in memory. We then placed the hamster in the duplicating machine and after the buzzer sounded, we opened both boxes to reveal that there were now two identical hamsters. What would the children think? Would the invisible physical properties and the memories be the same or different for each animal? So we asked the child whether each hamster had a blue heart, a broken tooth and a marble in its tummy. We also asked about the memories. Did each hamster know the child’s name and what picture the child drew, and remember being tickled?