A Mind of Its Own

by Cordelia Fine

  Even when researchers explicitly command people to answer as if they don’t know about things that have actually happened, or firmly warn them of our propensity to exaggerate how much we would have guessed anyhow, we continue to deny that the knowledge to which we are privy has influenced us, and insist we would have known it all along.25 Our refusal to acknowledge that our opinions benefit from hindsight is particularly troublesome for legal cases in which jurors decide whether to award punitive damages. (Punitive damages essentially say to the defendant, ‘Naughty! Should have seen that one coming.’) In a simulation of this sort of case, people were given testimony about an actual accident in which a Southern Pacific train had derailed, spilling toxic herbicide into the Sacramento River in California.26 Some volunteers were told only that the National Transportation Safety Board, reckoning the track to be hazardous, had slapped an order on the railway to stop operations, and that the railroad wanted the order lifted. They were shown extensive expert testimony about the various defects and dangers of the condition of the train and its mountainous track as it was just before the real accident none of them knew about. They were then asked to decide whether the risk of an accident was such that the order should stay in place. Totally unaware of what had actually happened on this stretch of railroad, these mock jurors proved fairly optimistic about the safety of the track. Only a third of them thought that the hazards were serious enough to justify stopping the train from running.

  Contrast this with the views of the other volunteers, who were able to inspect the details of the case through the crystal clear lens of hindsight. These volunteers were told both of the derailment and the consequent pollution of the river. They then viewed exactly the same expert testimony as the other group of volunteers. Before the accident occurred, they were asked, was there a grave danger or risk of harm that was a foreseeable and likely consequence of the condition of the tracks? Knowing that such harm had indeed occurred, and unable to perform the mental gymnastics necessary to pretend they didn’t, two-thirds of the volunteers said yes, an accident was likely and the railroad should have realised this. In their view, punitive damages should be awarded. The difference in the outlooks offered by foresight and hindsight suggests that, once an accident has happened, our assessment of responsibility can become unreasonably high.

  We have seen how the brain pretends to know what it did not or would not have known. But things don’t stop there. The brain also lays claim to knowledge of what it cannot know. As a final embarrassment in this sorry catalogue of our cocky tendencies, we think we know what (if we only knew it) can’t be known at all. So omniscient does the pigheaded brain think itself that it even affects to be acquainted with knowledge that doesn’t exist. University student volunteers were given a hundred general knowledge questions to answer.27 Sneakily scattered among them, however, were twenty questions to which there was no answer (such as, ‘What is the name of the only type of cat native to Australia?’, ‘What is the name of the legendary floating island in ancient Greece?’ or ‘What is the last name of the only woman to sign the Declaration of Independence?’). On about 20 per cent of these unanswerable questions the volunteers claimed to be on the verge of dredging up the answer. They knew it was in there somewhere. It was on the tip of their tongue!

  Blinded by our own brilliance, we think we know it all.

  The ramifications of our pigheadedness spread far wider than controversy over the correct method for decanting spaghetti. Beyond the dramas of the kitchen sink, our complacent obstinacy rears its ugly head everywhere: it’s in the bedroom, the classroom, the social scene, the scientist’s laboratory, the political stage, the courtroom. Pervading, as it does, every aspect of our lives, is there anything we can do to lessen the shameful and often dangerous effects of our stubbornness and conceit? At this point, psychology texts like to make a few half-hearted suggestions as to how we can combat the mulish tendencies of our minds. ‘Entertain alternative hypotheses’, we are urged. ‘Consider the counter-evidence.’ The problem, of course, is that we are convinced that we are already doing this; it’s simply that the other guy’s view is absurd, his arguments laughably flimsy. Our pigheadedness appears to be irredeemable. It is a sad fact that the research bears out the news paper columnist Richard Cohen, who wrote that ‘The ability to kill or capture a man is a relatively simple task compared with changing his mind.’28

  My husband would do well to bear that in mind, come dinnertime.

  Notes

  1 D. Sedaris (2004), Dress your family in corduroy and denim, London: Abacus.

  2 T.R. Caretta and R. L. Moreland (1982), ‘Nixon and Watergate: A field demonstration of belief perseverance’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 8: 446–53.

  3 A. J. Stewart, J.G. Webb, D. Giles and D. Hewitt (1956), ‘Preliminary Communication: Malignant disease in childhood and diagnostic irradiation in utero’, Lancet, 447. For details of Alice Stewart’s research, see G. Greene (1999), The woman who knew too much: Alice Stewart and the secrets of radiation, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

  4 C.G. Lord, L. Ross and M.R. Lepper (1979), ‘Biased assimilation and attitude polarization: the effects of prior theories on subsequently considered evidence’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37: 2098–109.

  5 K. Edwards and E.E. Smith (1996), ‘A disconfirmation bias in the evaluation of arguments’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71: 5–24.

  6

  M. J. Mahoney (1977), ‘Publication prejudices: an experimental study of confirmatory bias in the peer review system’, Cognitive Therapy and Research, 1: 161–75.7 Reported in G. Greene (1999), The woman who knew too much: Alice Stewart and the secrets of radiation, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

  8 S.E. Taylor and Gollwitzer (1995), ‘Effects of mindset on positive illusions’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69: 213–26.

  9 See M. Talbot (2000), ‘The placebo prescription’, New York Times Magazine, January 9, available at: http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20000109mag-talbot7.html

  10 F. Benedetti, G. Maggi and L. Lopiano (2003), ‘Open versus hidden medical treatments: The patient’s knowledge about a therapy affects the therapy outcome’, Prevention and Treatment, 6.

  11 See, for example, R. Rosenthal (2002), ‘Experimenter and clinician effects in scientific inquiry and clinical practice’, Prevention and Treatment, 5; R. Rosenthal (1994), ‘Interpersonal expectancy effects: A 30-year perspective’, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 3: 176–9.

  12 R. Rosenthal (2003), ‘Covert communication in laboratories, classrooms and the truly real world’, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 12: 151–4.

  13 G. Downey, A.L. Freitas, B. Michaelis and H. Khouri (1998), ‘The self-fulfilling prophecy in close relationships: rejection sensitivity and rejection by romantic partners’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75: 545–60.

  14 R.P. Abelson (1986), ‘Beliefs are like possessions’, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 16: 223–50.

  15 L. Ross, M.R. Lepper and M. Hubbard (1975), ‘Perseverance in self-perception and social perception: biased attributional processes in the debriefing paradigm’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32: 880–92.

  16 M.R. Lepper, L. Ross and R.R. Lau (1986), ‘Persistence of inaccurate beliefs about the self: perseverance effects in the classroom’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50: 482–91.

  17 L. Ross, M.R. Lepper, F. Stack and J. Steinmetz (1977), ‘Social explanation and social expectation: effects of real and hypothetical explanations on subjective likelihood’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35: 817–29.

  18 D.T. Gilbert, R.W. Tafarodi and P. S. Malone (1993), ‘You can’t not believe everything you read’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65: 221–33. See also D.T. Gilbert (1991), ‘How mental systems believe’, American Psychologist, 46: 107–19.

  19 R.E. Petty and J.T. Cacioppo (1986
), ‘The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion’, in L. Berkowitz (ed), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 19: 123–205.

  20 D.T. Gilbert, R.W. Tafarodi and P. S. Malone (1993), ‘You can’t not believe everything you read’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65: 221–33.

  21 D.M. Wegner, R. Wenzlaff, R.M. Kerker and A.E. Beattie (1981), ‘Incrimination through innuendo: can media questions become public answers?’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40: 822–32.

  22 For an explanation of this result, see D.T. Gilbert (1991), ‘How mental systems believe’, American Psychologist, 46: 107–19.

  23 J.D. Lieberman and J.D. Arndt (2000), ‘Understanding the limits of limiting instructions: social psychological explanations for the failures of instructions to disregard pretrial publicity and other inadmissible evidence’, Psychology, Public Policy and Law, 6: 677–711.

  24 F.B. Bryant and R.L. Guilbault (2002), ‘“I knew it all along” eventually: the development of hindsight bias in reaction to the Clinton impeachment verdict’, Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 24: 27–41.

  25 For review of the ‘hindsight bias’ effect, see S.A. Hawkins and R. Hastie (1990), ‘Hindsight: biased judgments of past events after the outcomes are known’, Psychological Bulletin, 107: 311–27.

  26 R. Hastie, D.A. Schkade and J.W. Payne (1999), ‘Juror judgments in civil cases: hindsight effects on judgments of liability for punitive damages’, Law and Human Behavior, 23: 597–614.

  27 B. L. Schwartz (1998), ‘Illusory tip-of-the-tongue states’, Memory, 6: 623–42.

  28 R. Cohen (1991), ‘No time for hubris’, Washington Post, 28 February.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Secretive Brain

  Exposing the guile of the mental butler

  I remember my husband waking up one morning exclaiming, ‘I had a dream last night!’ This was quite an event, since my husband generally claims not to dream. He clearly expected me to show an interest: if not professionally, then at least in my role as spouse. Certainly, as a psychologist – indoctrinated to value only strictly scientific methods – I was entirely unequipped to offer my husband a Freudian analysis of his slumberous labours. The name Freud was not one mentioned often in the psychology department I attended as an undergraduate. Indeed, it was rumoured that his dusty collected works on the library shelves were wired to a generator. Anyone misguided enough to touch them would receive an enlightening electric shock – that popular educational tool of the experimental psychologist. Yet although I stand firmly in the camp of those who think ‘Penis envy? Puh-lease’, there is something tantalising about the promise offered by dreams, to reveal the secret machinations that go on below the paper-thin surface of the conscious mind. Which is why, despite myself, I felt a little thrill of excitement in response to my husband’s announcement. Here at last was an unprecedented opportunity to take a peek at the uncensored ruminations of my husband’s hidden mind. Thus it was that I found myself asking him to tell me all about his dream.

  ‘I dreamed that we had an argument’, he said proudly.

  ‘Interesting’, I replied thoughtfully. ‘We had an argument last night.’

  ‘Yes, my dream was almost exactly the same. God, I was mad. Do you want some tea?’

  And there ended my brief psychoanalytic journey of discovery into my spouse’s unconscious mind.

  Fortunately, psychoanalysis is no longer the only route available into the covert portion of our mind. Over the past few decades social psychologists have been getting very interested in this aspect of our mental life, and what it’s up to. Their research shows that there’s both good news and bad news. The good news is that the unconscious isn’t, as it’s often billed, merely the boxing ring for psychic struggles. The unconscious mind works hard, efficiently and tirelessly on your behalf. One prominent social psychologist refers to it as the ‘mental butler’ who tends silently to our needs and desires, without us even having to trouble to ring the bell.1 With the grunt work covered, the conscious mind is left at leisure to ponder life goals, make important decisions and generally run the show.

  Or does it? The bad news is that delegation always comes at a cost to control. When you hand over a job to your willing unconscious, you can never be quite sure how it’s being done.

  Actually, that’s not the bad news. I just didn’t want to break it to you too suddenly, while you were still glorying in the metaphor of your conscious self as master of the manor lording it over your staff of unconscious mental processes. The real bad news is that even our relatively rare moments of conscious choice may be nothing but an illusion. Like the hapless toff Bertie Wooster, who is but putty in the hands of his scheming butler Jeeves, recent research suggests that the hand that polishes the shoes walks the feet. You only think you’re in charge of where you’re going.

  However, the unconscious – like Jeeves – is as indispensable as it is devious. Everyday activities, like walking and driving, perfectly illustrate the importance of being able to delegate responsibility to the unconscious mind. This point was vividly brought home to me as I observed my toddler son learning how to walk. When he was twelve months old it was an activity requiring the utmost concentration. No other business – receiving a proffered toy, taking a sip of water, even surveying the pathway ahead for obstacles – could be conducted at the same time. Imagine if this carried on throughout life, with passers-by on the street plopping clumsily to their bottoms should you distract them for an instant by asking for directions. But fortunately, the unconscious gradually takes over. The previously tricky aspects of walking – balancing upright, moving forward, the whole left-foot–right-foot routine – become automatic and mentally effortless. And once a skill moves into the domain of the unconscious mind, we free up our conscious thought for other matters. The learner driver is a poor conversationalist because his conscious mind is fully taken up with the complexities of steering, changing gears and indicating. As driving becomes automatic, we can offer something a little more fulfilling to our front-seat companion than a series of fractured mutterings and muffled cries of ‘Sorry!’ Precious conscious thought becomes available again.

  And conscious thought is precious. Famously a stream, rather than tributary, of consciousness, it limits you to just a single line of inner dialogue at any one time. So since there’s only one of the conscious you, you need droves of full-time help from the mental downstairs. Of course, there’s nothing particularly secretive or sinister about the idea of the conscious will demanding ‘Home, James’ and the unconscious following the order by smoothly taking over the routine of driving. But what if the unconscious could itself trigger the very act of willing, setting itself off in the pursuit of a goal without a conscious command from above?2 Recent research has caught the unconscious in this very act. If you’re an experienced driver, a curve in the road triggers the unconscious to adjust the steering wheel without you even having to think about it. You might see the curve, but you don’t notice the automatic effect it has on your steering. In a similar way, as we become experienced navigators of the social highway, the people and situations we encounter automatically trigger our unconscious to adjust our social steering in line with well-practised goals, without us even realising.

  Because our relationships with others are such hotbeds of motivations and goals, our unconscious is particularly easily sparked off in this way by people. And since no chapter on the unconscious, however modern in its approach, would be complete without mention of mothers, we will take the worthy aim of ‘making mother proud’ as an example of an ‘interpersonal goal’. If this is one of your goals (and I certainly hope it is) then your unconscious will not have failed to notice that when you find yourself thinking ‘But what would mother say?’ you strive to be and do better. So what the helpful unconscious does is to automatically set you the goal of going that extra mile, whenever anything in your situation reminds it of your mother. You, in the meantime – the conscious you, that is – are completely
unaware that you’re acting under the influence of a hidden agenda.

  In a demonstration of this, researchers recruited volunteer students who – months and months before – had been asked to write down the sorts of goals they had with respect to their mothers.3 The volunteers were chosen so that about equal numbers did and did not have the goal of making their mother proud.

  The researchers then poked the unconscious into automatically activating mother-related goals in some of the volunteers. They did this by priming the mother schema, to use the technical terms. Schemas make up the filing system of your mind. Cognitive psychologists think that just about everything we learn about the world is neatly tidied away into a schema. I like to think of a schema as a big bed full of slumbering brain cells. All the brain cells in the bed represent a different part of the schema. So, for example, in the schema for dogs you’ll find brain cells that – when active and awake – point out that dogs have four legs. Then there are the neurons that hold the information that dogs bark, neurons that remind you that dogs have hair, and all the neurons for just about everything else you know about the concept of dogs. And they’re all tucked up in the same bed.

  Priming a schema is like shaking a few of the brain cells awake. Because they’re all snuggled up cosily, waking one group of brain cells disturbs the sleep of all the others in the bed, and makes them more likely to wake up. And brain cells that are on the verge of wakefulness are much more likely to answer the call of the conscious than are brain cells sleeping undisturbed in some other schema bed. (For example, researchers primed the Asian schema in some volunteers by using an Asian experimenter to present a word-completion task.4 For the other volunteers, the experimenter was white. The task was to make words from fragments such as ‘POLI_E’ and ‘S_Y’. The volunteers whose Asian schemas were primed were more likely to come up with words from the Asian schema, like ‘POLITE’ and ‘SHY’, rather than, say, ‘POLICE’ and ‘SKY’.)