Little wonder we can’t all get along! You may think that you are doing nothing more than skimming through the newspaper on the way to work but, as we now know, your mind is up to far more than you could ever have imagined. A report that divorce rates are on the increase is critically dismissed by the woman whose engagement ring sparkles bright and new.1 ‘No smoke without fire’, is the confident view of the man furtively acquainting himself with the dying embers of a celebrity scandal in the society pages.2 And reports headlined ‘NO WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION FOUND IN IRAQ’ leave at least some Americans believing that, well, weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq.3 In a striking real-world demonstration of the vulnerability of beliefs to the psychological context, Americans and Germans were asked to look closely at some news items from the Iraq war that were subsequently retracted. Germans (who as a country opposed the war) expressed great suspicion as to the coalition’s true motives for war. (The word ‘oil’ did not go unmentioned.) Working from this distrustful frame of mind, they sensibly discounted misinformation about the war: as you would expect, they didn’t believe things they knew to have been retracted. And almost none of the sceptical Germans wrongly recalled that weapons of mass destruction (WMD) had been discovered in Iraq.
But by way of bizarre contrast, Americans – even though they remembered that the statements about the war had later been retracted – still continued to believe them! And it was surely no coincidence that – with the destruction of WMD put forward as the primary motive for the US-led war – fully a third of the American sample succumbed to a false memory of that oft-spoken-of armoury. Thus, in their minds, the official US line regarding the necessity of war was thoroughly vindicated. Truth – already a casualty of war – received a second hard blow.
The mendacious mind doesn’t just corrupt our view of the world: it also distorts our impression of other people. A judge in a small town in Pennsylvania, still mourning the loss of a family pet, comes down unduly hard on a defendant charged with cruelty to animals.4 The psychiatrist, rattled by the incurable and devastating symptoms of children with autism, thinks it obvious that the parenting style of the wrecked and exhausted mothers must be to blame.5 The passer-by wonders why the beggar doesn’t pull himself together and get a job, without a thought to how circumstances and ill-fortune can drain willpower, and smother the best of intentions.6 Meanwhile, the stereotypes with which we interpret the behaviour of others are constantly at work: simplifying, twisting, discounting and inventing. The wife, seething with fury at an injustice, is asked why she is so ‘upset’.7 The female scientist is judged ‘not quite up to scratch’ by her peers.8 The black man fumbling for his wallet is shot dead by police.9
Nor is it just our understanding of others that is skewed and unreliable: it has been just as troubling, perhaps, to learn of the farce that passes for self-knowledge. Our conception of ourselves, we have discovered, is ever changing, fluidly adapting itself to our circumstances and moods, and the petulant demands of self-esteem. Nor does the devious brain always do us the courtesy of informing us of all the true sources of our feelings and views. What a shameful catalogue of arbitrary influences it has been. Despondency about your job, however heartfelt, will clear with the skies. Joie de vivre will be found together with that twenty-pound note on the street. The disliked work colleague seems less objectionable, thanks to the fragrant aroma of the new office air freshener.10 One brand of spaghetti, rather than another, is thrown into your trolley because of where it is placed on the supermarket shelf.11 And, as if psychologists had not embarrassed us enough already, they have recently revealed that we are strangely drawn towards those things that unconsciously remind us of the person we love above all others – ourselves. Blinded by self-love, when the brain assesses potential locales, careers and life-partners, it favours those that share the beloved letters that appear in your own name.12 There are more people called Louis living in St. Louis than we would expect by chance. A dentist is more likely to be called Denis or Denise than (the equally popular) Jarrod or Beverly. Joseph is more likely to go down on bended knee before Josephine than Charlotte. (‘How do I love thee? Let me count the Js’, quip the researchers). Yet have you ever heard anyone explain that he moved to Seattle because his name is Sean? Even as we make some of the most important decisions of our lives, we are being unwittingly swayed by the brain’s capricious concerns.
Little surprise, then, that the true motives for our actions remain disturbingly obscure much of the time. We appear to have as little insight into our own behaviour as we do our thoughts. Nor do we enjoy as much control over ourselves as we might once have believed. It is not only that conscious will is weak and truculent (and, perhaps, nothing more than a pleasing illusion). We have learned of some of the myriad ways in which, without our knowing a thing about it, our behaviour is subtly altered by what is going on around us. We are, to some extent, at the mercy of whatever schemas are primed within us. The filthy, unkempt train encourages even more careless treatment by its passengers.13 The men’s magazine filled with pictures of disrobed women leaves its readers more inclined to leer and flirt with their female companions.14 The racist lyrics of the rap song playing on the radio kindle hostility against black people. Nor are we immune to the influences of the company we keep. Recent research has unearthed the contagion of other people’s motivations. Men, exposed to a description of another man who tried to seduce a young woman into a casual sexual encounter, pursued this goal themselves with heightened vigour.15
What is most alarming about all of this research is how these imperceptible changes in us occur without our conscious permission. The man with even the most praiseworthy attitude towards women is susceptible to the subtle effects of the sexist billboards that bombard him on his way to work. The woman who clutches her head in her hands at the sight of John Gray’s latest bestseller is nonetheless left a little less indignant about women’s lot after laughing at a joke that exploits those very same Mars-versus-Venus caricatures of the genders. When the aggressive bad guy in the action movie is black, even the sincere subscriber to ‘colour-blind’ principles becomes triggered to misconstrue the intent of the black man who stops him to ask the time. Our values and principles offer scant defence against the insidious effects of our environment.
The remarkable exposés of the mind described in this book underline the importance of experimental psychology for our understanding of the world, other people and ourselves. It is difficult, if not impossible, to point the finger at a single person and, with any degree of certainty, charge them with the crime of bias. Real-life situations are too complicated for us to be able to say, ‘You only think that parent should have custody of the child because of the way the question was phrased’, or ‘You gave that employee a smaller bonus because she’s a woman’, or ‘You only chose that car because the car dealer plied you with free coffee and pastries’. Indeed, thanks to our illusory sense of self-knowledge, these claims (particularly if levelled at ourselves) seem ludicrous. But as we have seen, the well-designed psychology experiment – by carefully manipulating the factor of interest – can expose concrete and undeniable evidence of these strange and often unwelcome influences at work.
On a more hopeful note, recognising and acknowledging our vulnerability to the many common machinations of the brain provides modest scope to guard against them. Some sources of ‘mental contamination’ can be side-stepped by simple avoidance.16 If you don’t want to take on the values of women’s magazines unconsciously – don’t buy them. If you don’t want to be biased by racist expectations of how your black students will perform – mark papers anonymously. If you don’t want distractedly to believe the trumped-up claims of adverts – don’t watch them.17 And if you don’t want your children unconsciously taking on board violent, sexist, racist or grossly acquisitive messages from their environment, then avoid exposing your young ones to them whenever you can – and complain about them.
It is also a pleasure to inform you that, simply
by reading this book, you have lightly armoured yourself against attacks on the integrity of your judgments and behaviour. (Why not protect your friends and family too? Buy them all their own copy.) Mental events that manipulate our brains – emotions, moods, schemas and stereotypes, and so on – lose some of their effect when we are aware of their potential to influence us. Remember the experiment described in ‘The Emotional Brain’, in which volunteers were asked about their life satisfaction on rainy or sunny days?18 People asked about the weather beforehand were less affected by weather-induced mood when giving their ratings than were volunteers not alerted to the current climatic conditions. Of course, the notorious British propensity for using the weather as an opening conversational gambit should offer protection against this particular influence on our thoughts. But still, remaining mindful of our susceptibility to polluting influences can only help compensate against them. (Unfortunately, we don’t always get this quite right; we sometimes under- or overcompensate. Still, it’s better than nothing.)19
While the veil our brain stealthily drapes over reality can never be whipped away entirely, there are other reasons for us not to be completely disheartened. We can be encouraged by the fact that determined efforts on our part to see the world accurately can help counteract distortion. If precision is important enough to us, we are capable of greater conscientiousness in gathering and considering our evidence. If it is important enough to you not to stereotype a particular group, for example, then with not a little effort you will succeed, as we saw in ‘The Bigoted Brain’. Nor, fortunately, must we be completely reliant on people motivating themselves to remove their bigot goggles. Making people accountable for their judgments of others goes a long way towards focusing their vision of other people with greater clarity.20
Best of all, we can recruit the brain’s freelance mind to use to our own advantage, as when we consciously train the mental butler of our unconscious efficiently and effortlessly to fulfil our aspirations. With some exertion on our part, the unconscious can come to automatically respond to certain situations in a manner that is in line with our conscious wishes. Vigilant weight-watchers, described in ‘The Weak-willed Brain’, for example, trained their mental butlers to respond to calorific temptations with an instant pursing of the lips and a shake of the head. Similarly, as we saw in ‘The Bigoted Brain’, it seems possible for us to cajole our brain into replacing its unwanted illiberal reactions to stereotyped groups with more enlightened attitudes.
Yet with this faint hope, that we are not entirely defenceless martyrs to the fictions of the brain, comes responsibility. ‘Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom; and with all thy getting, get understanding.’ This is no simple matter, of course. It is far easier to apply the lessons of the research described here to others than to oneself.21 Ironically, it is part-and-parcel of the vanities and weaknesses of the human brain that we secretly doubt that we ourselves are vulnerable to those vanities and weaknesses. (I asked my husband if he felt that I had become a more tolerant, understanding and perceptive person since writing this book. He stared at me blankly.)
However, let us rise loftily above ourselves. We owe a duty both to ourselves and to others to lessen the harmful effects of the brain’s various shams whenever we can. To be all eyes and ears for influences that may lead us astray when we are making important decisions. To be more tolerant of opposing viewpoints, however much it may seem that we are on the side of the angels. To bolster our feeble wills against temptations, distractions and impulses. To resist the easy complicity of stereotypes when judging others. To endeavour to put in the necessary groundwork to bring the unruly actions of the unconscious in line with our principles and values. And not to exploit the loose leash of other people’s brains in order to sell more soft drinks.
Above all, we should try to remain alert always to the distortions and deceptions of our wayward brains. For they are always with us.
Notes
1 See motivated scepticism as described in Chapter 1, pp. 16–18.
2 See belief perseverance and susceptibility to innuendo as described in Chapter 5, pp. 114–19 and 120–1.
3 S. Lewandowsky, W.G.K. Stritzke, K. Oberauer and M. Morales (2005), ‘Memory for fact, fiction, and misinformation: the Iraq War 2003’, Psychological Science, 16: 190–5.
4 See emotional contagion of moral judgments as described in Chapter 3, pp. 56–7. This particular case is described in L.H. Colwell (2005), ‘Cognitive heuristics in the context of legal decision making’, American Journal of Forensic Psychology, 23: 17–41.
5 How did the hypothesis (now completely discredited) that ‘refrigerator mothers’ were responsible for autism in their children come to hold such great sway in the 1950s and 1960s? Could it have been, in part, because of our need to believe in a just world (‘bad things happen to bad people’)? See Chapter 3, pp. 38–62, and illusory correlation as described in Chapter 4, pp. 82–5.
6 See situational control of behaviour and the correspondence bias as des cribed in Chapter 3, pp. 71–2. See also the effects of stress, distraction, social exclusion, etc., on willpower as described in Chapter 7.
7 See biased interpretation of ambiguous behaviour as described in Chapter 8. Regarding the use of stereotypes in making tacit inferences, see D. Dunning and D.A. Sherman (1997), ‘Stereotypes and tacit inference’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73: 459–71.
8 In a detailed analysis of the peer review process of the Swedish Medical Research Council, researchers found that women scientists had to be about two and a half times more productive than their male counterparts in order to be considered as competent a scientist. C. Wennerås and A. Wold (1997), ‘Nepotism and sexism in peer review’, Nature, 387: 341–3.
9 See the role of racial stereotypes in perception as described in Chapter 8, pp. 180–2.
10 See emotion-congruent judgments as described in Chapter 2, pp. 38–41.
11 See post hoc and erroneous explanations of behaviour as described in Chapter 6, pp. 137–42. Wilson and Nisbett found that shoppers, presented with four pairs of identical stockings, disproportionately preferred those presented on the right. (Needless to say, the shoppers did not cite position as a factor in their preference for a particular stocking.) See T.D. Wilson and R.E. Nisbett (1978), ‘The accuracy of verbal reports about the effects of stimuli on evaluations and behavior’, Social Psychology, 41: 118–31.
12 B.W. Pelham, M.C. Mirenberg and J.T. Jones (2002), ‘Why Susie sells seashells by the seashore: implicit egotism and major life decisions’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82: 469–87; J.T. Jones, B.W. Pelham, M. Carvallo and M.C. Mirenberg (2004), ‘How do I love thee? Let me count the Js: Implicit egotism and interpersonal attraction’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87: 665–83.
13 See the effect of schema priming on behaviour as described in Chapter 6, pp. 130–6.
14 Regarding these and subsequent examples, see the effect on behaviour of negative or benevolent stereotypes as described in Chapter 8.
15 But not if the goal was presented as being socially unacceptable. H. Aarts, P.M. Gollwitzer and R.R. Hassin (2004), ‘Goal contagion: perceiving is for pursuing’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87: 23–37.
16 The term ‘mental contamination’ defined by T.D. Wilson and N. Brekke (1994), ‘Mental contamination and mental correction: unwanted influences on judgments and evaluations’, Psychological Bulletin, 116: 117–42. They discuss strategies for avoiding mental contamination.
17 See the ‘you can’t not believe everything you read’ phenomenon as described in Chapter 5, pp. 119–20.
18 See Chapter 2, p. 40.
19 See T.D. Wilson and N. Brekke (1994), ‘Mental contamination and mental correction: unwanted influences on judgments and evaluations’, Psychological Bulletin, 116: 117–42.
20 For example, volunteers made accountable for the judgments of the culpability of defendants avoided the biasing effects of carry-over
anger. See Chapter 3, p. 57. Also see E.P. Thompson, G.B. Moskowitz, S. Chaiken and J.A. Bargh (1994), ‘Accuracy motivation attenuates covert priming: the systematic reprocessing of social information’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66: 474–89.
21 For example, people think that the self-serving bias affects other people more than it does themselves. See Chapter 1, p. x; Also, people think that situational factors will influence their own behaviour less than it does other people’s. See Chapter 3, pp. 70–1.
Index
advertising, subliminal 1
aggressiveness, primed 1
airline crashes 1
alien forces, belief in 1
‘alien hand’ experiment 1
altruism, rating of 1
ambiguity 1
anger, distorting effects 1
anxiety, coping with 1
Aristotle 1
aromatherapy 1
arousal 1 hypnotic suggestion experiment 1
Asian schema 1
assignment completion predictions 1, 2
authority gradient 1
Ax, A.F. 1
Batson, C.D. 1
Beads Task 1
behaviour, environmental influence 1, 2
beliefs adaptation of 1
handling of challenges to 1
and identity 1
loyalty to 1
perseverance of 1
polarisation of 1
benevolent sexism 1
bigot goggles 1
bigoted brain 1 see also stereotypes
A Mind of Its Own Page 21