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Thinking

Kirby, G., & Goodpaster, J. (2007). Thinking (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

THINKING FOURTH EDITION

GARY R. KIRBY JEFFERY R. GOODPASTER

WHAT IS THINKING?

We are such stuff as thoughts are made on.

-ADAPTED FROM SHAKESPEARE

In this book we encourage you to engage your mind and plunge into thinking. But first, let's meet some powerful thinkers who have preceded us.

Humans were speaking, and thus thinking, many millennia before the Sumerians, the Egyptians, and the Phoenicians learned to write their thoughts. The Greeks took their alphabet and burst forth into song, literature, philosophy, rhetoric, history, art, politics, and science. They needed to know how to argue their positions in their free democracy, and Corax of Syracuse, perhaps the first rhetorician, taught them how to use words to pierce into other minds. The sophists, skeptics, and cynics questioned everything, including their own ques- tioning. What would our world be like if we still held primitive beliefs such as Zeus throws thunderbolts? Socrates probed and prodded the Athenians to think: "The unexamined life is not worth living," he said. And he threw down to us the ultimate gauntlet: "Know thyself." Plato was so caught up with Socrates and with the pure power of the mind that he thought we were born

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2 CHAPTER 1 • What Is Thinking?

with ideas and that these innate ideas were as close as we could come to divinity. Plato's pupil, Aristotle, sharpened his senses to make impressive empirical obser- vations that climbed toward first principles; then he honed his mind into the ab- solute logic of the syllogism that stepped inexorably, deductively downward.

The Roman rhetoricians, Cicero, Tertullian, and Quintilian needing to argue their political and legal positions, built massive mental structures that rivaled Rome's architectural vastness.

The medieval thinkers, mental to a point that matched their ethereal (heav- enly) thinking, created mental structures mainly based on Plato, fortified with the logic of Aristotle. Aquinas, in his Summa, forged an unmatched mental cre- ation that, if one grants his premises, still stands as an unassailable mountain of the mind. In c;ontrast to much of this abstraction was the clean cut of Occam's razor, slicing off unnecessary entities, and the welcome freshness of Anselm, who preempted Descartes by stating, "I doubt, therefore I know."

The Renaissance thinkers turned their minds and energies to earthly navi- gation, sidereal science, art, pleasure, and empire. Some of these thinkers, like Leonardo da Vinci returned to the Greeks (Archimedes); some, like Montaigne, recovered rich ore in the Romans, sifted by the skepticism described on a medal around his neck: Que sai-s je? ("What do I know?") .

Pascal called his whole book of aphorisms Thoughts. Descartes echoed Anselm-"! think, therefore I arn"-and challenged our pride by telling us that "it is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well" (Les Dis- cours, Vol. 1). Those were the French rationalists.

No less rational, the British empiricists progressed from Locke's Aristotelian focus on the senses (the mind as a tabula rasa), to Berkeley's idea that we can be sure only of our perceptions' to Hume's radical skepticism.

Hegel looked on all history as an idea unfolding, and Marx concretized and capitalized that idea.

More modern thinkers like Wittgenstein, Whorf, and Chomsky all enter the open, unfolding, and marvelous arena of the mind. They welcome us ro come, enter with them, and think. .. .

Is anything more important than thinking? Is anything important that is c.c- connected with thinking? STOP! Did you think about the first question be;c:".. you read the second one? Our guess is that many of you kept reading; cor~=­ quently, you may have missed a chance to think.

WhyThink? 3

Things More Important Than Thinking

Let's start thinking now. Can you list anything more important than thinking?

1. ______________________________________ _ 2. ________________________________________ __ 3. ________________________________________ __ 4. __________________________________________ ___

What is on your list? How did you determine its value?

Thoughts Richer Than Gold

Take a look at the following very different lists. Are the items on any one list more important than thinking?

List A List B List C money breathing goodness good job eating life nice house exercising love new car mating truth

Think about list A. Although money is high on the list of American dreams, it cannot be earned or spent without the ability to think. Imagine a chimpanzee (limited ability) or a mannequin (no ability) trying to earn money or even spend it. Thinking is often behind the making of money. Larry Ellison, one of com- puter software's financial giants, says: "I observe and I plan and I think and I strategize" (Ramo, 1997, p. 58). Clearly, the ability to think is more important than money, jobs, houses, or cars.

What about list B? Is breathing more important than thinking? At this point we need to think more sharply and define the word important. If important means a sequentially first or necessary condition for something else to exist, then breathing is more important than thinking, for without oxygen the thinking brain quickly dies. But if important means a higher order or value, then thinking is of a higher order than breathing because breathing "serves" the brain (which, by the way, uses a disproportionately large amount of the oxygen). Rarely, however, does the cerebral cortex "serve" breathing, such as when one is studying to be a respiratory therapist.

Another way to understand that thinking is of a higher order than breathing is to realize that many philosophers since Aristotle have defined humans as "thinking animals." In other words, horses and horseflies breathe, but thinking

4 CHAPTER 1 • What Is Thinking?

makes us human; if humans are of a higher order than animals, it is our think- ing that makes us so. As a quality of a higher order, thinking is more important than eating, mating, or breathing.

And what do we think about list C? Are not goodness, life, love, and truth vast concepts of great importance? To weigh their importance against that of think- ing would take many pages and much thought; but to judge quickly the worth of thinking, we can again ask the question, is anything important that is not connected with thinking?

If we have thought of anything, we have just used our thinking process; thus we have connected thinking to the item we thought of, regardless of how important the item is. Similarly, love, life, truth, and goodness are necessarily con- nected with thinking. We may be able to mate without much thinking, like two fireflies, but we cannot love without thinking. Thus we think as we live life.

Just how important is thinking in relation to life? Since we think largely with language, consider how Wittgenstein connects life and thinking: "The lim- its of my language are the limits of my life." Is this an accurate statement? Does language limit life so strictly? If so, does this limitation show the importance of language and thinking? We will meet this idea again in Chapter 5, "Language: Our Thinking Medium."

• Thinking as Possibility

Our life at this moment, as we read this book and make choices about our actions today, is strictly limited by how much we have learned and by the thinking pat- terns we have developed. We can only choose to do what we know; for example, we simply cannot search for a sunken treasure unless we know that it sank. And the more we know and the better we can think with our knowledge, the more successful we are likely to be. If we know that a Spanish galleon, laden with Inca gold, sank in the Caribbean, and if we can think about the route it might have followed, the ocean currents, and its last reported sighting, then we might find the gold. More importantly, by thinking we might find the gold in our own lives.

THINK ABOUT IT: Your thoughts

become your words become your actions

become your habits become your character

become you

What Is Thinking? 5

Thoughts Accumu late

Tennyson tells us that "we are a part of all that we have met." Likewise, we are also part of all that we have thought; to a degree, we have become what we have thought about, and who we will become is limited by how and what we think. If we reflected earlier about language limiting life, we probably realized that our thinking has set the boundaries for our past choices in life. We have chosen from what we have known and how we have been able to think about our knowledge.

Life Without Thinking

Ignorance is the night of the mind, a night without moon or stars. -CONFUCIUS

What if we acquired no new thoughts for the next ten years? Could we hold our jobs? What would we think about quarks and nanotechnology? How well would we talk to people?

If in the next ten years we choose to read many thoughtful books, will our mind be different? Will we be markedly different because of the books we read, the people we listen to, the thoughts we have, and the way we express those thoughts? Certainly, thoughts accumulate. We grow as we think, and thus we change our future ability to think.

Thoughts accumulate not just arithmetically but exponentially. Each thought has the potential to merge with others and create an enormous num- ber of new thoughts; for instance, just forty-six items (your chromosomes) can be assembled into 25,852,010,000,000,000,000,000 combinations. With a six- thousand-word active vocabulary, imagine the creative combinations! In Chapter 7, "Creative Thinking," we will learn how to form some of these combinations.

Tell me what is a thought and of what substance is it made? -WILLIAM BLAKE

Right now you are thinking. Think about it. What exactly are you doing now? What is happening in your head as you think? Can you figure out how you have just processed these words into meaning? Simply put, how does your brain work?

The Mystery

Do not feel bad if you do not know the answer because neither do the experts. The Nobel laureate author Gerald Edelman at the beginning of this millennium said, "What goes on in your head when you have a thought . .. the answer must

6 CHAPTER 1 • What Is Thinking?

still be: we do not really know" (2000, p. 201). Humans have learned much about areas of the brain and neuroelectrochemical processes, but much is still to be discovered. We know more of the basic principles of the universe, of the atom, and of our bodies than we do of our brains. Newton drew the lines of forces connecting the earth to the stars, Einstein formulated the energy in mat- ter, Watson and Crick cracked the genetic code, but the model for the brain has not yet been found. (Some possible models include tabula rasa, or blank tablet, memory grooves, a computer, a hologram, and recently the metaphor itself.) Despite our fast accumulating knowledge of the brain, it remains a mystery.

Toward a Definition: Thinking as Communicating

If we do not understand the workings of the brain, if we cannot enter its inner sanctum and unfold its mystery, then how can we define thinking? One way to reach a definition is by observing the results of thinking as expressed in human communication. But what if some people claim that they do "thinking" that is to- tally internal and can never be externally communicated? We will not argue with them, but if they cannot talk about it or share it with us, their thinking cannot be useful to us. Therefore, we can define thinking as the activity of the brain that can potentially be communicated. The media of communication are multiple: language (speaking, writing, signing, paralanguage, miming), images (computer graphics, blueprints, charts, symbols), art (drawing, painting, sculpting, model- ing, architecture, music, dance), scientific formulas, and mathematics. All of these forms of communication have their special subtleties and strengths, but far and away the primary form of human communication is language; therefore, this book focuses on thinking as the activity of the brain that can potentially be expressed in speaking or writing.

The potential to express our thoughts includes, of course, the unexpressed thinking that is almost always in our heads: we plan the day and imagine sce- narios; we worry through problems and search for solutions; we daydream; we discover, invent, and create systems; we enjoy reflecting on our ventures, and sometimes we redesign our failures. Unexpressed thinking is valuable, and we use it often before speaking or acting.

How do we think about our thinking? That's not an easy question because we are caught in a circle: trying to know our mind with our mind is analogous to trying to see our eyes with our eyes. The eyes need a reflector such as a mirror or a still pond to see themselves. Similarly, to understand our thinking we need a mirror for our mind. Writing or talking can provide just such a mirror. Expressing our

Communicating: The Mirror of Thought 7

THE CENTRALITY OF THINKING , ~:;{'}tt,\' ..... ~~ .-;~-

You have only to look at the diagram be low to see the importance of, the centra lity of, thinking. Much of the stimuli around you enters your mind, you process it, or think, and then, if you choose, you respond.

INPUT OUTPUT

Listen Speak

Observe --+ THINKING Act

Read Write

thoughts allows us to look at them more objectively; others, then, can share their ideas about our thinking, and so, ultimately, we can think better.

Writing records our thinking on a piece of paper so that we can then exam- ine it. Try writing for sixty seconds as fast as you can on whatever comes to your mind without censoring any thought. In that way you will be able to externalize some of your thinking.

This externalization will probably not give us an exact replication of our thinking but will generate a cloudy mirror. The clouds will begin to clear if we repeat this activity often and learn to chart our thinking with our pen. Penning our thoughts is a challenge because the brain moves much faster than the pen, much faster than a "rapper" rapping 300 words per minute. The exact speed of the brain is not known, but let us guess that it is about 500 to 700 words per minute. Often the brain moves even faster because it does not think every word. Sometimes it leaps over phrases and whole groups of ideas to jump to almost instant insight.

We can also find out much about ourselves by looking for patterns in those sixty-second sketches: What are the topics that occupy our thoughts (People? Things? Money? Work? Home?)? What is on our sixty-second list? How much time do we spend rehashing the past, processing the present, planning the future, or

8 CHAPTER 1 • What Is Thinking?

daydreaming about our fantasies? Placing a percentage alongside those time frames (past, present, future) might amaze us.

Attempt these sixty-second snapshots at different times and in different places to get other sketches of your mind. They will change greatly with your environment and your feelings.

Thinking as Writing: Clarity, Exactness, Awareness, Richness

Print allows you to hold another's mind in your hand. -JAMES BURKE

Writing does more than mirror our mind. It can clarify it, sharpen our thinking, and enrich our mind with an understanding that was not there before we wrote.

Clarity is a gift writing gives to our thinking. "We do not write in order to be understood, we write in order to understand," said C. Day Lewis. Although many of us can "think on our feet," few humans can continually think crystal clearly. Our brains rarely function continually at a high level of clarity. With writing we have a chance to achieve some of that clarity. We can put our think- ing on paper and excise the ambiguity. This sentence, for instance, has been reworked until several readers approved of its clarity. And this clarity achieved in writing might even influence the type of person we are becoming: Francis Bacon tells us that writing makes an "exact" person.

Besides bringing clarity and exactness to our thinking, writing can intensify our physical and mental awareness. Just the attempt to describe what we are see- ing, feeling, and thinking can allow us to see sharply, feel deeply, and think more clearly. Later we explore these areas more thoroughly, but a warm-up activity is given below.

Thinking, Sensing, Writing

Look around the room. In the first column quickly make a list of what you see.

1 2 3

Now in the second column make a list of what you did not see before. You can become aware of what you missed by looking between the items

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Communicating: The Mirror of Thought 9

on your first list. If, for instance, your first item is a blackboard and your second item a student, notice what is between the blackboard and the student that you overlooked. Go ahead now and make a second list of overlooked items.

These two lists can tell you a lot about what kind of data you are put- ting into your mind. The first list might contain your usual observations, your usual "input" to your brain . The second list might contain items that you usually pass over. Now for the third list, try to see the most minute details of what you again overlooked. Try to see reflections of light, sur- face undulations, scratches and dents so small and so specific that they become hard to describe because there may not be exact words for them in our language. In the third column make a third list of small, sharp details that you see. To help you achieve this microscopic awareness, you may wish to peer into objects very close to you.

Has this third list helped you see new things? If you begin to record what you see, you will grow more alert and see what you never saw before. Try this looking activity in different places. And then attune your- self to your other senses of hearing, smell, touch, and taste. Respond with your feelings to what you sense. Finally, think about what you have sensed and felt. What does it mean?

Writing then, can mirror the mind, focus it into a state of clarity, and pres- ent new awarenesses. Beyond these gifts, writing offers another rich gift that is a paradox: When we pour water .out of a glass, we are emptying the glass, but when we pour thoughts out of our mind onto paper, we are filling our mind. As we assemble those thoughts into a new written structure, we are writing a new combination of words that was not in our mind before we wrote it down; hence, this powerful paradox: As we write something we create it both on the paper and in our mind. Thus, as we write we grow richer.

The poet Byron expresses this paradox in words that challenge our thinking:

'Tis to create, and in creating live A being more intense, that we endow With form our fancy, gaining as we give The life we image. (Lord Byron, Chi/de Harold's Pilgrimage)

Because writing is important as expressed thought, throughout this book you should take time to write out your thinking, especially when you wish clar- ification or feedback.

10 CHAPTER 1 • What Is Thinking?

Thinking as Dialogue: Validation and Insight Thought and speech are inseparable from each other.

-CARDINAL JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

We have seen that writing is a way to know, clarifY, and enrich our thinking. Dialoguing is another way to attempt to know and understand our thinking. Dialoguing is simply talking with and listening to other people. They be- come the sounding boards, the graveyards, and the launching platforms of our thoughts. As we will see in a later chapter, dialoguing is crucial to test our thoughts.

While we talk (expressing our thoughts), we can watch what effect our words have on others. Do people wrinkle their foreheads and repeatedly ask us, "What do you mean?" Or do our words quickly and easily get our ideas across? Do peo- ple lose interest in what we are saying, or do our words have the power, precision, and logic to gain attention, to hold attention, and to convince others? Their reactions give us information that helps us to judge and adjust our thinking.

As we observe these reactions of others, we need to interpret them, but some- times we get direct, focused comments from friends, students, or fellow learners who specifically critique our thinking as expressed in dialogue. One cautionary note concerning unrecorded dialogue is that it is gone as soon as it is spoken: "To base thought only on speech is to try nailing whispers to the wall" (Rosenthal, 1994). At the end of this chapter, some activities provide practice in critiquing dialogue.

Because human interaction is so important to our thinking, throughout this book we present activities that can be discussed, and we analyze the validity of dialogue in Chapter 13, "Evaluating." Besides validating our thinking, dialogu- ing can stimulate our thinking. Our thoughts can resound and rebound with new shape and vigor from the thoughts of others. Our ideas can intermingle, cross-fertilize, and become the seeds for whole new species of thoughts. A single head is a lonely thinker; however, we can seek out classmates, friends, colleagues, and new acquaintances who can excite our mind.

The opposite of clear thinking is confusion, and it can lead to costly conclu- sions. A young American inventor appeared before Napoleon and offered him a means to defeat the British navy: a ship that could sail against the wind and waves and outmaneuver the British fleet. Napoleon scorned his offer, called the American a crackpot, and sent him away. That young man was Robert Fulton. Napoleon had just turned down the steamship.

Summary 11

Napoleon's thinking error was common to most of us: He was blinded by the past. In addition, he was blinded by his quick temper. Instead of opening his mind and asking "how," his imperial temper may have cost him the war. In Chapter 2, "Personal Barriers," we will examine our personal thinking tenden- cies and barriers that could blind us from thinking clearly.

THINK ABOUT IT: We are not emperors, but we have mental blinders and habitual filters that block our thinking. Think for a moment about how we could make serious blunders. What are some of the topics we just will not listen to, the people whom we will not hear, the books we will not touch? How could our own thinking patterns lead us to costly conclusions?

SUMMARY

We have thought about the enormous importance of our thinking and how it can greatly impact our future. We have even had the audacity to rate thinking as more important than money. Although much of thinking remains a mystery in the vast, unexplored realm of our brain, writing and speaking can provide an entry into our unknown selves. Writing can be a mirror of our thoughts, a mir- ror that can give us clarity, exactness, awareness, and richness. The opposite, cloudy thinking, can miss its mark and cost us dearly.

We have just begun to probe the mystery of thinking. In coming chapters we will look more deeply into our thinking patterns and the way our language, beliefs, and values influence those patterns. We will then look at some of our major thinking "bases": sensing, feeling, creating, organizing, reasoning, scien- tific thinking, persuading, and problem solving; finally, we will look at evalua- tion, decision, and action.

Thinking Challenges

We have already suggested several thinking activities that can begin to help you to understand the thinking process. The following thinking challenges are designed to stimulate your thinking about issues related to this chapter. Your responses to the activities and questions that conclude each chapter might take various forms:

A simple reflection A journal entry A chat with a friend

12 CHAPTER 1 • What Is Thinking?

A dialogue with a student A class discussion A group discussion A formal paper A research project An individual or group presentation

1. How do you think differently from other people? Does your mind seem to move quickly or slowly? Do your thoughts come out in jumbles or clear steps? Are there certain times of the day that are better for certain types of thinking?

2. Write as you did for the sixty-second snapshots of your thinking but for a longer time. Then look into your writings as the mirror of your mind. Grad- ually see if you can wipe some of the fog off the glass and begin to get some understanding of what is in your mind.

3. Is Wittgenstein accurate when he says that "the limits of my language are the limits of my life"?

4. How might you think differently ten years from now according to the books you've read and the words you have written and spoken? What if you have not read any books?

5. Record a trip into your mind in any way you wish. You might try a stream- of-consciousness account like the novelist James Joyce, who often just lets the impressions of his mind pour out; you might make a list of associative think- ing (for example, black-white-snow-snowman-bully who knocked mine down . . . ). Enter a fantasy, a daydream, or any kind of thinking. The point is to attempt to become more aware of what you think about and how you think.

6. Look around, in different places, and describe what you don't usually see or hear. Think about why you do not usually see those things. What does this tell you about the interests of your mind?

7. Talk with someone else, and attempt to read the reactions your words are having on that person. Judge your thinking processes accordingly.

8. How might your particular thinking patterns lead you into costly errors? For instance, do you quickly accept what you read or hear? Do appearances of things or feelings of others strongly sway you?

9. Have you ever approached a problem, thought it through, and reached a decision that worked well for you? What were the thinking steps you took to produce those satisfactory results?

10. Have you ever jumped too quickly to a conclusion? Why? Have you ever been "absolutely certain" and then discovered you were wrong? What had you overlooked in your thinking?

Summary 13

11. If, as Tennyson says, "I am a part of all that I have met," what are the main events, persons, and places that have formed you? How have they formed your mind?

12. Thomas West (2004) has written a book with the intriguing title Thinking Like Einstein. He contends that because of our visual media, we are reading less and imaging more. He thinks visual thinking will replace word~based modes of teaching and learning. What do you think of that possibility? What do you think of images replacing spoken and written words?

13. "Print allows you to hold another mind in your hand," explains historian James Burke. What do you think he means by this? How much of your mind do you think you can express in print?

14. Before we go further into this book, take some time to reflect upon the mys~ tery of thinking. Ask yourself some questions that you would like to find answers to as you think through this book.

PERSONAL BARRIERS

Man is an emotional animal, occasionalf!J rational and through his feelings he can

be deceived to his heart's content. -WILL D VRANT, MANSIONS OF PHILOSOPHY

Who we are is how we think. Where and how we were raised may determine whether we are pessimists or optimists, conserva- tives or liberals, atheists or theists, idealists or realists. Our upbringing shapes our fears, which keep us from facing thoughts. It shapes our self-concept, which moves us to defend our thoughts. And it shapes our emotions, which can distort our thinking to an exceptional degree. In this and in other ways our psycholog- ical world, shaped by our exposure to cultural and genetic forces, often acts as a barrier to sound thinking. In this chapter we learn about these barriers so that we can diffuse some of their negative influence on our thinking. But this re- quires that we face ourselves honestly and completely, so that we can discover the personal factors that inhibit our thinking. Unless we face the fact of who were- ally are, we will not become the sound thinkers we are meant to be.

Imagine for a moment that you have the genetic constitution you have now but were raised by parents in another country. Imagine how you would be different. If you were raised in India, you would probably be of Hindu faith, believe in

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Enculturation 15

reincarnation, and be familiar with many gods and goddesses, such as Vishnu, Shiva, Shakti, Krishna, and Rarna. Or perhaps you would be of the Jain religion, revering animal life so much that you would never eat meat and would even sweep insects out of your house instead of killing them. If you were raised by parents in Iran, you would probably despise American capitalism and revere Muhammad above Jesus. If you were a man in the Sambian tribe of New Guinea, you would likely engage in homosexual behavior until you were married. And if you were a woman in the Mbuti tribe in Mrica, you would feel comfortable roaming your community in nothing but a loincloth. Even your taste preference is subject to cul- tural forces. In America, your favorite pizza topping might be sausage and mush- room, but in Japan it would probably be squid, in England tuna and corn, and in India pickled ginger. In sum, many of the values and preferences you have now, including religious ideas, sexual mores, and work ethic, were instilled in you since birth by your culture. This process, called enculturation, is going on continually, even now, no matter what your age. What does this have to do with thinking? Just this: The extent to which you are able to think critically about ideas that conflict with your basic attitudes and values is inversely related to the extent to which you are enculturated. If you accept only your enculturated notions of the world with- out resisting them, challenging them, thinking critically about them, you become a "logical egoist" a term used by Kant for close-minded people who are so sure of the correctness of their ideas that they see no reason to test them against the intel- lect of others. Ben Franklin seems to cite an example of this:

But though many private persons think almost as highly of their own infallibil- ity as of that of their sect, few express it so naturally as a certain French lady who, in a dispute with her sister, said: "I don't know how it happens, Sister, but I meet with nobody but myself that is always in the right." (Franklin, 1945, pp. 681-82)

Sources of Enculturation

Enculturation has many different sources or influences. One of the major influ- ences is the family in which we grow up. There we learn our religious beliefs, eth- ical standards, prejudices and stereotypes, eating habits, and worldview. The two great depth psychologists of the twentieth century, for example, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, accused each other of being negatively influenced by their family background. Jung accused Freud of establishing a negative psychology because he was Jewish, while Freud accused Jung of being blinded by his strong religious background, which prevented him from accepting sexual maladjust- ment as the root cause of neurosis (Puner, 194 7). The twentieth-century philoso- pher Bertrand Russell saw Immanuel Kant's moral argument for the existence of God as rooted "in the maxims that he had imbibed at his mother's knee" (Russell, 1957, p. 11), and Will Durant wrote of the influence of Martin Luther's parents,

16 CHAPTER 2 • Personal Barriers

who pushed him into the cloistered life through their repeated thrashing of him during youth, and who passed to him their vision of a hard, strict God and their beliefs in witches, elves, angels, and demons (Durant, 1957, p. 341).

Another source of enculturation is our place of work. Here we may learn cer- tain manners of behavior, dress code, professional ethics, and work attitude. The city in which we grow up can also be a strong source of enculturation. Some cities are known for wine and theater, others for beer and brats. Some cities tend to de- velop men with a lot of machismo, whereas others allow more tolerance for an- drogyny. In Milwaukee they may prefer Miller Beer, in Denver they may have a strong preference for Coors, and in Munich it may be Lowenbrau. Are the taste buds of citizens in these cities different? Or have the citizens learned to prefer one over the other? And what do you suppose the residents of Detroit think about Japanese automobiles? In the United States we can also find differences in encul- turation between northerners and southerners. Southern males, for example, think differently about the use of violence in self-protection and honor (Nisbett and Cohen, 1996). In sum, how we think about masculinity, violence, food and drink, sex, God, and most other things is often a matter of enculturation. The more we examine these enculturation effects on ourselves, the more we can think more ob- jectively, more independently, more clearly about various matters in the world.

THINK ABOUT IT: Can you think of other differences in behaviors, values, and ideas between people in the northern and southern sections of the United States? What about the eastern and western sections?

SOME COMMON AMERICAN BELIEFS

1. It's okay to kill animals. The Jains of India consider it sinful to kill even insects.

2. It's morally wrong to go outside without clothing, no matter where you live. Women in the Netherlands feel quite comfortable gardening in their backyard topless. And many tribes in Africa, of course, go without clothing or wear very little of it.

3. Intentionally deforming the body is sick. It was once traditional in China to wrap the feet of young girls for years to keep the feet ab- normally small. Such abnormality was considered a mark of beauty. And in some tribes in Africa, deforming the lips and ears, making them abnormally large, is also considered a mark of beauty. Perhaps deformation df the body is no longer considered "sick" by most

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Enculturation 17

Americans. Consider: In the United States most women, and some men, put holes in their ears; most males have the foreskin of their penis removed; and many thousands of women each year have surgery to enlarge their breasts. Maybe what is considered "sick" is only those deformations that are not done in one's own culture.

4. There is only one God. This monotheism is characteristic of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Most other religions are polytheistic.

5. Jesus is God. People of Jewish and Islamic faith would certainly dis- agree with this.

6. The Christian Bible is the only holy book. Of course, virtually every non-Christian would disagree. There are many books considered to be holy. The Koran and the Bhagavad-Gita are two examples.

7. It's all about money! The American obsession with money is catching fire throughout the world, but some cultures put less emphasis on it. Years ago, one Russian emigrant to the United States actually returned to Russia. His reason: Americans worship money like a god.

8. Marrying for reasons other than love is immoral. Throughout history and even today marriages are arranged for practical reasons: to strengthen family ties, for companionship, and for healthy offspring. Love grows later. In fact, people in some countries find our require- ment of romantic love for marriage absurd.

Religion and Enculturation

Most men indeed, as well as most sects in religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them, it is so far error.

-BEN FRANKLIN, AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITINGS (LAST SPEECH)

Religion is one area in which it is easy to see the enculturation process and its effects on thinking. For example, most Americans are Christians because they were raised by Christian parents and not because of any deliberate choice on their part. Most Christians have not objectively investigated alternative religions or looked extensively into the history of their own religion. Most are unaware, for example, that some romantic stories of other religious founders, like stories ofJesus, involve miraculous and supernatural conceptions, or that the Buddhist and Jain codes of ethics are in some ways more strict than that of the Christian ten commandments. And most Christians are probably unaware of the numerous contradictions in their sacred text, oflikely forgeries of some of the Epistles, of the alteration of texts by later scribes, of the geographical errors, and of the Epic of Gilgamesh, a myth about a Babylonian king much older than the Old Testament but with stories of a great flood, a man who built a boat to save his family, and a god who made man

18 CHAPTER 2 • Personal Barriers

from day. Nor are most Christians aware of the extent to which their own Christian doctrine has been shaped by "mere mortals" over the last seventeen hun- dred years. This lack of familiarity with one's own religion and that of others, due to enculturation processes, is true not only of Christians, but also of Muslims, and at people of all faiths. Despite our moderate ignorance about our creed and those of others, most of us are certain that the beliefs of our faith are true, and the faith of others and their heroes is false. This we "know" without any investigation at all. Obviously, our thoughts about religion are based more on feelings engendered by our faith and our culture than on critical thinking based upon knowledge and rea- soned argument. As William James put it, "Reasoned argument is but a surface exhibition. Instinct leads, intelligence does but follow" (1902, p. 74).

Clearly, if people are seekers of truth and clear thinking, resisting encultur- ation and its blinding influence (including an examination of their own religion) becomes essential, for it allows people to step back from their conditioning to look at issues more objectively-ethical issues such as abortion, proofs for God's existence, the meaning of life, new roles for women, and so on. A failure to re- sist enculturation, especially in religious areas, may lead to fanaticism. One con- sumed by this disease believes that, as William James puts it, "his deity's enemies must be put to shame" (1902, p. 342). Out offanaticism "crusades have been preached and massacres instigated for no other reason than to remove a fancied slight upon the God" (p. 335). Perhaps nobody puts it more bluntly than Robert Green Ingersol] (1955), the noted nineteenth-century agnostic orator:

Whenever a man believes that he has the exact truth from God, there is in that man no spirit of compromise. He has not the modesty born of the imperfec- tions of human nature; he has the arrogance of theological certainty and the tyranny born of ignorant assurance. Believing himself to be the slave of god, he imitates his master, and of all tyrants, the worst is a slave in power. (p. 589)

THINK ABOUT IT: Finding faults with a literal interpretation of a sacred text should not lead a person to rashly dismiss all its teachings that might be throwing out the baby with the bath water. There are timeless words of wisdom scattered throughout most holy books. But if some day you come to believe that, in the words of Nietzsche, "God is dead," or that your holy book is riddled with contradictions, errors, and myths, would that mean that it would then be okay to steal, lie, cheat, rape, and kill? In other words, what reasons, besides biblical authority, can you find for the moral values and behavioral codes taught in most religions about stealing, lying, killing, forgiving others, etc.?

Enculturation 19

. ::_;it· :: \ '~~' ·~'

SPINOZA: A MAN OF REASON ~-~:: _ ~-:,· -'"" ....

He was offered 1,000 florins a year to conceal his doubts; when he refused, an attempt was made to assassinate him.

-BERTRAND RUSSELL, A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY

One of the more notable resisters of enculturation was the philosopher Spinoza (1632-1677). He was a simple, poor, and humble man, a lens grinder and mystic of the seventeenth-century. He was raised Jewish, but his zeal for truth led him to study the philosophers of many faiths. Because his ideas challenged Jewish teachings, he was at the age of twenty-four excommunicated from his church and disowned by his father. To the Jews, he was a traitor, but in his own eyes, to desist from his challenges to Jew- ish dogma would make him a greater traitor, a traitor to the truth (Thomas and Thomas, 1959).

Many set out to convert him, or at least to refute him, but Spinoza stood steadfast, meeting his challengers with reasoned argument. His reliance on reason is apparent in this excerpt from a letter to one of his challengers:

Acknowledge the reason which God has given you, and follow that, unless you would be numbered with the brutes! (Eiwes, p. 425)

Refusing gifts of money from his friends and a university position in philosophy-the latter with a contingency that he not challenge the es- tablished relig ion of the state-Spinoza died a poor man.

An Exercise in Enculturation

Answer "yes" or "no" to the following questions. The purpose of this exercise is to examine the foundations of some of your thinking, not your conclusions, so don't be concerned about whether your answer is right or wrong. Just be honest. In most instances there is no general agreement on what the right answer should be.

1. Do you believe that the democratic form of government is the best kind of government in the world?

a. Are you aware of the problems of democracy often cited by sociologists and people from nondemocratic countries?

(continued)

20 CHAPTER 2 • Personal Barriers

I "~~~{~~ · _,_q;:"'--~~··:.i~}~'\ff-~~ :':· ~/l". ~~'"" -~~w;_-; ·.:£~U'r.

THINKING ~~.{-,_ .. · ·:r>'~·<> ,~i::~:"}1.ib.~:-.iJ2t, £~ :~~ ~,§), \ '~;'<:r:~J~~ ·~.:.l-i:J..~J,'•c.J~~,-.,.~::. • .t.; ... ~.Jt.~~<.A~ ,'§:;&;,. f!{N_. ~-jJj, ~~~.~~~~f~~

b. Can you express the basic philosophy of alternative forms of government?

c. Can you cite any positive aspects of either communism or socialism?

2. Do you believe that abortion is wrong in most or all cases? a. Do you have well-reasoned arguments to

support your belief? b. Does your definition of "human being" tell

you at what moment a human being comes into existence?

c. Do you know at what moment a developing fetus becomes conscious?

___ d. Do you know at what moment a developing fetus is capable of experiencing pain?

e. Can you cite any arguments used by pro- choice advocates to support abortion?

3. Do you believe that capital punishment is justified for mass murderers? ___ a. Do you know that capital punishment is a

more expensive punishment than life imprison- ment because of the numerous and very ex- pensive judicial appeals involved in the former?

___ b. Have you seen any statistics that clearly show capital punishment to inhibit murder?

4. Do you believe there is a God? a. Are you aware of the problem of evil? b. Can you present an argument against the

existence of God? c. Are you aware of some of the logical proofs

for God and the challenges to these argu- ments?

5. Do you believe that it is moral to use animals for medical experiments that may make life better for human beings?

a. Do you believe that it would be moral for beings on another planet with intelligence superior to ours to use human beings as guinea pigs for the advancement of their alien culture?

Enculturation 21

___ b. Have you ever seen laboratory animals suffer in an experimental setting?

c. Do you know that pigs are blowtorched under anesthesia, bunnies have their eyes sewed shut, and monkeys have their heads smashed to study the effects of burn treatment, cos- metics, and concussion respectively?

___ d. Have you ever read any argument against the use of animals in a laboratory?

___ e. Can you cite such an argument now?

___ 6. Do you believe that ESP is nonsense? ___ a. Have you read any studies by parapsycholo-

gists? ___ b. Are you familiar with any case histories of ESP?

c. Have you heard of J. B. Rhine? ___ d. Do you have a good argument for your posi-

tion?

___ 7. Do you believe that humans are the most intelligent life forms in the universe?

a. Do you know that there are billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars, so that if just one in 10 billion stars has a planet with life, there would be over one trillion planets with life?

___ b. Do you know that human life emerged on this planet in about 4.5 billion years and that the universe is old enough for this evolution- ary process to have happened three times in succession?

c. Are you aware that astronomers have discov- ered many planets orbiting our nearby stars?

8. Do you believe that one racial group is innately superior to another?

a. Do you know of any evidence that will sup- port your belief?

b. Do you know the extent to which the envi- ronment determines intelligence and eco- nomic success?

c. Do you know the amount of genetic similar- ity among racial groups?

(continued)

22 CHAPTER 2 • Personal Barriers

THINKING I ~~.~;,":;;-.,-~·;;l··~~"·'l~~1;.0":-r~~' ~W .. Mii. I.\§~ \\! :r·~t~; • ~;;"-{:'~';:;; ~· :t"-:-~Jo~ >!>,'{!!.' '&ir llfii ''W''?'f;. ""1 •. ~F),. .... D-"f1~~-rtt~J{J}~~t~J1'~~-- _§.'\if-·<~~ ./~gi,'1 , _::.]i£;t.j~~

9. Do you believe that the United States is the best country in the world?

a. Do you know that the U.S. infant mortality rate is higher than that of many other modern industrial countries?

b. Do you know that the United States has one of the highest rates of violent crime in the world?

c. Do you know that the top 1 percent of the U.S. population holds more than 40 percent of all wealth in the cou ntry, more than the combined wealth of the bottom 90 percent, reflecting the greatest inequality among ad- vanced industrial countries?

___ d. Do you know that people in many other countries have longer life spans than peop le in the United States?

___ 10. Do you believe that humans did not evolve from lower life forms but were created separate ly?

a. Have you ever read a book on the evidence for evolution?

b. Have you ever ta lked to a paleontologist, geologist, biochemist, or zoologist about evolution?

c. Do you know that 95 percent of our genes are identical to those of a chimpanzee?

d. Are you aware of any of the following?

Homologous structures Vestig ial traces Major fossil discoveries DNA similarities How our embryonic ontogeny recapitulates

phylogeny

If you answered "yes" to the numbered questions above, but "no" to the lettered questions that follow, it could be that you have ·merely adopted your position through an enculturation process-that is, you have picked up your ideas through peers, parents, religious community, and so on,

Self-Concept 23

instead of through careful reflection and the gathering of facts. A "yes" response 'to many of the questions above is not necessarily wrong and could be supported by sound reasoning and facts. Though it might ap- pear so, this is not an exercise to support "liberal" views. The point is not to determine what is true about these issues but to show the encultura- tion process at work by illustrating the lack of both thinking and knowl- edge that tends to go into these beliefs.

It happens over and over again. A company that is doing pretty well in a business it knows will take over another company and ruin it. . . . Why do companies make such big mistakes? One reason, I suggest, is ego. They want to show they are the biggest, smartest kids on the block . ... When will these guys grow up?

-JACK NEASE, "AT&T-NCR COMBO jUST DID NT COMPUTE"

Recognizing the extent of our enculturation lessens its effects and moves us closer to an open mind, which is essential to critical and creative thinking. But we must also deal with other barriers that inhibit sound thinking, one of which is self-concept.

Our self-concept is the way we view ourselves. It may be unhealthy if we see ourselves rather negatively (for example, as not very intelligent or very pretty); or it may be healthy, if we see ourselves positively (as attrac- tive and worthwhile). What goes into our self-concept may include not only intelligence and attractiveness but a variety of other things: the sports team we favor, our grades in school, our home, friends, religion, state, country, car, political position, values, possessions, and so on. Thus, some- one may view herself as an American, a "card-carrying Republican," a 49er fan, a conservative Catholic, an animal rights activist, an exceptionally beautiful person, and a consumer who would never buy anything but a Mercedes. People vary in the degree to which they use their attributes, things, values, and affiliations to define themselves and form their self-con- cept. To some people, these elements are central to the notion of self; they defend them as though they were defending themselves. Thus, we hear sto- ries of sports fans assaulting others because of some critical remark against their favorite football team, teenagers killing each other over a pair of

24 CHAPTER 2 • Personal Barriers

athletic shoes, and wars between countries over sacred buildings and dif- ferent religious beliefs. When these elements become so central to our no- tion of who we are, we are not likely to think critically about them. Instead, we respond emotionally and may engage in ego-defense mecha- nisms, self-serving biases, and other distortions to ensure ourselves that what we identify with-that is, what we think we are-is good.

The Idea of Self

What is our idea of self? Were we born with it? It seems not. Then have we made it our own creation? If so, have we done the right thing in cre- ating it? Does the self truly exist? Or is it only the mind's idea? Whether our idea of self refers to a real or an illusory self, most of us will agree that we do spend a lot of time defending, maintaining, and creating that idea of self-for example, when we fight with others when they demean us, expla in away a bad exam grade in order to appear more intelligent, or buy a new car to show off our wealth. Buddhist scholar and monk Walpola Rahula offers this perspective:

The idea of self ... produces harmful thoughts of "me and mine," selfish desire, craving, attachment, hatred, ill-will, conceit, pride, egoism, and other defilements, impurities, and problems. It is the source of all troubles in the world from personal conflicts to wars between nations. In short, to this false view can be traced all the evil in the world. (1974, p. 51)

Do you agree with Rahula's statement? Is the idea of self this dangerous? Can you cite instances to support it? Can you cite reasons to disagree with this statement?

Pay special attention to the news for the next few days. To what extent can the "troubles in the world" be attributed to the idea of self?

What about troubles in your own personal life? Reflect on your recent arguments or moments of tension with others. To what extent was your thinking affected by your need to protect your self-concept?

Finally, as an exercise in "self," try to respond to others today and tomorrow without a sense of self, without protecting an ego. How diffi- cult do you think it will be? What were the results?

Self-Concept 25

Letting Go .

If your idea of self can get in the way of your thinking, a good strategy to aid straight thinking is to practice letting go of those ideas you have of your self, whether true or false. Letting go means reducing as much as possible your identification with the constituents that you use to define your self. You can begin this letting go by li sting the major ideas you have of your self on the lines below.

Activities you most like to do

People and things you most enjoy

Traits you most admire about yourself

Now imagine that you are fifty years older. Which traits will be gone? Which people and things will have been replaced? Which activities will you no longer be do in g? Most likely your idea of self today will not be your idea of self tomorrow, yet you will probably believe that you are the same person (philosophers debate whether a person is actually the same or not over time). Should we, therefore, identify with those traits, activi- ties, and loves to the point that it leads us to conceit, anger, defensive- ness, and an inabi lity to take constructive criticism when those cherished

(continued)

26 CHAPTER 2 • Personal Barriers

- ~:;:~:r·--",-,,~~------~"'";f-~''··1f \Ili''mU ~~"-11

THINKING -X'·'(:;~~ "'l'lll:~ilfJf. J~l\ .. !;~ :~l~ii:~ s~?L-t~:>' ~~~q :(~, -~-·- ~·--*~ ~~ things are threatened? On the other hand, would it be acceptable to believe in something so much that you would die for it? Do you think it would be possible to let go of your idea of self and still act to defend some principle?

Ego defenses are psychological coping strategies that distort reality in order to protect ourselves from anxiety, guilt, and other bad feelings. Some of the more basic ones that impact on our thinking are denial, projection, and rationalization.

Denial

Experience with an alcoholic population suggests that certain individuals will deny to the point of dying.

-G. FORREST, DIAGNOSISAND TREATMENT OF ALCOHOLISM

When we simply refuse to accept an unpleasant reality, we are using denial. Defining what an unpleasant reality is varies from one person to another. For the alcoholic, it is his or her drinking problem. Thus, because of denial, many alco- holics are unable to think critically about their drinking behavior. Similarly, col- lege students may deny that they are doing poorly in school, that they are lazy, or that their boyfriend or girlfriend really does not love them. Religious people may deny scientific or logical challenges to their faith, and scientists may deny sound evidence that challenges their favorite theory. By keeping these unpleas- ant realities at bay, we protect ourselves from a reality that is unpleasant, but we also inhibit our ability to think objectively about the situation and to make in- telligent decisions for our own and others' best interests. The following appears to be a case of denial:

No scientist ever has, nor ever will see a star form because the Creator cre- ated all of His stars in the fourth day of the creation week (Genesis 1: 14-19). In the Spring of 1992, some scientists claimed to be observing a star form out in the stellar heavens. They used various mathematical equations to come to their conclusion. However, if their conclusion is in direct contradic- tion to what the Bible says, then their conclusion is wrong [emphasis added]. (Martin, 1994,p.175)

In the above passage, one gets the sense that no matter what the strength of the evidence for the birth of stars, the conclusion will simply be denied. When

Ego Defenses 27

our beliefs are already well-grounded, weak, foolish evidence or argument does not deserve attention, as when someone tries to argue for a flat earth. Unfortu- nately, those using denial too conveniently overestimate the strength of their position, as in the example above, and dismiss strong challenges and facts as nothing more than rubbish. The power of the mind to deny reality might be doubted by some; it should not be. It is all too apparent when one considers the steadfast delusions of the mentally ill: some schizophrenics who believe they are is Jesus will, when in the company of other schizophrenics with the same delusion, insist that the others are imposters; anorexics can look in a mirror and see a need to lose weight; and someone with a multiple personality can exhibit a subper- sonality of the opposite sex. If the human mind can achieve these lengths of de- ception, how much easier must it b~ for it to delude the rest of us with denials of more prosaic things.

THINK ABOUT IT: What beliefs about yourself, your children, your religion, etc., do you hold so dear that challenges to them might tempt you to deny the unpleasant truth? How about challenges to the truth of your religion? Challenges about the goodness of your child at school? Challenges to your ability to handle drugs? Challenges about the extent to which you have the character traits that make you proud?

Projection

There I see the beam in my own eye as a mote in my brother's eye. It is right there because I am unconscious of the beam in my own eye.

-CARL JUNG, C G. ]UNG SPEAKING

Projection is the defense mechanism by which we see in others a part of ourselves that we cannot accept and do not recognize. We may believe others are hostile toward us when it is we who are hostile toward them. We may see in others our own incompetence and deceitfulness, which we are unable to accept in our- selves. We may see selfish motives in others, which are really the selfish motives in us that we do not consciously recognize. In short, we see others not as they are, but as we are. Our thinking about ourselves and others is therefore grossly dis- torted when we engage in projection. Like denial, this interferes with our ability to think critically about ourselves, others, and our social situations. Notice in the example below how a man's perception of others as crazy and desiring to hurt him seems to be a projection of his own inner reality.

28 CHAPTER 2 8 Personal Barriers

INTERVIEWER: Well, how do you feel about all those things they are saying? PATIENT: What do you mean, "feel"? [said with distrust]. They're crazy.

They want to see me destroyed. INTERVIEWER: Oh, well, that's awful. It's scary to have people say crazy things

about you. What would make them do that?

PATIENT: They're jealous of me, that I have my wife; they must be trying to get her from me.

INTERVIEWER: Well, of course, you're a proud man, and it must be difficult to have them talking about you like that. Now let's see if there's any way we can help you stay on top of things and keep in con- trol. We can both agree that you're a strong man, and it's im- portant not to let it weaken you.

PATIENT: Yes. I'm strong. But I'm very worried that her family might make me do something crazy--Like want to hurt someone. (Vaillant and Perry, 1985, p. 965; emphasis added)

Rationalization The easiest person to deceive is one's self

-LORD LYITON

Of all the defense mechanisms, rationalization is perhaps the greatest inhibitor of clear thinking. Rationalization is distorted thinking that attempts to justifY behavior motivated by self-interest or unacceptable desires. It serves to protect us from bad feelings by, for example, turning selfish motives into honorable ones. For example, a rationalization may have come from the captain of the cruise ship Oceanos, which sank in the Indian Ocean in 1991. When asked why he left his ship in a lifeboat while hundreds of passengers were still on board, he replied that the order to abandon ship applies to everyone, and once the order is given it does not matter when the captain leaves. He also mentioned that he could control rescue operations better from the shore.

In essence, rationalization is lying to ourselves about the real reasons for our behaviors and feelings. It is essential that we believe in this lie in order for it to protect us; if we knew we were lying, it would do us no good. Many of us can recognize the following tax-season rationalization:

I cheat on my taxes because of the way the government spends our money, you know-hundreds of dollars for a plain hammer and thousands of dollars for a toilet seat. It's our duty as U.S. citizens to put a stop to this nonsense. Maybe if we all held back a little Uncle Sam would get the message.

Rationalization has its roots in psychoanalytic psychology. Ironically, even its founder, Sigmund Freud, may have been guilty of it. He gave several reasons

Self-Serving Biases 29

why the proverbial couch, which deters patient-therapist eye contact, enhances therapy, but elsewhere he stated, "I cannot put up with being stared at by other people for eight hours a day (or more)" (cited in Roazen, 1975, p. 123).

A famous, lengthy rationalization is found in Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage. The Civil War soldier, who abandons his comrades and flees for his life out of sheer terror when an enemy battalion approaches, justifies his actions later:

He [speaking of himself] had done a good part in saving himself, who was a little piece of the army. He had considered the time, he said, to be one in which it was the duty of every little piece to rescue itself if possible. Later the officers could fit the little pieces together again, and make a battle front. If none of the little pieces were wise enough to save themselves from the flurry of death at such a time, why, then, where would be the army? It was all plain that he pro- ceeded according to very correct and commendable rules ... He, the enlight- ened man . . . had fled because of his superior perceptions and knowledge. (Crane, 1894/1951, pp. 87-88)

Yes, indeed! As Shakespeare's Falstaff said, "The better part of valor is dis- cretion" (Henry the Fourth, Part I).

Finally, let's not forget the rationalizations of the anti-abolitionists, those peo- ple who wholeheartedly supported slavery, including the Fugitive Slave Bill. How many of them, instead of facing the truth of their motivations, that their support resided in enculturated bigotry or the personal economic advantages of free slave labor, convinced themselves that their position was an honorable one, that slavery was in accord with the Law of God, that sending runaway slaves back to their masters was also in accord with the law of God, and that the support of slavery was good for the country's stability? Preachers read passages from the Bible that apparently support slavery (e.g., Exodus 21:2-8 and 20-21; Leviticus 25:44--46; Ephesians 6:5; Timothy 6:1-2) and delivered their rationalizations in public sermons: "When the slave asks me to stand between him and his master, what does he ask? He asks me to murder a nation's life; and I will not do it, be- cause I have a conscience-because there is a God" (Craft, 2000, p. 733).

Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.

-DEMOSTHENES, THIRD OLYNTHIAC

If our actions are driven by good motives, they do not need to be rational- ized. But actions, even with good motives, can lead us into other thinking dis- tortions if they lead to undesirable consequences, consequences that threaten

30 CHAPTER 2 • Personal Barriers

our self-esteem. The actions of others can also threaten our self-esteem. Such ego-threatening situations can lead us to cognitive biases called self-serving biases. These are biases in our thinking and perception that protect or elevate our self- esteem. As noted above, we do not always think about and perceive things as they are, for that would often mean looking at ourselves in an unpleasant light. Consequently, most people tend to see what they need to see and what they want to see in order to maintain or strengthen positive feelings about themselves (Maslow, 1954).

One aspect of the self-serving bias is the tendency to take credit for our successes and to blame our failures on external factors (Zuckerman, 1979; Bradley, 1978). For example, a student failing an exam might attribute her failure to an unfair test or an incompetent instructor rather than her poor study habits. And politicians who lose elections are likely to attribute their loss to negative campaigning by their opponent or a lack of funds necessary to get their message across rather than to flaws in their own personality or po- litical perspective. On the other hand, when we get promoted at work or get an A on a test, we are likely to attribute our success to our intelligence, per- severance, and hard work.

Whereas we often attribute our failures to situational factors and our suc- cesses to personal ones, a second aspect of the self-serving bias is the tendency to make opposite attributions when judging the behavior of others that threatens our own self-esteem. When a student competitor in college gets a better grade than we do, we may find it threatening to our self-esteem and attribute the bet- ter grade to luck or some privileged relationship with the instructor. Yet, when others fail, we may look to their character for an explanation and ascribe their failure to their incompetence, ignorance, or laziness.

The tendency to engage in ego defenses and self-serving biases should de- crease as our psychological health increases. Healthy people are more able to own up to the totality of who they are, both positive and negative (Jung, 1969a). When we can truly accept ourselves as we are with our faults-that is, when we can think of ourselves as worthwhile persons in spite of our failings-then we have less need to repress, deny, project, or make misattributions to protect our- selves. As healthier people, we are less threatened by the successes of others and more able to tolerate our own failures; we own up to our mistakes and give credit to others. In sum, we think better for b~ing better.

THINK ABOUT IT: Have you ever made an erroneous attribution for someone else's behavior? Have you ever been the victim of such an attribution?

Self-Serving Biases 31

,''f.;;:. •'I ';'·::'! '' ' OTHER ATTRIBUTION ERRORS :: · . . :-- - · ·

:;7.. _:;:...

Our attributions about our own behaviors as well as the behavior of others are often wrong because they are biased by our need to protect our self- esteem. But they can also go wrong for other reasons. For example, if we saw a young man speeding by in a red convertible with a beautiful lady by his side, we would probably attribute his behavior to immaturity and show- ing off. This is because of a tendency we have to attribute the behavior of others to their personal traits instead of to their situation. Oftentimes these internal attributions are wrong and the situation is the real force behind the behavior. In such instances we have committed the fundamental attribu- tion error. In the example above, the student might be speeding to the hospital because his gorgeous wife is about to deliver a baby.

The actor-observer bias extends the fundamental attribution error one more step by stating that we tend to make internal attributions when ob- serving the behavior of others but situational attributions when assessing our own behavior (except when examining our success). Thus, employees (observers) may attribute a manager's strict rules to the manager's rigid per- sonality, whereas the manager (actor) explains the rules as necessary to deal with the stresses and pressures coming from her superiors. On the other hand, a manager (the observer now) may see her unproductive employees as lazy and unmotivated, whereas they (the actors) perceive their unpro- ductive behavior as a natural consequence of working for an insensitive, au- thoritarian personality. The differences in attribution are probably rooted in differences in points of view: the boss is less aware of herself and more aware of the employees, while the employees are focused on the boss and are less focused on themselves. Fortunately, this bias can be minimized by having each side empathize with the other (Regan and Totten, 1975).

SELF-SERVING BIASES? - ''f''.~t:;,,_" .. "!-<,. >' ~'

Self-serving biases are cognitive distortions that put us in a favorable posi- tion. The statements below come from the insurance forms of car-accident victims who were asked to summarize the accident. Are these self-serving biases or just grammatical mistakes?

1. A pedestrian hit me and went under my car. 2. As 1 approached the intersection a sign suddenly appeared in a place

where no sign had ever appeared before.

(continued)

32 CHAPTER 2 • Personal Barriers

SELF-SERVING BIASES? (Continued)

3. My car was legally parked as it backed into the other vehicle. 4. The indirect cause of this accident was a little guy in a small car with

a big mouth. 5. An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my vehicle, and vanished. 6. The telephone pole was approaching. I was attempting to swerve out

of the way, when it struck my front end. 7. I had been driving for forty years when I fell asleep at the wheel. 8. To avoid hitting the car in front of me, I struck the pedestrian. 9. The pedestrian had no idea which direction to run, so I ran over him.

10. 1 pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother-in-law, and headed for the embankment.

Owning Up to Our Dark Side

We have seen how a failure to see and accept ourselves as we are can lead to thinking distortions as we rationalize, project, deny, and use self-serving biases. Therefore, it is worthwhile to look at the dark side of ourselves and accept it as part of who we are. And if we think we don't have a dark side, we might consider the words of the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1921):

Self knowledge is proverbially rare and difficult. Most men, for example, have in their nature meannesses, vanities, and envies of which they are quite unconscious, though even their best friends can perceive them without any difficulty.

So be honest with yourself and write down those "meannesses, vanities, and envies ." To help you identify those dark .elements, which the psychol- ogist Carl Jung called the "shadow," reflect back on criticisms you have received from others and remember that other people, especially our friends and loved ones, often know us better than we know ourselves. And don't forget your enemies: "It is an old saying but true: If you wish to learn your faults, listen to what your enem ies say" (Eads, 1879, p. 167). Also reflect on how you reacted to that criticism and consider these state- ments by M.-L. von Franz (1964), one of Jung's students:

If you feel an overwhelming rage com ing up in you when a friend reproaches you about a fault, you can be fairly sure that at this point you will find a part of your shadow, of which you are unconscious.

(continued)

The Role of Expectations and Schemata 33

It is particularly in contacts with people of the same sex that one stumbles over both one's own shadow and those of other people.

When an individual makes an attempt to see his shadow, he becomes aware of (and often ashamed of) those qualities and impulses he denies in himself but can plainly see in other people- such things as egotism, mental laziness, and sloppiness; unreal fantasies, schemes, and plots; carelessness and cowardice; inordi- nate love of money and possessions-in short, all the little sins about which he might previously have told himself: "That doesn't matter; nobody will notice it, and in any case other people do it too." (pp. 168-69)

So that you don't walk away from this exercise depressed and full of loathing about yourself, write down ten positive characteristics of your personality also. Then congratulate yourself for taking a small step toward better thinking and a richer life, for "only those who have ach ieved self- knowledge and are constantly seeking both to enlarge it and apply it in their daily living, are capable of overcoming their automatic reactions and reaching their own ideal limits" (Mumford, 1951, p. 250).

Nan-in, a japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen. Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself '1t is overfull. No more will go in!" "Like this cup, "Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and spec- ulations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"

-N. SENZAKI AND P. REPS, "ZEN STORIES"

Not only do we tend to think about the world according to what we want to see and what we need to see, we tend to think of it in terms of what we expect to see. We tend to perceive and think about others and situations in terms of the ideas we have already formed about them. These ideas are called schemata (plural of schema). Often we distort the truth to make it fit into our existing schema, or we notice only those aspects of others' behavior or ideas that fit into our existing ideas about them. In other words, we are reluctant to change our perceptions and ideas to accommodate the facts (accommodation); instead, it is easier to fit our observations and thinking into our existing schemata (assimilation). If our

34 CHAPTER 2 • Personal Barriers

prior experience with someone is that he is extremely selfish and we form an idea of him as "a selfish person," then we tend to see his current actions as selfish. If he suggests a new policy at work to increase morale and productivity, we wonder about the selfish motives that must be underlying his new policy. Surely he can- not be interested in the well-being of others and the company's productivity.

Similarly, if a teacher believes that a student is not very bright, frequent questions from that student may be interpreted by the teacher as verification of the student's ignorance. On the other hand, if the teacher is told that a student is intelligent and highly motivated, the student's questions may be seen as re- flecting that person's insight and motivation. Imagine what your reaction would be if you heard that a dictator was freeing some political prisoners and giving millions of dollars to the poor in his country. You would probably either dis- count the information as mere propaganda or question his motives, believing that he was trying to manipulate his people for some reason. His behavior would not likely cause you to change your perception of him from a ruthless dictator to a compassionate benefactor.

A good example of a schema that influences the way we perceive and think is the stereotype-a simplistic, biased view about members of a certain group. We learn stereotypes from a variety of sources. Sometimes we overgeneralize from our limited experience with members of a group. Often we learn our parents' stereotypes by listening and observing them, and we sometimes absorb stereo- types from our peers and the media. Whatever their source, stereotypes have a powerful effect on our thinking.

It is important to realize that stereotypes are inaccurate. They assume that groups are more homogeneous than they are. For some reason, when it comes to our own group, we see the richness and diversity of its members, but when it comes to our perception of other groups, we assume that their members are all alike. On what basis can we possibly assume so? Certainly, similarities exist among group members but not to the degree that stereotypes imply.

Although stereotypes in particular and schemata in general often distort our thinking, sometimes we do change our views of people and situations when we encounter facts contradicting a particular schema. Some research suggests that this accommodation is most likely to occur when the new information is mod- erately discrepant with our schema (Bochner and Insko, 1966). If an idea is very similar to our existing views, we are likely to minimize the difference and assim- ilate it into our existing schema, thus not modifying our views. Likewise, if the information is highly discrepant, it simply cannot fit into our schema and we reject it. For example, if typical Christians were exposed to arguments that Jesus never existed and that the entire New Testament is a myth, they would find this information very discrepant and would probably reject it without the least con- sideration. On the other hand, information that Jesus was unusually friendly

Emotionallnfluences 35

with a political group whose intent was to overthrow the Romans might simply be assimilated into their schema ofJesus as a spiritual leader, who just happened to appeal to some political groups bent on overthrowing Roman rulers. Little or no change would be made in their concept of Jesus.

Moderately discrepant information, however, is too different to be easily as- similated and yet not so different that it must be rejected. Thus, if we are likely to change our views in the face of evidence, moderately discrepant information will most likely, but not necessarily, lead to that change. Can you imagine any real or fictitious revelation about Jesus that could be considered by most Chris- tians as moderately discrepant with their views?

THINK ABOUT IT: An open mind is essential to critical thinking. But there is no easy recipe for acquiring an open mind, especially regarding prejudice. Negative thoughts toward a minority group may go, but negative feelings often linger on. Those feelings may lead us to continue our negative behaviors and attitudes toward a group.

Emotions are an important feature of human experience. They are, in part, what separates humans from machines and the lower animals, for machines can compute but they cannot experience joy. And although animals may find themselves attached to others, they do not love them. Emotions give our world color and richness, joy and surprise, but also pain and sorrow. Emotions can affect and inspire thought, said William James, but he also said they can de- stroy it. Later in this book we look at how emotions can inspire thinking, but for now our attention focuses on their inhibiting influence, on their capacity to bury, twist, and fragment the thinking process and take it to the depths of the irrational.

Anger

Why does my violence so silence reason and intelligence? -JEAN RACINE, PHAEDRA

Both Plato and Aristotle believed that anger could be a "potentially constructive ally of reason" (Averill, 1982, p. 85), but both of them also recognized its de- structive influences on rational thought. This destructive influence was apparent

36 CHAPTER 2 • Personal Barriers

to the Eastern philosophers of that period also. In the Bhagavad Gita (ch II. vs. 63) we read:

From anger arises bewilderment, from bewilderment loss of memory; and from loss of memory, the destruction of intelligence and from the destruction of intelligence he perishes. (Radhakrishnan, 1948, p. 126)

Likewise, the Roman philosopher Seneca saw no value in anger:

No provocation justifies it, no situation permits it, and no benefit is gained by it. Once allowed, anger entirely consumes its possessor and renders dull his capacity for reasoning and sensible action. (Averill, 1982, p. 83)

Certainly anger and reason appear to most people to be the antithesis of each other; where one appears, the other seems to be absent. Anger has destroyed intimacy, thwarted good judgment, motivated senseless killings, inspired nu- merous wars, and probably burned more bridges in the career paths of men and women than any other single force. That's because it distorts our perception of a situation, colors our ability to think critically about it, and impairs our self-control. As William James put it, "Nothing annihilates an inhibition as irresistibly as anger does it." (1902, p. 264)

The cause of anger may be a threat to something we hold dear. It may also be due to frustration, which is often caused by the blocking of a goal, or even by stress and hormonal changes in our bodies. No matter what the source, it is im- portant not to make important decisions in the heat of anger, for good thinking does not prevail during such moments. Instead, we want to release the tension caused by the anger and strike out, hurt, or destroy.

The short-term goal of releasing tension can supersede and crush years of careful deliberation and planning as we say or do things we know we should not. The aspiring businesswoman ruins her career by berating her boss for making a poor decision, or a man angry at his fiancee's selfish behavior castigates her for all her personal faults and breaks off the engagement. Although anger may in- spire great speeches, it often throws thinking in the backseat as our emotions take control.

Earlier we mentioned how previous knowledge, like stereotypes and other schemata, can distort our thinking. Feelings can also affect thinking in a similar way. For example, anger can not only overrule our thinking but also distort it so that we believe that what we are doing is justified and rational. For example, a parent may severely spank a child because of frustration with the child and a need to release anger. The parent may then rationalize the aggression against the child by claiming that such punishment was necessary to teach the child appropriate behavior-in spite of the fact that psychologists have for years been saying that appropriate behavior can be taught by nonviolent methods and that such

Emotionallnfluences 37

spanking can be harmful to the child. The parent does not acknowledge the real motivation for the behavior.

Dealing with Anger

If anger can lead to unthinking behavior or override our better judgment, we need to lessen its impact. We offer five suggestions.

First, do not vent your anger:

The psychological rationales for ventilating anger do not stand up under ex- perimental scrutiny. The weight of the evidence indicates precisely the oppo- site: expressing anger makes you angrier, solidifies an angry attitude, and establishes a hostile habit. If you keep quiet about momentary irritations and distract yourself with pleasant activity until your fury simmers down, chances are you will feel better, and feel better faster, than if you let yourself go in a shouting match. (Tavris, 1982, pp. 143-44)

Besides fueling the original anger, venting anger more often results in guilt, low- ered self-esteem, mild depression, anxiety, embarrassment, and an exacerbation of the original conflict (Tavris, 1982; Averill, 1982). This is not to say that you should stew for days with unabated anger. If the anger does not eventually sub- side, although usually it does, an attempt should be made to calmly talk about the matter. Pick a time when the other person is not angry and will therefore be more likely to listen.

Second, get advice about your chosen course of action from others who are not angry. They may be able to give you a clearer perspective and prevent the some- times disastrous consequences of decisions made under the influence of anger.

Third, become assertive. Anger is sometimes caused by continuous victimiza- tion. Being assertive means standing up for your rights in a self-controlled, nonaggressive manner that diminishes the potential for defensiveness in the other person. Bear in mind, however, that it is irrational to believe that life should al- ways treat us justly. In other words, don't overdo your assertive behavior.

Fourth, learn to relax and to practice other stress-management strategies. Reducing the stress in your life and practicing relaxation exercises regularly can help you control the frequency of your anger.

Lastly, don't get angry. This may sound simplistic; however, when you con- sider that anger is rooted in the meaning you give to the events around you, as opposed to the events themselves, it is reasonable to try to alter that initial per- ception and prevent the anger from occurring altogether. Psychologists call this cognitive restructuring or reappraisal. For example, if you perceive that someone is trying to slight you in some way, you might ask yourself if there is another rea- son for his behavior. It might be possible, for example, that he is unaware of the impact his behavior has on you. Empathy, identifying with the position of the

38 CHAPTER 2 • Personal Barriers

other person, sometimes helps to make these reappraisals. Or you might want to put things in proper perspective. For example, if you were counting on someone to mow the lawn today and he did not, you can ask yourself how important it is that the lawn be mowed today as opposed to tomorrow. Even if the lawn mow- ing were to be skipped for a week, what's the worst that would happen?

THINK ABOUT IT: Aristotle said, "But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way-this is not easy" (Nichomachean Ethics) . This statement suggests that there is a place for anger. Even Jesus got angry: "And making a kind of whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, also the sheep and oxen, and he poured out the money of the changers and overturned the tables" (John 2: 15). In what situations, if any, do you think anger is an appropriate response? What would be the right way to express it? Be careful that you do not rationalize your past behavior.

Passion Be it what it will, the ruling passion conquers reason still.

-ALEXANDER POPE, MORAL ESSAY.S'

William Penn defined passion as "a sort of fever in the mind, which ever leaves us weaker than it found us" (1906, p. 57). We define it more prosaically as the intense love of some person, thing, situation, or value to a level that inhibits objective rea- soning about irs object. Most people have experienced it in romantic love, whence the statement "Love is blind." In love or wherever it is found, passion is able to un- seat reason, and rational thought becomes "rationalized thought."

How many unwanted pregnancies occur because a couple has surrendered to "the heat of passion"? How many lives have been lost because of a passion for the euphoria of drugs? And how many good relationships have been destroyed by misplaced passion felt for someone else? When we love a person or thing in- tensely, we typically do not see the dark side; we tend only to justifY our desires. Romantic lovers, for example, idealize their partners and often find them with- out faults. Contrary opinions from friends and family are seen as motivated by jealousy or born of misunderstanding.

Our passion may be our religion, our food, or our drugs. It may be televi- sion, a person, a home, or a material object. Whatever the source, we tend to im- merse ourselves in our object of passion, revel in its various qualities, and only later, if ever, find our reason again. Perhaps we can take the advice of the Cistercian

Emotionallnfluences 39

monks (Trappists) who suggest developing a humble awareness of passion's hold on our reason: "Cistercian humility makes you very circumspect in your actions when you know your will to be weak and wounded and your intellect to be of- ten blinded by selfishness and passion." (Merton, 1949, p. 23)

THINK ABOUT IT: For what people, things, or ideas do you have such passion that you may not be able to think clearly about them?

Depression

When our object of passion is lost, we may find ourselves dysphoric or seriously depressed. This response is echoed in the story of Romeo and Juliet and the nu- merous young and old alike every year who commit suicide out of a deep sense of loss. But the loss of something dear to us is only one cause of depression. Other causes include biochemical factors, severe stress, a sense of hopelessness, lack of sunlight, and illogical thinking.

Of particular interest to us are the effects that depression may have on thinking. Several studies on depression support the idea that irrational cogni- tions are correlated with depression. (For our purposes "irrational" and "illogi- cal" are the same, although some make a distinction here.) However, some disagreement exists about whether unhealthy cognitions cause depression, or whether depression causes unhealthy cognitive styles. Although we can find re- search supporting both hypotheses, the conclusion from a longitudinal study on this topic, using a sample of998 people, is that "people change their expectan- cies and subscribe to irrational beliefs as a result of being depressed," and not the other way around (Lewinsohn et al., 1981). Other studies (e.g., Miranda and Persons, 1988) also give support to the idea that mood can influence thinking.

The kinds of irrational thinking that often accompany depression include a tendency to see or exaggerate the negative side of a situation and to diminish the positive:

A depressed patient observed that a faucet was leaking in a bathroom, that the pilot light was out in the stove, and that one of the steps in the staircase was broken. He concluded, "The whole house is deteriorating." The house was in excellent condition (except for these minor problems); he had made a massive overgeneralization. (Beck, 1976, p. 219)

To depressed people the cup is half empty, not half full. Depressed people also tend to minimize their successes and maximize their failures by attributing their successes to external causes and their failures to internal causes. In general,

40 CHAPTER 2 • Personal Barriers

depressives are more critical of themselves than they should be and see the world and their future in a more negative light than nondepressives do. That is why suicide prevention centers must often help suicidal people think of alternatives to their problems. Their ability to see their situations clearly is often impaired by their negative mood. As Schneidman ( 1985) points out, suicidal people, most of whom are depressed, may see only two alternatives to their dilemma: suicide or some unrealistic solution .

Depression in various degrees is so prevalent that it is often called the common cold of mental illness. Ten percent of college students, for example, exhibit moderate depression (Craighead et. al, 1984). Mild depression may be much more common, and even mild depression can negatively color our thinking.

Dealing with Depression

Serious depression requires serious psychological or medical intervention by a pro- fessional. But if we are simply suffering from "the blues," we must realize that our thinking about ourselves and about life in general is probably colored somewhat by our negative mood. If possible, we should put off major decisions until our mood lifts or talk to others to help us explore alternative courses of action and achieve better insight into our situation. If we have not already done so, we should exercise; exercise can lessen depression (Stein and Motta, 1992; Dunn et al., 2005). In the meantime, we can try to identify the causes of our depression and take action to correct them or, if necessary, seek advice on handling those causes.

Sometimes the cause of our depression is our own irrational thinking. For example, if we encounter a person who does not like us, we may become ex- tremely upset about it and spend many hours wondering what it is about us that is difficult to like, and we may even suffer insomnia worrying about it. We may also strive excessively to please that person. Through our own reflection or through the hdp of others we may come to see the irrational assumption under- lying our unhealthy reaction: "Everyone should like me because I'm a nice person." If we think carefully about this assumption for a moment we can see there is no truth to this, for plenty of nice people, including Jesus, Gandhi, and Mother Teresa, had enemies. No matter how nice we may be, some people will invariably misunderStand us or project on us their own inadequacies. Similarly, students who feel lowered self-worth when they receive a disappointing grade are operating under a different irrational belief: "My worth depends upon my achievements." They need only remind themselves that many psychopaths have done well on college exams to realize the error in this kind of thinking.

Cognitive psychologists help people with dysfunctional thinking to see the irrational nature of their thoughts and then suggest rational replacements. Our friends and colleagues may help us do the same, and we can even learn to do this ourselves. In the example below we can see how one cognitive psychologist

Emotionallnfluences 41

challenged the distorted thinking of a student who was fearful of giving a speech (sound familiar?).

PATIENT: I have to give a talk before my class tomorrow and I'm scared stiff. THERAPIST: What are you afraid of? ,

PATIENT: I think I'll make a fool of mysel£ THERAPIST: Suppose you do make a fool of yourself. Why is that so bad?

PATIENT: I'll never live it down . THERAPIST: "Never" is a long time. . . . Now look here, suppose they

ridicule you. Can you die from it? PATIENT: Of course not.

THERAPIST: Suppose they decide you're the worst public speaker that ever lived .... Will this ruin your future career?

PATIENT: No ... . But it would be nice if I could be a good speaker. THERAPIST: Sure it would be nice. But if you flubbed it, would your par-

ents or your wife disown you? PATIENT: No .... They're very sympathetic.

THERAPIST: Well, what would be so awful about it? PATIENT: I would feel pretty bad.

THERAPIST: For how long? PATIENT: For about a day or two.

THERAPIST: And then what? PATIENT: Then I'd be O .K. (Beck, 1976, p. 250)

The resolution of depression is not always easy. Fortunately, most people do not become severely depressed. And most who are mildly to moderately de- pressed, unless it is a major personality characteristic, will find their depression eventually lifting. In the meantime, we must be careful about the thoughts and decisions we make while depressed and remind ourselves of the cognitive distor- tions we may be experiencing.

Five Thinking Errors

The five thinking errors below range in severity and frequency and can be found in all of us from time to time. They are particularly likely to appear in times of emotional strain. As you read them, think about instances in which these thinking errors have distorted your thinking, and how these errors have affected your significant others.

(continued)

42 CHAPTER 2 • Personal Barriers

1. Personalization: egocentric thinking in which the world is seen to revolve unduly around the individual. A person might take respo nsi - bility for a disappointing picnic at the lake by saying, "I should have known it would probably ra in today; it rains a lot in May. I shou ld have waited until June." Or upon walking by a woman in a store with an arngry look on her face, a person wonders, "Why is she mad at me? What did I do?"

2. Polarized thinking: also ca lled "black and white th inking" or "d i- chotomous th inking," categorizing complexities into one extreme or the other (later we examine it as the "either/or fallacy") . For example, a depressed person may see himself only in a negative light and fai l to see the good characteristics he has. Or if a person is not extremely suc- cessful, she might consider herself a loser. A man might say, "People either like me, or they hate me," not real izing that peop le can also have mixed fee lings about him . A person with a borderline persona lity disorder often sees people as either all good or all bad. Politics is often riddled with this kind of thinking when we assess the merits of a bill , cand idate, or foreign pol icy.

3. Overgeneralization : drawing broad conclusions on the bas is of a sing le incident. A student fails one course at college and then be lieves she is a fa ilure and wil l not be able to earn her degree . Or after rece iving a reprimand duly or unduly deserved, a person thinks, "Everyone hates me." Or after his girlfriend breaks up with him, a man th inks, "I'm never going to find someone who will love me."

4. Catastrophizing: a common characteristic of anxious peop le in which they cons ider the worst possible outcome of an event. A young man announces to his mother that he is getting married, and she immedi- ately th inks about the likelihood of a deformed baby or even a divorce in his future . A young woman going out on a bl ind date expects it to be a real disappointment. Or a father, upon hearing that his son intends to major in philosophy, imag ines his son permanently unemployed and expects him to be a constant financial burden.

5. Selective abstraction: focusing on one detail of a situation and ignor- ing the larger picture. For example, an instructor receives a very favor- able evaluation from 90 percent of her students but dwells instead on the unfavorable comments from the few. Or a football player, after an overall excellent performance, curses himself for the one pass that he should have caught (Beck, 1976).

Striving for Cognitive Consistency 43

Cognitive consistency refers to a harmony among our various thoughts, and to a harmony between our thoughts and behaviors. Human beings strive for cognitive consistency because holding onto thoughts that are inconsistent can create an un- pleasant state called cognitive dissonance (discord) when the inconsistency cannot be justified. This state of dissonance may lead to psychological tension and un- comfortable feelings. When we find ourselves in a state of cognitive dissonance, we will often try to change our thoughts or our behaviors to achieve harmony and thereby reduce the tension.

Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) conducted a now classic study illustrating the effects of cognitive dissonance. They had subjects perform a boring task and then asked them to lie to the next subjects by telling them that the task was actually quite enjoyable. Some of the subjects were paid $1 to lie, whereas others were paid $20. Later the subjects were asked about their feelings toward the task. Results showed that subjects who lied for $1 rated the task more fa- vorable than the ones who lied for $20 (about $130 in today's money). This was exactly what Festinger and Carlsmith's cognitive dissonance theory would have predicted. The group that lied for $20 could more easily justify the in- consistency between their thoughts and their behavior. They might have said to themselves something like this:

The task was really boring, but I told this other guy that it was a lot of fun. I know I lied, but, hey, wouldn't you for twenty bucks? I mean, it's not like I hurt anyone, you know.

On the other hand, the group that lied for $1 would experience dissonance and pressure to change their belief, because it is not easy to justify the incon- sistency for only $1:

The task was really boring, but I told this other guy that it was a lot of fun. I lied for a lousy buck. Boy do I sell out cheap-a lousy buck. But, hey, when I thought about it, you know, it really wasn't so bad. In fact it was sort of chal- lenging. I mean, turning pegs in a hole a quarter of a turn over and over again for a half-hour. Hey, that's a challenge! Kind of fun. No, I didn't lie to the guy, it was quite challenging and enjoyable actually. Besides, I wouldn't lie for a buck.

Thus we see how our thinking can be influenced by dissonance and the need to reduce tension. Specifically, cognitive dissonance can lead to rationalization, a defense mechanism mentioned above.

The need for cognitive consistency shows up in many areas of life. When buying a car, for example, we might be torn between two attractive models: an

44 CHAPTER 2 • Personal Barriers

expensive model with a lot of extras, or a less exciting but more affordable model. If we don't believe in spending a lot of money for a car or paying for a lot of unnecessary frills but we are somehow talked into doing so, we experience dis- sonance as our behavior becomes incompatible with our beliefs. We then have two options to remove the dissonance: (1) we can change our behavior-in this case, that would mean taking the car back, which is not usually an option-or (2) we can change our thinking about the car, in other words, rationalize our purchase:

Compared to the cheaper car I was looking at, this one will last longer, so I'll easily get the extra money out of it. Besides, this car is safer than the other one. And when it comes to your very life, you can never spend too much. As far as the accessories go, well, they'll help to sell the car when that distant day arrives. Besides, what's wrong with a little pleasure in life. You only live once, you know.

Incongruence among thoughts or between thoughts and behaviors does not always cause a dissonant state. For example, if a student disliked the school she was attending but no other school in her area was affordable, there would be no cognitive dissonance. As long as there is sufficient justification for the discrepant situation, cognitive dissonance does not occur. Or if a young man does not be- lieve in premarital sex, but when the moment arrives at which his beliefs must be put to the test he engages in such sex, then cognitive dissonance would prob- ably occur-unless he can sufficiently justify the discrepancy somehow, such as believing he was not free to choose. He might argue to himself that he was drinking that night and didn't know what he was doing. If this argument is con- vincing, no dissonance will occur and he will not be motivated to change his thinking about premarital sex. If, however, he cannot find a source of coercion or justifiable motivation for his behavior, he will probably experience dissonance and be motivated to either (1) change his thinking about the wrongfulness of premarital sex or (2) change his behavior. Because he cannot undo the sexual behavior that caused the dissonance, his only option is to change his attitude, or live with the dissonance.

We can apply the idea of cognitive consistency to relationships in other ways. Balance theory argues that our likes and dislikes of other people should be in harmony. For example, if you are friends with Mary and you both are pro-life, then you have a balanced relationship in that area; there is no disharmony. How- ever, if you are friends with Mary and you learn that she is pro-life but you are pro-choice, you have some incongruence, an imbalance that creates pressure on you to change either your attitude toward abortion or your thinking and feelings toward Mary.

Balance theory predicts that many people would vote for a candidate because their friend or spouse did. Doing so would create a more balanced situation.

Stress 45

When the imbalance grows too strong, some couples won't even talk about pol- itics or religion, although many couples and friends do openly disagree with each other and maintain their deep friendship at the same time. Crucial or cher- ished ideas create more balance pressure than rather irrelevant ones. Who cares, for example, what your friend's favorite ice cream is? Relationships do not change over a disagreement about vanilla or chocolate. However, dissonance would likely occur in a relationship when both persons are quite politically active and share very different political ideas.

Many couples and their mutual friends experience an unbalanced relationship when the couple gets divorced. For example, it is often difficult for an ex-wife to continue her friendship with someone who still likes her ex-husband. Similarly, it is difficult for the mutual friend to continue her affection for both of her divorced friends when each criticizes the other in her presence. In order to eliminate her dis- sonance, she may begin thinking and feeling negatively about one or the other and break off her relationship with that person, or she may find a way to get them to- gether again. Her third option is to distance herself from both of them.

Thus we can see how dissonance and imbalanced situations can change our sexual mores, political views, and attitudes toward our friends, for no other rea- son than to remove the incongruence and tension we experience. Our need for compatible thoughts and behaviors actually leads to altered thinking.

It's when Jim weary of considerations, And lift is too much like a pathless wood . ..

I'd like to get away from earth awhile -ROBERT FROST, "BIRCHES"

Stress is excessive demand upon the body or mind, producing physical or psy- chological strain. The sources of stress are numerous: work overload, rapid cul- tural change, time pressure, conflict, noise pollution, negative life experiences, unrealistic expectations, daily hassles, and so on. These stressors not only con- tribute to between 60 and 80 percent of all diseases, but they affect our cogni- tion as well. Stress can impair our memory, the basis of much of our thinking, and it can also affect thinking more directly. Stress can lead to preoccupation with an idea, concentration difficulties, deterioration in judgment and logical thinking, and negative self-evaluations. It may also lead to an inability to check our thoughts against reality (Becket al., 1979) and may seriously interfere with our ability to make decisions (Janis, 1982). Under stress, our ability to perceive alternative solutions to a problem diminishes, our capacity to search for relevant

46 CHAPTER 2 • Personal Barriers

information to aid our decision making is impaired, and the long-term conse- quences of our decisions are overlooked. This leads us to make decisions prema- turely-an action called "premature closure" (Janis, 1982)-and then creates more stress as we deal with the consequences of our poor decisions:

A professor was asked to speak to a community group. He walked to the wrong room and suddenly realized that the presentation was to be given in another building. Beginning to feel pressure, he trotted out to the parking lot to drive to the other building, which was about a block away. He reached for his car keys and found none. Panic began to build. He could see the building in which he was to speak but could not get into his car to drive over there. It was already five minutes past the time of his talk, so he ran to his office to pick up his keys and then ran back and drove over. Only then did he realize that he could have walked the distance in less time than it took him to go back to his office for his keys.

This is a classic example of how stress interferes with our ability to perceive al- ternatives.

Because stress affects our thinking in so many ways, it is important that we keep it under control. A number of stress-management strategies can help us with this control, but we must first be aware that we are under stress. This is not always easy, for stress can accumulate so insidiously that we underestimate its extent. We may get clues, however, by observing ourselves and noting the signs and symptoms of stress and by listening to what our friends and loved ones say about us, such as, "What's wrong with you lately? You're not yourself."

SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS OF STRESS

The following signs and symptoms may be indicative of stress. The list is by no means exhaustive. The more of these symptoms you have, the more stress you are likely to be suffering, although no two people respond to stress in exactly the same way. Bear in mind that although stress is a com- mon cause of these ailments, other causes may be responsible.

Cognitive Signs 1. Poor concentration 2. Poor memory 3. Paranoid thinking 4. Low self-esteem, loss of self-confidence 5. Nightmarish dreams 6. Preoccupation with one idea or thought 7. Constant worrying

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Stress 47

Emotional Signs 1. Depression 2. Moodiness 3. Irritability 4. Anger 5. Crying spells

Physical Signs 1. Gastrointestinal problems 2. Inability to feel relaxed 3. Insomnia 4. Fatigue 5. Loss of appetite 6. Ulcers 7. Skin rashes 8. More frequent colds 9. Headaches

10. Worsening of other physical problems 11. Loss of sex drive

Behavioral Signs 1. Withdrawal from others 2. Intolerance of others 3. Displaced aggression toward others 4. Fidgeting behavior (pencil tapping, leg bouncing) 5. Increase in bad habits (fingernail biting, smoking) 6. Increase in facial and other tics 7. Binge eating 8. Increased use of alcohol

Stress Management

Once we know we are under stress, it is important to identify its source, being as specific as possible. Don't settle for generalities like "life stresses me out." That's too vague to suggest a stress-management solution-suicide is not a viable option. By probing further we may find that it is not life itself that is the source of our stress, but perhaps it is the speech we have to give in two weeks or time pressures at work that is causing us strain. Or perhaps it is our children. But what about our children? Are they too noisy? Too demanding? Too disobedient? Do they require roo much attention, or frequently get us up in the middle of the night? We need to be specific, for each situation requires a different approach to stress management.

48 CHAPTER 2 B Personal Barriers

Sometimes the source of our stress is ourselves, for we can easily be our own worst enemy. This inside source of stress can be our unrelenting need for perfection in everything we do, or our failure to put things in proper perspective, as when we make mountains out of molehills. Other times the source of our stress is outside our self. Noisy children, time pressures at work, or a failing relationship are examples.

In general, stress-management approaches fall into four major categories: (1) removing the outside source of stress, (2) removing the inside source of stress, (3) managing the body's response to stress, and (4) preventing stress. Re- moving the outside source of stress would be appropriate when dealing with the stress of noisy children, for example. We could set an hour of quiet time every day, discard noisy toys or only allow them to be used outside, or install more doors and carpet. If the stress comes from the constant attention we must give a child in the middle of the night, the solution may be to ask one's spouse to share in that responsibility by alternating nights. Again, the source of stress should be identified as specifically as possible. Often the appropriate stress-management approach will then become obvious.

If the outside source of stress cannot be removed, perhaps we can remove the inside source, which involves changing ourselves. Typically this means re- moving irrational ideas and expectations that give rise to our stress, and chang- ing the meaning we give to the stressor. Often we can change the stressful meaning we give to life events by putting them in proper perspective. If we must give a speech, for example, we could ask ourselves, "What's the worst that can re- alistically happen? Will I die?" Probably the worst would be to forget our speech and become embarrassed. Life goes on. In one week no one will remember any- way because people will be too busy with their own problems.

Putting a speech in proper perspective is one way to reduce its stress. Often- times this requires addressing and removing irrational ideas that underlie the speech anxiety. For example, we may be · overly concerned about our upcoming speech because we believe that we must be perfect in everything we do, that everyone should like us, or that everyone is concerned about how we perform. All of these are irrational thoughts that must be challenged and replaced with more realistic ones.

Sometimes we can extend our perspective still wider to show how small our stressors really are. If we stop to think about how short our lives are and how small we are in this huge universe, certain concerns and worries dissolve away in insignificance. When we think about our Milky Way galaxy sitting in obscurity in the vastness of space among 130 billion others like it, with an average of 100 billion stars in each galaxy, with the total number of stars in these galaxies possi- bly exceeding the number of grains of sand on all the beaches on our planet, we can understand why the astronomer Carl Sagan referred to our home as only a speck in the cosmic dark, "a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam" ( 1994, p. 8). And when we think about how old our universe is (about 14 billion years), and

Stress 49

how in comparison our life is shorter than that of a fruit fly, then maybe it does not matter any more that we are trapped behind a car going 34 miles per hour in a 35-mph zone, that our spouse doesn't get the garbage out on time, that we are five minutes late for our meeting, or that our hair doesn't look just right. As Ralph Waldo Emerson put it:

Life is too short to waste In critic peep or cynic bark, Quarrel or reprimand; 'Twill soon be dark; Up! mind thine own aim, and God speed the mark! -RALPH WALDO EMERSON, "TO J W."

If we cannot eliminate the source of stress and we cannot change the meaning we give to it, we can always manage our body's response to stress through exercise, meditation, relaxation tapes, adequate rest, and proper nutrition. This reduces both the subjective feelings of stress and the deleterious effects stress can have on our physical and mental functioning. Exercise, meditation, or relaxation alone can sometimes be enough to remove the feelings of stress. Proper nutrition is important because stress rapidly removes essential vitamins, particularly the B complex, which are vital to healthy physical and mental functioning.

Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, we should think about ways that we can prevent stress in the first place. In most areas oflife, prevention is much eas- ier to accomplish than a cure. When our lives are already full of responsibilities and our free time is barely enough to meet our needs, we can turn down offers for extra work and refrain from volunteering on yet another committee. Think- ing ahead will also help reduce stress: our umbrella will then be in the car on a rainy day, the car will have gas for our trip to work, and we will leave room in our schedule to attend our child's school performance. In short, an extra car key and the word "no" will often do wonders.

Five Ways to Prevent Stress

By itself, readi ng about stress management wi ll do nothing to prevent or reduce stress. Action is what is ca lled for. In this activity, identify five things that you can do th is week to prevent future stress. To get ideas, consider past stressors and the stresses of people in your fam ily or at work. If you get

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50 CHAPTER 2 • Personal Barriers

-,· '·"~,..,. ,_<,,_, "·· ~';"["' ~ • ':\l!lilf·~· THINKING ltl.~V.~~:~f\t&.il\'.;ol' .:::t~i· t'@; ~1 .. ~'"· '" i,-,,.Jk~::

- J]'IW:""~-;?'87["1":--'-~"o"".·@i ;ti)l ,'l'f''":;',l>'~~-~1mi':!!;,.

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stuck, consult a friend; they can often be invaluable thinking aids for getting your life back on track or keeping it from jumping ra ils in the fi rst place. 1. __________________________________________ __ 2. ________________________________________ _ 3. ________________________________________ _ 4. ________________________________________ ___ 5. ________________________________________ _

Congratulations on comp leting this activity. Now it's time to act on your ideas, for "the great end of life is not knowledge but action" (Huxley, 1885, p. 7).

SUMMARY

The extent to which we can think critically is strongly related to who we are. The enculturation process largely determines our prejudices and values, and our self-concept contains specific areas of sensitivity and weaknesses that motivate defensive thinking through the use of ego defenses and self-serving biases. Addi- tionally, our schemata shape, restrict, and stereotype our perceptions and think- ing. And depression, anger, passion, and stress can lead to irrational thoughts and poor judgment. Our thinking also seems to be affected by our need for consistency and balance among our thoughts and emotions.

All of these factors lead one to wonder about the extent to which human be- ings can be rational at all. Certainly, the more we engage in self-reflection and become aware of these biases and limitations, the more we are able to avoid them. Such awareness can help us identify our thinking biases and move our thinking in a healthier, more rational direction. Besides self-reflection, we can take specific actions to remove the causes of bad thinking. But transcending our personal barriers is not easy, and most of us do not completely remove them. Fortunately, better thinking does not require perfection, only one step at a time in the right direction.

Barrier Challenges

1. List the favorite beer in your town or among your group. Is it your favorite as well? Why?

2. Would you eat cow? Would people in India eat cow? Do you think it is okay to eat dog? Do you know any cultures in which they do eat dog?

Summary 51

3. What does your religion teach you about the right way to think about con- temporary issues such as abortion, the existence of God, euthanasia, work- ing hard, and the role of women? In what other ways does your religion shape your values, beliefs, and attitudes?

4. How has your hometown influenced you? To help you find out, write down how you might be different if you had been raised in the following cities: San Francisco, Des Moines, New York, Dallas, New Orleans.

5. Investigate a major religion that is unfamiliar to you. How might people of that religion view your religious beliefs?

6. How have your friends and school influenced your values?

7. Is there anything unique about the people who live in your state compared with people in other states?

8. Sometimes the people we hate most are those who have the trait we hate most in ourselves. Whom do you hate most? Why? Could that trait charac- terize you as well? If in doubt, ask others.

9. When was the last time you rationalized? It's easier to look back and see it than to identify it at the time it is happening.

10. When was the last time you failed a test or a task at work? Did you use a self- serving bias to protect your self-esteem?

11. We often see according to our expectations and beliefs. Is your perception of your instructor influenced by what you heard about him or her. Do signifi- cant people in your life complain that you fail to recognize their changed be- havior and still perceive them as they used to be?

12. When you are angry, do you typically say things that you don't really mean? Do you tend to overgeneralize or catastrophize?

13. Alexander Hamilton once said, "Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint" (The Federalist). Do you agree with his state- ment? What would people's behavior be like without a government? Can you find instances in history to support your answer?

14. When you are depressed, which of Beck's five thinking errors (see page 41) tend to characterize your thinking?

15. Have you ever experienced pressure to abandon a couple who broke up? Did you maintain allegiance to one and not the other? How have you and oth- ers you know handled such situations?

16. Did you ever believe one way but act in another? How did you handle the apparent contradiction?

17. What happens to your thinking under stress?

52 CHAPTER 2 B Personal Barriers

18. Some people define themselves by their possessions, religious beliefs, or abil- ities. How do you define yourself? These are the topics about which you may have difficulty thinking objectively.

19. What stereotypes do you tend to believe? Do you know people who do not fit these stereotypes? If you can't find exceptions, ask your friends, family members, or college professors. You could also do research on these groups that you stereotype to learn about the diversity within those groups.

20. Recall two or three times when you were angry. Which was worse: the situ- ation that caused your anger or the consequences of venting your anger? Could you have done anything to control your anger?

21. Have you ever met people who were fanatics? What was your impression about their thinking? Were they open to new ideas or challenges to their views? Were they good listeners?

22. Oftentimes parents blame their children for their behaviors, while children blame their parents. How would the actor-observer bias explain this?

SENSING

There is nothii1.!J in the mind unless it is ftrst in the senses.

-AQUINAS

·:we were blindfolded, taken to a place, and the blindfold removed for only a cond, we would get a flash of visual stimulation. If we were standing where we

never been before, perhaps in a mosque, the one-second glance would reveal umble of colors, mosaics, and geometric designs; however, if we were in a city rary, we would recognize and understand what we saw. In both cases visual -ers would flow into our eyes, but we would understand the library because we ·eady had the language in our mind. That language would have prestructured ..: perceptions and would have allowed us to understand and to process the =~ ual stream of books and desks.

With language already in our mind, it is possible to close our eyes and, dis- unected from the outside world, do "pure thinking," but that kind of isolated ~ng is rare. Most of our thinking is sensory interactive; after all, our brain

enfleshed in our senses. This sensing-thinking connection is so closely interre- -ed that our thinking often begins in our senses, progresses through additional

· ry input, and shapes itself to our sensing habits; conversely, thinking can -. the way we sense.

53

54 CHAPTER 3 • Sensing

The statement, "There is nothing in the mind unless it is first in the senses," says, in stark simplicity, that our brain would be empty without our senses. If this view is correct, then sensing would be the main source of raw data for our thinking: If we sense better, we can think better.

Whereas sensing precedes thinking for infants, sensing for adults is con- current with thinking. As adults our sensing and thinking are interwoven: Even now as we read this book, as we listen in class, and as we write, we are sensing (with our eyes, ears, hands); and when we bungee jump, prepare din- ner, or install brakes on a car, we are thinking. We continually return to our senses to refresh the data, to seek new data, to fortify our thinking with tan- gible examples, and to validate the structures of our thinking. Being human, our thinking often gets the last word: if you felt pain on your knee, your thoughts, and consequent feelings and actions, would be quite different if you found that a bee had stung you or that someone had jabbed you with a knife.

Sharpening our perceptions is crucial for delivering better data to our brains. We need the accurate observations. We need the facts right. We need solid sensory awareness to ground our thinking. We need to perceive beyond ap- pearances and behind false faces.

In this chapter we examine how our senses both enlighten and deceive our mind, we learn how we can sharpen our vital sensing-thinking connection, and especially, we will stress how we can strengthen our two most important senses for thinking: seeing and hearing.

Our senses act as our lenses, amplifiers, particle detectors, and pressure and heat gauges. These sensors are acutely sensitive. Our hearing reacts to a sound vibrat- ing at a frequency as high as 20,000 cycles per second and to a multitude of tim ..~ bres that allow us to recognize different human voices. Our sight can detect a candle flame on a dark, clear night 20 miles away or discern a single color (mauve or teal) out of millions of hues. Our sense of smell can detect a single molecule of bacon or coffee out of five billion molecules. Our senses feed our brain much as food feeds our body; without their input, our brain would be

almost empty.

Is our brain a blank slate at birth, as John Locke says, or is it alive with in- nate ideas? There are strong thinkers on both sides of this issue. John Locke agrees with Aristotle and calls the mind a tabula rasa (blank slate) that our senses and experience write upon. But other philosophers (Plato), psychologists Qung), and linguists (Chomsky) disagree at least partially with this concept.

The Deception of Our Senses 55

They say we have innate, or inborn, ideas or structures in our mind. What do you think?

Throughout our life our senses have enriched our brain, and currently our senses link with our brain as we think. Powerful though they are, our senses do notal- ways deliver accurate data to our brain. Our senses do not operate effectively when we are sick, drowsy, or tired; and sometimes, although our senses deliver accurately, the world is not always what it seems on the surface. Our sensual per- ceptions (using sight as an example) can deceive our brain in three major ways: limited biologically, we see the superficial; corralled by custom, we see the ha- bitual; and blinded by language, we see the general.

Ideas: Innate or Learned?

Where do our ideas come from? List reasons supporting both those who say we are born with ideas and those who say we learn them through our senses.

Ideas Are Inborn Our Senses Fill the Mind

As you listed reasons, you may have come to a decision in favor of one side or another. If you have not yet decided, weigh those reasons now and check one of the boxes below. As you check the box, be aware of what is going on in your mind. We wil l discuss your awareness shortly.

o We are born with knowledge. o We acquire knowledge through our senses. o We are born with knowledge; then we acquire more.

How did you arrive at your conclusion? Although the process may be difficult to describe because we are often not aware of our thinking while

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56 CHAPTER 3 • Sensing

we think, try to describe the thinking processes you went through to ar- rive at your decision.

Whatever you discovered while you checked the box and wrote about your decision-making process, you sensed and thought together; you in- terwove sight and touch with your thinking as you read and wrote.

Scientists and philosophers have alerted us to the superficiality of our senses. Copernicus stated that the sun did not "set," and Descartes pointed out the "bent" oar in the water. Subsequently, science has shown us the narrow range of our sight from red to violet; all the "colors" from infrared in one di- rection and ultraviolet in the other through the vast electromagnetic spectrum are invisible to our eyes, as are things very small and very far away. The super- ficial perception of our senses is weakened further by certain life forms that at- tempt to deceive, such as the chameleon, the Venus flytrap, and, yes, even humans: "That one could smile and smile and smile and be a villain" (Shakespeare, Hamlet).

Likewise, custom, in the form of habits, interests, and biases, focuses and thus limits our perceptions. An interior decorator, walking into a room, sees that room differently from a carpenter, an antique collector, a gymnast, or a party an- imal (only the plasterer might seriously study the ceiling). In the following chapter we will study how language also puts reins upon our senses.

Our Personal Sense Deceptions

Think about how your senses can deceive you. What things appear safe but are dangerous, soft but are hard, fragrant but are poisonous, beauti- ful but are rotten, true but are false? In the chart list some people or things that can deceive your senses and note what the reality is. Also be aware of your own biases and strong interests that might block, focus, and distort your sense impressions.

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Sharpening Our Senses 57

Deceptions Corrections

Van illa extract smells edible. Tastes terrible!

Perhaps my originality boils down to being a hypersensitive receptor. -CLAUDE MONET, IMPRESSIONIST PAINTER

When we realize that our senses are fallible, then we can begin to adjust to surface appearance and personal distortions. Seeing should not always be be- lieving. The spear-fishing Chippewa Indians ofWisconsin (who don't know about Descartes' bent oar) have learned to adjust: they plunge their spear above the point where they see the fish. If they didn't, they would go hungry.

We can adjust not just to water but to the entire surface of the earth by turn- ing up the power of our senses. Our eyes now pierce the surface through the electronic microscope, ultrasound, magnetic resonance, and positron emission; our ears amplify apparent silence through the microphone, listen to the shifting earth through seismographs, and hear the echo of the big bang through radar tele- scopes. Our nostrils smell hidden particles through smoke detectors and Geiger counters, and our sense of touch feels more precisely through the barometer and thermometer. These instruments allow us to perceive beyond the range of our senses to see the molecules and microbes moving. We can then struggle to syn- thesize the clash between appearance and reality. Our mind can reason, accept the validity of these observations, and know, for example, that invisible species crawl over our skin and that vast spaces exist in the floor upon which we step.

If we try, we can sometimes return to the sensual newness of a child. A five- year-old boy in a mechanic's shop identified his friend Brad's car. His dad glanced at the car and said, "No, that's too rusty." The boy replied, "But it smells like Brad's car." The father asked the mechanic: it was Brad's car. That young boy was using his powerful sense of smell. How powerful? The 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology

58 CHAPTER 3 • Sensing

was given to Drs. Axel and Buck for discovering a large gene family of about 1,000 olfactory genes, or about 3 percent of our entire genetic code! (Altman, 2004). Or we can watch and learn from a three-month-old girl discovering her hands, flexing and turning them in the sunlight, her eyes tracking them as they move. Large movements, small movements, a single finger, fingers together. We too can extend our senses. By willing and by trying we can see more and sense more. If we start a program that tries, a few times a day, to absorb more intensely the sensual infor- mation around us, we can hone our perceptions to a piercing power of accuracy and newness; by the end of this course we will be perceiving at a higher level. This sharper perception can lead to sharper thinking as we place more specific, con- crete, accurate data in our mind; and when our thinking is interacting with our en- vironment, the results will more closely reflect the external reality.

In Chapter 1 we made three lists of observations in progressively greater detail. By such methods we can learn to push our senses to see fine details, to notice the rainbow colors of the snowflakes (often we just see white), to hear the wind through the grass (it's different from the wind through the trees), and to smell the fragrance unique to each rose, even those coming from the same rosebush (a rose is not just a rose just a rose). As we struggle to sense more closely, we might dis- cover the startling fact that no two things are alike: Even mass-produced items, like beer cans, pencils, bolts, and coins have differences easily distinguishable by our sight. We need to break the habit of seeing things in the same general way, largely because we think we know what they look like. One way to break through this habitual pattern is to look at things in extremely small detail and then try to express what we see in new words. Avoid cliches: They are a sign that we are using other people's words and therefore are not describing what we are seeing.

When we actively use our senses, even as adults, we can be shaping our brain. Cab drivers who learned the complicated streets of London had a change in the memory area of the hippocampus (Sheppard, 2000). And neuroscientist John Flanagan of Harvard found that repeatedly touching the fingers of primates caused a corresponding area of the brain to grow larger. Conversely, when the whiskers of mice were trimmed, that sensory area of the brain shrunk (Vogel, 2000). So once again the adage applies-use it or lose it. By use we sharpen our senses.

Seeing Anew

1. Pick any two things that you think are identical; if you wish, reach into your pocket or purse and take two coins of the same denomination and begin to notice the differences. Turn and twist them and watch the

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Powerful Listening 59

light reflect off their individual surfaces. Strike them and hear their unique sounds.

2. Focus your senses on those two things as if you were alone in a woods at night and you heard breaking branches on the forest floor.

3. Look so close ly, so minutely at tiny sections of the objects that you have no easy words for such small areas of focus. Then try to break the lan- guage barrier by describing those differences specifically and concretely.

4. Avoid cl iches. Find new ways to describe what you are seeing; use ana log ies to get your meaning across.

If you practice these steps, your thinking will take root in specific facts and your writing and speaking will glisten with newness.

After seeing, hearing may be our most vital sense. Hearing sends rivers of sound into our ears, from the music of falling waters to the cry of a newborn baby. When we use our hearing to listen to words, listening becomes interactive with our thinking and crucial in communicating.

The Paradox of Powerful Listening

When we were small children, our listening was natural and effortless, like the earth receiving rain. That's partly why we were able to learn language so quickly. Our adult brains can absorb thoughts several times faster than they are spoken: Speech runs about 125 words per minute, yet if this rate were doubled (or even tripled through a sped-up audiotape) we could still understand the words. Listening is so simple that, paradoxically, it is hard. Because the rate of speaking is so slow, we can easily allow our mind to roam elsewhere. And now that we've grown older, our lis- tening is drowned by the buzz of our thinking and is smothered by our poor habits. Because listening is apparently simple, we allow our mind to drift elsewhere while someone is talking. The challenge then becomes, how do we rein in our brain to fol- low the speaker? How do we not get bored and allow our attention to wander?

How to listen

In order to listen well, we must want to listen. Here are a few reasons to help mo- tivate us to listen well: (1) we will know more, (2) our decisions will be based on firmer data, (3) we will understand the speaker's values and positions better,

60 CHAPTER 3 • Sensing

(4) our interpersonal skills will be beltes, (5) our responses will carry greater ef- fectiveness, (6) we can recall how good we felt when anyone really listened to us, and give that same courtesy to the speal{er, and (7) the speaker will talk better be- cause we actually partially control the speaker by how well we listen and ask ques- tions. Can you think of other reasons to listen well?

Even if we think the speaker is boring, if our attitude is receptive we can learn from anyone. Ultimately, we are the ones who profit. We are the ones who grow wiser. Consider one final example of the power of listening. A married graduate student reported that he was on a path toward a divorce, so in his busy schedule he set aside twenty minutes a week on Friday nights to listen, really lis- ten, to his wife. The first night, without even knowing why, his wife said, "Gee, han, we had fun tonight." By continuing to listen, the student said he began to find out things about his kids and his wife that he never knew. He said listening, simply listening, rescued and enriched their relationship.

Once we have set our will to listen, we may need to adjust our environment. MTV, screaming children, trucks winding through their gears, and blasting bands do not provide a good listening environment. If we want to listen, we can move to a place of acceptable noise level and privacy, adjust our chairs so we are close enough, turn our back on windows, televisions, or other distractions, and face the speaker. The environment is ours to control.

Then we need to place our body into a listening posture. First, we square up, sitting or standing directly across from the other person (effective, forthright communication is not assisted by angles-acute, oblique, or otherwise). Second, we relax and open our body to the ideas of the other (folded arms and locked knees often reflect our mental locks). Third, we lean slightly toward the speaker (pulling back is a reaction associated with horror, fright, fear, bad breath, or re- jection of the other's ideas). Finally and most importantly, we look the other in the eyes without staring, and we appropriately maintain that vital connection while we are listening (eye contact connects us in some ways more strongly than the tele- phone wire connects our phones). Squared, relaxed, leaning, and looking, our body prepares us for listening.

With our will set, the environment adjusted, and our body posed, we have a better chance of keeping our mind focused. Here are some ways to keep your mind on the speaker. As we present these ideas, think about which ones will work effectively for you:

1. Listen to the tone of the speaker's words, to the feelings behind the thoughts. Tone can easily color or contradict the content of the words, but con- tent can rarely outweigh tone. For example, if you greet your boyfriend and ask him how he is, and in a tired voice he sighs, ''I'm okay," you can believe the tone of his voice and ignore his words. He isn't okay. Some- thing is wrong, and his tone shows it. Because of the connection

Powerful Listening 61

between tone and truth, voice stress indicators have been developed in an attempt to measure the truthfulness of people's statements; further- more, magnetic resonance imaging has shown that areas of the brain re- spond specifically to the tone of the human voice as opposed to sounds made from other sources (Belin, 2000).

2. Read the speaker's body. Watch the face, the tightness or relaxation around the lips and the eyes; watch the hands. Is any nervous energy playing through the speaker's fingers? A top executive in an advertising firm was a man of forced smiles and memorized names. As he smiled and talked to clients he did not like, his left fist clenched and un- clenched. An alert client reading the nonverbal message would know how to deal with him.

Since the work of Edward Sapir in the 1930s, the literature on non- verbal communication has been growing. Body signals, however, can be ambiguous; there is always the possibility that we are "reading" wrongly. With this caution in mind, reading the body can help us stay focused and listen more fully to the speaker.

3. Use your memory. Recall earlier meetings and conversations with the speaker and how those ideas fit with the speaker's present words.

4. Understand the speaker's needs, values, beliefi, and goals. In the old adage--step into the speaker's shoes and empathize.

5. Organize what you hear. Often speakers do not convey their thoughts in perfect prose. Try to group their words into main points.

6. Paraphrase the speaker's words out loud. Give feedback by saying some- thing like, "So what you are saying is that you would like to ... ," and check their response.

7. Ask questions. If the speaking situation permits it, asking questions di- rects the speaker toward topics of interest to you. Also, questions can clarify ambiguities and may spark the speaker alive to new ideas.

8. Summarize the other's ideas. This helps both parties focus on the nu- cleus: on the thoughts to be remembered, on the actions to be taken. Clarity will result.

Developing an Action Plan

Thinking is intangible, and while you might get some great ideas as you read this book and listen to your teacher and participate in class, unless you act on your thinking, your ideas will probably remain intangible. To

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62 CHAPTER 3 • Sensing

bring thinking into your life more, you are highly encouraged to develop a specific, practical plan of action for each chapter.

To try to listen better, you can make a list of specific steps describing what you will do, when you will do it, and how you will check your progress. A sample action plan might look like this:

What: I want to listen to my friend with more attention. I will try ·to maintain eye contact and not to interrupt while my friend is talking. I will ask appropriate questions and paraphrase my friend's responses to focus my listening.

When: I will listen for five minutes each day when I return home from school or work.

Check: On Fridays I will count the number of days that I was suc- cessful. and reflect on the result my listening has had.

Now develop your own action plan in the spaces below. Please pick an idea from class or the book that you would like to try to bring into your life. Remember: Be specific in describing what you are going to do; when you will do it (days and times and places); and how and when you will check upon your progress.

What:

When:

Check:

SUMMARY

We have seen how our powerful senses both nourish and deceive our minds. We have seen that our acute senses can be expanded by the instruments of science, and we have been alerted to the appearance of reality of some of our sensations.

Summary 63

Furthermore, we have glanced at the deliberate deceptions that occur in nature and human beings. Shakespeare alerts us "that there is no art known to read the mind's construction in the face." We have seen how we can sharpen these vital sensing- thinking connections by looking more closely at the unique world around us. Finally, we have seen how we can focus our powerful mind for effective listening. By keeping our thinking refreshed and sharpened through interaction with our sens- ing, we will be grounded in a more solid reality as we absorb and seek new data.

Sensing and Thinking Challenges

1. Do you accept information when it is contrary to common sense? For in- stance, the earth is closer to the sun in the winter than it is in the summer. Seek the reason for this phenomenon and then think about how your mind struggles with the apparent conflict between your senses and the facts.

2. When he pointed a telescope at Jupiter and watched the moons go around it, Galileo convinced the world that Copernicus was right about the orbit- ing spheres. Is seeing always believing? Can you think of any exceptions?

3. If you are writing a descriptive paper or trying to paint with words, this chapter can help you. Perform Thinking Activity 3.3 several times; that is, try to see on a very small scale, and then search for new words, especially analo- gies, to describe what you see. Practice this activity on any of the following: a. A one-inch square area of the palm of your hand. b. A feature (a small part) of someone's face. (In The Canterbury Tales,

Chaucer describes a wart on the edge of the miller's nose as having three red sow bristles growing from it. You do not need to choose a grotesque feature, but you should strive for Chaucer's minute level of detail.)

c. A leaf of some plant. d. A petal of a flower. e. The shine, color, and reflection in a drop of water. f. Any small part of anything you wish.

4. Try focusing one sense, such as smell or hearing, and then shifting to an- other and focusing sharply. What do you experience?

5. William Wordsworth did not think we were born empty: "We come trailing clouds of glory." What do you think was already in your mind at birth?

6. As a quick test of the effect of your listening, the next time you are in a small group, listen intently and receptively to the speaker: Notice if the speaker begins to look at you longer and more often than others in the group.

7. Do words blind our senses? How might the word mountain or forest prevent us from seeing the uniqueness of that mountain or that forest, and the uniqueness of the rocks and trees within each?

64 CHAPTER 3 • Sensing

8. Schedule a few times during the day to practice sensing. These times can overlap other things you are doing, such as driving or eating or washing dishes. Focus your mind to become acutely aware of details.

9. Listening is so simple that it is hard. Do you agree with that statement? What do you find particularly easy or difficult about listening?

10. Buddhists engage in a practice of"bare attention" to sharpen their perceiving. This practice is described as "observing things as they are, without laying our projections and expectations onto what is happening; cultivating instead a choiceless and non-interfering awareness" (Goldstein, 1976, p. 20) . What- ever you are doing now and throughout the day, give it your bare attention. Try simply to notice things without labeling or evaluating them; remain de- tached. Afterwards, reflect, write about, or discuss your experience.

11. Have you ever really seen a penny? Which of the following features are on the Lincoln cent? Circle the items that you believe are on the penny, and then inspect a penny. How perceptive were you? a. Lincoln facing forward b. Lincoln facing to the right c. Lincoln facing left d. "Give me liberty or give me death" e. "In God We Trust" f. "One Penny" g. "One Cent" h. Picture of the White House i. "E Pluribus Unum" j. "Liberty" k. The date of the penny I. "United States of America" m. Picture of the American Flag

12. Evaluate the following claim: "a healthy human brain is hard-wired to love cars. They fascinate our senses. The handsome taper of the coach work, an agreeable symmetry between the headlights and grille mouth, a rich scent from the up- holstery and a potent song from the machinery resonates even with those who avow total ignorance and indifference to automobiles" (Robinson, 2000, p.l).

13. Recently a gene has been found that seems to guide the way our sensory memories are recorded (Vogel, 2000). Once again, this raises the old ques- tion of nature and nurture. Will your senses just record what they record be- cause they are genetically determined? What part do you have to play in what does get recorded?

14. Our senses give us our original data to think with. So our thinking is rooted in our senses, but then afterward we can build thoughts from thoughts.

Summary 65

Consider the following advice: "If you wish to see the valleys, climb to the mountaintop; if you desire to see the mountaintop, rise into the cloud; but if you seek to understand the cloud, close your eyes and think" (Gibran, 1962). At what times might this process of closing your eyes to think be helpful?

15. Here is a descriptive paper written by a student. What words, figures of speech, and thought patterns does this writer use to activate our senses?

Mom and I used to watch the storms that would later resemble life. It was in the springtime of my life when we watched the rain shimmer with moonlight as it fell so delicately to the earth.

When I was an adolescent we watched the clouds billow in overlap- ping layers, covering the entire horizon like a crimson blanket of fog. The lightning danced in a blinding fury to the beat of the rumbling thunder. As we watched, rebelliousness took the stage for my summer years. The wind cried as if it was afraid of the dark. The show gained intensity as the actors prepared for the finale. Then I saw the explosion, and lights like glass shattered everywhere. And the sky cleared and looked again for a new beginning.

I have since matured and mellowed into the autumn of my life. Mom is gone, and now I have taken her place, with my own children. We sit and watch the storms.

16. The next chapter will discuss memory, but as a warm-up now, you might think about how your senses affect what you remember. The novelist Proust describes how a certain smell brought back many early memories. Does this work for you? How might you use your senses in creating stronger memo- ries that will be easier to recall?

BRAIN AND MEMORY

The brain breathes mind like the lungs breathe air.

-HVSTON SMITH, FORGOTTEN TRUTH

Our brain. It lies behind the creativity within the Sistine Chapel and the formu- las of Einstein. It has taken humankind to the moon and will someday reach the stars. Perhaps only the universe itself can equal its marvel, yet we know so little of it. How can this physical organ create a private mental world that has no mass and no spatial location? Where are our thoughts? How are they generated by our brain? How has our identity become intricately enmeshed within it? These ques- tions we cannot yet answer, and we leave them to the philosophers and neuro- scientists of the future. Here we take a brief, pragmatic look at what we do know about the brain, particularly how it affects our thinking, for though the brain is still a great mystery, we have begun to learn its secrets.

We have also begun to learn the secrets of memory-but only begun. This mystery within a mystery is the bedrock of thinking itself. It, too, has its points of wonder. How is it, for example, that a physical process in the brain can give

. rise to the memory of your grandfather? If you could take a journey inside your brain, where would he be found? While we can't answer this question, it is

66

Thinking and Our Brain 67

worthwhile to think about it, for the activity of thinking enhances thought, just as the activity of memorizing enhances memory.

In what follows we look at the brain, its universe of neurons, the influ- ences on the brain that affect our thinking, and ways to move our brain toward better thinking. We then explore memory, its impermanence, the reasons why we forget, and how we can remember better. With this understanding of our brain and memory, we can lay a stronger foundation for critical and creative thinking.

As you read these words your brain is at work. Relying on earlier learning which associated certain line patterns with letters of the alphabet, your brain checks its own database for familiar combinations of these letter patterns and then recog- nizes the words or word phrases as individual units. Unfamiliar words, like "phacoemulsification" are flagged and processed with greater attention to each letter or syllable. As all of this is taking place your brain is simultaneously placing these words and word phrases in a context that gives them meaning; the words make sense. Your brain may then continue on to yet another step as you think about the meaning of the sentences themselves. For example, you might wonder about the complexity of this process, the fact that you have little control over it (try not to see the letters as words, for example), or whether there can be any kind of thinking without the brain (as in speculations about an afterlife). As you con- tinue to process these words, you might also judge the value of this information, compare it with other information you already have, or wonder about the point the authors are making. You might even think about whether a machine could ever be developed that can do what you are doing now. All this wondering, valu- ing, and organizing is done with your brain. Alter the brain or destroy it and the character of this process changes or ceases altogether.

The brain is incredibly complex and has the potential to handle huge think- ing demands. It contains more than one trillion cells, about a hundred billion of which are neurons: These neurons are the single-cell messengers that carry out the responses that comprise our thinking and movement activities. It would take you about 4,731 years to count them all if you counted one number per second every minute of your waking life! But that's just the beginning, for each of these 100 bil- lion neurons has 1,000 to more than 200,000 contacts with other neurons, each neuron sending and receiving messages up to 1,000 times a second. With this in- credible, dynamic interconnectedness, the number of different pathways in the brain is unimaginable!

68 CHAPTER 4 • Brain and Memory

What we consider to be critical thinking ability is located in the outer part of the brain, that wrinkled skin called the cortex. The cortex is about one-tenth of an inch thick and is convoluted, which explains how its one and two-thirds square feet of surface area can fit within the confines of the human skull. The cortex alone contains more than ten billion neurons. In one square inch of this cortex there are about ten thousand miles of nerve cell connections! In the entire cor- tex, if we layed these connections out end to end, they would stretch to the moon and back to earth-and then to the moon again! (Davis, 1984). It is here, in this incredibly expansive cortex, that all the higher intellectual processes take place. The rest of the brain is responsible for lower functions, such as emotions, hunger, and basic life-sustaining processes, although even these are influenced by input from the cortex.

We are still in our infancy in understanding how our brain's universe of neurons interact to create thinking, but we have made some significant progress. We know, for example, that brain neurons do not touch; they communicate by sending tiny amounts of chemical substances called neurotransmitters across a synapse, the microscopic space between "adjacent" neurons. Fifty-three different types of neurotransmitters have been identified so far (Ratey, 200 1), with per- haps hundreds waiting to be discovered. The balance between these neurotrans- mitters is rather delicate. A glass of wine, a strong cup of coffee, a poor night's sleep, a candy bar, or a common cold pill can affect it. Even falling in love can change the chemistry of the brain. When this chemistry changes, the way we perceive and think about reality changes too. Below we briefly address some of the variables that can impact the brain in a way that affects our critical thinking abilities.

An Exercise in Mental Discipline

Do you agre.e with the Eastern ana logy of the mind t hat thoughts jump hither and th ither li ke monkeys jump from tree branch to tree branch? To check out th is II monkey mind II analogy, try a simp le meditation ex- ercise for ten minutes. Sit in a comfortab le chair in a qu iet room and try to keep yo ur attent ion on on ly one thing, like a menta l image of a cand le f lame, the sound II ah nam II sil ently repeated to yourself, or a blue vase. When you find yourse lf thinking about someth ing else, br in g yo ur attention back to your object of meditation. After doing this exercise, what do you think about the extent to wh ich you consc ious ly cont rol your thinking?

Thinking and Our Brain 69

Food and Drugs

0 God! that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains. -SHAKESPEARE, OTHELLO

Clearly the brain needs food. Like the rest of our body, it requires energy, specif- ically glucose, which it gets from the body's conversion of starches and sugars. Like the rest of the body, the brain also needs protein and vitamins for proper functioning. Without adequate nutrients, intellectual impairment results:

In an intensive study of the children of North American Indians, Dr. Ernesto Pollitt, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, demonstrated a 50 per- cent decrease in behavioral performance in severely malnourished children. Memory, abstract reasoning, thinking, and verbal ability were most affected. (Restak, 1979, pp. 107-8)

But we do not have to be malnourished to notice the effects of nutritional deficiency on our thinking. Simply trying to go through the day with too few calories impairs our ability to concentrate, as any student knows who has tried to concentrate on a lecture on an empty stomach.

Of particular importance to thinking are the B vitamins. Vitamin B defi- ciency has been linked to problems in memory, concentration, and depression. In acute cases of vitamin B deficiency, particularly thiamine, Korsakoff's syn- drome may develop. This is a chronic disorder that, even after the vitamin defi- ciency is corrected, creates gross deficits in recent memories. This syndrome primarily affects alcoholics, for alcohol rapidly depletes the body of essential B vitamins.

Besides depleting the body of vitamin B, alcohol also impairs our thinking, particularly judgment and decision making, through its intoxicating effects. Heavy, prolonged drinking changes brain tissue and may permanently retard intellectual abilities. Specifically, it can retard problem solving, impair learning and perception, and reduce attention. These effects are due to the underlying brain damage inflicted by chronic alcohol abuse. This damage occurs because alcohol interferes with neurotransmitters, kills brain cells, causes neuron atrophy and incorrect growth, and shrinks the brain (Oscar-Berman et al., 1998; Barinaga, 2000). Areas that are targeted include the limbic system, responsible for memories, and the cerebral cortex, where our higher-thinking activities occur (Oscar-Berman et al., 1998). Though not everyone responds to alcohol in the same way, the more alcohol one drinks, the more likely these pernicious effects will occur.

Besides alcohol, another legal and very popular drug in the United States is nicotine, most commonly absorbed through cigarette smoking. Studies on the effects of smoking on memory and learning are mixed. Some have found that

70 CHAPTER 4 • Brain and Memory

smoking enhances learning and memory, especially short-term recall; others have found it to have a deleterious effect. Reviews of some of these studies (Adler, 1993a; Bower, 1993) suggest that the positive effects of smoking on learning and memory seem to pertain only to simple memory tasks, and these positive effects may benefit only those who are already addicted to nicotine. Re-

....-----;'

garding more complex memory and learning tasks, however, nicotine has been • -l found to be detrimental, decreasing logical reasoning abilities, impairing perform- ance on complex memory tasks, reducing problem-solving ability, and adversely affecting recall of critical information in essays. Similar effects are experienced during nicotine withdrawal and may linger for one to two months afterward (Adler, 1993b). A later study found a relationship between heavy smokers (greater than twenty cigarettes per day) and cognitive decline during middle age (Richards et al., 2003). While researchers are continuing to explore the possible learning and memory enhancements of nicotine, they seem to agree that ciga- rette smoking's potential for harm far outweighs any memory and learning en- hancement so far discovered. If the above is not enough reason to stop smoking, consider the effects of smoking on the developing fetus's brain. Smoking increases the risk that the newborn will be mentally retarded by 50 percent and raises the risk of attention deficit disorder by threefold (Ratey, 200 1, p. 26).

THINK ABOUT IT: It is common knowledge that women who drink while pregnant may cause their baby to be born with fetal alco- hol syndrome, a group of birth defects that includes mental retarda- tion and facial and limb abnormalities. Yet, according to a 1996 report (cited in Barinaga, 2000), 20 percent of women who drink alcohol continue to drink while they are pregnant. Does this show the power of addiction over sound thinking? Or is there another explanation? What do you think?

Marijuana is the most popular illicit drug in the United States. One animal study found that chronic exposure to moderate levels ofTHC, the main active ingredient in marijuana, accelerated brain-cell death in the hippocampus, a crit- ical brain structure for long-term memory formation (Landfield, Cadwallader, and Vinsant, 1988). Human studies have also found detrimental effects of mar- ijuana on the memory system (e.g. Lane et al., 2005). These studies also show at- tention deficits among marijuana smokers (e.g., Pope and Yurgelun-Todd, 1996). And more than one study has found that the effects on memory of long- term users of marijuana endure beyond the period of intoxication and worsen as marijuana use continues (e.g., Solowij et al., 2002; Bolla et al., 2002). This is

Thinking and Our Brain 71

compatible with earlier research that has found attention deficits and decreased motivation among regular marijuana users. Even occasional use of marijuana harms thinking, but as marijuana use becomes heavier and longer, the cognitive deficits increase. In addition to these deficits in attention and memory, other neu- rological deficits have been found, such as the relationship between marijuana smoking in adolescence and the increased risk of developing a mental illness later in life (Ferdinand et al., 2005). The mechanism behind these neurological deficits is not yet known, but it might involve the reduced blood flow to the brain that occurs among marijuana smokers-and lasts beyond the cessation of the drug (Fackelmann, 2005). In short, marijuana correlates with an increased risk oflater mental illness, reduces blood flow to the brain, and retards learning by negatively affecting the attention and memory systems. Because of the deficits in attention and memory, students who study while smoking marijuana are wasting a lot of their time. And though marijuana smokers believe it enhances their creativity, one study found that in fact it does not (Tinklenberg et al., 1978).

Another drug that can affect thinking is cocaine, a stimulant that, taken daily in large doses, can produce irritability and disturbed concentration. With chronic, heavy use it can lead to paranoid thinking and perceptual disturbances (Grinspoon and Bakalar, 1985). Even those who never ingested cocaine may suf- fer its effects if they were exposed to it in the womb. Research with humans and animals have found that prenatal exposure to cocaine has subtle but significant effects after birth, such as concentration difficulties and greater susceptibility to distractions. Animal research suggests that these effects are due, at least in part, to abnormal growth of brain neurons (Vogel, 1997). Brain abnormality of those prenatally exposed to cocaine is also suggested by research that has found a difference in EEG measures in infants who were prenatally exposed (Scher, Richardson, and Day, 2000). Research in this area is challenging and not all con- clusions are consistent (e.g. Hurt and Malmud, 1997), but apparently cocaine is not a brain-friendly drug.

Other commonly abused drugs, also in the stimulant class, are the amphet- amines. These drugs are commonly used to maintain wakefulness and alertness or to increase metabolism and suppress appetite. Although they do have these effects, in heavy use over several days they can cause paranoid delusions, halluci- nations, irritability, and insomnia-and distortions in thinking and social func- tioning that result from these effects. A drug user's "irritability and paranoia may cause fights and unprovoked violence and drive their friends away; their preoc- cupation with the drug has a disastrous effect on their family relationships and work" (Grinspoon and Bakalar, 1985). When discontinued after prolonged use, they can lead to depression and even suicide.

Ecstasy (MDMA), a drug with amphetamine and hallucinogenic properties, became a popular "club drug" in the early 1990s and continues to be popular.

12 CHAPTER 4 • Brain and Memory

Studies are finding that this drug may cause memory problems and other cogni- tive impairments, such as mental processing speed. The memory effects can last at least a year after the drug has been discontinued ("Study: Ecstasy may cause," 2001; "Study links cognitive deficit," 2004).

All of these drugs interact with the brain at the synapse, increasing or de- creasing the brain's natural chemical activity. Even though their pharmaceutic effects are different, they all have in common the ability to disrupt our cognitive abilities-and in some cases the deficits seem to last after the drug is discontin- ued, leaving open the possibility of permanent cognitive damage.

THINK ABO UT IT: Many people considered to be very brilliant, some to the point of genius, developed ideas and theories that con- flicted with those of other very brilliant persons. For every brilliant de- terminist we can find an equally brilliant proponent of free will; for every empiricist, a rationalist; for every pessimist, an optimist; and for every theist, an atheist. In one sense almost all of them are mostly or entirely wrong, assuming there can be only one correct view. That being the case, what is our basis for considering these people to be extraordinarily brilliant?

Sleep

We need sleep to think; perhaps that is why we spend one-third of our lives sleep- ing. The important stage of sleep for critical thinking is the rapid eye movement (REM) stage, during which dreaming occurs. When people are more intellectually active during the day, they dream more (Smith and Lapp, 1991), and when they are deprived of dream sleep, they have cognitive impairments, such as reduced memory capabilities (Li et al., 1991; Drummond et al., 2000) and impaired con- centration (Horne, 1985). These studies and others (e.g., Louie and Wilson, 2001) suggest that dreams are crucial for solidifying learning that takes place during the day and that our daily sleep is necessary for optimal cognitive functioning.

So how much sleep should we get each night? There is still no consensus among experts, but one study of college students found that only those who slept at least six hours improved on a learning task, and those sleeping eight hours im- proved the most (Blakeslee, 2000). A later study supported these findings. People who slept only six hours or less produced cognitive deficits equal to two nights of total sleep deprivation (Van Dogen et al., 2003). Although sleep needs vary, most people will need much more than six hours for optimum cognitive functioning. Some researchers are now recommending between nine and ten hours, which is

Thinking and Our Brain 73

closer to our ape cousins (Brownlee, 1999a; Coren, 1996). This recommendation seems particularly relevant for teenagers and young college students who are go- ing through biological maturation and straining their cognitive resources with brains not yet fully developed. Sleep deprivation for this group correlates with poor academic performance (Wolfson and Carskadon, 2003). And though we may "get by" with less sleep and be unaware of the effects of our sleep loss, we will still suffer the consequences of sleep deprivation. Sleep debt can negatively affect mood, motivation, memory, decision making, concentration, problem solving, and logical thinking (Coren, 1996). One sleep expert estimates that for teenagers those consequences translate to a loss of one IQ point per day for each hour short of eight hours of sleep--accumulating throughout the week (Brunet, 1997). Fortunately, he also believes the loss can be recovered by sleeping on week- ends. Time for a nap?

THINK ABOUT IT: The lowered reasoning ability of people with a sleep debt has been taken advantage of by professional negotiators who intentionally keep their parties up very late at night and continue the meeting early the next morning. One negotiator admitted to keeping the caffeinated coffee available all night to further reduce their sleep. In the end, an agreement is more easily reached because participants get sloppy, forget details, and lose their motivation to fight over anything but the major issues (Coren, 1996). Is this ethica l?

Critical Reading Before We Sleep

To ill ustrate how mental fatig ue can hinder critica l th inking and concen- tration abil ities, read the following passage on the unconscious by C. G. Jung and the poem by Emily Dickinson just before you fa ll asleep, or dur- ing some other period when you are menta lly fatigued. (Don't do it now!) Then, shortly after you awake, read them again . Granted, you are reading them for the second time and may understand them better because of that, but you shou ld also notice the difference between your abi lity to concentrate the first time as opposed to the second. How does your first read ing compare with your second?

(con tinued)

74 CHAPTER 4 • Brain and Memory

The Passage from Carl Jung:

We cannot overlook the fact that, just as consciousness arises from the unconscious, the ego-centre, too, crystallizes out of a dark depth in which it was somehow contained in potentia. Just as a human mother can only produce a human child, whose deepest nature lay hidden during its potential existence within her, so we are practically compelled to believe that the uncon- scious cannot be an entirely chaotic accumulation of instincts and images. There must be something to hold it together and give ex- pression to the whole. Its centre cannot possibly be the ego, since the ego was born out of it into consciousness and turns its back on the unconscious, seeking to shut it out as much as possible. Or can it be that the unconscious loses its centre with the birth of the ego? In that case we would expect the ego to be far superior to the unconscious in influence and importance. The unconscious would then follow meekly in the footsteps of the conscious, and that would be just what we wish. (Jung, 1983, p. 218)

Now read this untitled poem by Emily Dickinson (1924, pp. 223-24) .

I heard a fly buzz when I died; The stillness round my form Was like the stillness in the air Between the heaves of storm. The eyes beside had wrung them dry, And breaths were gathering sure For that last onset, when the king Be witnessed in his power. I willed my keepsakes, Signed away What portion of me I Could make assignable,-and then There interposed a fly, With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz, Between the light and me; And then the windows failed, and then I could not see to see.

Our Thinking Potential

If we avoid the substances and practices that can dull our thinking, and work positively on the suggestions in this book to sharpen our cognitive skills, we can

Thinking and Our Brain 75

begin to fulfill our own unique potential to think. Our brain can be moved toward greater thinking.

For our thinking to grow, our brain must grow. Like a muscle, it must be worked to reach its maximum capabilities . Without intellectual work and stim- ulation, our minds will not develop to their potential. Ideally, this stimulation should begin during the first three years oflife. Talking to infants might be the best kind of stimulation they can receive at that young age. But stimulation shouldn't stop there. New research is finding that the human brain grows dra- matically through the first fifteen years, and then slows just as dramatically after that. From ages three to six, parts of the brain involved in planning and organizing new actions and in maintaining attention develop most rapidly. From ages six to puberty accelerated growth shifts to the areas involved in lan- guage and spatial relations (Thompson et al., 2000). The brain does not com- plete its basic hardwiring until the early twenties! (Brownlee, 1999b). Enjoying a robust environment during these formative years will help the brain reach its thinking potential.

Many studies have shown the effects of environmental stimuli on intellec- rual development. Some of these studies involved orphans and other children who were raised in a sterile, impoverished environment. Other studies used rats in an experimental design in which some were raised in a rich, complex envi- ronment and others in a sterile one. What these studies find is that a rich, stim- ulating environment is necessary for the actualization of the brain's intellectual capacity. Raise an organism in an intellectually unchallenging environment and irs intelligence becomes stunted.

While it is best to nourish the brain when young, the good news is that even as adults we can improve our brain. One study found that even aged rats who had lived all their lives in a sterile world could benefit from a stimulating envi- ronment (Greenough, 1988). Put in a world with mazes, bridges, and spinning wheels, these rats developed an average of 2,000 new synapses per neuron. It would be unethical to perform such a study with human beings, of course, but the implication of this research is that it may never be too late for us to start growing toward our potential. And if that isn't enough to motivate us to use our mind, consider this: studies (e.g., Gagnon et al., 1990) have found that the longer we stay intellectually active, the less chance we have of developing de- mentia, a brain disease that insidiously degrades intellectual functioning. Do you feel like taking up a foreign language about now?

If we get our sleep, avoid drugs (including alcohol), eat right, and stimulate our brain with intellectual activity, we may expand the potential of our brain. But does the nature of our brain limit our understanding of the world? It probably does, although it is difficult to know the extent to which it does. The situation is so mething like a blind man trying to know a world of colors and light, which he cannot experience.

76 CHAPTER 4 B Brain and Memory

If we reflect for a moment on our experience, we can see that we have only five senses that feed our brain the information we use to think. It is possible that there are six, seven, or more than a hundred ways to experience the world. We have no reason to suppose that we possess all the senses necessary for a complete understanding of the universe. Even the experiences we are given with our senses may not represent the true reality. Is your pen really blue? Or is that blueness just the relationship between your pen, your sense organs, and the way your brain processes the sensory data? Does the colorblind man see it wrongly or just differently? Do we have sufficient justification for believing that our brain and sense organs bring the "real" world to us? Could it be that our brain structures reality as much as it discovers it? The philosopher Im- manuel Kant believed that causation, space, and time are structures imposed upon the world by our brain. The Oxford mathematician Roger Penrose (1989) takes a similar view:

The "time" of physical descriptions does not really "flow" at all; we just have a static-looking fixed "space-time" in which the events of our universe are laid out! Yet, according to our perceptions, time does flow. My guess is that there is something illusory here too, and the time of our perceptions does not "really" flow in quite the linear forward-moving way that we perceive it to flow (what- ever that might mean!). The temporal ordering that we "appear" to perceive is, I am claiming, something that we impose upon our perceptions in order to make sense of them in relation to the uniform forward time-progression of an external physical reality. (p. 444)

In sum, our brain, as healthily as we might maintain it, probably limits our ability to perceive and think about the world. It is likely that if our neu- rons fired faster, if they were organized differently, or if our brains were slightly larger, our experience of reality would be quite different than it is to- day. Thus, our thinking may not be perfect thinking yielding absolute truths about reality, just the best sound thinking we can do with the brain instru- ment we are given.

THINK ABOUT IT: We know that drugs can alter our perception of reality and distort our thinking. Yet the brain is also a drug machine in its normal state. Does the normal "drugged" state of the brain limit and distort our thinking too? What state of the brain gives us a "true" picture of reality?

Thinking and Our Brain 77

~ .~ ' ; ,' '

BRAIN AND MIND ,_. .. · . • """ < ~

One of the most important philosophical problems concerns the relation- ship between the brain and the mind, Known as the mind-body problem, it involves two fundamental (and related) questions: (1) are the brain and mind separate entities? (2) in what way are brain and mind related? The brain is rather simply defined as the physical organ or mass of nervous system tissue enclosed by the skull. Most people know to what we refer when we speak of the brain. There is less agreement, however, about the definition of mind. It is not the physical organ under our skull that we re- fer to when we speak of our mind . Rather, mind is normally defined as the organized structure of our mental processes, including remembering, thinking, perceiving, and experiencing. Sometimes it is seen as synony- mous with consciousness, but then what of the unconscious? Is that not part of the mind? One might say that the neuron is of the brain, but our memories of first grade are of our mind, part of our mental world. But what is that mental world? Is it merely a property of the brain? Is it gen- erated by the brain? Or does the brain simply receive mind and interpret mind, much like a radio station receives radio signals? Does the mind drive the brain? Or does the brain drive the mind? Can mind exist at all without the brain? If so, what is its nature without a brain, and how do we account for the apparent connection between the two such that a change in brain tissue seems causally related to a change in mental experience?

Interestingly, the brain and the mind seem to have different proper- ties. The brain has mass, is public (it can be seen during an autopsy), and is located in space. Our mental world, however, is private (no one knows what you're thinking), has no mass, and is not located anywhere in space (so far as it appears). When we refer to our memory of our grand- father, we don't equate it with the sequence of neuron firings that occur during our recollection. So how can a brain, which has properties that our mental life does not, and does not seem to be the same as our men- tal life, give rise to mind? Or vice versa? Are brain and mind two aspects of something else? Is matter an illusion? (It does seem to disappear as our exploration of it deepens.) Or is mind somehow a form of matter?

Finding the answers to these questions will help to solve other impor- tant philosophical problems like determinism versus free will and the pos- sibility of survival after death. There are good arguments on many sides of this mind-body issue, but none has provided a definitive conclusion-and perhaps no argument ever will, for as one philosopher puts it, "there is

(continued)

78 CHAPTER 4 • Brain and Memory

BRAIN AND MIND (Continued)

room for the possibility that the nature of mind and matter might not be accessible to human thought:"

I do not believe that any current theory makes a significant dent in the mind-body problem. I thus hold that the relation between the mind and the body is a deep mystery. More than that. ... I take it to be a permanent mystery. (McGinn, 1997, p. 6-7)

In this chapter we have made statements such as "Our brain can be moved toward greater thinking" and "For our thinking to grow, our brains must grow." Obviously these statements could be challenged, de- pending on one's point of view on the mind-brain relationship. It is diffi- cult to satisfy all theoretical points of view on this issue, and we do not mean to support any particular theory of mind.

The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself you remember, or pretend to remember.

-HAROLD PINTER, PLAYWRIGHT

Without at least some brief memory, we could not think. For even adding the numbers 6 and 3 requires memory of 6 as we add to it 3. Without memory there could be no thinking based upon experience and there would be no continuity to our world. We would be fully immersed in the present and have no future to imagine, no past to consider. We wouldn't know who we were or where we were going. Being conscious in this perpetual present seems conceivable to some, but thinking in it seems unimaginable.

Thinking and memory are inseparable. What we think depends both on our ability to remember and on the content of that remembering. A poor memory or a distorted memory makes it difficult for us to think successfully. Even a good memory, however, is not perfect. In spite of how certain we may be about prior events, we can be wrong. Therefore, we must listen to the recollections of others and be open to the possibility that their stories offer a more accurate version of what we experienced. We must also back up our memory with hard data and write down events that we know we will be expected to recollect later, and we must work actively to encode information through meaningfulness, practice, and the use of mnemonics. Below we look briefly at how memory can deceive our thinking, why we forget, and how we can improve our memory.

Thinking and Memory 79

The Changing Nature of Memory

When memories are laid down in the brain, the neurons related to those mem- ories undergo physical changes. Neurons branch out to make more connections, and they become able to fire more efficiently, needing less neurotransmitter stimulation. But exactly how these and other physical changes can lay down memories in the brain is still quite a mystery. What we do know, however, is that memories, no matter what their physical underpinnings, are subject to change. Before reading further about memory, take time to complete the thinking activ- ity below.

Memories of Childhood

Take a moment to recollect the first time you learned to ride a bicycle or, if that's too difficult, one of the first times you rode a bicycle. Remember this in as much detail as you can before reading the next paragraph.

If your memory is an exact copy of what you experienced, then you have recalled no more than the front of your bicycle, your arms and hands on the bicyc le hand lebars, the sidewalk or road ahead, and some houses or trees on the side depending on where your experience oc- curred. If you remembered more than that and have visualized your head (which you did not see), your grandfather pushing you (whom you did not see), the rear wheel of the bicycle (which you did not see), and so on, you are adding to your actual visual experience. Almost everyone adds in- formation to these experiences. These additions are often consistent with the meaning of what happened but are not perfect reproductions of the actual event.

From the above exercise it becomes clear that we actually reconstruct our :nemories as opposed to retrieving an exact copy of our experience. This recon- struction often, but not always, moves in the direction of the meaning of the ex- _;>e rience. That is, although these memories are not necessarily accurate in their ~etails, they may nonetheless be consistent with the meaning that we gave the experience. One of the earliest experiments to demonstrate this (Carmichael, :logan, and Walter, 1932) found that if we show subjects a picture of something

at looks like a very thick letter C or a very thin quarter-moon and tell them it's - e letter C, they will tend to remember it later as looking thinner, much more

e the letter C than a quarter-moon. And when other subjects are shown the :oa.me stimulus but are told it is a quarter-moon, they later remember it as much

80 CHAPTER 4 • Brain and Memory

thicker than it was, looking more like a quarter-moon. In other words, people's memories are distorted in the direction of the meaning of the stimulus, in this case the letter C or the quarter-moon.

The importance of meaning to our recollections of events cannot be dis- missed lightly, because throughout our daily lives we continuously give meaning to the great and small experiences we endure. A dog bite might be experienced at the time as a minor nuisance but remembered as even more trivial than it was. On the other hand, if a dog bite was originally perceived as an awful ordeal, then perhaps with time our recollections of it will make it much worse than it was. The dog becomes larger, the bite more severe, the duration of battle lengthens, and the dog's owner becomes more indifferent, or even sadistic. Indeed, it ap- pears our lives are but true tales embedded in fiction.

The memories that are most subject to change are episodic memories, those memories of biographical events in our lives. Other kinds of memory, such as perceptual-motor memory (memory for how to perform skills like rid- ing a bicycle and operating heavy machinery) and semantic memory (memory of our own language, of what a dog is, and how to add numbers) are less vul- nerable to distortion. But what about episodic memories of emotional events that seem to freeze time? Examples of such events are the bombing of Pearl Harbor, John F. Kennedy's assassination, the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, and the events of September 11. Many Americans can recall in vivid detail where they were and what they were doing when they heard or saw the news of these events. But as we explore these memories, we find that these, too, vivid as they are, may be erroneous; in fact, most of our memories are quite subject to change. Some, in fact, are complete fabrications, stories that appear to come from nowhere with no grounding in facts whatsoever, yet believed to be true by the people holding them.

THINK ABOUT IT: Have you ever told a story and embellished it to add more excitement to it, and then one day, as you were telling it for the tenth time, you caught yourself starting to believe the embellish- ments? How often do you suppose you've told such stories, failed to catch yourself slipping over the edge, and ended up believing your own created fiction?

Experimental research has found differences among people in their ten- dency toward false recollections, which could be due to innate differences or variances in personal histories (e.g., Clancy et al., 2000). Despite these differences, most people are especially prone to recalling distorted or fabricated memories

Thinking and Memory 81

while under hypnosis. Leading questions by the hypnotist or expectations of the subject under hypnosis can lead to fabricated memories. In spite of what most people think, if people undergo hypnosis to retrieve lost memories, the memo- ries they retrieve are likely to be confabulations (false memories) instead of ac- curate recollections, and the confabulations revolve around the expectations of the hypnotist or the subject. Such confabulations might describe recollections of past lives and have been used to explain some false memories of incest abuse (Goldstein, 1992; Wassil-Grimm, 1995) .

The following anecdote is a good example, albeit extreme, of the constructive nature and unreliability of memory. The anecdote seems to describe a recon- suucted memory that is not consistent with actual events, yet the rememberer considers it to be true.

The vet had come to this psychologist complaining that he suffered from con- stant nightmares from his years in Vietnam. He would awaken sweating, heart pounding, surrounded by images of his wounded buddies, visions of blood and gore everywhere. Unable to turn off the state of constant readiness that served him well in the foxhole, he startled at the slightest sound, reflexively reaching for his knife. During sessions the vet would cry about the buddies he'd seen murdered or would scream out in horror at a combat memory. The experienced psychologist treating him would reassure him that the war was over and he was now safe at home.

Nonetheless, the vet could not be saved, and he committed suicide by in- haling carbon monoxide. Following his death, his widow attempted to get his name put on the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., since she felt he was justifiably a "casualty of the war." An extensive search of the man's mili- tary record showed that he had never set foot in Vietnam. (Wassil-Grimm, 1995, p. 93)

Forgetting

~ot only do memories change and impair our thinking, but we can forget them entirely. Some memories actually seem meant for forgetting, like a telephone number that we will never use again. These shorHerm memories last only about rwenty to thirty seconds without rehearsal. Once they fulfill their purpose, they are forgotten and are probably not retrievable.

The memories most important for most of our thinking are our long-term :nemories. These are the memories that we need to perform well on exams, dis- :::uss the philosophy of Plato, and think critically about the world around us. Contrary to what most people believe, most of our long-term forgetting occurs -· ortly after learning; the rate of forgetting tapers off with time. For example,

ost of what we remember one year after a college course we will remember two ·-ears later, but much of what we remember from our reading today will be for- gotten in a few weeks.

82 CHAPTER 4 • Brain and Memory

RECAll VERSUS RECOGNITION

It is much easier to recognize information than to recal l it. In one study that dramat~cally illustrates the power of recognition (Haber, 1970), sub- jects were shown 2,560 photographic sl ides at the rate of one every ten seconds. One hour after the last picture was shown, each subject was then presented with 280 pairs of pictures. One picture in each pa ir was from the set of 2,560 pictures; the other was from a sim ilar set. Each sub- ject was asked to identify the picture that was also in the set of 2,560. What do you suppose the accuracy rate was? One might expect an ac- curacy rate on a recall task of this sort to be no greater than 10 percent. In this recognition experiment. however, accuracy rates were between 85 and 95 percent! This is one good reason why pol ice departments use mug shots to help victims identify criminals. Unfortunately, we often do not have a choice about how we are to recall information. But whenever we do, the recognition option is usually more successfu l.

Why We Forget

Sometimes we forget because to remember would be painful. This theory of forgetting, called repression, suggests that we forget more of the unpleasant events in our lives than the good. This idea has found some empirical support through numerous case studies. Unfortunately, all of us can remember some bad events; no one knows why some negative experiences are repressed and others are not.

Another reason we forget is because other information, especially similar in- formation, interferes with what we are trying to remember. This interference theory of forgetting explains the problems and frustrations of cramming. At the beginning of the cram session we may accurately associate names with events and theories, but as the information builds so does interference, and we often find ourselves associating names and events incorrectly. Cramming does increase learning, but because it requires more study time to overcome the interference problems, we would do better to space our study out over time.

THINK ABOUT IT: The interference theory suggests that we not study two foreign languages simultaneously What other subjects may pose interference problems if studied concurrently?

Thinking and Memory 83

A third reason why we forget is because we can't find the right cues. Cues can be names of categories (tools), the location in which an experience occurred (Washington Park), certain smells (plum trees), and so on . Even our emotional state might serve as a cue. When we are sad, we can remember sad things more easily than happy events, and vice versa (Baddeley, 1990). Why we can't retrieve the right cues is unknown, but often it may be that strong, distinct cues were never associated with the information initially.

Stress is also detrimental to memory. Studies are finding that certain hormones that are increased during physical and emotional stress can impair recall. The culprits are corticotropin-releasing hormones (CRH) produced by the hypothalamus, and glucocorticoids produced by the adrenal gland: co rticosterone, cortisone, and cortisol. High levels of CRH produced under stress can interfere with memory and learning by damaging the neurons in learning and memory areas of the brain , particularly the hippocampus. Damage done in stressful early years, such as that occurring during child abuse, may even affect memory in adulthood (Karten, Olariu, and Cameron, 2005). With respect to the glucocorticoids, one interesting study with rats found that stress in the form of electric shock interfered with the recall of memories through the effects of corticosterone (De Quervain et al., 1998). A later study with humans supported these results. Subjects were asked to memorize sixty verbs and were then given cortisone an hour before being tested . The results: scores from the cortisone group dropped by 35 percent (De Quervain et al., 2000). These findings might explain some of the mem- ory problems that coincide with depression and old age, two conditions that co rrelate with higher cortisol levels. These studies may also explain memory problems of court witnesses who are under duress, or other human memory errors that occur under stressful conditions-such as failing memory due to test anxiety. Those most likely to succumb to the pressures of test anxiety are the students who would have performed better than their peers had there been no such pressure. In other words, the best without pressure succumb rhe most with it ("Tests and Stress," 2005).

THINK ABO UT IT: Why is it that some students who know the material for a test cannot remember the material when they take the exam? The studies above suggest that the stress before and during the exam could interfere with a student's recall. If so, what implica- tions does this information have for testing students?

l

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84 CHAPTER 4 • Brain and Memory

How to Improve Memory

The basic strategy for enhancing memory is to lay the information down well initially because our ability to remember is proportional to the degree to which our memories were originally stored. We must not write our memories with mere chalk; we should engrave them like a chisel on stone. We can accomplish this by making the information more meaningful, by associating information with what we already know well, by using mnemonic techniques, and by repetition and practice.

Make Information Meaningful. Experiences that are exciting are easy to retrieve because they are particularly meaningful; their memories are laid down effortlessly. Meaningful information is less likely to be forgotten than meaningless information. And though we may not find the world always ex- citing, we can make it meaningful in other ways. For instance, finding the rel- evance of the information we are trying to learn and how it can relate to our lives increases its meaning and makes it more memorable. We can also try to understand how the information is organized or, better yet, organize the information ourselves. This provides a meaningful structure that facilitates recollection.

Information can also be made more meaningful by associating the informa- tion with what we already know well. The license number KLB 100, for exam- ple, may be the initials of our name and the age we would like to live to. Noticing this relationship may make retrieval of this number effortless for months or years.

Use Mnemonic Techniques. Mnemonic techniques are strategies for en- coding information so that recall is easier. One strategy uses pictures, rhymes, and associations, another uses a linking technique, and still another uses the familiarity we have with our home environment. Entertainers who impress their audience with their excellent memory usually use these and other mnemonics.

THINK ABOUT IT: The fact that we can usually retrieve memories at will suggests that our memories are organized. Estimate how long it would take you to retrieve the memory of the color of your first bicycle if your memories were not organized and were retrieved at random.

Thinking and Memory 85

Using Mnemonics

The following mnemonic techniques wi ll help you to facil itate recall by lay- ing down memories in an organized, meaningful manner.

Rhyme-Association Method

This is a good technique to learn if you want to impress your friends . It allows you to remember lists forwards and backwards and to identify any object associated with any of the numbers. This step first requires memo- rizing rhymes for each number one through ten such as the following:

One-Bun Two-Stew Three-Bee Four-Floor Five-Dive

Six-Fix Seven-Heaven Eight-Bait Nine-Dine Ten-Dog pen

Once you have these rhymes memorized, you associate the idea or thing you are trying to remember with the rhyming word. To enhance recall, these associations should be as ridiculous and lively as you can make them. For example, if you want to remember "alligator," you can imag- ine biting into a bun, expecting a juicy hamburger, and finding a baby alligator instead-who, much to your surprise cries, "Ouch! What do you th ink you're doing!" If the eighth word you are trying to remember is "rocking cha ir," you can imagine fishing with a rocking chair as bait.

For the numbers eleven through twenty, you can develop associations for each rhyming word in a particular setting, such as on an airplane. For eleven, you might think of biting into the bun as you hit an air pocket, for example.

Try remembering the following words with the above technique:

dust mask stapler calculator lamp sock quarter battery address book book screwdriver

Method of Location

This mnemonic technique is similar to the one above; the main difference is that you do not have to memorize rhymes first. Instead, you use what you already know, such as the arrangement of your living room furniture .

(continued)

86 CHAPTER 4 • Brain and Memory

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THINKING ;_o;;':;"<..:..:·-)·:io::u€?- t.:ftJJ,"f;M. -~ ~ - -~ .~. r'lfi~i~;J; -~~-:.:_c]i~~-~~ ~-;i.ifi ~~z~,;~~-:_ ~:~~~{

As you try to remember a list, mentally walk through your living room and associate each word with a living room object. In the above example, you might imagine an alligator in your houseplant playing love ballads on his guitar in an attempt to win the affection of the shark lying on your sofa.

Practice using this technique with the ten items above.

The Linking Technique

Sometimes the information we are trying to remember is difficult to pic- ture using the above techniques. The state of Wisconsin, for example, is hard to imagine lying on the living room sofa. The linking technique may be better in such cases . In this technique, all the items to remember are connected to each other. Each item can be pictured as it is, or something else associated with or sound ing like the object can take its place. For ex- ample, if you want to remember the states of Minnesota, California, New York, and Florida, you can imagine a Viking (Minnesota) standing next to the Statue of Liberty (New York) wearing a Mickey Mouse hat (Florida) as an earthquake (California) rocks the statue and the Viking back and forth.

Practice using this technique with the first thirteen states below. They are given in the order in which they became part of the United States of America .

1. Delaware 6. Massachusetts 10. Virginia

2. Pennsylvania 7. Maryland 11. New York

3. New Jersey 8. South Carol in a 12. North Carolina

4. Georgia 9. New Hampshire 13. Rhode Island

5. Connecticut

Repeat. The more we repeat new information and ideas, the easier it is to re- member them. College professors who have taught a course numerous times can often teach an entire semester from memory alone. But simply repeating some- thing over and over, without attending to its meaning-i.e., without thinking about it-does not usually work well to lay down strong memories. People re- peatedly see pennies throughout their lives, perhaps over a 100,000 of them, bur relatively few can draw the front and back of a penny and place all the words, num- bers, and pictures in their proper place. From this illustration it becomes dear that we could read a chapter in a college text repeatedly, but if we did not make it meaningful, organize it, or make associations with it, we would learn and remem- ber very little. There is a place, however, for mere repetition. Poetry, for example,

Summary 87

is learned by repetition because we are trying to recall exact words, not just the meaning. But if the poetry is not made meaningful, the words we learn are empty.

Practice. Memory can be likened to a muscle: If it is exercised, it grows; if it is no t, it weakens. Putting our memory to work increases our ability to remember. & the saying goes, "Use it or lose it."

We can see that laying down memories can take some serious effort. Wouldn't it be nice if we could just take a pill? Successful experiments using a "memory protein" have already been conducted with animals (Weed, 2000), and human trials are now underway (Jacoby, 2005). The idea that college students of the future will be picking up their memory pills along with their textbooks is thus not that farfetched. As one re- searcher put it, "It's a matter of when, not if, memory drugs are going to reach the market (Jacoby, 2005). But how much memory is too much? Do we really want to remember the details of every bad argument, every em- barrassing event, or every boring movie? What price are you willing to pay to ace that exam?

SUMMARY

Our brain is a thinking instrument made up of billions of neurons in a complex connectedness that is unimaginable. In order for our brain to function properly and for us to reach our potential for thinking, our brain must receive adequate nourishment and sufficient sleep. It must also remain free of drugs, alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, and other substances that can affect the delicate neuro- u ansmitter balance in the brain and lead to distorted thinking. But our brain needs more than sound nutrition and freedom from pernicious drugs; it needs stimulation. A rich, challenging environment will build our brain into a stronger thinking organ, and it will help to forestall the dementias of old age. Our brain may not solve all the mysteries that concern us-and may actually create as much of the world as it discovers-but it will give us new glimpses and new insights into our unfolding personal universe.

Hidden within our brain is our memory. We have explored some of its nature and mystery and have learned that we must listen to others who disagree with our recollections, for our long-term memory is in constant movement; it may not only revise our past, it may even create it. We've also

88 CHAPTER 4 • Brain and Memory

looked at some reasons why we forget-repression, interference, loss of cues, stress, and failure to lay down memories well in the first place-and we've ex- plored ways to enhance memory through meaning, mnemonics, repetition, and practice.

Through this greater awareness of the nature of memory, we have aban- doned our absolute trust in what it presents to us. But we have also learned to improve it and move on to become better thinkers.

Brain and Memory Challenges

1. This chapter suggests that we can do a lot to maximize our brain's potential. List some of the ways to improve the working of your brain. Then decide which ones you are going to pursue.

2. We know that the brain is fairly sensitive to coffee, sleep, drugs, and food. What are the implications of this sensitivity for our behavior?

3. We have seen that old people who stay active develop fewer cases of some brain diseases. Do you know any older people who are very mentally alert? What are their mental activities-reading, hobbies, talking with people, and so forth?

4. Do you know any young people who do not show much intellectual inter- est or activity? Do you find any areas in your own life in which you are in- tellectually lazy? Reading a challenging book is food for the mind. What else could you do to give your mind regular workouts?

5. Look again at the quotation from Shakespeare's Othello (p.69). What do you think is the "enemy" that can steal away our brains?

6. Using your own experience or the experience of others you know, identify instances in which the drugs mentioned in this chapter clouded thinking and judgment. What were the consequences of the person's reduced ability to think critically?

7. How is it that a physical brain can give rise to a mental world that has prop- erties that the physical world does not? Are there other situations in which physical matter generates something that has nonphysical properties?

8. We mentioned that the brain is fed by our five senses. Can you imagine any other sense that could exist? Or is this impossible to imagine?

9. How might your brain be filtering, creating, and structuring reality? Is it possible to know something without the instrument of our knowing (the brain and senses) affecting and distorting what we know? What does it mean to say that we know something as it really is?

10. Do you will the brain to action, or does the brain will you to action? Are you something that exists apart from the brain, or are you something that is manufactured by the brain?

Summary 89

11. Have you ever gone without sleep for several days? How did it affect your thinking and concentration?

12. Your ability to think is related in part to the stimulation in your environ~ mem. In light of this, how would you assess your environment?

13. Can you think of other mnemonic techniques besides those mentioned in this chapter?

14. If we can't think without memory, then it is obviously very important to us. In what ways can you enhance your memory?

15. Although memory is vitally important, it is also fallible. Can you recall times when you were certain about some past event and then found out that you recalled wrongly? Can you identify what it was that caused your poor recall?

16. Try the penny challenge, if you haven't already done so in Chapter 3: Draw the from and back of a penny and place the following in the right positions: Lincoln's face (facing forward? facing right? facing left?), the date the mint mark, "In God We Trust," "Liberty," "One Cent," and "E Pluribus Unum." Finally, a simple question: What image is on the back? Now find a penny and check your memory. Did repeatedly seeing a penny result in a perfect memory?

17. Interference can hamper memory. Develop a study schedule that gives you the least amount of interference. Remember, do not overload by cramming, and do not place similar subjects back to back.

18. Do you suffer from test anxiety? If so, what can you do to reduce it so that your memory will serve you better on your next test?

19. Firmly laying down a memory is fundamental to recalling it later. What can you do to lay down strong memories so you can recall them when you want them?