The Hidden Workings of Our Minds
How do great artists create? How do brilliant scientists solve the hardest problems in their field? Listen to them try to explain and you'll probably be disappointed. Artists say mysterious things like: "The picture just formed in my mind." Writers tell us that: "I don't know where the words come from." Scientists say they: "Just had a hunch."
Of course, not all scientists, artists and writers give such mysterious answers. Some talk about the processes they went through or what inspired their conceptual jump. But their explanations are almost invariable unsatisfying. They usually can't really explain how they made that vital leap of the imagination. This is strange. Why is it that otherwise brilliant and articulate people seem unable to adequately explain their thought processes? Don't they know how they did it?
What is true of great scientific and artistic leaps of imagination is also true in everyday life. When people are asked why they chose one career over another, one partner over another or one flavour of ice-cream over another, the same problems emerge. Often, people's answers are unconvincing or they just don't know.
Psychologists no longer find this inability to explain our internal mental processes strange. Like Freud all those years ago, modern cognitive psychologists have come to accept that a lot of the time we don't have much of a clue what's going on in our own minds, and there's evidence to prove it.
Mysterious thoughts
In a classic review of the literature, Nisbett and Wilson (1977) looked at many, many cognitive and social psychology studies conducted in the 1960s, 70s and earlier. These studies involved manipulating participants' behaviour. For an example, have a look at my report of this classic study of cognitive dissonance.
After reviewing all these studies where experimenters are messing with participants' minds, Nisbett and Wilson came to the following conclusions:
- People are mostly unaware that their behaviour or thought processes have been changed by the experimenter.
- Even if they are aware of the manipulation, they can't identify the process of change that occurred.
- Most people cannot connect their changed thought or behaviour with the experimenter's manipulation.
Frustratingly, it seems that the most powerful workings of the mind are hidden away from view, even when we go rummaging around. If this is true, what about the explanations that people actually give for their behaviour? Where do these come from and are they ever right?
Nisbett and Wilson reach two further disturbing conclusions:
- When coming up with their explanations, people don't seem to access the correct thought process(es). If they do then it only happens when the explanation is plausible.
- Sometimes people do report the correct reason for what they've done, but it's probably only a coincidence.
If Nisbett and Wilson are right it has profound implications for what we can know about our own thoughts and whether we can believe what other people say about theirs.
The evidence
In the next few posts I'll explain some of the evidence for these claims. But in the meantime think about a relatively common experience like driving. Most drivers have had the experience of having driven for a length of time without noticing any traffic signals, yet they still stop at every red light.
Some part of our minds has clearly been paying attention and it's these automatic unconscious processes that are keeping us alive. But there's a major difference between being on automatic pilot because it suits us, and being unable to get off automatic pilot even if we want to.
It's this idea of not having access to the vast majority of our own thoughts, even when we try, that has been such a major psychological insight for modern cognitive psychologists.
References
Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review, 84(3), 231-259.
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As always, nice post.
A couple of points: First, you refer to the frustration of the cognitive processes being hidden away -- the ghost in the machine, if you will. Seriously consider the alternative: full awareness of the cognitive process, with the associated double and triple and quadruple guessing that would ensue. There have been numerous studies that have demonstrated that trying to analyze our reasoning too much results in as much error as relying on hunches.
Second, one theme that seems pretty consistent in the "break-throughs" is what I refer to as the intentionality-unintentionality paradox. That is, if must be something that is deliberately pondered, and has been quite a while, but the solution comes when they stop deliberating.
Naturally, this occurs to those who are experts at what they do, those who have developed the 10,000+ hours neural pathways that produce reliable instinct in their area of expertise.
I'm looking forward to the upcoming series of posts.
Dr G, thank you.
I suppose it sometimes frustrates me that I can't identify exactly why I think a particular way about something. But it's probably a case of be careful what you wish for! You're probably right - if we really did have access to all these processes it would drive us crazy and we, as a species, would never have survived.
In fact, perhaps we had some distant ancestor who DID have access to these processes and they died out from simple indecision.
Interesting post and I still have to check the full serie...
I've been interested in creativity, arts, expression and such areas for quite some time now. I came across your blog in the perfect moment. I'm studying the ways those areas connect to each other and this was a light but effective guide for some of my ideas. If you allow me, I've linked this post in my last post.
Congratulations, Dean.
Ren B, glad it's useful.
As a practitioner of Tibetan Buddhist meditation, I was drawn to your insights on mental processing. So I come from a somewhat different perspective than the scientific. Additionally, as a fiction author, my experiences with creativity have opened up into a realm of no boundaries.
The questions you raise with "The Hidden Workings of Our Minds" are, in a sense, more fascinating than cited research findings. You and your readers may appreciate my essay, "Getting a Story Out of Nowhere." It is available for reading, and linking to, at http://www.bloomingrosepress.com/gettingastory.html.
Thank you for your provocative piece! I'll be back for more.
Care, you're welcome!
Hi Jeremy. The topic you raise in these couple of posts is of a fundamental interest. You can also check the insightful work of Bertram F. Malle ( how the mind explains behaviour" which make the bridge between the cognitive model of the "theory of mind" and the social psychology's "attribution theory". As stipulated before, the attention processes are crucial in these sorts of 'metacognitive' processes.
After studying psychology for many years I finally came to the conclusion that it was a dead-end street. The problem with the discipline of psychology, and it's medical "brother", psychiatry, is that they are looking at the physical to resolve a problem which is spiritual.
I decided that correct research would really have to start with Buddhism (Gautama Siddhartha - a great scientist) and his efforts to understand man as a spiritual entity, and then move forward. I discovered in the 60s that this had already been done when I read Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard, a book which was widely criticized by psychiatrists and psychologists. It is the only good science on the mind I have ever read. Interestingly, I have never read a critique of the subject by anyone who has actually practiced it, only by those who haven't, usually explaining how wildly out of alignment it is with the theories of modern experts in psychology and psychiatry. One thing I'm sure of - you can study the brain, "neural pathways" and genetics for the next million years and you'll never come any closer than you are right now to understanding who you are, why you think the way you do, the source of the logical and illogical actions you take and source and nature of your own immense and endless creativity.
dr. grumpus, excellent points! I have an art teacher who encourages us to discuss our thought process with the class after every assignment, and I would have to argue that the hunches and guesses that my explinations are based on help my creative process more than they hinder it. I agree that overanalysis can in many cases lead to error, but as mentioned creative thinkers like artists and writers sometimes rely on the absence of knowledge in order to form a cohesive explanation for their work.
very interesting article!