The human brain is an impressive yet bewildering thing. Although it only weighs about three pounds, it is the reason why we are so highly evolved compared to the rest of the animal kingdoms. The human brain is so fast that it’s slowest processing speeds is faster than the fastest car on earth.
But here’s the thing, there are times where our brain actually makes us “dumb.” Think I’m making this up? Here are 7 ways your brain can work against you.
1. Your Memories are Wrong
Do you and a friend ever recall a memory you shared but argue over the details? When you guys first heard about 9/11 it was at your house...or was it at school...or the gym.
You’re 100% sure he was at your house, but he’s saying it was at school and you are both sure of it. It turns out that the more emotional a memory is, the more confident we are around recalling that story accurately.
In 1986 the Challenger space shuttle exploded, it was a memorable day for many Americans. The next day a Professor at Emory, named Ulric Neisser handed out a questionnaire to his students asking them to reflect on where they were and who they were with and other details at the time of hearing about the Challenger explosion.
Two and a half years later, Professor Neisser handed out the same questionnaire to the same group of students. The average accuracy of these memories was a measly three out of seven, but what was even more fascinating is that when asked about how “confident” they were in recollecting their memory the average rating was a whopping 4.17 out of five!
We tend to be confident about an event and the details surrounding it but we are actually way off, this is because we tend to “tunnel vision” on the major event of the memory and the minor details associated with it tend to be forgotten.
2. You Filter Out More Information than you Realize
We all want to think that we are aware of everything, all the time. The truth of the matter is that we are not. Our brains use about 20-25% of our body’s energy, so it’s important that our brains act as efficiently as possible. In order to do this, the brain filters out a lot of “noise” in our environment and focuses our attention on the things we deem important using the reticular activating system (RAS).
Have you ever considered buying a particular car and then noticed it everywhere? It’s not that everyone bought that same exact car the same day, your RAS was in action and was focusing your attention on that specific car. Since your brain was focused on the new car purchase, your RAS took note of it making you even more aware of that car in your environment.
The RAS is an essential network in the brain that helps us parse through the massive amount of information we are exposed to everyday, it’s a great tool but realize that you’re filtering out a lot of information.
3. Your Brain Can be Primed
Do you ever go shopping, flip over a tag and find a great deal you can’t resist? The shirt you’re considering buying used to be $100, now it’s only $10― what a deal!
But Is it really a good deal or is your mind primed to think so because you saw the giant “x” over the original price? That’s because an initial stimuli can have huge affects on our subsequent decisions or behaviors.
In an interesting study, subjects were primed with words related to elderly people. After hearing those words, the subjects were found to walk slower when leaving the experiment compared to the control group who wasn’t primed.
4. You get Overwhelmed by Options
Too many options is bad. Although it may seem advantageous to have a variety of options to make the best decision, your mind actually gets overwhelmed and can’t make a decision.
Have you ever been browsing Netflix at night and just felt totally paralyzed? We’ve all been there, flipping through the endless choices presented to you. That’s the paradox of choice in action.
A fascinating experiment in a grocery store examined a stand with 24 different varieties of jams for shoppers to test and buy, those who sampled got a $1 coupon towards any purchase. The 24 jam display got a lot of interest as people wanted to taste test different flavors.
The next day a similar table was set up, but this time it only had six jams to try. Although the smaller table wasn’t as popular, when it come to buying the jam, people who saw the smaller display were ten times more likely to purchase.
5. You View your “Future Self” as a Stranger
Think planning for retirement is a waste of time?
That’s because we tend to think our future selves as totally different people, causing us to weaken the connection of the pain or sacrifice that the “future self” will have to go through.
Numerous studies have shown that our brain thinks of our future selves as entirely different people, so much so, we may as well be thinking of a celebrity! In a study conducted by Hershfield (6) and his colleagues, subjects’ neural activity when imagining their future selves was similar to when they described celebrities like Matt Damon!
The experimenters took this a step further and asked subjects to either look at themselves in the mirror or look at a photo of their future selves (by way of digitally making their face look older). Afterwards they were asked how they’d spend $1,000, those exposed to their “older self” said they’d put twice as much money into a retirement account compared to those who saw their current self in the mirror.
6. You Don’t Panic when You Should
Have you ever felt a minor earthquake in the middle of the night? You may wake up alarmed for a few seconds, but then you roll over and fall back asleep.
That’s the normalcy bias at play. This bias occurs when there’s a disaster going on and instead of getting into “fight or flight” mode you convince yourself that everything is totally normal, leading to inaction.
This bias leads to a lot of unnecessary deaths and injuries such as Hurricane Katrina where residents never thought the levees would break and when they did they were stuck at home, faring the worst.
Scientific hypotheses suggest this occurs because it takes our brains 8-10 seconds to process information and adding stress to the equation slows this down even more.
7. The Availability Heuristic
The availability heuristic is a mental shortcut we take, we believe something is common place if we have an example to reference or are already familiar with it. For example, if we have a lot of friends with iPhones we assume that everyone has iPhones!
An experiment from the University of Zurich showed that people who had been affected by flooding (or knew someone who was) were more likely to perceive higher risk about flooding probabilities in their neighborhood compared to those who never had such experiences.
About the Author
This is a guest post by communication coach Katrina Razavi, founder of CommunicationforNerds.com. If you liked this article, visit her site to sign up for a free three-video mini course called: How to Shut Up that Inner Voice & Beat Awkward Conversations. It covers six secrets to social confidence, the #1 strategy to improve your life and how to have natural conversations...even if you’re super awkward.
Katrina helps people who struggle with social anxiety and social confidence by sharing strategies using change psychology, confidence building and habit transformation.