“Your mind is the outcome of genetics, traumas and hacks.”
In my last composition, we examined a few of the more well known behavioral psychology studies conducted during the 20th century. While you may have drawn different inferences from these studies than I did, I would hope we can agree that what these studies ultimately presented us was a very clear image of how human behavior can be more or less easily manipulated with very simple reinforcement mechanisms.
For the purpose of reference, we’ll call that piece Part I. This is Part II…
Learned Helplessness
I would assume that the vast majority of us are already familiar with Ivan Pavlov in regards to his work involving the classical theory of conditioning. If somehow you are not, you can begin learning about that here. Don’t be shy… go ahead and click the link. We’ll wait for you to return…
Building on the concepts, hypotheses, and methodologies presented by Pavlov in his own work, Martin Seligman and Steven F. Maier set out, in 1967 at the University of Pennsylvania, to study the extent to which interference can occur when individual control over a negative stimulus is removed. Pavlov’s most famous study(the one with the dogs and the bell) demonstrated how a behavioral response can be conditioned using an unrelated proxy. Seligman & Maier were seeking to understand whether or not the inverse of this proposition could also be true. Specifically, to what degree behavioral conditioning could play a role in preventing an escape response to a stimulus that would typically be perceived as objectionable to the subject.
Seligman & Maier devised an experiment that would also utilize dogs as their test subjects. The first study that they conducted separated the test subjects into two groups. One group that was strapped into harnesses, given electric shocks, and were able to halt the shock by nudging a pressure panel located next to their heads. The other group was also strapped into harnesses and given shocks, but there was no panel for this group to nudge to stop the shocks.
24 hours after this initial phase of the trial, both groups were then put into “shuttle boxes” for the next phase. These shuttle boxes were enclosures where the space was separated by a half-wall, with one side of the floor having the capability to deliver and electric shock. The supposition was that, with the stimulus of the shock, the dogs would jump over the half-wall to the side where the floor was not electrified. This is exactly how the dogs who were part of the first group in the first phase, where the dogs could nudge a panel to terminate the shock, behaved.
However, the dogs in the second group did not react this way. In repeated trials, the dogs who were unable to stop the shock with a panel nudge in the first phase also rarely attempted to jump the half-wall in the shuttle box. Some of them did eventually jump the wall after 7 or 8 or 10 trials; others in this group never even made an attempt. A week later, this same group was put through the shuttle box trial again, but the results were largely the same. Seligman & Maier would repeat this experiment in subsequent years, each time tweaking various aspects of the trials, but the results were found to be well within the acceptable variance of the original study.
What they managed to demonstrate over the course of all of the studies is that, without first knowing that they could escape the negative stimulus of the electric shock, most of the dogs never even tried. Or, as the researchers themselves stated: “if an animal first learns that it’s responding produces shock termination and then faces a situation in which reinforcement is independent of its responding, it is more persistent in its attempts to escape shock than is a naïve animal.”
In other words, if you never know that you have the power to change something that you find unacceptable, or your efforts to enact change don’t appear to result in that change, you may give up or never even try. Over time, this has the potential to lead to the individual accepting conditions from their environment that they would otherwise never capitulate to; or, as the well-worn saying goes, “what are you gonna do?” In his own work, Pavlov observed that it was the first conditioned inhibitor that was the most difficult to instill. But once that behavior was established, any successive conditioning was much easier to accomplish in the same subject.
The Deception of Memory
We all have memories. Some of those memories consist of enjoyable experiences; events that, if it were possible, we would happily relive over and over again. By contrast, we also have memories that we wish we didn’t; traumatic experiences that, at the time, intimated the worst possible confluence of events that we would have consciously avoided if at all possible. But the ultimate question that I have about memories is this: do we have control over our memories, or do our memories have control over us?
In 1974, Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer commenced a series of trials to study the effects of language on the structure of memories and the accuracy of recall. The hypothesis they put forth to test was that language was not only integral to the formation of memories, but also had the potential to change and even distort those memories. This would eventually come to be referred to as the Car Crash Experiment. In their initial study, participants were shown random videos of automobile accidents, and then asked to describe what they had seen as if they were an eyewitness at the scene. At the conclusion of their viewing, the participants were asked a series of questions about what they had witnessed, including a variation of the critical question for the study: “about how fast were the cars going when they (smashed/collided/bumped/hit/contacted) each other?”
What Loftus and Palmer found was that the more forceful the verb used in the critical question, the greater the speed of the automobiles was estimated to be by the participants. Loftus and Palmer devised two possible explanations for this outcome:
1) The differing estimates occur because the critical verb influences the response of the participant, or
2) The critical verb affects the perception of the participant, and then becomes stored in memory, thus distorting the original memory.
Loftus and Palmer concluded that if the latter was indeed true, they should be able to observe participants “remembering” details about the accidents that did not actually happen. They would conduct another study to test this new hypothesis.
In this subsequent study, 3 groups were used. All three would be presented with a short video of about 60 seconds that displayed an automobile driving through a tranquil countryside, with the final 4 seconds of the video showing an accident. After viewing the video, the first group was asked the question, “how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?” The second group was asked, “how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?” The third group was not asked any variation of this question. All three groups were asked, “did you see any broken glass? Yes or no?”
In regards to the critical verb question from this trial, the results fell right into line with the results from the first study, with the group that was asked the “smashed” critical question reporting higher estimated speeds than the other two groups. The participants of the group that was asked the “smashed” critical question were also more likely to report remembering seeing broken glass than the participants of the other groups. There was no broken glass in the videos viewed by any of the three groups. Loftus and Palmer surmised that not only can memory be distorted by the wording of questions asked after the fact, but also that information introduced to the viewer after the initial memory creation can combine with the actual events to create a false memory; also known as confabulation.
As you can probably imagine, these findings were not universally accepted in the halls of academic psychology at large at the time, and Loftus and Palmer were widely criticized for their methods as well as their results. In 1986, the research team of John Yuille and Judith Daylen(formerly Cutshall) set out to disprove the findings of Loftus and Palmer using real life events, in direct contrast to the studies that Loftus and Palmer conducted. Yuille and Daylen were of the opinion that the studies of Loftus and Palmer relied too heavily on data from participants observing events that had no direct impact on their lives.
To prove their point, Yuille and Daylen went looking for a real world event to use as a case study and selected an armed robbery that had a significant amount of eyewitnesses. Some of the eyewitnesses were central observers of the crime, whereas the rest were peripheral. All of the eyewitnesses had already completed interviews with the local authorities, and their participation in the study was voluntary. Yuille and Daylen, in a bid to cultivate false memories of the event from the eyewitnesses, deliberately inserted false or misleading information into some of their questions about the event. Surprisingly, the eyewitnesses were able to recall the details of the crime with a high level of accuracy, even 4 or 5 months later. As a matter of fact, those eyewitnesses from the group considered to be central to the commission of the crime displayed a greater level of recall than those who were considered peripheral. Perhaps as a function of karma, this study has also received more than it’s fair share of peer criticism.
Yuille and Daylen’s aim was to disprove the reproducible findings of Loftus and Palmer, thereby minimizing any possible correlations or inferences that could be drawn from them, but what if they ended up proving something else entirely? Could it be possible that memories may be categorized by the individual’s level of participation in the events that form that memory? In other words, maybe we can separate memories into at least two categories: active or passive. Active memories, like those possessed by the eyewitnesses of the armed robbery, may be less susceptible to confabulation due to the stresses of, or the natural autonomic responses to, what would presumably be perceived as a potentially dangerous situation. You know, survival instincts and all that. Whereas passive memories, like those possessed by the participants in the Loftus and Palmer studies, may be more susceptible to confabulation due to the fact that the observer is not in a heightened state of awareness(if engaged at all), and by that more open to suggestion or manipulation.
If that could be proven true, we may then have to start a new discussion about the methods and effects of the entire spectrum of media, and also how we choose to consume it. Or maybe we could just start with advertising, and work our way forward from there.
The False Consensus Effect
“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”
-Charles Darwin, from the Descent of Man
How normal are you? Or, to ask the same question another way, what percentage of the population do you think would hold the same views and make the same decisions that you do? I’ll recuse my answer, because I’m well aware of my own anomalous nature. But what about you? And how do you view the character of those who would stand in opposition to your views?
At Stanford University in 1976, the research team of Lee Ross, David Green, and Pamela House posited that “in a sense, every social observer is an intuitive psychologist who is forced by everyday experience to judge the causes and implications of behavior.” The research team hypothesized that the average individual perceives that their choices and their process of reasoning are representative of the majority of the population, while conversely viewing opposing points of view as uncommon or rare.
The team conducted studies using students from the university as participants. The trial consisted of 4 hypothetical stories where, at the end of each, the participants were asked to choose one of two responses to the situation presented, and indicate what percentage of the population they thought would make that same choice. Participants were also presented with 4 behavioral traits(i.e. shyness/confidence, trust/suspicion, etc.) that could be associated with each choice, and asked to rate on a 100 point scale how much those traits related to each choice presented. More often than not, participants stated that they believed that their observations and choices were reflective of what the majority of the population would choose. The same outcome was also observed when the participants assigned their ratings to the behavioral traits associated with each choice.
The team of Ross et al. accepted these findings, but were curious to know if the hypothetical nature of the situations presented to the participants in the study may have skewed the results. So they created a supplemental study to test how the responses produced from a hypothetical decision-making situation differed from the responses of participants who were being presented with a real decision-making situation. What they discovered was that the hypothetical group produced nearly identical results to the original study, but the effect was even more pronounced in the group that would have to perform an action(or not) dependent upon the decision that they made.
The research team concluded that, in nearly every instance, the individual’s “intuitive estimates of deviance and normalcy… are biased in accord[ance]” with the choices and proclivities of the individual making the choice. Moreover, in the real situation group, they observed that the responses viewed by the participant as “counter-normative or atypical” prompted stronger associated trait ratings than those responses the participant considered to be “common.”
To me, this study exposes the very human tendency to project what we see inside of ourselves, which we may or may not recognize, onto whatever we may encounter outside of ourselves. Perhaps it is a form of psychological self-defense or ego preservation, but we allow ourselves to believe that most people think like we do, and would make the same choices that we make, regardless of any indications that may point in any other direction. That effect only intensifies when we begin assigning value to those choices in terms of how we may view the righteousness of ourselves or others, and only serves to reinforce what we think we intuitively know, but can’t actually prove. I could be wrong, but I believe that this is the type of system that’s known as a negative feedback loop. And not a particularly constructive one.
To me, this kind of makes it appear as though human beings may have a hard-wired vulnerability to the effects of a psychological echo chamber due to evolutionary forces that originally aided our collective survival. That would almost certainly be a significant aspect in explaining at least some the effects of social media.
Selective Attention
Before we wind this puppy up, it’s test time! No, seriously… go ahead and take the test below before proceeding. It’s quick, and you get to grade yourself.
As human beings, our brains are processing millions upon millions of bits of data every single day. This is true not only when we are awake and actively participating in the world around us, but also when we are sleeping and predominantly unaware of what’s going on around us. How many times have you woken from a dream to find that whatever it was that woke you(an alarm, a noisy automobile, etc.) was actually weaving its way into your dream just before the moment of waking? Even though you may think of yourself as “dead to the world,” as I often do, your brain is still receiving and processing information; even if you are not consciously aware of it.
My inclination was that actually taking the test would be more expedient than trying to explain how it works. So… how did you do? Did you see the faux simian? I did, but I also knew what I was looking for beforehand, so that’s kind of cheating. Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, who developed the above video, must have known what they were looking for as well back in 1999. If they didn’t, then they managed to stumble onto something that could cause us to reevaluate all of our previous theories about how the brain works. And in case you were wondering, just over 50% people never see the gorilla the first time they take the test.
What Chabris and Simons demonstrated with this experiment is how often and how easily we can be deceived, even by our own senses and our own mind, when we think we know what we are doing. Some researchers have argued that intuition, that “sense of knowing” that something is right, is an underutilized tool that should be provided deeper exploration; that it somehow (magically) guides us to the right outcome because it only focuses on the relevant information being presented and quickly discards everything else.
Chabris and Simons would seem to disagree. They have offered that the reason at least half of people never see the gorilla is because of the illusion of attention, or what has become more commonly known as selective attention. The idea is that the more we tune our focus to look for, or respond to, just one thing, the more likely it become that we will either discard relevant information because it does not immediately appear to fit the criteria that we are looking for, or that we just won’t see that information at all. Which, when you really consider it, is a very purposeful trait to possess if we are a talking about survival in any sense.
But what about when survival is no longer a concern, at least not in the manner where we have to be constantly aware of physical predators that may like to make a tasty snack of us? What are the practical applications of intuition in the world we know and inhabit today? It appears to me that Chabris and Simons make a compelling argument that, while some of our instincts can benefit us by performing functions like leading us away from a potentially dangerous situation, they can also prevent us from recognizing potential opportunities or even hazards that are literally right in front of our faces.
For example, did you know that the overwhelming majority of motorcycle accidents involve other vehicles? Most of us, when we are driving a car, are aware that there are going to be other cars on the road, and that we need to watch out for them. We all also know that we share the road with motorcycles, even though their frequency is severely reduced compared to that of other cars. So do you think that it would be more likely that catching a glimpse of a motorcycle coming out of your blind spot would register in your brain before another car? Chabris and Simons say that this is not likely due to the illusion of attention, and the statistics would seem to support them. Why? Because that’s not the pattern we’ve been conditioned to look for.
Chabris and Simons have published their studies and theoretical work for general public consumption, which can be found here.
So What Did We Learn Today?
Behavioral researchers have understood far longer than the general public how studying the behavior of animals, like dogs or mice, can correlate to and be informative of a greater understanding of human behavior. As do the people and organizations who provide the necessary funding for such studies. We will discuss these people in future publications.
Animals are adaptable. And last time I checked, humans are still classified biologically as animals; therefore, humans are adaptable. No big surprise there. Animals also can be conditioned accept almost anything, especially if they are unable to recognize that their actions or choices may mitigate or negate any circumstance. Or, to put it more simply, you don’t know what you don’t know; especially when ignorance is itself a contributing factor. But even the faintest memory of an alternative to the situation the animal is experiencing, if that situation is determined by the animal to be displeasing, will drastically reduce the efficacy of any previous conditioning.
Language can be an incredibly powerful tool, but can conversely be an equally perilous weapon. Evidence of this can be found simply by reading a newspaper or turning on the nightly news. Because memory is not static(unlike a recording), and can be influenced afterward by nothing more than proper word selection, the validity of our own recall can be called into question at almost any time. Unless, apparently, that memory is the result of a traumatic event that we were actively aware was happening. Lower levels of situational awareness may leave our memories, and by extension our subconscious mind, open to manipulation by a carefully chosen word or two. A recent article from Gizmodo illustrates just how effortless it is to implant a false memory. It does make me wonder, with now approaching five decades of media consumption under my belt, how many of my own memories are genuine, and how many have been fashioned into what I now believe them to be.
In general, we humans seem to think quite highly of ourselves in our own minds. I’m convinced that, with minimal effort, we could create an exhaustive list for why this would be so, and equally plausible justifications for each item on that list. Humans are rather adept at those types of thought experiments. We also display a tendency to judge more favorably those ideas and people that we view as agreeing with our own mentality, and much less favorably of those that do not. All the while trusting that our instincts will provide us with exactly what we need to navigate any circumstance, any situation that we may find ourselves in, regardless of whether or not those instincts can be proven reductive or incorrect.
Maybe we’re just not quite as smart as we want to believe that we are. Or maybe we’ve been conditioned to believe that, because it’s all that we’ve ever known, while being guided to watch the people in white pass the ball around. The anonymous author at the 12 Minute Blog summed it up quite nicely: “if we can only see the patterns we’ve previously acquired, then we’re pretty susceptible to brainwashing, not to mention inherently limited to a worldview created by our own prejudices and superstitions.”
All of this taken together with the information that was presented in Asch, Milgram, and the Stanford Prison would seem to indicate that, not only are we not as in control of our own behavior(as most of us would like to believe), but we are also susceptible to having our perception of the world around us manipulated as readily as is our behavior. Now, if you and I can sit here and hash all of this out over the course of an hour or so (maybe less, depending on how quickly you read), what do you think people with tremendous resources and decades worth of time to invest would be able to do with this information?
It might be a question worth considering before the very act of asking questions becomes enforcedly forbidden. Twenty years ago, I would have said that a lot still has to happen before that scenario could be considered a reasonable possibility. I can’t make that same statement today.
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