Changing the Other Guy's Mind, Part Two
Change is Pain -- Recap
As Rock and Schwartz demonstrate in the Neuroscience of Leadership, change is pain. Just take a look at the expression of dismay on our cartoon mathematician's face when his colleague explains that he made a mistake in step two or three of his lenghy equation. Like the rest of us, he experiences error in the "reptile" flight or fight part of his brain -- the amygdala.
Because the amygdala's response is a hair-trigger reaction to danger -- timed to override any wasted cognitive activity at, for instance, our first detection of a black striped yellow creature softly padding toward us -- our mathemetician's discomfort is far more likely to be expressed in anger or petulant withdrawal than in any further rational argumentation.
We're threfore extremely unlikely to change our minds when someone is vigorously asserting that we are wrong wrong wrong wrong WRONG!
[Slight Digression -- In the Absence of Information, We Make Stuff Up]
Our brains are pattern-making organs. They are always trying to fit the pieces of a puzzle together. So strong is our desire to "make sense" of unrelated and disparate data that we tell ourselves absoutely sincere and compelling stories which are often completely and demonstratively untrue.
Researchers have demonstrated our talent for creative narrative by studying people whose left and right brains have been severed by surgery or accident. These people are perfect experimental subjects because their right (impressionistic, visual, creative) hemispheres have no way of communicating with their left (verbal, linear and logical) hemispheres. What one hemisphere knows, the other cannot learn.
In one of the most famous "split brain" studies, researchers presented each hemisphere with two images. One of the two images presented to each hemisphere matched the picture presented to both hemispheres. When asked to identify the related images, the subjects were easily able to point to related images with the hand controlled by the hemisphere capable of identifying the "match."
Because only the left brain can 'talk," however, when asked why the right hemisphere had chosen the correct image, the subject could not accurately explain because his "talking brain" simply didn't know. "Quick as a flash," said the researchers, the subject simply made up a wholly plausible and reasonable explanation, based upon the information at hand.
Anyone who has ever watched a mock jury deliberate has seen this creative narrative principle at work. Trials are not so much won or lost by what is demonstrated, but by some missing detail that the jury deems critical to the creation of a coherent narrative. In the absence of information, juries, like everyone else, simply make stuff up.
(I learned these "split brain" theoretical and practical lessons by watching several episodes of a now-forgotten PBS series (probable sequels to which can be found here). An excellent article discussing the split brain experiments can be found here for those who wish to pursue it).
If We Resist Change and Make Stuff Up to Avoid It, How Do We Ever Alter Our Thinking
Had Mother Nature left us without resource other than flight or fight, we likely would never have survived as a species. Insight ("eureka," the "AHA moment") is our gift the from the gods.
And it is insight, coupled with the brain's remarkable plasticity that allows us to change our minds and our behavior as well as to encourage others to join us.
The third and final part of this three-part piece on Changing the Other Guy's Mind will appear tomorrow.
Promise.
I've gotta go finish decorating my Christmas tree now!
