PERSONAL SPECIAL...What the Brain Wants

What the Brain Wants

Bestselling author David DiSalvo on why it can be dangerous to allow the brain to run on auto-pilot

Science writer David DiSalvo says he works in the space where science, culture and technology intersect. In his first book, What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite, he puts forth an interesting proposition — that much of what makes our brains happy often leads to errors and biases. He goes on to explain why we are prone to assigning meaning to statistically common coincidences and why we’ll pick options that don’t serve either our short-term or longterm goals. Delving into economics and marketing, social and evolutionary psychology and neurology, DiSalvo outlines methods to recognise the way the brain functions and how to use this knowledge.
The basic premise of the book is that what makes the brain happy isn’t what it necessarily needs. Please explain this further
    The brain is a marvel of nature that boasts an array of well-developed abilities, including detecting patterns, predicting outcomes, and anticipating threats, among several others. The problem is that these same abilities, essential though they are, also predispose us to cognitive biases and mental distortions that make getting out of our own way very difficult.
    We usually fall prey to these biases and distortions because they present themselves as preferred-initial thought — or what some might simply call “top-ofmind” solutions. It’s difficult but quite necessary that we challenge those initial thoughts and work towards better solutions, even when we’d rather go the path of least resistance.
What is it that makes the brain happy and why should we be wary of it?
    The human brain craves certainty, consistency and stability (a trinity that can be summed up in the term “homeostatis”) — much as we would expect of an organ that evolved to ensure species’ survival. The brain is also energy-conservation centric, meaning that it is always calculating ways to reach rewards and avoid threats with the least amount of energy expenditure necessary.
    If we could somehow let the brain run on autopilot, without conscious “piloting” of any sort, it would ceaselessly target homeostasis and short-term rewards. In the book I describe this tendency as that of the “happy” brain. Allowing the brain to operate on those terms would lead to a host of problems, including chronic loss avoidance that leads to stagnation, and short-sighted decision making that leads to sub-par outcomes. We have to assert enough conscious piloting — guided by knowledge, experience and heightened awareness of our environments — to keep our brains from becoming their own worst enemies.
Why do we routinely choose alternatives that don't meet our short-term needs and undermine our longterm goals?
    Psychologists and economists share a term that addresses this question, called “hyperbolic discounting.” It involves two problematic dynamics: our inability to place ourselves in the future with any degree of accuracy, and our desire to reap short-term rewards. When those dynamics join, we frequently find ourselves losing in both the short and long terms.
    To counter this problem, we need to use what I call the “awareness wedge”, which is simply a brief reflection period that forces us to think about our thinking (a process cognitive scientists call “metacognition”). As we become better at evaluating our thinking, almost as if we’re looking at it from an outsider’s perspective, we become more effective at countering the significant drawbacks of hyperbolic discounting.
What are the implications for this sort of behaviour for business and how does one tackle it?
    Decision makers in business organisations own a special responsibility when it comes to challenging confirmation bias, because their decisions affect not only themselves but hundreds if not thousands of others. They have to begin with a decision-making stance that retains confidence while jettisoning the inclination to ignore that which doesn’t match up with what they’d like to be true.
    Imagine, for example, commissioning a research firm to evaluate a business process, but telling the firm ahead of time what the outcome of the evaluation should be. That’s the sort of thinking decisionmakers must avoid. Don’t presuppose outcomes and don’t allow your pre-existing biases to colour your evaluation. Acknowledge the possibility that you could be wrong, and embrace a strategy to improve your chances of making better decisions moving forward.
Given that most of us are trained to ‘listen to our brain’, how does one deal with this?
    Listening to the brain is a valid, but incomplete way of describing metacognition, because our brains are part of a larger whole that encompasses our entire nervous system, that’s also affected by an endless barrage of external influences. In truth, tuning into our own thinking is a difficult discipline to develop, because it’s a voice among a cacophony of voices from within and without. To really get good at metacognition and make better decisions as a result, we have to re-train ourselves, because our typical (trained) inclinations aren’t going to get us far enough.
How does the desire to ‘feel right’ impact our thinking/ behaviour?
    Feeling right is the psycho-emotional reward our brains desire almost endlessly — and we usually mistake it for being right. The problem is that we want this reward so much, it’s very easy to ignore disconfirming evidence and only seek out evidence that supports our positions — positions that are inherently biased. The term “confirmation bias” is typically used to describe this particular brain foible that we’re all subject to tripping over on a daily basis.
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