Your physical experiences influence how you think, feel and make decisions

It’s true that the way people feel think and decide can be altered by their circumstances. This field of ’embodied cognition’ explores the theory that a person’s physical experiences subtly and unconsciously influence their psychological states. Underpinning this is the notion that the mind is not only connected to the body but that the body influences the mind. In practice, what this means is that our cognition, our representation and understanding of our world is not entirely defined by what is going on in our brains in terms of actual physical activity. Rather, our experiences in the physical world are an important influence. It is also related to the idea that the brain circuits responsible for abstract thinking are closely tied to those circuits that analyze and process sensory experiences received from the body — and its role in how we think and feel about our world.

This approach has important implications. By expanding the resources available to solve a task from simply the brain to include the body and the brain circuits that processes sensory information received perceptual and motor systems, we’ve opened up the possibility that we can solve a task in a very different way than a brain by itself might solve the task. A classic example that is often cited is the baseball outfielder problem where the informational problem of catching the ball is solved by moving in a particular way – a solution that requires both the body and the brain.

Recently, researchers used an adapted embodied cognition approach to examine whether seemingly unrelated experiences affect individuals’ preferences for stability. Although this study is still in press, a write-up about it can be found here and in a recent edition of The Economist. The researchers split a group in two, assigning one half to a slightly wobbly table and chair, while others had stable furniture. When asked to rate the stability of four celebrity couples, those in the ‘wobbly’ group rated the couple as significantly less stable that the ‘non-wobbly furniture’ group. Moreover, when asked to rate their preferences for traits in potential romantic partners (all participants were romantically unattached), those in the ‘wobbly’ group said that they valued stability in their own relationships more highly to a statistically significant level.

It seems that even a small amount of wobbliness in your physical environment seems to be able to influence the desire for more stable surroundings, including potential partner choice. So the next time you find yourself making seemingly strange decisions that you are having trouble understanding, ask yourself how much you are being affected by the context you find yourself in. And perhaps change your context if you want to experience a different outcome.

 

No need to rush

There are times when procrastinating might be a good idea. Not because you are avoiding doing something – though we are all guilty of that at times. But it can be useful when we are trying to figure out the best course of action in a complex situation, or where we are trying not to make critical errors.

There is a lot of pressure in modern life to respond immediately to requests. Email is constantly with us, social networks like Facebook and Twitter ping us with updates – even when we are trying to sleep unless we are disciplined about switching these functions off (Apple have recognized this and seem poised to add a ‘Do Not Disturb’ mode to the next version of the iPhone operating system). Business supply chains rely upon just-in-time management techniques and delivery windows which do not have much margin for lateness. Fast food chains will give you your fix in under two minutes. Even job contracts are getting shorter and focused upon a core set of deliverables – those and those alone, thank you very much – “Now, go and get on with it, and woe betide you if I catch you fiddling around with anything else when you are supposed to be doing this job.”

All this pressure for immediacy. Yet, we also hear things like ‘act in haste, repent at leisure’. We also see online transactions, or credit contracts that have a ‘cooling-off period’ to help us to take another look in the ‘cold light of day’. Maybe creativity also needs time, and perhaps distraction to enable the fusing of new combinations and ideas. Ernest Hemingway once told a fan that the best way to write a novel was to first clean the fridge. And when you plant a seed, you don’t dig it up every five minutes to see how it is doing. Doing that only damages the process, or at least delays it. Some things operate on a different time scale altogether. Immediacy is not a good fit.

In Wait: The Art and Science of Delay, Frank Partnoy argues that too many people fail to recognise that success depends on knowing when to delay, and for how long. Comedians get this, as do people who make a living through public speaking. Sometimes, doing things right is more important than doing it first. Just ask Apple about the iPad and then see what Microsoft has to say about the Tablet computer they had out years earlier.

Delaying also works where critical errors need to be avoided. Airline pilots and surgeons use checklists, even when they have done the procedure many, many times before. The list slows them down and helps them to work methodologically, avoiding the taking of potentially time-saving shortcuts that could lead to catastrophic error, whilst improving quality and consistency of service at the same time.

The wisdom comes from recognising when to think and act quickly (e.g. delaying paying that credit card bill is probably just going to make things worse), and knowing when to act and think slowly. Partnoy thinks that this is a skill that can be learned, and I agree. It also ties in nicely with my to-do list post here.

Speed for its own sake can lead down dangerous paths. The pleasure gained deciding and executing an action can bring a sense of closure and can even be aesthetically pleasing. But the secret of modern life and how are brains have evolved to function is that we need a combination of fast and slow. Deadlines are useful, but there is value in dawdling too.