The Book “Blink” and Experiential Education: Tapping the same Other Lobe of the Brain Circuits?

The Book “Blink” and Experiential Education: Tapping the same Other Lobe of the Brain Circuits?

Once one begins to think about how emotional logic circuits operate in experiential education (other lobe of the brain thinking), one sees them in other domains.  Here is a good example.

-Jim and Shwen

Hillary W. Steinbrook and Jim Stellar

Hillary is a law student at Harvard who worked at Northeastern as a legal intern in the Office of the University Counsel.  We got talking about a fascinating book “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell.  The conversation seemed so relevant to the blog, I asked her to prepare a statement about it. In our usual conversational format, she did and I had a few comments.

Blink

My mother told me when I was very little that real life is not like Disney movies, and the bad guys do not make it obvious that they are bad by dressing only in black clothing and walking around with an ominous soundtrack following them to warn others of their sinister motives. While this certainly is true, it turns out that we do have a protection mechanism built into our unconscious that can protect us from evildoers, at least on some occasions. However, we must be willing to listen to the signals that this system sends out in response to environmental stimuli.

Gladwell’s excellent book, “Blink,” focuses on our ability to make automatic, rapid judgments in response to our surroundings. Starting with the non-intuitive premise that these judgments can be as good as decisions made after substantial thought, Gladwell suggests that we should have more appreciation for, and less apprehension towards, our ability to assess people and places unconsciously and use these quick judgments to guide our behavior. In fact, becoming bogged down in too much information and spending too much time ruminating over a decision can impede performance, even if the increase in information ironically makes us feel more confident in our decision.

However, the author warns that our ability to thin-slice, that is the “ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience,” is not infallible. On occasion, we may be prone to act based on prejudice and discrimination if the past experiences on which we build our rapid evaluations of our environment were biased. Gladwell refers to the IAT, a test developed by Mahzarin Banaji, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and in whose lab I worked one summer during college. The IAT demonstrates the strength of our associations between two categories, such as race and quality. Depending on an individual’s bias, the individual will associate a photo of a Caucasian man or a photo of an African-American man more quickly with positive words than with negative words. Furthermore, under situations of extreme stress, we may become “mind-blind,” unable to read accurately a sequence of events or the motives of another individual because our ability to discount the influence of biases fails when we are focused on survival.

Under normal levels of arousal, our ability to make quick assessments based on little information is good. However, this skill can be impeded if we subsequently attempt to import conscious analysis into the decision-making process by providing a verbal explanation for our behavior. Not only are we unable to come up with plausible and consistent explanations for why we behaved in a certain manner, but our attempts at explaining our preferences for certain types of food or music actually can alter our preferences when we realize that the item we liked the most cannot be described in terms that make it sound like the best. This conflict between modes of thought helps explain why it can be so difficult to express in words why someone creeps you out immediately once you meet that person. I first learned about the concept of the “baloney generator” from Steven Pinker, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, in the context of split-brain patients who rely on their verbal left hemisphere to explain what their emotional right hemisphere is feeling. (“The Blank Slate”). It appears that we all have baloney generators observing our unconsciously directed behavior and explaining that behavior at a conscious level.

Perhaps most importantly from the perspective of advocates of experiential learning, Gladwell states that “we learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction.” By saying this, he means that while judgment can be trained (the ability to “interpret and decode snap judgments and first impressions” differentiates experts from laypeople), judgment cannot be taught. Only through repeated experiences can an individual cull from the task the relevant information that the activity provides. Thereafter, the individual can use that information as the basis for future rapid judgments when faced with similar circumstances.

My only comment here is to point out that most of the time in this blog, I have referred to the other lobe as the limbic system, below the cognitive right and left hemispheres in the brain.  But there is a great history of studying the classical right hemisphere as being more involved with emotions than the left.  Certainly, it is where facial recognition occurs and even more relevant here the recognition of facial emotion.  Damage there can really knock out these abilities in some people.  It is a great effort of many human brain scanning laboratories to try to sort out what areas underlie what functions on what tasks and it may proved difficult as some properties may be located on the network of brain systems and not in one place.  From the perspective of designing educational systems, all I want is a slight disconnect between the felt outcomes of a particular experience and the conscious verbal awareness with which we all communicate with each other, particularly if that communication is in the form of a classic college written or (worse) multiple-choice test.  Cognitive psychologists and others will figure this out.  Right now, what I want us to do is figure out how to teach to the theoretical/facts learning and the more instinctive do-it-yourself learning and how to integrate them.