You might never have realized this before, but our brains function in two very distinct ways.
Lets take a look at this picture
You know without much efforts that this guy is angry and probably has some specific words to yell. What you have experienced right now, is called fast thinking.
Now take a look at this problem:
29x38=?
Don't you feel something different happening? You think you could solve this, given the energy and time to do so, but when you try this your muscles contract, pupils dilate and your heart rate increases. Now, you have experienced slow thinking.
These two systems of fast and slow thinking dictate much of our perception and reaction in life.
Take these lines for example:
It is clearly "seen" that they are of different lengths, or are they?
If you measure these lines you would find that they all are of the same length. Seems unbelievable? Take a look at the same but a bit modified version of this pic
Even now your system one, or your fast thinking cant stop seeing those lines as unequal. This happens because your system one is a fast thinker and so the moment you look at the picture again your system one generates the answer rapidly.
Now lets try this image:
What your brain might be saying at first glance is that all these figures are of different sizes. But, again we are tricked by our brain's perception of depth and perspective. This is what causes our brain to interpret the image as 3 dimensional, whereas this image becomes 2 dimensional when we remove the extra lines:
Our brain generally tends to make quick perception with the available information, and hence our conscious system two or slow thinker should later compensate and choose not to believe your intuition or instinct. Want to see your systems mess you up?
Try solving this in one go.
A bat and a ball costs 1.10 dollars or more accurately one dollar and ten cents. The bat costs one dollar more than the ball. What is the cost of the ball?
Chances are, your system one is yelling 10cents, but the appealing system one's answer is, wrong. Infact the correct answer is 5 cents. The bat costs 1dollar 5 cents and the ball costs 5 cents.
Even if you worked out the correct answer, you likely thought of 10 cents along the way. Your system one is trying to work out an answer as quickly and seemingly as possible which is extremely beneficial in everyday life.
If every activity required full mental effort, it would become very stressful just move your hands. But knowing this allows us to understand that not all our first impressions are correct.
Lets try another question:
How many animals of each kind did Moses take into the ark?
So, have any answer in mind? Well, lets look at the question first. Few people can detect what is wrong with this question, that it is been dubbed with the Moses illusion. In fact, Moses took no animals into the ark, Noah did.
Again, our brain invests as little resource as necessary so that things run quickly. As Moses is not abnormal in the biblical context. System one un-consiously detects an association between Moses and Ark and quickly accepts the question.
Similarly look at the picture below
Reading each of the above may prove fairly simple.
ABC,Ann Approached The Bank, 121314
But your brain actually interprets these statements without you ever knowing. You could have read it as A 13 B or 12 B 14. But your brain created the context unconsciously. Also, you might have imagined a women with money on her mind approaching the bank. But if I changed the sentence a bit and added "They were floating gently down the river", the entire meaning of the sentence would have changed because "Bank" was no longer associated with money. Without an explicit context system one quickly draws a conclusion based on a previous experience, in this case you might have visited the bank more than a river.
This ties into a concept called priming.
For example, If I said
Wash So_p.
How would you complete this word fragment?
Most would see wash and soap. But had I changed the word from Wash to Eat, then you might have related it to Eat and Soup. In this way both Eat and Soap prime your thoughts.
Tho system two likes to think that its in charge and knows whats going on, but the truth is completely different. It has been found out that priming effects have even been shown to effect and modify behavior. These arise in system one and we have no conscious control over it.
To know more about slow and fast thinking please refer to the book, Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Or if you want to buy it, you can use my trusted link here.
Lets take a look at this picture
You know without much efforts that this guy is angry and probably has some specific words to yell. What you have experienced right now, is called fast thinking.
Now take a look at this problem:
29x38=?
Don't you feel something different happening? You think you could solve this, given the energy and time to do so, but when you try this your muscles contract, pupils dilate and your heart rate increases. Now, you have experienced slow thinking.
These two systems of fast and slow thinking dictate much of our perception and reaction in life.
Take these lines for example:
If you measure these lines you would find that they all are of the same length. Seems unbelievable? Take a look at the same but a bit modified version of this pic
Now lets try this image:
Our brain generally tends to make quick perception with the available information, and hence our conscious system two or slow thinker should later compensate and choose not to believe your intuition or instinct. Want to see your systems mess you up?
Try solving this in one go.
A bat and a ball costs 1.10 dollars or more accurately one dollar and ten cents. The bat costs one dollar more than the ball. What is the cost of the ball?
Chances are, your system one is yelling 10cents, but the appealing system one's answer is, wrong. Infact the correct answer is 5 cents. The bat costs 1dollar 5 cents and the ball costs 5 cents.
Even if you worked out the correct answer, you likely thought of 10 cents along the way. Your system one is trying to work out an answer as quickly and seemingly as possible which is extremely beneficial in everyday life.
If every activity required full mental effort, it would become very stressful just move your hands. But knowing this allows us to understand that not all our first impressions are correct.
Lets try another question:
How many animals of each kind did Moses take into the ark?
So, have any answer in mind? Well, lets look at the question first. Few people can detect what is wrong with this question, that it is been dubbed with the Moses illusion. In fact, Moses took no animals into the ark, Noah did.
Again, our brain invests as little resource as necessary so that things run quickly. As Moses is not abnormal in the biblical context. System one un-consiously detects an association between Moses and Ark and quickly accepts the question.
Similarly look at the picture below
ABC,Ann Approached The Bank, 121314
But your brain actually interprets these statements without you ever knowing. You could have read it as A 13 B or 12 B 14. But your brain created the context unconsciously. Also, you might have imagined a women with money on her mind approaching the bank. But if I changed the sentence a bit and added "They were floating gently down the river", the entire meaning of the sentence would have changed because "Bank" was no longer associated with money. Without an explicit context system one quickly draws a conclusion based on a previous experience, in this case you might have visited the bank more than a river.
This ties into a concept called priming.
For example, If I said
Wash So_p.
How would you complete this word fragment?
Most would see wash and soap. But had I changed the word from Wash to Eat, then you might have related it to Eat and Soup. In this way both Eat and Soap prime your thoughts.
Tho system two likes to think that its in charge and knows whats going on, but the truth is completely different. It has been found out that priming effects have even been shown to effect and modify behavior. These arise in system one and we have no conscious control over it.
To know more about slow and fast thinking please refer to the book, Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Or if you want to buy it, you can use my trusted link here.
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