THINKING TAKES TIME

Sometimes science opens the door to new discoveries in the simplest of ways. The answer to the question; do we think fast or slow, opens up a while new world, Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow (2001). Most of us have never thought about it but it obviously takes times time to think—we just assumed thinking was a timeless process; it is not.  

The technique resembles the old style lie detector test where we measure physiological response to questions: sweating, changes in breathing, and heart rates, for example. Now, the examiners make a judgment based the time it takes individuals to respond simple matches of words and pictures; thus, eliminates many, but not all of the vagaries of physiology; thus, greatly increase the accuracy of the test. An example of the way test works is the examiner shows the subject a series of portrait pictures of persons and then asked to pick a word from a list of three words. The picture is of a person of one or another ethnic group and the words in a list of simple words with clear meaning. What is measure is the time it takes for the subject to make a match of a word with a picture. As an example, the examiner allows the subject to observe a picture of a white person then the clock started at the time the subject is allowed to see a list of two words with obvious judgmental connotations such as ‘like’ and ‘not like’. The examiner repeats the same process with a picture of a black person. The examiner repeats the process with pictures and different people but obviously people who belong to one or the other ethnic group and a different list of matching words with equally obvious connotations.

The time it takes people to pick the word indicates the speed of his or her thought process. If I, a white man, claim not to be raciest and truly was not a racist, shown a picture of a black man, I would pick the word “like’. However, If I was a raciest and wanted to lie, I would still pick the word “like’ but it would, on average, take me a fraction of second longer to make the choice. In other words, it takes time to decide to lie or not to lie. Of course, the control pictures would not only be of people of different ethic groups and genders but would be of flowers, birds, or neutral thing and with an appropriate list of words. Psychologists have designed sophisticated algorithms to evaluate the results, which appears to validate the procedure.

By treating the test as a lie detector test, we have hidden what lies underneath all of this there is something more fundamental. It is a way to tell if something is innate verses something we learned. The psychologists who designed the test caution people, who take the test concerning racism, they should be prepared to shock themselves meaning they are apt to find the test indicates they are racists when they sincerely believe they are not. I believe this is because xenophobia is innate—we are all raciest to some degree. At the bestial level, apparently we are all cautious of people who are different to some degree or another. We see a flock of parrots, a herd of elk, or a school of fish, and they are invariable 100% the same species; they look alike and act alike. Even two herds of the same species do not mix as readily as one might suppose. People are people are all the same until we start to look at minor differences. When we find something different, that is what we so loosely refer to as racism. The same reasoning applies to people who dress or even think differently, use a different language, or are of a different religion.

With that in mind, while thinking about using this procedure, I realized scientists could use it to prove or disprove one of the prevailing theories of special interest to me, which is that our political party affiliations are innate. I am aware of one study by a political scientist that addresses this issue but does so in a tangential and clumsy way, Jonathan Haidt, the Righteous Mind; Why good people are divided by politics and religion (2012). I realized that here is a potential that scientists could use this technique for a number of other uses, for example, to determine if something was innate or learned. The classic examples would be the fear snakes, heights, fire, among many other things. In addition, scientists could investigate the concept of universal common behavior—behavior all people share regardless of culture. In addition, no one has been able to answer the question of what is basic human behavior, the interface between what is innate or bestial—meaning at the level of dogs act like dogs, rabbits act like rabbits, and people act like people—and what we have learned.

  

URL: firetreepub.blogspot.com Comments Invited and not moderated