The Hidden Brain Buchzusammenfassung - das Wichtigste aus The Hidden Brain

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Zusammenfassung von The Hidden Brain

Name: The Hidden Brain
Rating: 3.8 (145 reviews)
Author: Shankar Vedantam

Shankar Vedantam

How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives

3.8 (145 Bewertungen)

23 Min.

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Rassismus Neurowissenschaft

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The Hidden Brain
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What’s in it for me? Reclaim control of your unconscious brain.

Most of us believe that we behave according to knowledge and conscious intention. Not only does this belief inform our individual experiences, but it’s also the bedrock of our social, economic, and political institutions.

But how accurate is it? If you look at the science, the answer to this question becomes unsettlingly clear: not very.

According to numerous studies, we spend much of our time on autopilot. In many ways, this is a good thing. Unconscious cognitive mechanisms enable us to navigate the world smoothly from the moment we are born. But this comes with some less-positive side effects. Inevitably, unconscious forces influence our memories, judgments, and perceptions. In these blinks, you’ll learn about the unconscious biases and errors that the author calls the hidden brain.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

why shoplifters aren’t necessarily bad people;
how to teach young children to be anti-racist; and
why criminal-justice systems should consider the effects of unconscious bias.

Evidence of the hidden brain is all around us.

Have you seen the movie The Matrix? In the film, Keanu Reeves’s character, Neo, discovers that the world is a simulated reality designed and controlled by robots. This simulation is called the Matrix. Unlike other humans, Neo gains the ability to see and manipulate the Matrix’s code, which gives him the power to emancipate humanity from the simulation.

The Matrix is an improbable sci-fi action flick – and yet it does shed some light on reality. No, we aren’t controlled by robots. But we are controlled by invisible forces. Though we’re oblivious to it, our unconscious mind constantly influences our most basic perceptions.

Our brains are designed to hide these invisible forces. But even if we never feel ourselves being manipulated, studies show that the processes of the hidden brain are always at play.

The key message here is: Evidence of the hidden brain is all around us.

Melissa Bateson is a researcher who tracked a beverage station at an office in Newcastle for ten weeks. The beverage station dispensed coffee, tea, and milk using an honor system. Posted at eye level was a sheet of paper listing the cost of each beverage. Users put money into an honor box to make their payment.

This particular station was in a secluded location, far from the eyes of onlookers who might keep people accountable for their payment. Users did not know that someone was tracking the box. Nor did they consciously register a small image at the top of the notice sheet – an image that Bateson changed every week.

During the five odd-numbered weeks, the image featured various pictures of eyes downloaded from the internet. During the even weeks, it showed nothing but flowers.

Bateson discovered something surprising. When the notice depicted images of eyes, users contributed three times more than they did when the image featured flowers. Even an image in one’s peripheral vision had the power to influence people’s contributions.

But it’s not just images that influence our behavior. A study by psychologist Rick van Baaran conducted at an Applebee’s restaurant in the Dutch town of Heerlen found that when a waitress repeated a customer's order verbatim, the customer gave, on average, a 140 percent larger tip than when she paraphrased the order.

Baaran’s research showed how people respond positively when they feel in sync with each other. The customers may not have been aware of it, but their choice to give a higher tip was determined by their hidden brain.

The hidden brain is the foundation of our social behavior.

As we’ve learned, we remain largely unaware of the hidden brain in our daily lives. But the hidden brain is more than just a glitch in our cognitive function. In fact, our unconscious guides us through the world and regulates our social interactions.

Neuroscientists don’t have a precise understanding of how unconscious cognitive mechanisms function. But they have observed what occurs in patients with conditions that affect parts of the brain thought to control these mechanisms.

The hidden brain leads children to form unconscious racial biases.

Humans are wired to recognize faces. It makes sense. Recognizing Mom provides us with food and security, and so her face becomes a symbol of safety. Soon enough, our ability to recognize faces in our own ethnic group helps us orient ourselves within a particular culture.

Unfortunately, this unconscious evolutionary trait means that we are less able to discern faces from unfamiliar ethnic groups. Today, the pervasiveness of American popular culture around the world has created a disparity in global representation. And when it comes to how white people perceive Black people in North America, the unconscious biases of the hidden brain have taken a toll.

Unconscious bias influences political elections.

Few people consider themselves racists. But, just like children, adults form unconscious racial biases based on associative patterns in the world around them.

While there are certainly people who are consciously racist, the author believes that these people belong to a minority. The real problem is unconscious racial bias.

The hidden brain creates racial disparities in the criminal justice system.

The fact that racial biases influence the criminal justice system in the United States may sound obvious to some Black Americans. Yet, for many white people, admitting this would mean redesigning the criminal justice system altogether.

In order to study the effects of bias in the criminal justice system, Jennifer Eberhardt and other researchers at Stanford University analyzed over six hundred criminal cases serious enough to sanction the death penalty. From these cases, the researchers selected photographs of Black people who had been convicted for murdering white people.

Unconscious bias undermines women in the professional world.

While vacationing on the Mexican island of Isla Mujeres, the author swam to a desolate spot away from the main snorkeling area. Just as he turned around, he was hit with a terrible realization. His journey around the bay had been aided by the ocean’s current. Without flippers or a life jacket, swimming back was going to be a battle. In the end, he made it, but just barely, and his struggle was utterly exhausting.

Reflecting on the incident, the author had another realization: his experience swimming with the current was like the unconscious gender bias aiding most men in their professional lives.

Disaster victims conform to group tendencies.

When an airplane crashed into the World Trade Center’s North Tower at 8:46 a.m. on September 11, the employees at Keefe, Bruyette, and Woods in the adjacent South Tower heard what sounded like an earthquake.

The investment-banking firm was spread between the 88th floor and the 89th floor. No one on either floor knew that just 16 minutes later, a second United Airlines plane would crash into their building, the South Tower. But this is where the similarities between the two floors ended. The people on the 89th floor stayed where they were, and nearly all of them perished. The people on the 88th floor evacuated, and nearly all of them survived.

Suicide terrorists are motivated by group norms.

The hidden brain’s proclivity for conformity isn’t limited to our response to disaster. On the other side of the spectrum, it also reveals the psychology of terrorists.

Most people assume that suicide terrorists are motivated by one thing and one thing only: religious fanaticism. Al-Qaeda suicide bombers are willing to die because they believe their sacrifice will be rewarded in the afterlife. Or so the theory goes.

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Worum geht es in The Hidden Brain?

The Hidden Brain (2010) reveals the function and effects of our unconscious lives. In our increasingly interconnected world, unconscious biases and errors influence our memories, judgments, and perceptions and shape our social, economic, and political institutions.

Bestes Zitat aus The Hidden Brain

We are programmed to trust our memories, judgments, and perceptions.

—Shankar Vedantam

Wer The Hidden Brain lesen sollte

White people interested in understanding unconscious racial bias
Parents and teachers
Students of neuroscience or psychology

Über den Autor

Shankar Vedantam is an American journalist, writer, and social-science correspondent for NPR. From 2006 to 2009, he wrote about the hidden brain in his Washington Post column “Department of Human Behavior.” His popular podcast Hidden Brain has over two million downloads per week, and the Hidden Brain radio show is broadcasted to around 250 public radio shows.

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