HHow does the mind work? How can we explain consciousness, development, memory, language, rationality, emotions, racism, kindness and hatred - the most important and intimate aspects of ourselves?
Solving these mysteries is the task of experimental psychology, the field to which I have devoted my life. But not everyone is satisfied with the way we do our work. Some believe that psychology is not scientific enough in its approach and believe that the real answers will come from research into the brain. Away with psychology; with neuroscience! Others reject a scientific approach altogether and seek answers from mystics, self-help celebrities and Internet gurus.
This skepticism is understandable. Our field continues a replication crisis, as many of our best-known findings have not held up. And like any other field, progress in psychology can be slow, and the answers we provide are often tentative and qualified.
But I'm optimistic about psychology. The field has made a number of striking findings that challenge common views on how the mind works. I'll tell you four.
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1. Babies know more than we could have imagined
The idea that we start with empty heads has been accepted by many scholars. In 1890, William James described an infant's mental life as "a blooming, buzzing confusion." A century earlier, Jean-Jacques Rousseau made this point in starker terms, saying that if a child were born in an adult body, "such a child-man would be a perfect idiot."
Maybe you believe this too: Babies certainly don't seem very smart. But psychologists have used clever methods to take advantage of the few things babies are good at, like sucking on a pacifier and moving their eyes. This may not sound like much, but in the hands of smart researchers, these behaviors can reveal the secrets of the young soul.
We have discovered an innate system for reasoning about objects, one that is present in babies as young as researchers can test (and that is also present in species other than humans, such as newborn baby chicks). For example, babies know that objects that disappear from sight continue to exist.
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We know that babies have some understanding of people from early on. Imagine a table with two different objects on it, and a hand reaching for one of them. Then the objects switch places. Adults know that hands are connected to people and that people have goals, and a reasonable goal for a person is to reach for a specific object, not to go to a specific location. Six-month-old babies have the same expectations. They are even capable of rudimentary moral judgments. If you show them a character who helps someone and another character who stands in that person's way, six-month-olds prefer the helper. When you look into a baby's big eyes, someone is looking back smartly.
2. Memory cannot be trusted
Some people believe that we take perfect pictures of the world. Any memory can be recovered if we work hard enough, whether through self-reflection, hypnotic regression, or examination by a patient psychiatrist.
None of this is true. The memory is vague and vague; much of what we experience is never stored in our brains, and much of what is stored becomes distorted over time. When we try to remember something, it's not like a computer retrieving information; it is more of a storytelling process - a reconstruction that takes place on the spot.
One way we know this is through studies in which psychologists implant false memories in their subjects. Sometimes this is subtle: showing people a scene and later asking them, "Did you see any kids getting on the school bus?" makes it more likely that they will later remember a school bus even if it wasn't there. Sometimes it's harder. In one study, psychologists asked students' relatives for information about childhood events and interviewed students about their memories. The twist is that for each interview, one event (getting lost in a mall, almost drowning, punching a bride's parents at a wedding, being attacked by a vicious animal) was completely made up by the researchers. Despite this, many of the subjects remembered that these false events actually happened.
This research has led to a revolution in the law. Memory research has helped us realize that police interrogations intended to elicit memories can instead shape and create them. On a more personal level, it's worth knowing - maybe when you're arguing with your partner! - that you can be completely certain of a memory and yet be completely wrong about it.
3. Consciousness is surprisingly limited
If you close your eyes and open them again, would you notice that everything changed?
One of the great discoveries of cognitive psychology is that only a small portion of sensory experiences are received; everything else is ignored and lost forever. In one famous study, reported in an article titled "Gorillas in Our Midst," subjects are shown a video of people in white and black shirts standing in a hallway and passing basketballs back and forth. The subjects' task is to focus on the white shirts and count the steps they make. People don't find this difficult, but it does require all their attention. Here's the twist: In the middle of the video, someone dressed as a gorilla walks onto the stage, stops in the middle and pounds his chest, then walks away. About half of the subjects don't see this at all, although the gorilla's presence is glaringly obvious to anyone who isn't told to concentrate on passing the basketballs.
We tend not to know these limitations. It feels like we are aware of the world, and not just a small part of it. It feels like we can do several things at once, instead of being forced to shift our attention back and forth. Our limitations are innocent enough if we listen to a podcast while mowing the lawn. But they can be fatal in cases where something requires our full attention, such as driving a car. Talking on the phone, even when using a hands-free device, slows our reaction time on the road to an extent that's about the same as being legally drunk.
4. Insights from the new science of happiness
A few decades ago, a group of psychologists worried that there was too much focus on the negative. We haven't done enough research into what it takes to live an enjoyable, meaningful, and fulfilling life. A new movement known as positive psychology emerged to change all this. And now we have a lot of data, some from surveys of millions of people, that helps us appreciate the conditions for human flourishing.
Some findings are based on common sense. Money does indeed lead to happiness, both at the level of individuals (richer people are happier) and at the level of countries (citizens of richer countries are happier) - although the returns decline once the numbers get high enough. Social connections are even more important; one study, published in the journal Science Research has shown that loneliness has a worse effect on health than obesity and smoking.
Other findings are more surprising. Research into aging and happiness shows that for many people the 1950s are the saddest period of their lives, after which happiness begins to increase; for many, the eighties are the happiest times of their lives. Who would have thought?
Happiness researchers have also discovered a paradox. There is a strong relationship between thinking a lot about happiness and... being sad. The moral here is: don't spend too much time researching happiness!
There are so many other findings that could have been on the list, and there will be more in the future. I'm most excited about the debates about how well deep learning (how ChatGPT and other AIs work) can work as a model for human thinking, but also about recent developments in clinical psychology, including studies of mind-altering drugs like ketamine and psylocibin . , as treatments for depression and anxiety. These are exciting times to be a psychologist.
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