Mind Blogging. Mind Boggling.

I'm reading 'Quiet' by Susan Cain. (Subtitled - 'The power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking') Published in 2012, and given how insightful it is, I should have read it 10 years ago! 

(Although it did make a splash back then in reading circles, I heard it but did not quite quite 'listen' or heed it. Maybe it was a "Quiet" splash. And not a "Bigger Splash" like David Hockney's iconic painting)  

In Quiet- the author describes the famous and astonishing 'Solomon Asch' experiment of the 1950s. Student volunteers were shown lines of varying lengths, and were asked to answer objective questions such as which line is the longest. When volunteers went through the excercise by themselves, 95% of the volunteers answered correctly. But once imposter volunteers were inserted into their group who gave wrong answers, the volunteers also gave more wrong answers. The 95% plunged to 25%! 

A 2005 follow up by researcher Gregory Berns threw up an even more startling insight. He repeated the experiment but with MRI scanners checking the activity of various parts of the brain. Two parts of the brain will be expected to light up- the part related to processing visual input (Occipital and Parietal Cortex), and the part related to decision making (Prefrontal Cortex). 

Now one scenario in which the 95% correct plunged to 25% correct is that the volunteers actually thought X is the correct answer but to save face and kowtow the line of the group, said Y, so as to not stick out. In this scenario, the 'thinking' part of the brain (pre frontal cortex), should light up more in the groupthink scenario. However, that was not the case. In the groupthink scenario, there was increased activity in the Occipital and Parietal Cortex. 

This offers a stunning insight. The sight was 'altered' due to what the volunteers heard from the group. They actually "saw" what was different from what they would have seen had they not received the input from the group.

Just a day after reading this, I had a 2 hour session of doubles Badminton. There were 5 players, so we took turns in sitting out. Now during a time when I was sitting out, during the game there was a close call on the sideline where it was not clear if the shuttle landed in or out. Since I was sitting out and watching the action, 3 players turned to me, asking - was it In or Out ? 

I could feel my mind replaying the memory of the shuttle hitting the ground, and I could not make out clearly whether it was In or Out. However, just at this moment, the 4th player A confidently said- it was "Out". And I almost felt the memory clarifying itself in my mind, and now I could see the shuttle landing outside the line quite clearly!  This understanding of how my brain works, read just the previous day and now illustrated so starkly, dawned on me like a cold splash to the face. 

Coming back to the 'subtitle' of the book ("The power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking")- I can closely relate the subtitle to my favorite book of 2022- How to do nothing, resisting the attention economy (my review here: https://ashwinravikumarwrites.blogspot.com/2023/03/peer-group-shapes-your-eyesight-cold.html ) . There too, a point is made about relentless shallow "chatter" which pervades the social media of our times. The author quotes from elsewhere that "the regime we inhabit relies on the proliferation of chatter, the irrelevance of opinion and discourse, and on making thought, dissent and critique banal and ridiculous".  

Labels: Books

# posted by Ashwin Ravikumar @ 6:50 PM