Bill's Notebook

A little neuroscience research for your Monday:  According to research from Etienne Koechlin (Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, France) we can only handle two tasks at a time.  Add a third task and our performance plummets.

This is due to an area in our brain called the medial prefrontal cortex (MFC).  As the research demonstrates, this area is able to assign one task to one hemisphere of the brain while the other hemisphere works on the second task.  Because we only have two hemispheres the MFC cannot handle any tasks past two.  This may also explain why we have a difficult time making choices between multiple options.

The MFC is also the reward area of the brain in that it determines our motivations for a task.  Our brain uses rewards to determine which option we should pursue.  So, if you are given the choice of fish or chicken for dinner, your brain can easily make the choice based on the perceived rewards of the two options.  Given a choice between steak, fish, or chicken, your brain quickly decides between two of the choices and then compares that choice to the remaining option.  The more options, the more time it takes to process the pairings.  Think about the time it takes to make a decision when you go to a Baskin Robbins and you have an idea of the processing that the MFC undertakes.

What are the practical aspects of this research?  First, realize that at best, people can only handle two things at most.  Second, when making decisions among multiple options, develop a method of weighing options in pairs so that you have a consistent way of ranking your options to derive the best choice.  The most practical aspect of this research is that it demonstrates that focusing on one task allows us to use our whole brain on a problem rather than half a brain on two problems.

Thanks to Henry Brown from GovLoop.

People with Power are Better Liars
Dana R. Carney, Andy J. Yap, Brian J. Lucas, & Pranjal H. Mehta
Columbia University

Abstract:  “Telling a lie is costly: emotionally, cognitively, and physiologically. Lie-tellers experience
negative emotions, cognitive impairment, physiological stress, and reveal this through nonverbal
cues. The emotional, cognitive, and physiological resources taxed by lying are enhanced by the
experience of social power. Power-holders enjoy positive emotions, increases in cognitive
function, and physiological resilience. This research tested and found that holding power buffers
individuals from the stressful event of telling a lie and leads to easy and effective deception. In
situations of high (vs. low) power, lie-tellers appear like truth-tellers emotionally, cognitively,
physiologically, and nonverbally.”

My guess on why this is true is that the leader may feel that his or her deception is for the good of the group and thus their sense of altruism prevents the expected stress of telling a lie.

This article from Edu.Blogs reminds me of a presentation that I gave at a conference where I advocated using SimCity to teach introductory Public Administration.  Game based learning seems a natural way to have students quickly learn a number of complicated skills and in-depth knowledge.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted on neuroscience.  Turns out understanding sarcasm requires both sides of your brain:

“Reality, in other words, is so richly complex that the brain has to process it in two different ways at the same time. We need to see the trees, but we also have to remember the forest. . . Sarcasm, of course, is a perfect example of speech that requires a contextual understanding. The only way to know if someone is being sarcastic is to look around. The incongruity isn’t in the words – it’s in the world.”

Great article explaining why our risk perceptions sometimes follows game theory and why it differs from rational calculations.  By studying sports like tennis, baseball, and football, the research found that players are likely to switch strategies after the previous strategy failed.  For example, according to statistical analysis football coaches should call more passing plays than they actually do.  An explanation for this is that there is more perceived uncertainty with a ball “in the air” even though the evidence demonstrates that rushing is actually more risky.

How this relates to government is that many policies that attempt to handle risk events are highly influenced by the perceived emotional reactions of the public and the employees who have to implement the policies.  Think about how emotions have greatly affected the health care debate with the angry town hall meetings and the specter of “death panels.”

A month ago I posted a link to the essay on how unstructured movements quickly become more tyrannical than the organizations they are protesting.  This might be well worth remembering as one reads this rather interesting essay that proclaims the Tea Party Movement the first open-source political movement.  I dispute the foundational belief that the Tea Party is leaderless as it has been well-documented that a large part of the movement is bankrolled by conservative advocacy groups.

Let’s go with the premise that this is an open source movement.  Open source may work well for software projects where there is a clear goal and the benefits are fully realized.  That doesn’t translate into politics as it may take time and compromise to realize some benefits.  Anger may be good for short bursts of activity but what is the focus of the Tea Party movement?  What will sustain the movement after the anger fades?

If we continue the open source analogy, the ultimate fate of the Tea Party movement could be that it will be abandoned in favor of the newer open source political movement.  Or the Tea Party movement could have some success that will attract political professionals who will come in with their high-paid advice to make the movement even more successful by offering a premium version of the movement (while keeping a free but functionally-limited version).

Casting this in neuroscientific terms:  movements based on the amygdala may start faster and build faster but they don’t have the staying power of a movement built on the prefrontal cortex.

Hello everyone and I hope you had a good time during the holidays.  I certainly had and that’s why it has been a while between postings.

The latest issue of the Harvard Business Review and before I talk about an interesting article, I want to express how much I like the redesign.  The look needed to be updated and I found the magazine more readable.  Great job!

One of the new features is the “Idea Watch” which is a great roundup of interesting roundup of new ideas for management.  One section, “Neuroscience,” reported on how success causes the brain to change in response to successful stimuli.  What was surprising is that failure has no effect on the brain.  This makes sense in one way because you want the brain to change to repeat successful actions.  But, this also prevents learning from failure.  And in many cases, that can be more beneficial.

For example, when I build a program, I will spend some time debugging the program.  I may try several different approaches before I find the right coding to fix the issue.  I will remember the successful fix but I will quickly forget my unsuccessful attempts.  These attempts may be useful in other instances or may help me in generalizing the problem so that I can create an ever better fix.  There are numerous examples of failures that  turn out to be successes in other ways (think about Post-It Notes).

Thus, you should be just as attentive to your failures as your successes.  Keep a failure log and go through it on a periodic basis.  Instead of beating yourself up over past failures try to find ways to turn them into successes in a different way.  After all, failure or success is in the mind of the beholder.