When trying to escape a dangerous situation, the emotional brain can only be reliable to a certain point until you need to switch over to rationality. Rational thought takes place in the prefrontal cortex, the outermost layer of the frontal lobes. Some people are better at this than others are though, causing those some of the others to make unwise, or irrational, decisions. “People who are more rational don’t perceive emotion less, they just regulate it better” (Lehrer). All of Lehrer’s examples really portray how important each part of the brain is when it comes to decision making. It depends on what the situation is, and how you respond to that, that then determines how you then are able to come up with a decision.
A story of a crew of pilots keeping calm in the midst of their airplane’s system crashing was an amazing illustration. The most remarkable thing about the performance of the pilots, Lehrer states, is that they managed to keep their emotions in check. That would not be something easy to do while you know in your head that you have lost all control of your aircraft, and if you have no way of regaining it, you, your entire crew and hundreds of your passengers will crash into the ground. “If the emotional brain is pointing you in the direction of a bad decision, you can choose to rely on your rational brain instead” (Lehrer). This is exactly what Captain Al Haynes needed to do in this situation of his United Airlines Flight 232 taking a turn for the worse. He never let his fear turn into panic, and he only was able to do this because he used his prefrontal cortex to manage his emotions. He took what he knew, and even though he was faced with a situation that they were never trained for or no one specifically knew how to handle, Haynes made connections and thought carefully about everything minute detail he could act upon. This activity is an exclusive strength of the prefrontal cortex. This region of the brain is able to take an abstract principle and apply it to an unfamiliar situation to come up with an original solution. What makes this possible is a specific kind of memory called our working memory. It is able to determine if we know any information that can be relevant to the problem at hand. Neurons in the prefrontal areas will fire in response to a stimulus and keep firing for several seconds even after the stimulus is gone. This makes it possible for the brain to make connections and ideas overlap. Those new ideas are simply several old thoughts that occur at the same time. “The problem-solving abilities of working memory and the prefrontal cortex are a crucial aspect of human intelligence” (Lehrer). In this situation alone, Haynes saved 184 passengers lives that day, along with his own and many of his flight crew. He was only able to control the plane to a certain extent to land, but because he got it to crash on to the runaway expected, they were able to put out the fire immediately and medical attention was readily available. “Although the rational talents of the prefrontal cortex kept Flight 232 from crashing into a cornfield, it’s important to realize that rationality isn’t an all-purpose solution” (Lehrer). As much as one decision-making method can be the absolute best solution for one situation, it can lead to disaster for another.
This book has caused to me to look at so many decisions differently because of all the examples and information Lehrer has presented through it. Just as we were talking about rationality saving the day, the next chapter switched to begin talking about how sometimes thinking too much can create a problem and rationality can lead us astray. Thinking too much is actually a mental mistake better known as choking. We all know this feeling when we continually rehearse our speech repeatedly and we know we know every single word, but when we get up in front of the class or audience, not a word comes to mind. This happens on an even bigger level, for example with opera superstar Renee Fleming. She was used to singing one of the most beloved pieces from Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, and killed the high notes every time with no problem, the one’s many other sopranos had trouble with. All of a sudden in one of her routine performances, she started to worry about the most difficult part of the song as she approached it. “She couldn’t stop thinking that she was about to make a mistake” (Lehrer). She made it through the song, barely being able to breathe, and greatly shaken up by the end of it. Sadly, Fleming’s performance problems became chronic. The songs that used to be “second nature” to her became impossible for her to sing. Her struggle was against anxiety; she had lost her confidence. When you have a high skill in something, a lot of the time it becomes completely automated. You don’t even need to think about what you’re doing. A part of your brain in the prefrontal cortex that monitors behavior can interfere with this and those decisions that are normally made without thinking, causing one to “choke”. This was just one of his examples showing that rational thought can backfire. Along with many other points I have pulled out before, it can be added to the list of information that we need to be aware of, because even though reason can be a powerful cognitive tool, it is also dangerous to rely on exclusively.
No comments:
Post a Comment