The Optimist's Brain

People think fossil fuel energy makes the human world go round, but that's a mistaken view  

It's our delusional optimism, the obligatory Hope, that makes the world work, even when it's not working. Realists find it harder and harder to get out of bed—what's the point? More and more scientific research into human cognition is finding a perversive bias to see the glass as half-full even when the water's nearly gone. The latest finding came from University College London (UCL), as reported in the BBC's Brain 'rejects negative thoughts'.

A study, published in Nature Neuroscience, suggests the brain is very good at processing good news about the future.

However, in some people, anything negative is practically ignored - with them retaining a positive world view.

The authors said optimism did have important health benefits.

Scientists at University College London said about 80% of people were optimists, even if they would not label themselves as such.

The details of the study are not important, for it's as if these researchers had re-discovered the wheel. Writing this blog requires me to sort through lots of potential source material about the economy, energy, the environment and other subjects. Unwarranted optimism is everywhere you look, despite massive evidence to the contrary. In fact, I was preparing a post along these lines when the UCL study surfaced. Their press release offers up some additional insights.

In a study published today in Nature Neuroscience, researchers at UCL's Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging show that people who are very optimistic about the outcome of events tend to learn only from information that reinforces their rose-tinted view of the world. This is related to ‘faulty’ function of their frontal lobes.

People’s predictions of the future are often unrealistically optimistic. A problem that has puzzled scientists for decades is why human optimism is so pervasive, when reality continuously confronts us with information that challenges these biased beliefs.

“Seeing the glass as half full rather than half empty can be a positive thing – it can lower stress and anxiety and be good for our health and well-being,” explains Dr Tali Sharot. “But it can also mean that we are less likely to take precautionary action, such as practising safe sex or saving for retirement. So why don’t we learn from cautionary information?”

Safe sex? Saving for retirement? What about learning from cautionary information that shows humans are radically altering the climate, destroying the oceans, and running out of easily exploitable oil? And that's just a partial list. I had prepared a semi-facetious diagram of The Optimist's Brain before I heard about this UCL study. Here it is in slightly modified form. This processing "model" first arose during discussions with my psychotherapist in the mid-1990s. Before that in the late 1980s, I got my first clue about what really goes on in Daniel Goleman's book Vital Lies, Simple Truths, subtitled The Psychology of Self-Deception, which contains a chapter called Awareness Is Not A Necessary Stop.

The optimist's brain "rejects" negative (pessimistic) thoughts, meaning these thoughts never enter awareness (red circled area). A pessimistic or otherwise unwelcome input enters The Unconscious (blue circled area) directly—this is always the case. There are three possible outcomes: 1) the input is filtered and ejected (discarded); 2) the input is buried (remains) in the unconscious, where it might do all sorts of mischief later; or 3) the input passes right through as though it had never existed. This last might be called the "neutrino theory" because neutrino particles are so minute that they pass through "solid matter" without actually colliding with anything, even on the atomic level. Unfortunately, the elegant "neutrino theory" is too parsimonious. Under this view, how would an optimist be able to distinguish between pessimistic inputs which must be disregarded and positive inputs which are retained and reach awareness?  Image source.

It is notable that the UCL researchers believe The Optimist's Brain suffers from "faulty" functioning in the frontal lobes. But if 80% of people are optimists, as the UCL scientists also claim—this would appear to be a a substantial underestimate—then the large majority of humans have "faulty" frontal lobes. If Nature gave us such frontal lobes—they must have had survival value a few million years ago and thereafter—it seems quite apparent they have little adaptive value in our troubled modern world.

The more parsimonious explanation is that Nature designed us to be optimists of the type described here, and nothing has changed, and it's the brains of the much smaller minority of realists pessimists that are out of kilter with respect to "normal" human cognition.

I've ridiculed optimism and persistent positive bias a number of times on DOTE. For example, see The Astounding World Of The Future, The Eternal Optimist, or Our Fantastic Future, featuring Arthur C. Clarke. But my "favorite" optimist is The Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley. In Ridley's (malfunctioning?) Big Brain, it surely must be a full-time job ignoring pessimistic (albeit realistic) inputs coming from everywhere everyday. In that spirit, I've included two short videos about "rational optimism" below.

Let's finish up with this remarkable statement from Dr. John Williams, Head of Neuroscience and Mental Health at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging—

“Being optimistic must clearly have some benefits, but is it always helpful? And why do some people have a less rosy outlook on life? Understanding how some people always manage to remain optimistic could provide useful insights into happens when our brains do not function properly.”

Hey, he said it, not me! Perhaps the headline should read—

Scientists Demonstrate Humans Routinely Ignore Reality!

How about that for Front Page News?

 

 

Comments

[Diogenes]

“The evolution of the brain not only overshot the needs of prehistoric man, it is the only example of evolution providing a species with an organ which it does not know how to use” Arthur Koestler
I would add: ...an organ too easily manipulated.

[Bill Hicks]

What's funny is that I have several professional colleagues who routinely seek me out about stuff going on in the world because they KNOW that I will provide them with a pessimistic/realistic assessment to counter what they just saw or read in the mainstream media. Probably the only thing worse than being wired pessimistically in a world full of optimists is not recognizing the inherent bias among the overwhelming majority of those around you.

[Diogenes]

Bill Hicks
No - the worst thing is not recognizing the inherent bias in ourselves.

[Alexander Ač]

Ridley is dangerous!

[S P]

It is undoubtedly the case that optimism reflects something selected for in nature, because optimists are more likely to go out and do things and reproduce, and over a long amount of time, optimists will outbreed and outnumber pessimists.

But pessmism never goes away, for a couple of reasons:
1) Pessimists understand that life at its core is problematic, so they are more likely careful and hesititant and take risk into account. As long as there are some of them breeding, they will always tend to survive especially in times of great upheaval such as these.
2) Life throws so much shit at you, eventually a certain number of optimists must surely change their mind.

[Mitch]

I consider much of what is called Optimism, to be irrational "optimism". The St. Exupery quote "A goal without a plan, is just a wish" often comes to mind. Most people that start telling me how things will get better, may as well just be telling me that Santa Claus is going to fix things, so don't worry, because he has the easter bunny working for him, and the easter bunny is really smart.

I don't remember where I read this, but something I think related to our predicaments and often times to our own personal situations is "When Hope DIES, Action begins..."

Irrational hope is usually just magical thinking, creating a plan, taking actions, changing behaviors, sometimes can change an individuals life circumstance. Hoping often is just an excuse to do nothing, may as well just go back to waiting around for Santa Claus to fix the environment or give you a job or better income.

Rational optimism, perhaps is something different altogether from what most people do, it involves adapting to circumstances, perhaps just surviving and clinging to a lower SES or type of living and attempting to re-arrange priorities. Often times depressed people see a bit more clearly, but over time move toward victim identification, passivity, and learned helplessness. But clearly dissonance remains the key change agent, Irrational hope just promotes waiting for whatever that powerlessness external hope magic/or magical being to save you from your situation.

[Gail]

Betsy Rosenberg wonders how come some of us didn't get the "denial gene"

http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2011/10/complacent-oblivious-and-in-denial.html

Are we the flawed...or are the glass half full folks flawed?

Never mind. We are all going down on this Titanic together!

[Unbound]

The following entry is from Wikipedia, followed by some additional thoughts relative to today's post.

"Optimism is "an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome".[1]

It is the philosophical opposite of pessimism. Optimists generally believe that people and events are inherently good, so that most situations work out in the end for the best.

Alternatively, some optimists believe that regardless of the external world or situation, one should choose to feel good about it and make the most of it. This kind of optimism doesn't say anything about the quality of the external world; it's an internal optimism about one's own feelings.

A common conundrum illustrates optimism-versus-pessimism with the question, does one regard a given glass of water, filled to half its capacity, as half full or as half empty? Conventional wisdom expects optimists to reply, "Half full," and pessimists to respond, "Half empty" (assuming that "full" is considered good, and "empty", bad)."
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimism

I always thought that sort of "logic" about the glass half full/half empty was a trap -- I consider the contents of the glass to be at the half-way point, with none of that psychological baggage attached to it.

Christine Patton posted Magical Thinking, on her Peak Oil Hausfrau blog 3/5/2010. The first couple of paragraphs are provided below plus the link for the complete post, followed by a salient quote from the late, great and sorely missed Joe Bageant.

From Magical Thinking:
"Peak Shrink has an interesting post on The Tyranny of Positive Thinking, a review of Barbara Ehrenreich's book Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. In it, she expresses the same frustration I've felt when dealing with our cult of positivity.

I believe that I can improve situations by the way that I think about them and how I interpret them. I believe that, by envisioning a positive future that INCLUDES the harsh facts about peak oil and climate change, I can work toward that future by coming to terms with the massive changes that will be occurring and taking steps to prepare for it. A positive vision helps keep me motivated.

However. There is a pathological brand of positive thinking that demands that we be happy at all times, that we neither admit nor experience pain, unhappiness or depression. In order to achieve this type of happiness, the high priests and priestesses of the cult of positive thinking make recommendations like "don't read the news" and "get rid of negative people."

In other words, deny reality, hide from reality, and don't let your friends and family experience any real emotions." The rest is available at:
http://peakoilhausfrau.blogspot.com/2010/03/magical-thinking.html

"America doesn't like whiners. A whiner or a cynic is about the worst thing you can be here in the land of gunpoint optimism. Foreigners often remark on the upbeat American personality. I assure them that our American corpocracy has its way of pistol-whipping or sedating its human assets into the appropriate level of cheerfulness." - Joe Bageant

[RobM]

I wonder if intelligence requires optimism to survive?

With intelligence we are capable of understanding:
1) the universe will eventually go dark
2) the sun will age and engulf the earth
3) we will die
4) there is no god
5) the only purpose to life is for genes to reproduce
6) political beliefs and leaders have no influence on anything important
7) technology is just a flattering word for new ways to consume non-renewable resources
8) climate change will ruin the lives of our grandchildren and it's too late to do anything about it
9) the depletion of non-renewable energy will eliminate 9 out of 10 people within 50 years
10) more than 50% of our paper wealth will vaporize in the coming global depression

I know that I would be more energetic if I was ignorant and optimistic.

[DaShui]

pessimistic people don't have children

[Gail]

Thanks for those links Unbound. A friend of mine, who has practically made a religion of determined optimism (several millions of dollars help) came back from her 25th college reunion this weekend and said it was the most depressing thing she has ever done. Apparently, everyone was divorced, stagnating or worse financially, and miserable.

If this microcosmic event is any indication, people may not yet intellectually acknowledge the excellent list posted by RobM, but their instincts are on red alert. (I would have added that climate change is going to ruin lives much earlier than our grandchildren's - in fact for some unlucky folks in Thailand, Joplin Missouri, Texas and many other places too numerous to list, it already has.)

[Ed]

Hmzzzzz, I wonder what happens when we see crime rates fall and social awareness of crime (through the media) rise ((c) Michael Moore, Bowling for Columbine), creating a climate of paranoia you see today. Maybe pessimism only has a place when it hightens awareness of percieved imitiate and mittigatable danger, but is has no place when it has to deal with long term abstract and unmittigatable ones.

That could be an evolutianary advantage allong these lines.

a) Awareness of the dagers in the here and now means I get the you know what out of danger. If a leopard in a tree is contemplating my fat to weight avarage and I notice it doing that, I run like hell.

b) If the leopard has seen my statue and decided not to risk a corronary, I on the other hand can stuff myself freely on burgers having an optimistic attitude on my distant future, due to the fact that in the long run I'm an optimist, and in doing so being the only one the survive a famine down the road.

Now mutiply that behaviour by 7.000.000.0000 and we're all headed for the proverbial cliff like the proverbial lemmings (who by the way are a lot smarter then that, they can regulate their offspring according to the expected food situation and hence seem to have more foresight than us intelligent beings).

Greetings, Ed