Given Expert Advice, Brains "Shut Down"

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/financebrain.html

by robg • 17 years ago

59 35 17 years ago

blog.wired.com

Article here: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0004957

robg• 17 years ago

Article here: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...

zupatol• 17 years ago

I noticed a similar effect on my opinion about movies and books. I am extremely influenced by what I hear, to the point that a movie that I love when I see it for the first time is completely spoilt the second time if I heard a disparaging comment by someone I respect. The same thing almost made me stop listening to music. I've heard so many bad things about Houellebecq that I know there is no point in even trying to read his books.

This sounds like I can be easily influenced, but it may also be that I am more conscious of these effects because I find it very important to judge things by myself.

c00p3r5• 17 years ago

There are two kinds of books and movies (in very simplified example) - which are the art, and which are just a stuff for sale. The first ones are good for you, because they are altering you in good way. The second are annoying and damaging you like primitive direct advertisements (some kind of hypnosis). The first ones is the fresh food for your imagination, the second one is some kind of poison. Just make your choice what to see, read, eat, or drink. =)

whatusername• 17 years ago

With some movies though - I'll go in with a negative expectation - and come out very pleasantly surprised!

h34t• 17 years ago

This is another reason why I hated undergrad education. You have a bunch of teachers positioned as "experts," and they ask you to accept counter-intuitive statements under extreme time pressure and the threat of not passing the class. The most natural thing to do is turn off your brain and accept what they tell you, to pass the test.

Even if what you've "learned" is correct, you've disengaged yourself from the actual process of thinking and learning.

tylerhwillis• 17 years ago

that's a big problem I had with undergrad, and is directly related to the reason I dropped out.

Critical thinking has become a second-class citizen in our educational system.

tokenadult2• 17 years ago

Upvoted for agreement. It is extremely difficult to get fully grown adults to reconsider any wild opinion they've heard from a teacher. But if one must get an undergraduate education, at least get it in a research university environment where not all the professors agree with one another, even in the same department, and where the enrolled students are diverse enough to bring on campus a lot of different points of view.

The concern you have about most educational environments is why I'm an "unschooling"-leaning eclectic homeschooler for my own children. There are at least biological drives ensuring that my children will disagree with me [smile], so they all learn to question one teacher.

sam_in_nyc2• 17 years ago

I have to disagree with you here. I've found the vast majority of what I was taught followed a progression from the basics, up towards more advanced stuff, and included the "revelations" in between. There wasn't much stuff pulled out of thin air.

If something did seem to be pulled out of thin air, I asked critical questions, did my own research, or just made a mental note that it's note quite as much a fact as it's made out to be. I can't think of any examples off-hand, but probably it was with stuff in sociology, where (I feel) there are so many variables it's nearly impossible to attribute an outcome to a specific type of behavior.

I think it's up to each person to think critically, and I think each person has the power to control whether or not they "switch off" their brain. It just so happens most people choose not to.

Zev• 17 years ago

I haven't had any professor in an upper level (300 or 400) class expect anyone to take in what they say as absolute truth. They usually welcome students questions as an opportunity for discussion. The only times they don't seem to is when trying to cover something new and someone doesn't want to move on.

In lower level courses, where straight up lectures are more common, professors are more inclined to simply teach the facts instead of trying to create a(n unmanageable) discussion between 50+ people. Which is understandable. And they (usually, at the beginning of the semester, at least) stress that they have office hours or are available at other times if someone wants to continue talking about a topic for whatever reason.

But these are my experiences, maybe I've just been lucky?

DannoHung• 17 years ago

Man, I've been in large lectures where there 200 students in a classroom and the professor tolerated completely inane arguments to try and teach just one student the material.

If you're in a class and you don't think what the professor is saying is right, either ask a question or write a note so you can follow up on it later.

Not once in my undergraduate career was I expected to turn off my brain and go on cruise control just because the guy down in front was an expert.

Honesstly, I feel like my whole benefit of my academic career was taken from sitting in a class, not understanding what the fuck was going on and then struggling to understand or contradict what I was being taught.

jibiki• 17 years ago

Most of what you learn (in school) is stuff you HAVE to take on faith. Are you going to empirically verify the concept of covalent bonding? Are you going to figure out Kreb's cycle from first principles? Will you deduce the results of the Civil War based on it's causes?

If it was limited to subjects where students could study the evidence and come to their own conclusions, school would quickly end up being useless...

eru• 17 years ago

We would still have math. Or most of it.

easp• 17 years ago

I'm not just being flip by saying this: You went to the wrong school.

rbanffy2• 17 years ago

I see the implications of this are enormous. The first example that comes to my mind is criminal prosecution.

The second are software salesman. I have seen a lot of smart people who bought from Vignette, Oracle, Microsoft... Now they have an excuse...

a-priori• 17 years ago

I don't think this study speaks to anything about criminal persecution. This study was about the effect of one expert against a person's own judgement. What you're talking about is the effect of the opinion of two competing experts (persecution and defence).

My hunch is that having two expert opinions would be similar to having no expert advice, in terms of fMRI activity.

rbanffy2• 17 years ago

Not at all. I am worried about the implications on the study conclusions on interrogation techniques. The validity of a confession obtained under coercion can be questioned when you show the effect an "expert" opinion can have on someone's own capacity to assess his/her situation.

Cops will need to interrogate their suspects inside an fMRI machine...

snprbob862• 17 years ago

Now, they need to conduct this experiment again with a general population control group and a "successful people" variable group. I'm willing to bet that successful people think for themselves.

tokenadult2• 17 years ago

I was about to reply in a different manner, but let me start by asking you what you mean by "successful people." What kind of people would be in that group?

snprbob862• 17 years ago

I put it in quotes to leave it intentionally undefined.

You could run several experiments with differing variable group selection criteria to find out what kinds of people are more or less easily influenced. However, in particular, I was thinking of people who are considered to be strong leaders.

mahmud3• 17 years ago

I have noticed that in the people I have been pitching my startup idea to. Thirty seconds or so and they would "lock up" and stare blankly. It took several iterations and beta-testing on friends and family until I formulated my pitch into a 3 minute high-level interactive approach. E.g:

"We all use the web and love it. Oh man, this is my favorite website, I'm gonna do X and catch up with Y, but look! [problem description here]. [explain the aggravation caused by the problem. [real numbers about the loss in productivity or lost sales potential]. [projected growth in my industry, a quick highlight of what's out there and how we're different and better]." Then I go into the project description and everyone is delighted at that point.

To engage the people ask them questions. Instead of "we all do X" say "don't we all do X?". Instead of saying something is a problem for you, say "is it just me or does X bug the hell out of anybody else? [then look the audience members individually in the eye]"

Participatory learning is something good teachers and salespeople have known for a very long time, as far back as Socrates at least.

s_baar• 17 years ago

Why is there a video of Cramer on the side?

ams6110• 17 years ago

Hmm. To me this illustrates that we should be more skeptical of who we consider to be "experts" not that we should not seek counsel of those with subject matter expertise.

Hint, someone with a TV show is probably NOT who you should be listening to.

quellhorst• 17 years ago

My brain doesn't "shut down". I tend to question everything even ideas that are widely held by people around me.

magoghm• 17 years ago

Haven't they noticed that people spend all of their formative years in schools were they are taught to never question authority? After so many years of "behavioral training" it seems quite normal to me that people's brains shut down when listening to an expert.

c00p3r5• 17 years ago

There is some old classic paper titled The Programmers Stone. In the first chapter there is very good description of two different states of the mind - Packers and Mappers. This study is about packer's brain, because mappers will try to combine expert's opinion with their own map, alter or update it when necessary, or even create a model which fills both opinions. The rest of this Programmers Stone is some kind of nonsense, but this first chapter is a must read.

mahmud3• 17 years ago

Absolutely phenomenal find there c00p3r. The paper in question is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmer%27s_Stone">here&....

Any more pointers on the psychology of programming would be nice, folks (I know there is google, but I want to crowd-source that searching and vetting ;-)

c00p3r5• 17 years ago

About psychology behind programming - there are very interesting parallels - almost everything in psychotherapy is based on the usage of the language and direct communication. This means to choosing a words carefully, paying full attention to the order of the words in a sentence, simplicity an unambiguous of the sentences and adapting to and reusing the client's vocabulary.

The same ideas should be applied to any texts (source code, documentation, marketing) that we're creating, because these texts, and especially the source code, are being written not for the compilers or interpreters, but for the people, same like you.

It seems like XP, Refactoring and other good ideas which are based on readability and simplicity of the source code is just the reflections of the thousand years old ideas. The old sages, sutras, and stories were survived because they are easy to understand, remember and modify when necessary.

There are some hints - not psychology but worth to notice: Ruby as a programming language which was developed by Japanese (East, Symbolic) mind, the 37signals which is trying to adapt Zen principles in project management, and a brilliant philosophy behind Python - simplicity but imperfection.

MaysonL• 17 years ago

Weinberg Psychology of Computer Programming recently published in 25th anniversary edition:

http://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Computer-Programming-Silver...

johnm• 17 years ago

"Socratic method" FTW!

sam_in_nyc2• 17 years ago

Here's a summary of the "experiment":

  * hook 24 college students to brain-scanner-majigs.
  * given them an economic problem.. the better they do, the more they get rewarded
  * have some of them do it on their own.
  * have some of them receive advice from someone who is said to be an expert of economics.

The results? Guess what! Different parts of your brain are active when you do something yourself, and when you receive advice. Oh, and also, people tend to follow advice from experts. Here's the amazing scientific breakthrough the research suggests: maybe we can one day make brain-scanners that tell you when you're receiving expert advice or making the decision yourself. Wow! I'd pay $0 for such a thing, because I don't need one: I know when I'm choosing to take a short-cut by following expert advice, and when I'm deciding myself.

Following expert advise isn't a bad thing. Think for yourselves what it means to follow expert advice -- to me it's what allows the human race to advance at such a rapid pace. You ask someone with experience, so that you don't have to experience/learn it all yourself. It's the same concept as paying a business to do something that would be inefficient for your own business to do, or figure out how to do. If someone suggests using a company that in the past has had good results, and you use them, and they fail... would you say that your brain was shut off during the decision to use them? No... they just let you down. Plain and simple. But what if someone took brain scans while you made the decision process?? Well, in that case, you could write an article about it in Wired, it seems.

This is sensationalized science... and in this case is especially ironic, since people seem to be taking the article headline at face value.

time_management• 17 years ago

Someone needs to tell me who the experts are so I can be mindful of this and prevent it from happening to me.

jksmith• 17 years ago

This is one of the issues I was thinking about when I was looking at that Hunch site. The purest decisions that I make are the ones that have the additional attribute that I think I know why I'm making them. This seems to provide the most fertile ground for creativity.

So experts have worked on the Hunch algorithms - how do they codify this issue of providing solutions without the taint of incestuously created (self-reinforcing) knowledge? It's a closed environment that discourages the existence of black swans.

Specific to the Wired piece, many remember the team of math guys who put together a stock picking app back in the 90's. They thought the algorithms were nearly foolproof, and built an investment business around their work. Of course, their effort ultimately crashed spectacularly. An example of shutting your own brain down from your own work.

Given Expert Advice, Brains "Shut Down"

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