My younger son is freakishly good at making mental connections. Since he was little, he\u2019s been surprising us by blurting out the most random and absolutely on-point knowledge. We used to ask him, \u201cHow did you know that, Zachary?\u201d Or \u201cWho told you that?\u201d and he would say in his high-pitched 3-year-old voice, \u201cMy BRAIN told me!\u201d<\/p>\n
He was 100% correct; his brain was working as it was made to. His System 1, as Daniel Kahneman would call it, was taking in information, forming impressions, and weaving together a coherent \u201cstory\u201d. All this was happening instinctually, without any intentional effort on my son\u2019s part.[1]<\/a> Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, prominent researcher in psychology and neuroscience, explains it in this way: Our brains are constantly working in a cycle of prediction then testing those predictions against sensory input. The more input our brains receive, the better we can form concepts, be it of emotions or social rules or macroeconomics.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n Kahneman\u2019s main thesis in Thinking, Fast and Slow <\/em>is that our brains house two systems. To grossly oversimplify, System 1 is responsible for the involuntary, automatic, and instinctual aspects of our thinking. It is like an autopilot setting. System 2 is used when we do anything in an intentional way or engage in higher level intellectual thinking. That\u2019s all well and good, most of the time. But parts 2-5 of the book go on to explain all the ways our brains can trick us into misunderstanding statistical information or feeling overconfident in a judgement or even inaccurately remembering an experience.<\/p>\n What Kahneman explains thoroughly, we know tacitly. We experience this 100 times a day when we are startled and react with a fight-or-flight response. Or when we jump to conclusions based on a look someone gave us. Or when we pass judgement on someone based on their appearance. Essentially, we are operating on autopilot, even when our rational brain could easily spot our error.<\/p>\n When I think of using System 1 and System 2 in my own brain, I think of the early days of learning a second language. Suddenly something I had always taken for granted, conveying meaning through my words, I just couldn\u2019t do anymore. As the months dragged on, communication took so much System 2 effort that I was exhausted all the time. I remember wanting to spend time with new friends, but after an hour of speaking in French, my brain just shut down. Then one day (I\u2019ll never forget this feeling) the TV was on the background, and I realized that I knew what was happening in the show even though I hadn\u2019t been paying attention. \u201cMy BRAIN told me!\u201d as my little son would have said.<\/p>\n As I think about System 1 and System 2 thinking related to my NPO, there are two important things that directly came out of my Discovery Workshop. My stakeholders identified an overriding feeling of fear as they approach parenting. This is interesting because with their System 2 thinking engaged, they were rationally able to articulate many reasons why they shouldn\u2019t be afraid.<\/p>\n God is in control.<\/p>\n Not all kids end up running away from home\/addicted to drugs\/rejecting God\/etc.<\/p>\n No parent is perfect, and I\u2019m doing the best I can.<\/p>\n But nearly every parent I spoke with said that fear was a major motivator, an important reason why parents make decisions. Their System 1 was overriding their rational thinking and making them fearful even when the circumstances didn\u2019t justify it.<\/p>\n Secondly, the participants in my Discovery Workshop spoke about how new parents generally rely on instinct which really boils down to however they were raised. If they were spanked, they are likely to spank their own children. If they were required to do chores around the house, they will make their kids do chores. What is even more interesting is even when a parent identifies a shortcoming in their own upbringing and they desire to make a change, it is extremely difficult to break those ingrained patterns. Why? Obviously, because their System 1 has created a concept of what is \u201cnormal\u201d such that it becomes instinctual and automatic.<\/p>\n Where does that leave me as a leader with an ambition of supporting parents? This endeavor is going to be much harder than just educating parents or even coaching them to make the changes they desire for their families. Real change to ingrained thinking is a long and difficult road. Kahneman gave a Google Talk after which an audience member posed the question, \u201cHow fixed or plastic are these systems?\u201d Kahneman\u2019s answer was essentially that System 1 can be updated in terms of content but very difficult to control. However we can \u201ctrain\u201d System 2 and learn to recognize situations where it can take over and be of use.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n As a first step on that long road toward change, we need to get out of \u201cautomatic\u201d mode. Of course, we can\u2019t leave System 1 behind (it\u2019s important for things like breathing and blinking after all) but we all need to think and act more intentionally. We need to reevaluate our own judgement calls and those of others. We need to be careful to avoid jumping to conclusion and instead communicate carefully. As leaders and as parents we need to turn off autopilot and start driving (and thinking) for ourselves.<\/p>\n ________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow.<\/em> Farrar, Straus and Giroux; New York. 2013.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Barrett, Lisa Feldman. How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain<\/em>. First Mariner Books edition. Boston New York: Mariner Books, 2018.<\/p>\n [3] <\/a>Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow.<\/em> Talks at Google. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=CjVQJdIrDJ0<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My younger son is freakishly good at making mental connections. Since he was little, he\u2019s been surprising us by blurting out the most random and absolutely on-point knowledge. We used to ask him, \u201cHow did you know that, Zachary?\u201d Or \u201cWho told you that?\u201d and he would say in his high-pitched 3-year-old voice, \u201cMy BRAIN […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":186,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2310],"tags":[2052],"class_list":["post-31445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doctor-of-leadership-3","tag-kahneman","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/186"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31445"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31446,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31445\/revisions\/31446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}