You're Probably Wrong, Part 1

We all consider ourselves rational people that make choices in a logical and coherent manner, and in turn, we try to lead that way. In fact, we regard reason as our highest function. We even named ourselves after it: Homo sapiens translates to mean “wise man.” However, we can explain our most illogical decisions, baffling actions, and undesirable outcomes by the same interplay of emotion and cognition that shapes all human behavior.

There are as many as six million active scuba divers worldwide according to the Diving Equipment and Marketing Association (DEMA). The average diver is a married, middle-aged, college graduate who owns a home and makes a healthy living. Demographically, the people we consider the most stable in our society tend to be the ones that engage in such a recreational activity. Laurence Gonzalez, in Deep Survival, highlighted a study by the Society for Human Performance in Extreme Environments about a series of accidents where scuba divers were found dead with air in their tanks and correctly functioning regulators.

“Only they had pulled the regulators out of their mouths and drowned.”[1]

It took a while for researchers to figure out what was going on. Their ultimate conclusion was that certain people suffer an intense feeling of suffocation when their mouths are covered. This led to an overwhelming impulse to uncover the mouth and nose. The victims had followed an emotional response that was generally a good one for the organism, to get air. However, it was the wrong response under the particular, non-natural circumstance of scuba diving. 

Perhaps an implicit memory of some previous experience was the catalyst, but before they went into the water, the divers could not have anticipated that the one thing that would keep them alive was the one thing the organism would not permit.[2] Even though, logically, they all knew that breath was not possible without a regulator, at the critical moment of decision, reason was not strong enough to overcome emotion.

So, what’s wrong here? Is there a self-destruct mode in our wiring? Do we have faulty software?

In the book Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari points out various remnants of an earlier time that we still carry with us today. We still have the same anxieties and ambitions that we possessed as hunter-gatherers when we were not yet at the top of the food chain. The domestication of fire was an important first step, as that helped us fend off predators and cook food, allowing us to safely ingest more calories than we had previously. Today, we still find comfort in a roaring blaze in the fireplace, even though we have a perfectly capable furnace. Even our tendency for gorging on high-calories, low-nutrient sweets can be traced back to a time when we ate entire trees of ripe fruits when they were available. Even though the food is still readily available for many people, this intrinsic competition for resources drives much of our behavior.

The only reason you have anything in your physiology is for survival. When you’re in danger, you don’t have time for abstract thinking - you need brain shut down. Your thinking has to become binary. So you either have fight-flight-or play dead. Two choices. You either just drop to the ground and faint, or you’re prepared to slug it out or run. Anything more sophisticated than that is unnecessary. You’ll be lion food.

We just think things…but how often do we think about why we think what we think? As we learn to control our physiological and emotional state, we can begin to create better outcomes for ourselves, our communities, our businesses, and our families. Creating a positive, passionate, winning attitude doesn’t guarantee success, but a negative one almost always leads to failure and ensures you will not adapt to challenges and obstacles.

How do we do that? Tune into Part 2.