Energy Output

In the Jules Vernes novel “Around the World in 80 Days,” Phileas Fogg circumnavigated the earth by train, ship and all kinds of other transportation. But Fogg never resorted to a bicycle. Last summer, Scot Mark Beaumont showed that it was possible to ride a bike around the world in 78 days. The endurance athlete cycled from Paris to Beijing via Moscow, through Australia and New Zealand, from Alaska to Halifax, and finally from Portugal back to Paris. He only traveled by air over oceans. After 78 days, 14 hours and 40 minutes, he had managed to cover 29,000 km (18,000 miles). During this period, he consumed 9,000 calories per day and got along with just five hours of sleep per night.

Instinct

Every year, tens of thousands of emperor penguins set off on the same journey. In April, they leave the nutrient-rich waters of the Atlantic for their breeding grounds on the Antarctic ice. In the process, they defy snowstorms and temperatures down to – 60° C (– 76° F). As soon as their offspring mature in their eggs they make their departure – a cycle they will repeat again and again. They travel back to the ocean to gather food for their young. Taking turns, the emperor penguin pairs migrate back and forth a total of 16 times. Researchers have calculated that each animal takes on a distance of up to 2,000 km (1,250 miles).

Progress

Even as late as the year 2000, three-quarters of all information was stored on analog data carriers. Not even one generation later, the idea seems very quaint. Today more and more people are storing their data in the cloud, since most information is now received and processed digitally. Industry 4.0 is based on digitally connected facilities and products. All of this generates huge quantities of data. Big data successfully handles processing with the help of better performing and smarter machines. Managing and interpreting the flood of data is becoming possible, and more and more knowledge is available. Humanity is beginning a new chapter.

“Optimism 

Is Vital”

Israeli neuroscientist Tali Sharot has shown that people tend 

to paint the future a bit rosier than it is actually going to be. 

In an interview with “ESSENTIAL,” she explains why that makes sense – why our brain often deceives us, and how we make our decisions 

before heading out into the unknown.

Ms. Sharot, is anticipation of a positive future something deeply human?

At least in some cases, it feels even better to expect something good than to actually experience it. Experiments have shown that people would pay more for a kiss from a celebrity if it were to take place in a year’s time than if they were to receive it immediately. An immediate kiss allows no time for anticipation.

Is that why a new beginning, a departure, puts us in such a positive mood?

Yes, because everything is open to us. There are no boundaries. We can imagine the best possible outcome and we tend to do precisely that subconsciously.

So humans are wired to think positively.

Yes, that can be shown in various ways. An overwhelming majority of us expect things to be more positive than negative for us in the coming month, no matter how old we are, what population group we belong to, or what our economic status is. We believe that good will happen to us and we underestimate risks. But just for us – not for others. The number of criminal offenses is usually imagined to be higher than the total actually committed. But practically no one expects to be the victim of a crime. We overwhelmingly tend to appraise ourselves as more interesting, friendly and successful than the “average.” But it is just mathematically impossible for 93 percent of us to be better drivers than the rest. But we are often not even aware of this inclination to optimism. That’s exactly what makes it so powerful.

That sounds a little unsettling.

It is normal and probably vital. Based on everything that we know so far, we are the only species that has the power to consciously project and to travel into the future in thought. But that has a price; it is associated with the knowledge that death awaits us, along with old age, illness and the decline of our capacities. Fear and worry about this would necessarily cripple and constantly compromise us in our everyday life. Without repressing such negative forecasting, the capacity for projection would likely be an evolutionary dead-end.

So we are generally not inclined to be preoccupied with negative news.

Yes. In one of our experiments, we invited participants to a lottery: either a large or small monetary prize was selected for them by chance. They had previously been allowed to look behind one of two doors to see what was hidden – but this did not change the result. Again and again, people chose the little door with the more valuable prize. That shows us that we want to know what luck could have in store for us in the best case, and not the disappointment that could await us. You see the exact same thing among investors when they look at their stock portfolios: if the share price is rising, they log on more frequently to get a good feeling. If the share price is falling, many turn a blind eye.

So you are making the case for opening the door to the bad news more often? 

We humans are more resilient than we think. If we open the door, we can begin to accept, and that also means recovering and starting anew. Sometimes we believe that it’s better not to know. But that just makes us more anxious. But that’s not advice that applies everywhere and at all times. Think about medical prognoses and precautionary tests. Something like this is very helpful if the disease is curable or if you could infect others. But it can be a source of unnecessary stress if you know you are suffering from a fatal disease and can’t do anything about it. Incidentally, this is a decision that we will likely have to make much more often in view of medicine’s progress 

„Die Meinung der Anderen“
Siedler-Verlag, 2017 

In her latest book, Tali Sharot delves into the question of how we are influenced – and how we affect others. Based on her own psychological and behavioral economic studies, the neuroscientist shows, on the one hand, why it is so difficult to persuade someone to change his thinking, and, on the other hand, why we often don’t even notice how fully we allow ourselves to be subconsciously influenced.

Imagine that we are at the start of the path. Everything is new. Nothing seems impossible. How and why do people make decisions?

There are some interesting findings on this. When we have to make the same decision multiple times, we keep tapping into different knowledge. So our choice can turn out differently every time. Should I take this job offer or would another be better? If I choose this, I lose that. This or that apartment? Again and again, there will be other details that steer you in one direction or another. We have a great deal of knowledge stored away. We cannot call it all up at the same time.

Would people want to make decisions themselves?

It is known that professional fund managers are able to handle your finances better. Still, many people are more comfortable managing their own money. Here we are exchanging financial profit for peace of mind.

In that light, it even sounds like a sensible exchange.

Yes, there is a whole series of examples of people acting in a way economists would call irrational, and I now have my doubts as to whether this is true. We do not merely act to optimize our finances and our material things, but also to optimize our emotional balance and our mental health. If we are happier and, in the process, make do with a little less money – why not? Naturally, it doesn’t necessarily help your frame of mind when you lose large sums of money.

But the control feels good.

We are designed to maintain control over our environment ourselves. There are good reasons for this: by and large, making the decision ourselves leads us to a better result. That’s why enormous stress results when the power to make decisions is taken from us. Incidentally, our fear of flying is based on the fact that we have no control at these moments.

From this standpoint, it is satisfying to make a decision, no matter what it is, because it gives the person control over his own actions.

That is an interesting thought. Yes, facing a decision is uncomfortable. You juggle a thousand things in your head, and every vision of the future harbors the fear of loss. If I decide this, I can’t have the other thing. But as soon as I make the decision, I can push all that aside and put my mind in order. This then leads to a situation where you evaluate a decision more positively once it is made than during the decision-making process.

Just the fact that we made a decision on something improves our assessment of the decision?

We have shown this in the lab and presented people with two possible vacation sites: Thailand and Greece. With some trickery, we made the participants believe that they had deliberately chosen one of these countries. In reality, the choice that we presented was purely coincidental. Nonetheless, all of them justified the decision they had apparently made in great detail and then liked one travel destination measurably more than the other. This confirmed similar experiments by other researchers who asked their subjects, for example, to choose the more attractive of two people. But after many, many different rounds with several hundred images, the participants then were presented with the opposite choice in each case, without realizing it. The result was a quick, very detailed and flowery justification as to why the subject found one person – whom he had previously rejected – to be more attractive.

So we find justifications for decisions after the fact merely because we believe that we made them?

Yes. But the following applies here as well: this mechanism helps us to move forward. Otherwise we would stagnate. We make a decision – so we are doing something. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we won’t regret it later in some cases.

Nonetheless, it gives me a queasy feeling to imagine that major decisions in industry, technology and politics are later justified vehemently, even though they may have risen from coincidence.

Every bias, that is, every cognitive distortion by our brain, has an origin, an evolutionary significance, and offers a certain advantage. But it can also have negative effects. This is just a basic constant in our lives. Everything has two sides.

How important is the past when we make decisions?

Very important. It is the building block for looking into our future. It has an impact on how we envision the future. Not just our own past but also the experience of other people. You can’t create something out of nothing. Even if we believe we are at the start of a journey, and everything is new and free like a blank sheet of paper. In reality, everything is based on past experiences.

So there are no completely new, freely-made decisions?

It is through learning and experiencing that we first become what we are. A baby begins learning as soon as it is born. Only a few reflexes are inborn. The remainder is learned through trial and error, from the first movements all the way to speech. All the attempts to create artificial intelligence are based on the same principle: trial and error, independent learning. Decisions are based on prior experience.

And on convictions, as you present in your new book, “The influential mind.”

In our lives, we all develop a very strong set of opinions from which we only allow ourselves to be dissuaded with great difficulty. Religion is often an example. Politics is another. When we are very convinced of something, we often don’t let ourselves be dissuaded by facts. On the contrary: we look for logical errors in the facts or develop new counterarguments based on them. Paradoxically, any attempt to change our minds leads us to be even more convinced of what we previously believed. It is a phenomenon that is currently a source of amazement in many political discussions.

That means we are actually incapable of learning new perspectives?

Oh no, we can definitely learn. But if you are very convinced of something, then I have a hard time countering the conviction with facts because it is tightly intertwined within you. In a way, every doubt would call your identity into question. It is more promising to question the actual motivation for your conviction and then address it. Take skepticism about vaccines as an example. An opponent of vaccination will not change his opinion in response to statistics that show no connection between vaccinations and autism. But what actually is his deep-seated motivation? Fears for the child to be vaccinated, in all likelihood. So it is more promising to argue, “Hey listen, vaccines protect your kids from these deadly diseases.” Vaccination opponents really don’t dispute this. Instead of attacking an existing conviction frontally, it can be better to find common, unifying motives.

How important is it to people to be able to influence other people?

Immensely important! Without Kennedy’s stirring speech, we might not have gone to the moon. Individuals can persuade people on very rational as well as quite unreasonable things – I am sure a few examples occur to you straightaway. Naturally, we realize after a while that one idea or another was nonsense. Think about the biotech sector, which in the past was supported with millions of dollars, even though the basis for all of the ideas was not demonstrably strong.

Does it help to know how our brain responds? You’ve described how human many of these processes are. Do you behave differently in your everyday life?

I think it is good to have them in the back of your mind, at least. For example, the fact that you get further by offering people alternatives and letting them choose. I at least try to think about this in raising my children. I deliberately choose positive statements: “Tidy your room so you can find your favorite toy more easily.” That works better than threats. Well – most of the time.

If we take all this into account, do we develop an outright fear of our own brain? Can we really trust ourselves?

The brain is all that we have. There’s nothing else to trust. It is certainly not a bad idea to occasionally be skeptical about the first intuitive idea that comes to mind and to think about it. But in the end, there is nothing better to trust than our own brain.

Tali Sharot

Sharot, an Israeli, earned her doctorate in psychology and neuroscience at New York University and is a professor at the Institute for Experimental Psychology at the University of London. In addition, she directs the Affective Brain Lab, which investigates how affects and emotions influence our perception and behavior. She also does research on memory, optimism and decision-making. Her book, “The influential mind,” was awarded the British Psychological Society Book Award. The video of her 2012 Ted talk has already been viewed 2 million times.

See the entire TED Talk with Tali Sharot