Only Experience Changes Perception

Two times in as many days, I have heard communication professionals contend that knowledge and information will change perception. They are mistaken. I no longer believe that information alone results in behavioral change and change in perception; that all a communicator has to do is load information and facts onto the scale until reaching the proverbial tipping point.

Experience changes perception. Ideally, first-hand experience. My Brownie troop leader admitted to me, a second-grader, that until she found out I was Jewish, her perception was that all Jews had horns and tails. My perception of prison was altered by my spending a day inside the New Jersey State Prison.

Short of first-hand experience, virtual experience results in behavior change. This is why video games are proving effective in helping adolescent cancer and diabetes patients stick to their drug regimes.

The next-best thing to being there? Being transported into a situation through an engaging story. A story with a protagonist with whom you can identify; a story with just enough detail that you can imagine yourself seeing, feeling, smelling, and tasting what the protagonist is experiencing.

The April issue of the Harvard Business Review contains an interview with Jane Goodall, which touches on the issue of changing people's perceptions:

HBR: Your work requires persuading people to change when it may not be in their immediate best interest to do so. How do you do that?

Goodall: It's important to tell stories. Sometimes you're told you'll never change so-and-so's mind. But if you can be one-on-one with that person and tell a couple of stories....You usually can't change people's minds by the intellect. You've got to find something that reaches into their hearts. ...

HBR: How do you stay hopeful?

Goodall: ...[P]eople say you can't change somebody who's older than such and such an age, because they're set in their ways. It's not true. If you can find a story, if you can make them think and not be defensive, sometimes the toughest person can change.

adventures in minimalism

Long ago, before google, I belonged to an internet writers' group that ran as a listserv. Members contributed stories, mostly autobiographical, which were distributed without editing or annotation; everything happened via email. Many of the members wrote daily. I too contributed regularly, but in a minimalist vein, sending in, for some time, an almost-daily report consisting, in its entirety, of either:

Breakfasted; walked dog.

Or:

Walked dog; breakfasted.

The choice depended simply on in which order I had done those two things that morning.

One Saturday, it happened that my wife woke early and walked the dog without me. So, I contributed, on that day, to this story-writers' list, an email that consisted of a single-word sentence:

Breakfasted.

In reply, I received, from people in many nations, emails asking – some quite anxiously! – about the health of my dog.

phrasewatch

Recently we came across a phrase we had not seen before: "To predict caseness".

"Flash turns day into night."

Flash turns day into night.

In this photograph, a pair off-camera speedlights (that's Nikon-speak for strobe-light), hit the flowers with so much light that, by comparison, the background looks like nighttime, even though it's daytime: With flash, I can turn day into night. Like they do in the movies, sometimes.

[Spring arrives: Narcissus by the kitchen steps, 18 March 2010. Nikon 35mm f/2.0 lens on D700 camera with two (off-camera) SB-600 speedlights; exposure 1/125 s, f/22, ISO 800. Any trademarks are property of their respective owners; their appearance here is under fair use; no endorsement or sponsorship exists or is implied. The camera was hand-held against the ground; focus was set manually, using a wooden ruler to measure distance from the camera's sensor plane.]

"Scientists Discover What Any Woman in a Bar Could Have Told Them."

In her phantom essay entitled "It's a Guy Thing: Pity the poor woman who overestimates the size of a man's corpus callosum" on page 84 of the New York Times Style Magazine "Men's Fashion Spring 2010" issue, which we discussed here earlier, Holly Brubach also quotes from Dr. Louann Brizendine's book "The Male Brain", and comments:

"The female brain wants the hope of love and commitment before having sex," Brizendine writes, "but for men, sex often comes first." News bulletin: Scientists Discover What Any Woman in a Bar Could Have Told Them.

Rodent bow ties?

In an essay entitled "It's a Guy Thing: Pity the poor woman who overestimates the size of a man's corpus callosum" on page 84 of the New York Times Style Magazine "Men's Fashion Spring 2010" issue, Holly Brubach summarizes Shaunti Feldhahn's book "The Male Factor: The Unwritten Rules, Misperceptions, and Secret Beliefs of Men in the Workplace" in this way:

Feldhahn attributes many of the differences in men's and women's behavior on the job to the corpus collosum, which connects the brain's right and left hemispheres. According to one study, it's 25 percent smaller in men, with more isolated gray matter, which facilitates compartmentalizing. In women, a greater concentration of white matter relays more thoughts across various areas of the brain and makes for more efficient multitasking.

Such clear prose brings to mind H. L. Mencken's dictum that "There is always an easy solution to every human problem – neat, plausible, and wrong."

Elsewhere, but no doubt with equal authority, the same magazine issue directs our attention to the "rodent bow tie":

Biomorphic lamps, off-the-wall rooms, rodent bow ties, lo-fi rock-band T-shirts, untailored tailoring and John Lennon’s nonconformist cool all get their moment in the fashion sun. [links in original].

[Note re: "links in original". While the New York Times Style Magazine "Men's Fashion Spring 2010" issue appears gayly hyperlinked on the web site of the New York Times, and while other excellent writing by Holly Brubach is available on the web site of the New York Times, Holly Brubach's essay "It's a Guy Thing: Pity the poor woman who overestimates the size of a man's corpus callosum", on page 84 of the New York Times Style Magazine "Men's Fashion Spring 2010" issue, does not. In fact, there appears to be absolutely nothing on the web site of the New York Times to confirm your correspondent's observation that Holly Brubach's essay "It's a Guy Thing: Pity the poor woman who overestimates the size of a man's corpus callosum" appears on page 84 of the New York Times Style Magazine "Men's Fashion Spring 2010" that was delivered to our home with last Sunday's New York Times. It's as if the web site of the New York Times has decided to pretend that the essay does not exist, depriving their substantial internet readership of authoritative observations on human neuroanatomy – if not of helpful tips on taxidermy bow ties.]

[Any trademarks are property of their respective owners; their appearance here is under fair use; no endorsement or sponsorship exists or is implied; "corpus callosum" means "tough body", "corpus" as in corpse, and "callosum" as in calluses.]

Primer on Cultural Neuroscience

The March 1 issue of Newsweek offers an interesting article on cultural neuroscience, West Brain, East Brain: What a difference culture makes. I encourage you to read the entire article, and I post some excerpts, and the important conclusion:

Cultural neuroscience wouldn't be making waves if it found neurobiological bases only for well-known cultural differences. It is also uncovering the unexpected. For instance, a 2006 study found that native Chinese speakers use a different region of the brain to do simple arithmetic (3 + 4) or decide which number is larger than native English speakers do, even though both use Arabic numerals. The Chinese use the circuits that process visual and spatial information and plan movements (the latter may be related to the use of the abacus). But English speakers use language circuits. It is as if the West conceives numbers as just words, but the East imbues them with symbolic, spatial freight....

Not to be the skunk at this party, but I think it's important to ask whether neuroscience reveals anything more than we already know from, say, anthropology. For instance, it's well known that East Asian cultures prize the collective over the individual, and that Americans do the opposite. Does identifying brain correlates of those values offer any extra insight? After all, it's not as if anyone thought those values are the result of something in the liver.

...[C]ultural neuro-science does advance understanding. ...Especially when it shows how fundamental cultural differences are—so fundamental, perhaps, that "universal" notions such as human rights, democracy, and the like may be no such thing.

Tomorrow (Saturday) at ten!

Tickets to the Wolf Trap Opera Company's summer season go on sale at 10 AM tomorrow!

on happiness

"The secret of happiness is to own a convertible and a lake. If the sun shines, you can ride around in your convertible. If it rains, you can say, 'At least the rain will fill up my lake.' "

- Charles M. Schulz (1922 - 2000)

I have a bicycle that is rideable, and another bicycle that is not, because it needs new brake shoes and a new shifter cable & housing. I got the parts. So, if this weekend's weather forecast is correct, and it rains, I can work on the bike that needs work. But if the forecast is wrong, and the weather is nice, then I can ride the other bike. And, I suppose that if the weather is just right, then I can first fix the bike that needs fixing, and then ride it.

I agree with Mr. Schulz! But two bikes are more affordable than a convertible and a lake.

oxymoronic?

There is a large research literature on the effects of sedentary behavior.