But it’s Not That Simple
As much as we want a simple explanation for errant emotional states and human behavior, the nuances of this interaction are quite complex. Every human is ultimately a combination of their genetics, their life experiences, and who they choose to be. You have some control over how much each of those things makes up who you are, but you do not have the power to free yourself from one entirely.
What we have tried to focus on in this guide are aspects of human interaction over which we have the capacity to exercise control.
That said, there are factors that influence our behavior that are outside our control, and it is worthwhile for us to be aware of them. These external influencers fall into five broad categories: genetic influencers, traumatic life events, addictions, priming influencers, and logical fallacies and biases.
Genetic Influencers
It is common knowledge that certain aspects of our personality are inherited. It is not unusual to hear someone state, “he has his father’s hot temper,” and not think twice about the implications, specifically that he either inherited a hot temper from his father in his genes or that he inherited the temper through how he was raised. Twin studies are studies in which scientists look for similarities more often shared by identical twins than by fraternal twins, allowing them to identify aspects of a person’s character that are linked to genetics and not just how a person was raised. Such studies have provided a perpetually growing body of evidence that, yes, some portions of our personality are influenced by our genes.
Sometimes these genetic predispositions are as simple as an increased susceptibility to addiction while at other times they are significantly more nuanced, as is the case with mood disorders like bipolar and depression. There is copious evidence that such disorders are heavily reliant on our genetics. In the case of bipolar disorder, if one identical twin has it, there is a 60% probability that the other will have it as well.
There is even evidence that our genetic predispositions may extend beyond our personalities and into our ideologies. The nascent field of genopolitics specifically studies how our genes and brain morphology impact our political alignment. For example, one study published by Dr. Schreiber in 2013 indicates he could predict an individual’s political affiliation with 82.9% accuracy by how their brain structures reacted during a gambling task. Despite a few flashy results like Dr. Schreiber’s, the field is still in its nascency and may not carry as much weight as popular science magazines would have you believe.
Regardless of how new fields like genopolitics shake out, few in the scientific community would argue our genetics play no role in our cognition. Keep in mind that it is widely accepted that certain psychological conditions are, at their core, genetic/physiological in nature and that while the advice in this guide may help a psychologically healthy person achieve their goals, it isn’t going to be effective at altering a physiological abnormality.
Traumatic Life Events
Occasionally a person may experience an event so traumatic it alters the way his or her brain works. People who suffer from extreme PTSD will have their hippocampus shrink significantly in size. The reactions that result from this sort of atrophying of a brain structure are not something that an altered image of your identity can overcome. Only specialized therapy can help. That said, such events are exceedingly rare.
Addictions
It should go without saying that addictions will influence your behavior and are to some extent beyond the control of your self-image (though not entirely). Addictions occur when the normal reward pathways in our brains that evolved to get us to act in beneficial ways become hijacked and begin to work in ways that harm us.
These hijacking factors can be obvious culprits like chemicals that directly act on our reward pathways (cocaine), overindulgence in stimuli that activate base reward pathways (food and exercise), and even indulgence in activities that simulate genuine accomplishment, thereby activating our brains’ reward pathways (video games and gambling). It is worth noting that the level of one of these activities one must indulge in before addiction takes hold is heavily influenced by an individual’s genetics.
Addiction exists within your brain’s normal pathways. Your addiction isn’t a small voice in your head nagging you to partake in an action that “the real you” knows is wrong. Your addiction has access to 100% of the mental processing capacity the rest of “you” does and will utilize that power to win any struggle against the “real you.” Addiction being the result of disruption in your brain’s intended pathways is why pharmacological intervention like Naltrexone enjoy success in combating addictions where logic alone fails.
Because the addicted version of yourself will always control your autopilot, the only way out of an addiction outside of a pharmacological intervention involves entering a period of flux and referencing your objective function to create an altered identity more capable of rejecting temptation (this is why AA forces its members to believe in a higher power, as it is the only objective function its creators could conceive of as being concrete and simple enough to counteract the autopilot controlling forces of addiction).
Finally, it is worth noting that, contrary to what one may assume, studies have repeatedly shown abstinence from whatever you are addicted to is much easier than moderation. When you think about this, it makes sense. Consider someone addicted to alcohol feeling an impulse to have a beer: the person can either go through the fairly simple mental processes of saying “I don’t drink alcohol” to shut off the impulse or the more complex process of “How many beers have I had to-day? Was that too many?” The complexity of the latter process makes it less effective at combating the impulse to drink.
Priming Influencers
Simply put, priming takes place when exposure to one stimulus influences our response to another stimulus. For example, you will be able to recognize the word “nurse” faster after the word “doctor” than after the word “bread” because the neural pathways associated with medical professions has been primed and has an easier time activating.
Think of your brain as requiring a certain level of stimulation to pursue certain thoughts (e.g., there is a certain level of nurse related paraphernalia or letters in the word n***e you need to see before you think the word “nurse”). Similar but ultimately non-pertinent stimulation can lower this threshold dramatically (e.g., if you had heard the word “doctor” recently, you would think the word nurse at a lower level of “nurse” related input).
This lowering of thresholds isn’t limited to simple thoughts; it can also include behavior patterns—even those we typically think of as “moral” and “social.” Essentially, environmental stimuli priming us can cause us to act like different people. For example, people can be influenced to cheat less by being reminded of the Ten Commandments (even if they are not religious), signing a pledge to be honest, or even by viewing a pair of human eyes painted on a box (which gives the impression one is being watched and held accountable).
The easiest way to protect ourselves against the influences of priming is to mentally divide our internal model of ourselves into an “outer model” and a “core model.” The more complex outer model is the part of us that directly influences our behavior and is susceptible to priming effects, while the inner model is the reference sheet we use to maintain the fidelity of the outer model as it morphs over time.
This morphing of our outer mental model over time is not a sign of personal failure and part of normal human life—unless, of course, we allow our entire self-image to be the product of priming and never self-correct when we feel ourselves drifting.
Logical Fallacies and Biases
Logical fallacies and biases are very much like optical illusions but in the way our brain processes information. In an optical illusion, we perceive the world incorrectly because our brain is taking a shortcut that usually works, but in rare instances causes us to misperceive reality (like how we perceive the spaces in between the squares in the image below changing from white to black due to lateral inhibition in neural pathways).
In the same fashion, shortcuts our brains use to effectively process the massive amounts of information we take in daily can sometimes lead us to perceive arguments as rational that are not or pursue behaviors that don’t correlate with our self-image.
For example, we will perceive an idea that is popular as being more correct than an idea that is unpopular—even though we logically know that the popularity of an idea is not proof of its validity. We do this because most of the time, ideas that are popular have been vetted by other people and thus we do not need to personally expend as much mental energy validating them.
Fallacies and biases present a twofold challenge to a pragmatic outlook on life. First, studies have shown that even if we are aware of a bias, we are still susceptible to it. Worse, even if we succeed in admitting that we arrived at a conclusion due to an illogical bias, studies show we do not value that conclusion less. Even though we know the above picture is an optical illusion, we still see it as moving. So it goes with biased conclusions.
The second, and perhaps more damaging effect of biases and fallacies is that extensive knowledge about them does more to obfuscate our perception of reality than clarify it. Because knowledge of biases does nothing (or very little) to protect us from them, individuals with extensive knowledge of biases are more likely to use said knowledge to protect themselves from views that contradict their own rather than challenge their current worldviews. We will dismiss the ideas of others as being the result of a bias without truly processing those new ideas, but not use the same knowledge of biases to question our own ideas. (If you are someone who takes pride in your knowledge of fallacies and biases, honestly ask yourself if you have ever changed your own view of the world based on that knowledge.)
For this reason, while knowledge of biases and fallacies may help you win a debate, it will not help you improve yourself. The only two questions worth asking yourself to overcome a bias are: “Why am I doing this?” and “Why do I think this?” If you can train yourself to answer those questions honestly, the effect biases will have on you will be mitigated more than a lifetime spent researching logical fallacies and biases ever could.
Brain States Follow Physiological States
Sometimes our brains react emotionally to stimuli in very strange ways. It is common to hear things like: “Forcing yourself to smile makes you happier” and assume that you are hearing a pop-psychology myth. This is not the case. In fact, studies have even shown that Botox injections that paralyze the muscles in someone’s face and prevent them from frowning will make them happier while removing laugh lines with cosmetic surgery will make someone more depressed.
The findings associated with smiling are not unique. There is a virtual mountain of studies showing that facial expressions, the way you move, physical actions, and the position of your body can all affect your mental state. Here a just a few examples:
• Striking a “power pose” will make you more confident and increase your testosterone levels while decreasing your cortisol levels
• Sitting with good posture will make you happier
• Nodding while being told something will make you more likely to believe it
• If you hug yourself, you can reduce the perception of pain
• If you sit up straight, you are more likely to remember positive memories
• Striking a constricted pose (keeping your limbs close to your body and occupying minimal space) will make you less comfortable making risky bets
• A slow slumped walk will decrease perceived energy levels while skipping will make you feel more energetic
Note: There have been recent studies challenging the facial feedback hypothesis as well as others that challenge the somatic marker hypothesis. This is the first case in this book where the two authors primary standard of evidence conflicts with Simone’s being scientific method and Malcolm’s being expert consensus within the scientific community. Simone believes that the current body of research no longer supports these theories while Malcolm believes it is not worth throwing them out until expert consensus has turned against them. We have chosen to leave this section as is but post this disclaimer as an example of how recognizing you are working off of a different standard of evidence than someone else can lead to a more productive discussion about the validity of an ideology.