Behaviors of our Mind

We can pretty easily explain the evolution of traits such as upright walking, and the differences and similarities with our closest relatives are clearly visible in their behavior and physical features. Chimpanzees sometimes walk upright, e.g. to carry food, and we can well imagine that this behavior has survival and reproduction benefits under savanna-like environmental conditions, and thus can spread through natural selection over many generations in a population.

We can not see the behavior that happens in the brain from the outside (researchers consider mental processes such as thinking and feeling also as "behavior", i.e., something that the body does, only that we can not see it from the outside). Through language and other symbols, we humans can tell each other about our inner experience. But how can we then find out what other animals think and feel, and whether they have similar thoughts or ideas, as we humans do? 

Using modern research methods, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, we can at least observe the activity of nerve cells in the brain while organisms do certain things - which brain regions are active how strongly, how are they interconnected? And how does brain activity differ between humans and other species while they are doing similar things?

Another method that scientists use to compare the mental faculties of humans and other species is to observe behaviors while performing certain tasks. If, for example, chimpanzees or small children can remember something from yesterday or think about tomorrow, then they would need to be able to solve a particular task that requires that mental ability - e.g. pick up a tool or save food for later, because they may need it then.

However, we can also easily observe and "explore" our own minds without much effort or fancy technology: what different things does our mind actually do? And why does it do these different things? Which of these different things do we share with other animals, and which not? With which do we come into the world, and which only develop in the course of our life?

Scientists have come up with various metaphors and analogies to describe and differentiate the different behaviors in our mind. For example,

• "Fast Thinking", "Slow Thinking"

• "Moral Taste Buds"

• "Mental Time Travel"

• the "Noticer", the "Discoverer", and the "Advisor"

As we look more closely at our perception and thinking, we find that some of it is quite automatic and effortless. Other situations require our conscious concentration and make us tired very quickly. So solving the equation "2 + 2" feels quite differently to us from solving the equation "17 * 23".

In psychology, these different processes are often roughly divided into two ways of thinking - a fast System 1, and a slow System 2. We often think our system 2 is in control; in fact, system 1 dominates our perception, thinking and acting. Because System 1 helps us to navigate quickly and effortlessly and survive in a complex, dynamic world.

The Israeli-American psychologist Daniel Kahneman has popularized the insights about System 1 and System 2 in in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, published in 2011.

Fast thinking leads to a distorted or simplified perception of reality. Unfortunately, by definition, we can not see most of these processes because they are unconscious. But optical illusions allow us to watch our fast thinking "at work". In doing so, we can reflect on why these automatic distortions are taking place at all - do they have a function? Do they allow us (and did they allow our ancestors) to cope with the environment, or are they useless "software bugs" in our brains?

We have many of the mental activities of "System 1" in common with other species of animals, and we are born with some of these abilities. Other intuitions are also developed in the course of our life through repeated experience of stimuli and practice. That's why we can barely suppress reading words in our mother tongue or solving "2 + 2", even though there was a time when this was new and hard work for us. 

The function of these unconscious and automatic intuitions, for us and other animals, is to quickly learn the regularities of our social and natural environment, to perceive them quickly and without much energy expenditure, and to respond to them rapidly. System 1 enables us to navigate and survive in a complex, dynamic world, but it does not always provide a factually accurate view. Simplified or distorted perceptions of the world have become part of how humans think because they may have no negative effects, and often positive effects for us. So we can not prevent that sometimes we see faces where there are none, or get “tricked” by other optical illusions. All we can do is learn when System 1 distorts and simplifies our perception of the world, and not always blindly trust our perception.

We can also change many processes of System 1 over time by using System 2 and a lot of practice. So we humans, if we want, can become all sorts of experts!

“The capabilities of System 1 include innate skills that we share with other animals. We are born prepared to perceive the world around us, recognize objects, orient attention, avoid losses, and fear spiders. Other mental activities become fast and automatic through prolonged practice.” 

Daniel Kahneman (2011)

The mental processes of System 1 and System 2 are not strictly separable - many processes are more or less automatic, more or less conscious, more or less flexible depending on many factors. Other species, e.g. primates, may have certain "slow thinking" skills. Nevertheless, the activities of System 2 seem to be particularly pronounced in us humans. They probably originated throughout our evolutionary history because certain mental abilities, such as controlling emotional impulses in social situations, focusing on activities such as learning and teaching the use and manufacture of complex tools, and coordination of body movements, have become increasingly important to the survival of our ancestors. 

System 2 is related to the activity of the cerebral cortex and we do not come into the world with it - it develops throughout our lives.

We often think that our System 2 (our ‘self’, our ‘intention’, our ‘will’) is in control, after all we are mostly only aware of System 2. In fact, System 1 generally dominates our perception, our thinking and acting, in part because System 2 consumes a lot of energy and is exhausting! 

Observe how often and in what situations you and your mind use System 1 and System 2 thinking over the course of a day.

“The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration. (...) When we think of ourselves, we identify with System 2, the conscious, reasoning self that has beliefs, makes choices, and decides what to think about and what to do.”

Daniel Kahneman (2011)

As we look more closely at our perception and thinking, we also find that we are quite often "somewhere else". We may be physically sitting in the room, walking down the street, or lying in bed, but in our minds we are wandering around in time and space: we remember a situation of yesterday or last year and replay it like a movie, we imagine ourselves in a situation tomorrow or in 10 years, and wonder or worry about all sorts of situations that have nothing to do with our perception in the here-and-now.

Scientists call this behavior of our mind "mental time travel". Why do we have this behavior? Can other species do that too? Why, or why not? None of us can remember our first birthday. But if you are old enough to read this text, then mental time travel probably determines much of your everyday experience, sometimes in a negative way, and sometimes in a positive way. How and when do we develop this behavior in the course of our lives?

While these questions are still being debated, most scientists who study these issues believe that mental time travel has become particularly elaborated  in our species. Moreover, we are not born with it- children from the age of about 4 years are increasingly beginning to have ideas about the past and the future and to include them in their actions. Today, thanks to stories, historic documents, calendars, science and other cultural knowledge we have a concept of and can imagine a past tens, thousands, millions or even billions of years ago, and we can imagine and prepare decades into a forseeable future. Relationships with other people, language and cultural knowledge are seemingly important factors that play a role in the development of these abilities for mental time travel.

“What is in your pockets? Chances are you carry keys, money, cosmetics, a Swiss Army knife, or other tools—because they may be useful at some future point. Humans have the ubiquitous capacity to imagine, plan for, and shape the future (even if we do frequently get it wrong). This capacity must have long been of major importance to our survival (....) and may have been a prime mover in human cognitive evolution. Stone toolkits and spears from archaeological finds suggest that the ancestors of modern humans already prepared for the future hundreds of thousands of years ago. (...)

Of course, other animals also act in ways that increase their chances of future survival. Many species have evolved preparatory instincts that lead them, for example, to build nests or hoard food. [Learning] further allows individuals, rather than entire species, to predict recurrences on the basis of cues (for example, a smell signaling food). (...) 

Great apes even seem capable of imagining situations they cannot directly perceive. They can also make simple tools to solve nearby problems, such as fashioning an appropriate stick to obtain food that would otherwise be out of reach. Yet there seems little evidence that animals ponder the more distant future.”

Thomas Suddendorf (2006)

• Function: To detect physical, psychological, and environmental stimuli in the immediate here-and-now

• The noticer is evolutionarily very old, depending on how one defines "sensing" and "perception".

• We are born with the noticer, but it also develops over our lifetime, being able to notice more and more different things.

• The noticer is automatic (System 1), but can also be consciously controlled by us (System 2). For example, if we want, we can notice a sensation in our left foot (or another part of the body) exactly RIGHT NOW , or observe sounds from the environment, or watch our breath, or observe if our mind is also "elsewhere." (see mental time travel), or we can perceive / observe what our inner voice (the "advisor", below) wants to tell us. Our noticer therefore does not travel around in space and time, but always perceives everything in the here-and-now.

• Function: To increase our possibility for new behaviors and understandings through trial-and error learning 

• The discoverer originated about 500 million years ago and we have it in common with many animals - many animals have a motivation to explore their surrounding. Apes in particular seem to have elaborated motivations to explore and try out new ways of doing things.

• We are born with the discoverer. The fact that we humans like to play shows the activity, curiosity and imagination of our discoverer-mode. In childhood and youth, our discoverer is particularly active and willing to take risks. Even in adulthood, we still like to play, have hobbies, travel, read books, and want to try new things, just because we enjoy the discovery mode. Each of us has her own discovery mood that motivates us for certain activities, and in some it is more, in others less active.

• The discoverer can make use of the noticer and advisor, and can travel in space and time.

See also: Creativity

• Function: To use prior learning, experience and language in order to learn from experience, simulate possibilities, and reduce the need for trial-and-error learning 

• The advisor may be an evolved trait unique to humans (because of our ability for symbolic thinking).

• The advisor develops across our lives through relationships with other people and language learning. The things that people say or otherwise communicate to us in the course of our development, and the things we say/communicate to other people, become the repertoire from which our advisor continually builds our thoughts in unlimited combinations.

• The advisor is influenced by fast thinking (System 1), but it can also be controlled by us sometimes and to some degree (System 2). It often travels around in space and time. It does a lot of judging, evaluating, looking for causes and patterns, predicting.

See also: Symbols and Language

While all of these behaviors or characters in our mind have important functions and help us act in ways that are important for our survival and well-being, sometimes they are not very useful. For example:

• Fast thinking can give us distorted information that is not helpful to us or leads to social conflict.

• Mental time travel can make us experience negative experiences from the past over and over again, and can make us worry too much about the (imagined) future. It can affect our well-being and behavior in the here-and-now in ways that are not helpful.

• The advisor (the inner voice) can give us too much useless advice or too many negative evaluations (about ourselves, our life, other people, our circumstances), and it can drown out or restrict our Noticers and Discoverers (that is, our ability and motivation to notice the here-and-now and try out new things). It can affect our well-being and behavior in the here-and-now in ways that are not helpful.

• Ciarrochi, J & Hayes, L. (2018). Shaping DNA (Discoverer, Noticer,  and Advisor): A Contextual Behavioral Science Approach to Youth Intervention. In: Wilson, D.S. & Hayes, S.C. Evolution and Contextual Behavioral Science (S. 107-124). Oakland: Context Press. 

• Hayes, L. L., & Ciarrochi, J. (2015). The Thriving Adolescent. Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Positive Psychology to help teens manage emotions, achieve goals, and build connections. Oakland, CA, USA: Context Press.

• Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

• Suddendorf, T. (2006). Foresight and Evolution of the Human Mind. Science, 312, 1006–1007. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1129217 

• Osvath, M., & Gärdenfors, P. (2005). Oldowan Culture and the Evolution of Anticipatory Cognition. Lund University Cognitive Studies, 122, 1–16.