Human Behaviour
The Enemy Within
Cognitivism
I have been interested in human behaviour ever since I went to university, not once but twice. The second time, when I did a Post Graduate course in Education, was very intriguing as we spent a great deal of time studying human behaviour to better understand how we learn as human beings. However, a long long time before that, when I was learning to be a Heavy Goods Truck Driver, there at the driving school I also learned a great many things about how people behave, especially when they are driving.
Our driving instructor, Eric Dale, had an amazing insight as to how people viewed the world. For example, if a lollipop lady (a Crossing Guard in North American English) jumped out into the middle of the road at the last second, causing everybody to make an emergency stop, causing a pile up, drivers would remember that person for all the wrong reasons.
Of course, we would not dream that all lollipop ladies were bad. The good ones go un-noticed. And yet if a man or woman does something bad, like mistreat another man or woman, there is a tendency to think that all men or women are bad. This happens because our cognitive system tries to help us to remain safe, well out of harms way. However, that same system of processing information can mislead us.
