Media Can Change Your Brain
Media can be a bane or a boon to your thinking. It’s up to you to take control.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) finds its roots in the 1970s schism of behavioral psychology and cognitive psychology; a schism defined by whether thinking requires a physical/environmental stimulus. In some ways, CBT is an attempt to reconcile the two—you’re thinking can change your behavior and your behavior can change your thinking. What’s new to this equation is that our always-on media connections, our reminders, our public declarations of goals can change our thinking and behavior as well.
Given that brains are computing, and that computations can affect behavior, thinking must affect behavior although sometimes it really feels like that’s not the case. Anyone who has suffered from a bad habit knows you can’t think your way out of it. But first understand that a great deal of our thinking is not directly under our control—and it’s a good thing for us that it’s not. If someone hurls a ball at your head, and you catch it, you’ll find that it’s only after the catch that you have conscious-level thoughts of having caught a ball. If you took the time to think about catching the ball, it’s trajectory and color, you very well might get beaned. Second, understand that there is a difference between thinking in the short-term and thinking in the long-term. Your long-term thinking can change, no matter who you think you are.
If you sit quietly right now, focus on your breathing, and try to empty your mind of thoughts, how long is it before a thought occurs—just pops into your head? Ask yourself where that thought came from if you were trying not to think of anything? In came from the depths of your brain, processes veiled by your conscious thought. In some cases and experiments it’s not even clear which comes first: the thought or the conscious recognition of the thought? However, studies have also shown that practicing quieting your brain—through meditation—can have all sorts of other beneficial side effects, from increased focus to better sleep patterns. And there are a lot of apps for that.
CBT, in large part, encourages (trains) individuals to think about their thinking; to recognize where their thoughts come from and how to be critical of them. “Psychology Today” has a nice list of some of those techniques—practices that allow you to tune negative thinking—and here is why media can be a significant player in the process of changing your thinking. One common tool in all of the techniques mentioned above is the use of media—media as simple as pen and paper—to record objective measurements of thinking in order to reflect and then later, act on them.
Empirical evidence has shown that human memory is pretty shoddy (compared to, say, computer memory). It’s easy to remember just the bad outcomes, even though they may not be frequent, or to be deluded into thinking that bad/superstitious thoughts and actions are useful because of selective evidence. Yet, the simple act of writing down three happy things in a journal at the end of each day has been shown improve your overall long-term happiness. And, you guessed it, there’s an app for that.
In many cases the use of media of all kinds can be described as extended thought. We can use media to enhance our memory and our observational capacities. The athelete or stage performer who uses a video of their performance to observe what they are doing in critical moments can make improvements through the use media, since when they are in mid-action, they likely are relying on muscle memory and may not be thinking about what they are doing at all. The financial advisor who avoids the pitfalls of human biases like sunk costs or loss aversion by utilizing a spreadsheet to generate reliable information on which to make more considered decisions is doing the same.
This definition of media was certainly something that Marshall McLuhan was driving at in his seminal work “Understanding Media” in which he discussed media as extensions of man. Media serves to enhance our human senses and abilities. The wheel is an extension of the wheel, money an extension of a social network, and words on a page are an extension of speech. The use of media as cognitive enhancement is also a point raised by Daniel Kahneman in his book “Thinking Fast and Slow.” Kahneman built his reputation on experiments that showed biases in human thinking when applied to some problems. These biases have their basis in our biological evolution, but don’t produce optimal solutions for us in the modern world. These biases, however, can be overcome when we are aware of them and when we use tools to make better decisions because of our awareness of our biases.
The more we come to understand how media can act as extensions of our thinking process, the better we’ll be able to think. It’s not all roses; like all the things we create, media are easily abused. A certain amount of discretion and control has to exist. We all know an individual who cannot help but check his mobile phone every five minutes, and to the extent that behavior is disruptive to social engagement, it’s bad—or at least poor form. But even behavior with regard to media that seems like addiction can be overcome with simple CBT exercises. And these exercises can even take the form of a social game, like a recent trend of stacking phones in the center of the dinner table.
It’s okay to be alone with your thoughts, no matter how empty that might seem. If anything, being alone with your thoughts gives you time to observe them and ask yourself where they come from and are they testable? When you can grasp that not every thought you have is one that needs to be acted upon, or even paid attention to, you’ll find you possess a new level of control over your thinking. Those thoughts that you would rather not have?—negative thoughts about outcomes? Use media to test them. Record results. Those thoughts that you don’t want to forget?—the best place for them is somewhere in your arsenal of media—to clear your head for other things like not thinking at all. Use your media as an extended hard drive for your brain. And what about the thoughts you want to have but aren’t yet? You can use your media to remind you. With enough reminders, and action taken based on them, you’ll start having those thoughts all on your own.
