By Dennis Sale
Context
SOME readers have contacted me, asking why I call this series Hard Psychology. The main reason is that because it involves highlighting certain aspects of human psychological functioning that pose difficult challenges for human betterment – it’s all a bit scary and may convey pessimism. Now, let me be clear on my framing, I am not pessimistic, but realistic and ultimately optimistic. However, we must not be in denial, and this applies to many aspects of our lives that are challenging. The barriers to effective human functioning and action are real, but we also possess strong capability and resources to mitigate these existential limitations and be better both as individuals and collectives.
For further context, it is suggested by writers from many genres that humans are the result of intelligent design. Well, it’s certainly a complex design as even our brain, which weighs about 3lb and hosts around 900 billion neurons that create trillions of connections – that’s a lot of stuff, right! How this has come about in billions of years is mind bending, whether from evolutionary processes or theism (e.g., belief in a supreme being who created the universe and is actively involved in a relationship with us humans).
Organisation and disorganisation
Well, we know that the brain has naturally organising tendencies. The school of Gestalt Psychology (e.g., Wertheimer & Koffka), from extensive work on human perception, noted how the brain does not just passively receive sensory input from the environment but actively and instinctively (naturally) organises even fragmented information into meaningful, unified wholes – it can “connect the dots” metaphorically speaking. Key concepts include proximity (grouping nearby elements), similarity (grouping similar elements), closure (filling in gaps to complete a form), continuity (perceiving smooth, continuous patterns), and figure-ground (distinguishing an object from its background); these demonstrate this innate organisational ability.
Furthermore, the brain responds better – much better – to well-organised input. That’s why instructional design that focuses on key concepts, chunking of information into organised hierarchies that structure visual and auditory stimuli to create coherent experiences, rather than processing individual elements in isolation, is so important in effective teaching. Hierarchical organisation reduces cognitive load, allowing the brain to process information with less effort, which is why the learning technique and tool mind mapping works so well – when effectively employed. Organised input facilitates better encoding into long-term memory, improves recall, and enables faster comprehension, demonstrating the brain’s fundamental preference for structure and predictability in learning and thought.
However, and in contrast to the above, we also know that the human brain today is little different from our distant ancestors. Research suggests that brains were pretty much the same (morphologically) some 50,000 years ago. Indeed, recent data shows that even 300,000 years ago the brain size in H. sapiens already fell within the range of present-day humans (e.g., Neubauer, 2018). The present scenario is one cleverly explained by Mlodinow (2012):
Our genus, Homo, has been evolving for a couple of million years. Brain evolution happens over many thousands or millions of years, but we’ve lived in civilised society for less than 1% of that time. That means that while we may pack our brains with twenty-first-century knowledge, the organ inside our skull is still a Stone Age brain.
Pinker (2019), a globally recognised writer in this field, makes a challenging analysis:
Our cognitive, emotional and moral faculties are adapted to individual survival and reproduction in an archaic environment, not to universal thriving in a modern one. To appreciate this, one doesn’t have to believe that we are cavemen out of time, only that evolution, with its speed limit measured in generations, could not possibly have adapted our brains to modern technology and institutions. Humans today rely on cognitive faculties that worked well enough in traditional societies, but which we now see are infested with bugs.
Hence, his summary (2003) on the workings of brain and mind is particularly poignant:
Behaviour…comes from an internal struggle among mental modules with differing agendas and goals.
Similarly, Apter (2001), the originator of what is referred to as “Reversal Theory”, describes the mind in these terms:
Everyday life, as it is experienced, is a tangled web of changing desires, perceptions, feelings, and emotions that filter in and out of awareness in a perceptual swirl.
Reversal Theory challenges notions of people’s behaviour being predictable across different contexts, situations, and circumstances. In basic terms, while someone may display a very organised manner in one area of their life (e.g., at work), this does not mean that this is a stable personality trait or behavioural orientation generalisable to other life contexts. Apter posits that people constantly shift between what he refers to as opposing “Meta motivational States”. In more basic terms, instead of fixed traits, our personalities are dynamic, characterised by frequent reversals between different states. For instance, we might swing between being serious and goal-oriented to playful and funny dependent on context, situation, and even mood. Our current state dictates how we perceive and react to the world, influencing our emotions and behaviour. These reversals can be triggered by internal shifts or external circumstances, offering a powerful framework for understanding human motivation and emotional experience. How often have I heard people make comments such as “I don’t know what came over me” or “I don’t typically do this”. Well, that’s just different dimensions of you, and the nature of the brain-mind paradox. Hence, if you sometimes – even often – feel confused, don’t be too hard on yourself. Bandler & Grinder (1999) make the summative point:
It’s really important to understand that most people are very chaotically organised on the inside.
In the following columns in this series, the journey continues with an evaluation of viable practical strategies and resources to mitigate some of the worse outcomes of brain and mind limitations and confusions. Yes, it’s called Hard Psychology for a reason.
Dennis Sale worked in the Singapore education system for 25 years as advisor, researcher, and examiner. He coached over 15,000 teaching professionals and provided 100+ consultancies in the Asian region. Dennis is author of the books Creative Teachers: Self-directed Learners (Springer 2020) and Creative Teaching: An Evidence-Based Approach (Springer, 2015). To contact Dennis, visit dennissale.com.
