Don’t eat bad food. It’s dangerous to eat laundry pods or inhale cinnamon. When others tell us we shouldn’t do something, we often respond with twisted, self-destructive behaviors. Our primary goal becomes rescuing our dignity and proving the other person wrong.
The illusion of control is our brain’s tendency to believe that we have more control over things than we actually do. Getting more accustom to a situation can anesthetize us to the risk of failure.
The city of Chicago had a big problem. Street trash was everywhere. So the city came up with a brilliant plan: start paying everyday people to collect street trash. But crafty citizens started gathering trash from one neighborhood, then quietly depositing it in another. They had inadvertently incentivized people to drive around the city, moving trash from one place to another.
Brain science isn’t quite sure why, but our subconscious brain is continually trying to match the rhythm of those around us. Bottlenose dolphins arc through the water in unison.
Luckily, morality is always graded on a sliding scale. Marketers understand this and that’s why so many of them tempt us with the VIRTUOUS VICE, a single feature that’s a cognitive get-out-of-jail-free card.
Most people don’t realize it, but a big chunk of our brain is dedicated to simply tracking where our body is in space. PROPRIOCEPTION is the reason we can close our eyes and touch our nose, balance on one leg, and throw a baseball without looking at our arm.
If you look at the thousands of comments this amazing social video generated, you’ll notice something peculiar. After watching this thrilling clip, you would think viewers would share their OWN FEELINGS about how this video inspired them.
Who built these mutations? Box checkers, passive-aggressive people who don’t really care if things are done right. All they want is to stop working. And we can count on our subconscious brain to act with similar malevolence whenever we attempt to brute force an overly ambitious behavior change.
They never miss. A perfect toss every time. We could all be easily fooled into believing that the “Dude Perfect” guys have extraordinary coordination and timing, but what we’re not seeing are the thousands of failed attempts.
Why do most of us tend to pick A and not B? It’s because our brain gets caught in a bit of a TRAFFIC JAM. When I threw choice A at you, your brain instantly got busy analyzing. But your tired brain wasn’t done processing choice A, when all of a sudden, choice B comes barreling down the line. Because your brain was still preoccupied with A, B never really got your full attention and consideration.