Your Safety Bias

Your built-in bias is designed to help keep you safe. Well, safer. Your brain’s bias (to paraphrase some definitions) might tell you that those who are more like you in gender, appearance, and age, are more likely to be “safer” as compared to those you do not know. Therefore, a healthy ability to discriminate based on healthy and functional bias assessments is likely to help keep you safe. Unmanaged bias, however, or a warped bias can turn into learned bigotry, racism, and prejudice—all of which can become ingrained beliefs that tend to prompt and influence all your actions and behaviors. In fact, your beliefs can become semi-automatic or automatic habits and responses to which you give little if any conscious or analytical thought.

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Built-in Bias

The human brain appears to be born with a “built-in bias” specifically related to a sense of safety. Some say this built-in bias constitutes the fastest decision the brain ever makes. It appears that no brain is completely unbiased, notwithstanding that many brains claim they have no bias or are completely unbiased. In reality, it is what you don’t even know you don’t know that can cause you problems. When does the brain activate this bias? It makes a lightning-fast decision about safety every time it encounters someone or something for the first time.

If it is a person, the brain evaluates “Is this person like me? If not, what are the differences, and am I SAFE?”

If it is a thing, the brain evaluates: “Have I seen this something before and am I SAFE?” 

Brain & Bias

Our group got into a bit of a row over dinner last night because a rather opinionated guest said that anyone who was biased against (such-and-such) was an unmitigated idiot. How does the brain deal with bias?

Merriam-Webster dictionary describes the noun “bias” as a tendency to believe that some people, some ideas, etc., are better than others, which usually results in treating some people unfairly. Wikipedia puts it this way: Bias is an inclination or outlook to present or hold a partial perspective, often accompanied by a refusal to consider the possible merits of alternative points of view. When the word bias is used as a verb, one definition puts it this way: to feel or show inclination or prejudice for or against someone or something. Interestingly enough, it appears that the human brain comes with a specific built-in bias. 

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Homographs & Heteronyms

 Will you please repost your blogs about why English can be such a challenging language to master? Explain them again, too. I enjoy them so much.

 Homographs are words that are spelled the same but that have more than one meaning. Heteronyms are homographs that are spelled the same but that are pronounced differently. English is my native language. I have often wondered what it would be like to learn it as a second language. Have fun with these. I’ll include more in other posts.

• To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
• The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
• The bass player credits his competence to his love of poached bass.

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Long-term Memory

Long-term memory is designed to store information for long periods of time. It may be until the end of a quarter or semester or the entire school year until you can get through the tests, or in some cases for as long as the brain is alive. The hippocampus, your brain’s “browser” plays a role in storing the information as well as attempting to retrieve the stored information upon request. The transfer process appears to make actual physical changes to neurons and their connections. Recent studies are suggesting that long-term memories are stored diffusely in the synapses, the space between neurons. When you want to pull up a long-term memory, the hippocampus gets busy collecting or retrieving the bits that constitute the memory. The process helps to explain how sometimes part of the memory may be missing. When this occurs, the brain may try to reconstruct the missing piece in ways that may change the original memory somewhat. This means that memories can change over time and may not be completely reliable. 

Working Memory

Working memory appears to develop later and at a slower pace than short-term memory. It is related to temporary activation of neurons in the brain allowing you to “hold in temporary memory” information that is needed for longer periods of time than short-term memory. For example, information that is needed for a wide range of cognitive tasks involved with reasoning, manipulation of information, decision-making and behaviors. For example, repeating numbers in the same order they were presented (e.g., a phone numbers) would be a short-term memory task, while repeating the numbers backwards would be a working memory task. Working memory can be impaired by alcohol abuse and by acute and chronic psychological stress. The bad news: the more stress in one's life the lower the efficiency of working memory in performing simple cognitive tasks. The good news: study participants who performed exercises that reduced the intrusion of negative thoughts showed an increase in their working memory capacity.

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Short-term Memory

Short-term memory is involved in hanging onto information for short periods of time. For example, 30 seconds during which you can jot down or punch in a phone number, or remembering the three items you need purchase at the grocery story, or where you parked your car, especially if you stopped long enough to tie the location of your car to a visual landmark. Some large stores such as Walmart have placed numbers at the end of each parking row to help shoppers avoid “losing” their cars.” Short-term memory is believed to involve primarily in the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex. Short-term memory loss may be observed when a brain cannot recall what happened 15 minutes ago. Insufficient supplies of oxygen to the brain can negatively impact short-term memory along with alcohol and drug abuse, concussions, traumatic brain injuries, and other medical conditions such as seizures, epilepsy, and depression.