Circular Thoughts

Most of the time, I'm amazed at the sheer versatility of the human mind. It's been said before ad nauseam, but our mental capacity and imagination is pretty amazing by any standards -- even if we're inevitably biased in the matter.

Yet some things make me think of the engineering problems in our mental processes. Or, should I say, my mental processes. It's often difficult to determine how easy it is to step outside of one's own perspective and inhabit someone else's; evaluating the efficacy of one's own thinking patterns is particularly fraught.

Still. The flaw I'd like to focus on is the 'feedback effect' in thought: that is, the human tendency to focus on a trivial detail or irritant, and return to it again and again, multiplying it several-fold in the process.

This is extremely familiar to us, but why does it come about? Many of our other habits of thought are cleverly designed--attention, for example. The 'cocktail party' effect, where we are able to snap our attention into focus when we hear our name in a crowded room, has obvious utility for our ancestors.

But the gradual amplification of a small grievance through repetition seems to help no-one. If I had to come up with an evolutionary just-so story for this trait, I'd guess that attention feedback was designed to prevent us losing track of small grudges and grievances. Early humans, whose brains were focused entirely on keeping detailed accounts of their immediate social sphere, would have had plenty of cause to crystallise a specific hostility towards another member of their tribe.

There is also a clear physical incentive. Embellishing and deepening the antipathy felt for a rival through obsessive mental repetition would give the aggrieved individual a motivation to take action against him. In a small band-like society, where assuming a position of power must have meant physically overthrowing your opponent, being able to 'work up' a head of anger over a minor incident would have been a great asset in the right circumstances. If there are serious strictures preventing an usurper from killing a rival, mechanisms that temporarily override those apprehensions might be necessary to move up the food chain.

Of course, our current society doesn't reward the escalating feedback effect of anger. Instead, this impulse is punished. Those with a particular tendency toward anger may have been rewarded far more than a similar character would be today. The casual culture of violence toward one's enemies has only recently faded, and there are still many noble examples of it

I know that we aren't completely trapped within the biological structures handed down through the generations. Still, having spent the best part of an hour constructing elaborate fantasies of retribution over a trivial matter, I realised this: we're more in control of our behaviour if we remain aware of when our impulses override our thoughts.