The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain

by Annie Murphy Paul

“De-biasing approaches which rely primarily on shifting cognition from System 1 to System 2 are unlikely to succeed,” he maintains. “The human capacity for self-monitoring and effortful System 2 cognition is limited and is rapidly depleted. Attempts to reduce biases by learning about biases and engaging in self-monitoring rapidly come up against human cognitive limits.”

an experiment carried out by researchers at the Mayo Clinic determined that simply by standing rather than sitting, study participants expended 13 percent more energy. The impact on our cognitive functioning is also significant. Research has found that the use of a standing desk is associated with an enhancement in students’ executive function—that crucial capacity for planning and decision making—and with an increase in “on-task engagement.” In adults, working at a standing desk has been shown to boost productivity.

Turning coffee breaks into what some public health experts call “movement breaks” allows us to return to our work a bit smarter than when we left it.

More recent research has confirmed Allen’s original findings; in the age of texting, email, and Slack, the Allen curve still applies. Online communication, it seems, is no substitute for the offhand conversation, the casual exchange carried out in person.

Face to face communication…

The human mind, he lamented, is “a machine for jumping to conclusions.”

2017 book The Enigma of Reason, makes coherent sense of the very aspects of human thought that have seemed so confounding: the fact that people are capable of stringently evaluating the validity of arguments, along with the fact that they so often fail to do so when the arguments are their own. Both tendencies are fully predicted by the authors’ “argumentative theory of reasoning.” We have every incentive to closely examine the arguments of others—who might be out to exploit or manipulate us for their own ends—but few inducements to scrutinize the arguments we make ourselves.

Why does arguing help us think better? Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber have their theory: Engaging in active debate puts us in the position of evaluating others’ arguments, not simply constructing (and promoting) our own. Such objective analysis, unclouded by self-interested confirmation bias, makes the most of humans’ discriminating intelligence. But there are additional reasons why confrontations enhance our cognition, reasons that are likewise rooted deep in human nature.

The key is to approach the act of arguing with the aim not of winning at all costs but of reaching the truth

“People should fight as if they are right, and listen as if they are wrong.”

research has found that asynchronous communication—of the kind that is now common not only among teenagers but among adult professionals as well—reduces the efficiency and effectiveness of group work.)

It’s time we tossed out that individual model and replaced it with one better suited to the world in which we actually live. We can begin by identifying those ways in which thinking with a group is different from thinking on our own, and by instituting new practices that support the smooth operation of the group mind. Once these practices are put into place, research shows, a group can think more efficiently and more effectively than any one of its members—a phenomenon that psychologists call “collective intelligence.”

Instead of handing an employee a manual packed with guidelines, create spaces and occasions where stories—full of the tacit knowledge manuals can’t convey—will be shared among his co-workers.

Instead of instructing a team to cooperate and work together, plan an event (a shared meal, a group hike, karaoke!) where synchronized movement and mutual physiological arousal are bound to take place. The art of creating intelligence-extending situations is one that every parent, teacher, and manager needs to master.

enduring cues of belonging and identity are hard to sustain in an office where “hot-desking,” or unassigned work space, is the norm;

a transactive memory system is difficult to build in a work environment where turnover is high