Full transcript
0:13So, I want you to come on a little
0:15journey with me right now.
0:17I want you to imagine that you are a
0:20soldier in wartime, patrolling the
0:24forest with your squad.
0:27And then suddenly, up ahead,
0:29you hear rustling in the bush.
0:32You scan around you,
0:35and then it hits you.
0:37With horror,
0:38you see them.
0:40A long line of fighters, guerrilla
0:43fighters, dressed in camouflage,
0:46and carrying machine guns.
0:49Instinctively, you raise your rifle, you
0:52flip off the safety catch,
0:54and you
0:56point it at the leader
0:58who is carrying an AK-47.
1:02This is actually a true story that was
1:04told to me by a man who was drafted
1:08against his will into the Rhodesian army
1:12before the fall of apartheid.
1:15Before he was drafted, he was an
1:18attorney who defended guerrilla fighters
1:21in court.
1:23And now, to his utter astonishment and
1:26dismay, he was preparing to kill them.
1:32He focused in on his target,
1:35finger on trigger,
1:39and then he felt a gentle hand on his
1:41shoulder.
1:43"Don't shoot."
1:45whispered one of his squad members.
1:49"It's just a boy."
1:52Our friend lowered his rifle and took
1:54another look.
1:56It was a boy,
1:58maybe 10 or 11 years old,
2:01carrying
2:02not a rifle,
2:05but a long stick.
2:08And trailing behind him was a long line
2:13of cows.
2:17I'm a psychologist and a neuroscientist,
2:20and in my lab, we study why people have
2:23these surprising visual experiences.
2:26And here is the secret.
2:30What you see is influenced by how you
2:35feel.
2:37Your mood influences what you see, your
2:41vision,
2:42what you hear, your hearing,
2:45and every sense that you have, smell and
2:48taste and touch.
2:50Not just in the heat of war,
2:54but every day of your life.
2:58And this discovery of the power of mood
3:02just demolishes common sense.
3:05And it actually holds serious
3:08implications for how we live our lives.
3:12Now, when I say mood, I am not talking
3:14about emotion like anger and sadness and
3:17fear.
3:19Mood is more basic. It's just a simple
3:22accounting of how you're doing.
3:25So, maybe you're hungry right now.
3:30Maybe you had a terrific dinner before
3:32you came to the show, so you're feeling
3:34pretty comfortable.
3:36Maybe
3:37you are feeling
3:40very
3:42awake because you had a great night's
3:45sleep. You slept like a baby.
3:48And maybe you were kept up all night by
3:51a baby,
3:52so you're feeling pretty tired.
3:55Maybe
3:57you're sitting next to someone who you
3:59care about and you feel really
4:00comfortable with.
4:01Or maybe you're sitting next to a
4:04stranger who's hogging the armrest.
4:08All of these things combine together to
4:11create your mood.
4:13So, check in with yourself for a second
4:16using this graph.
4:18Are you feeling
4:20pleasant? Kind of good?
4:22Are you feeling unpleasant? Not so good?
4:26Calm?
4:28Alert?
4:29Jittery?
4:30Somewhere in the middle?
4:32This is your mood,
4:34or what scientists like me
4:37call affect. You know, because
4:40scientists always give something a
4:41really complicated name.
4:44Affect is with you
4:47every moment of your life,
4:50from the moment that you are born
4:53until the moment that you die,
4:56whether or not you're emotional and
4:58whether or not you're even aware of it.
5:01Let me show you an example.
5:06All of us, right now, are looking at the
5:09same image,
5:10but we don't all see this person in
5:12exactly the same way.
5:15Some of you see her as slightly smiling,
5:19and your first impression of her would
5:21be as that she's friendly and
5:24trustworthy.
5:26Other people in this audience see her as
5:30slightly frowning, and maybe find her
5:32less appealing.
5:34And still other people find her
5:36completely neutral.
5:38The difference is your mood, your
5:41affect.
5:43We actually have demonstrated this
5:45effect
5:47many, many times in our laboratory. And
5:49in fact, if you were to come to my lab,
5:52we could make her seem more appealing to
5:54you
5:56or less appealing
5:58just by fiddling with your mood, your
6:00affect.
6:03And that would influence whether or not
6:05you wanted to be her friend,
6:07or maybe whether you wanted to even hire
6:09her for a job.
6:12This power of affect happens in every
6:16day of our lives.
6:18So, the last time that you devoured a
6:21delicious piece of chocolate cake,
6:25that deliciousness was not in the cake.
6:29It's not even in your taste buds, it's
6:31actually in your brain.
6:33It's your affect.
6:36When you're driving on the highway and
6:38some idiot cuts you off,
6:42your certainty that he is an idiot
6:46is your affect.
6:51In fact, everything that you will hear
6:53tonight will be filtered through your
6:55affect.
6:57So, right now, I'm sure that many of you
7:00are thinking,
7:02"Wow, this is an amazing talk.
7:06Yeah. She's awesome."
7:09And that is your affect.
7:12And for the one or two people in the
7:15room who are skeptical and don't see the
7:18wisdom of my words,
7:20you know, yet,
7:23that's affect, too.
7:26So, where does affect come from?
7:29You know, what is it really?
7:31Affect is made by your brain
7:34as it controls the systems of your body
7:36to keep them all in balance.
7:39One of your brain's most important jobs
7:42is running a budget for your internal
7:45resources like oxygen and glucose,
7:49water, salt, hormones,
7:52to help keep you alive and well,
7:55so that you can do the things that you
7:58really like to do,
8:00like
8:02pass your genes on to the next
8:04generation,
8:06if you know what I mean.
8:09And this body budgeting is completely
8:13invisible to you. It's happening under
8:16the hood in a way that you are
8:18largely unaware of most of the time,
8:21which is a really fortunate thing,
8:24because if you were aware of it, this is
8:28what you would experience.
8:31You would hear your heart beating
8:37and your lungs expanding and contracting
8:39as you breathe.
8:46You'd be listening to a never-ending
8:49symphony
8:51of bodily sounds and sensations
8:57that is so distracting
9:00that you would never pay attention to
9:01anything outside your own skin.
9:09That's what's actually going on inside
9:12of each and every one of you right now.
9:17So, instead
9:19of making you aware of this distracting
9:22symphony,
9:23evolution gave you a workaround
9:27that merely hints at whether your body
9:30budget is in balance or is in the red.
9:33And that workaround is affect.
9:38Somehow,
9:39the sensations of body budgeting, which
9:42are physical,
9:45become transformed
9:47into affective feelings, which are
9:50mental.
9:53Scientists don't yet understand how this
9:56transformation happens,
9:58But we know that it does
10:01because there are hundreds of studies
10:03from laboratories all around the world
10:05which show us
10:07that it does.
10:10And this transformation from physical to
10:12mental
10:14is one of the great mysteries of
10:16consciousness.
10:19So, our brains are continuously
10:23regulating our body budgets and
10:25continuously generating affect. And the
10:29tricky bit here is that affect is really
10:33imprecise. It's really vague.
10:37So, here's an analogy. If vision is like
10:41watching high-definition TV,
10:44then affect is like watching a
10:4750-year-old TV set in black and white
10:50with a really bad connection through a
10:53layer of bubble wrap.
10:57It would have been totally awesome if
11:00evolution had given us a smart watch to
11:03regulate our body budget. You know, so
11:06that would go something like this. Beep.
11:09You're running low on glucose.
11:12Have an apple at the intermission.
11:15Or even better, have a piece of
11:16chocolate. But if this were evolution,
11:18it would be telling you to have an
11:19apple.
11:20Or beep. You didn't sleep too much last
11:24night, so you're running low on a brain
11:26chemical called dopamine. So, drink 8 oz
11:29of coffee,
11:31preferably dark roast with a little bit
11:33of cream,
11:34to borrow energy from tomorrow
11:37to help you get through the rest of
11:39today.
11:40But that's not what we have.
11:43We have
11:44um feeling kind of
11:47crappy.
11:48And then your brain is constantly
11:51guessing to figure out what caused that
11:53crappy feeling so that it knows what to
11:55do next to keep you alive and well.
11:59Sometimes your brain guesses really
12:02well. It's like right on the mark. And
12:04other times,
12:06not so much.
12:08So, you can be walking down the street
12:10and then you come to a hill
12:12and your affect can help can actually
12:15cause you to see that hill as steeper
12:18than it actually is. If you have the
12:20misfortune to interview for a job on a
12:24rainy gray day,
12:27the listless feeling that we get when
12:29it's gloomy outside can cause your
12:33interviewer to actually be less
12:35impressed with you
12:37uh than they otherwise would, making it
12:39harder for you to actually get that job.
12:43And we we all know that after we've had
12:47a few drinks
12:48and we're feeling pretty good,
12:51miraculously everyone around us becomes
12:54much more attractive than they were
12:55before.
12:58So,
13:00the bottom line here
13:02is that feeling
13:06is believing.
13:08You believe what you feel.
13:11The wiring of your brain guarantees that
13:15this is how it works.
13:18And in my lab, we give this a fancy
13:20name.
13:21We call it affective realism.
13:24Affective realism.
13:26You believe what you feel.
13:30And now we are equipped to understand
13:32what happened to our friend in the
13:34forest when he saw those guerrilla
13:36fighters.
13:37So, he was in a dangerous situation
13:41that disrupted his body budget.
13:45And he felt a powerful wave of affect
13:50and he physically saw a gun
13:54that wasn't there.
13:56Affective realism.
14:00And he prepared to shoot
14:02an unarmed African civilian.
14:07Does that sound familiar to you?
14:10It should.
14:13Now, I'm being deliberately provocative
14:15here to make a point.
14:17And I just want to be really clear. I'm
14:20not suggesting that every time an
14:22unarmed civilian is shot that it's
14:25merely a case of affective realism.
14:27These are really tragic situations
14:30and they are caused by a variety of very
14:34complex
14:36um influences.
14:39But as a scientist,
14:41I have to tell you
14:43that
14:44your brain, the human brain,
14:47is wired to see the world through
14:50affect-colored glasses.
14:54And a deeper appreciation of this of
14:58affective realism might help to save
15:01someone's life
15:02just like that tap on the shoulder saved
15:05the life of that young African shepherd
15:08and his cows.
15:11If we were going to pursue this a little
15:13further, we could discuss how affective
15:16realism may be at the heart of some of
15:19our society's most challenging problems
15:23like the opioid crisis,
15:27fake news,
15:30escalating gun violence,
15:33and every single financial meltdown of
15:36the past century.
15:39Because affective realism is part of
15:42human nature,
15:44it is inevitable
15:46for you and for me and for every person
15:50on this planet.
15:52But that doesn't mean that we are
15:55destined to hallucinate,
15:58to shoot people by mistake, to become
16:01addicted to pain medication, or make bad
16:04decision after bad decision.
16:06Because we can learn to use affect to
16:11our advantage.
16:13And when we do,
16:15affect becomes a source of wisdom.
16:20So, let me give you one example.
16:24You can use affect as a cue
16:28to step back from your deeply held
16:32beliefs so that you can better connect
16:35with people who see the world in a way
16:38that's different from the way that you
16:40do.
16:41When you watch something on television
16:44or you read something in the newspaper
16:46or on the internet or you listen to
16:48something on the radio and it hits you
16:51immediately that it is obviously true,
16:55right? Or obviously a piece of
16:58foolishness,
17:02um
17:03that is a cue
17:06that whatever you've encountered has
17:08touched a deeply held belief and either
17:11confirmed it or violated it, impacting
17:14your body budget.
17:17And so that's the moment
17:20to open your mind, to listen,
17:24and to learn.
17:27Even if you know you're right, maybe
17:29especially if you know you are right.
17:33Right? Conservatives know that abortion
17:36is immoral and liberals know that
17:38abortion is a woman's right. This
17:41knowing is affect.
17:44And maybe if we were a little less
17:47suspicious of each other
17:50and a little more suspicious of our own
17:52certainty, which is forged in the fires
17:55of affect, maybe our democracy
17:59would be a little healthier.
18:02And this skill is something
18:06Yeah. Thank you.
18:08Right?
18:11And this skill is something that we can
18:13use in our own lives each and every day.
18:17So, that idiot who cut you off on the
18:20highway,
18:22maybe he is just an idiot.
18:25Or maybe he's an idiot who's rushing to
18:27the hospital to be with his kid.
18:33You can use the affect that that came
18:38about, right? When he cut you off, it
18:40disrupted your body budget and gave you
18:42a strong sense of affect and you can use
18:45that as a cue
18:48to
18:49take a breath,
18:51to take a deep breath.
18:54Breathing, it turns out, is one of the
18:55ways that we can control affect a little
18:58bit because breathing
19:01it allows one part of our nervous system
19:03to kind of dial down uh the other parts
19:07to create enough space for us to
19:10transform certainty
19:13into curiosity.
19:16And that curiosity can let you consider
19:19other options.
19:21Options that don't uh necessarily
19:25involve um swearing at him or chasing
19:29him with your car. Options that could
19:32save you
19:34from getting a speeding ticket or even
19:36having a car accident um due to road
19:39rage.
19:42Now, if if I were listening to this
19:44talk, it's right about now that I would
19:46be thinking, "Seriously? In the heat of
19:49the moment, who has time to hit the
19:50pause button and be curious about their
19:52affect? It just sounds completely
19:54impractical in some situations.
19:57And that's right. It is.
20:00So sometimes the trick is to be curious
20:05earlier.
20:07To take a moment before the heat of the
20:10moment.
20:12Before you get behind the wheel.
20:15Before you have a meeting with your
20:19difficult boss.
20:21Before you draw your firearm.
20:24Take a breath.
20:28That might allow you a moment to think
20:31about what to do next.
20:33And you might discover other paths
20:35forward
20:37that don't involve
20:39uh you seeing a gun
20:42at the end, you know, where there is no
20:43gun.
20:45With a little bit of practice
20:48affect
20:50can help you make better, wiser choices.
20:55It It can make You can make choices that
20:57will improve your life.
20:59Choices that will maybe save your job or
21:03your relationship.
21:05Choices
21:06that will touch
21:08and maybe even save the lives of those
21:12around you.
21:15Thank you.