Wednesday 24 June 2015

The Peanut Theory

I was told "the Peanut Theory" a few years ago, but unfortunately I don't remember by whom, so can't give credit. The theory says that there is a little part of the brain, the size and the shape of a peanut, which we use to imagine what someone else is thinking.

Now whether that is a metaphor or a reality isn't the point here - what does matter is that we (humans) spend an inordinate amount of time imagining the things we don't know.

As so often, there is an evolutionary reason of that: those of our ancestors who spent time trying to predict outcomes were more likely to survive and reproduce than those who just "went for it".

The biggest change that has occurred though since the Stone Age is that our world has increased thousandfold in complexity. The amount of information that we have to try and juggle, in order to make good, rational decisions, is near unfathomable.

So we just supplement whatever information we are missing with some good guesses. No issue about that, except that our guesses are of course a projection of our own brain.

What happens in relationships? We will input the way we see ourselves to explain others' behaviours. A few examples, before it gets too dry and boring:

  • Your best friend hasn't returned your texts or calls for the last 3 days; you immediately start racking your brain on how you might have offended her. Your peanut is talking. Rational thinking is discarded in favour of emotional thinking (an oxymoron if there ever was one). Other explanations, like the one that she may simply be really busy, don't even make it to the surface.
  • You have suffered abandonment in your childhood, and have developed an over sensitive radar for anything that could be construed as such. Whenever you don't have all the information, you're likely to supplement it with theories that centre around abandonment. Your partner being short with you (due to stress at his/her work for example) will likely be construed as him/her having enough of you. 
  • You're waiting to hear back from a job interview - if you have experienced a lot of rejections, you will imagine that you have been unsuccessful. If you had mostly positive experiences, you will imagine that you haven't heard back because they're putting together a job offer for you.

So how can the Peanut Theory help us better understand the world around us?
By reminding us to check our assumptions about what other people are thinking, and becoming aware that they are only that: assumptions.

A good question to ask yourself is "do I know this? Or do I imagine I know this?".

How well developed is your peanut?
Are you aware of it when your peanut is getting a work-out?