Thinking Straight

Mom: Son, it is 7 'o clock already. Get up! You are getting late for school
Son replies: I don't want to go to school Mom.. The teachers don't like me and all the students laugh at me.
Mom says: Son.. that is no reason to skip school. You have to go to school -- besides, you are the Principal of the school!

~~~~~~~~~

I know it is an old joke, but why is it funny?

The reason why this story is funny is that, our brain does its thinking typically within the framework of what is called, a mental model. The mental model determines what "ground truths" or unchallenged assumptions, will guide our reasoning process. 

The "semantic memory" in our brains is responsible for giving inputs that form these ground truths. The ground truths represent significant concepts relevant to the situation, and relationships among them. 

For instance, in the above story, we would have typically assumed that the Son in the story is a student who has to go to school. 

And when the Mom says that "...you are the principal!!", suddenly this new piece of information brings down the entire model that we had at the back of our mind, and causes it to create a whole new consistent model. Now the Son is the Principal and yes, the Principal is likely to be bothered by the teachers not liking him and the students laughing at him. 

This sudden change in the model and its associated implications unnerves the brain, prompting it to give an emotional reaction. But since the new model essentially has trivial consequences, the emotional reaction that our brain provides is laughter. 

Our brain builds mental models because it is too difficult (perhaps impossible) to have one global set of ground truths for the entire universe and take into account all of them for arriving at conclusions or explanations. 

For instance, consider that we are watching a cricket match where we see a fielder miss an easy catch. We respond to this by giving typical explanations based on typical assumptions. "Perhaps the sun got into his eye" (and if he is an Indian cricketer), "Indian players are all too-old/complacent/tired/overworked/overpaid/do-too-many-advertisements", etc.  

But, would it be possible that there was a very mild earthquake, too small to be reported, but causing enough disorientation in someone who is looking up at the sky, to make them miss the ball they are trying to catch?

Strictly speaking, it is possible and we should ask for seismographic data for that time and place and study the impact of earthquakes on people looking at the sky and... etc. But, we typically don't go down that path because this explanation is not probable. 

In fact, we don't even think of this possibility. It is so improbable an event that our mental model would have effectively blocked it out of the set of ground truths that we work on. 

Another major source of mental model change is when we change our emotional dispositions. Our emotional disposition determines our dominant emotional reaction in any given situation. It also determines the kind of explanations we build, in response to observations.

And that is a reason why emotional roller-coasters are so damn exhausting. If we change our emotional disposition in quick succession, each disposition brings with it a mental model, giving us different explanations of the same observations, thereby enormously increasing confusion. And that is also the reason why we find it hard to "think straight" in emotionally charged situations. It is not just the rush of hormones, we do experience semantic confusion in times of emotional turmoil.

Think Straight and don't get emotional!