This Is How The Brain Multiplies Problems

Many people complain that “problems do not come alone” or that “once problems start, they never end again”. Somehow they are right, but this is probably not due to a design of doom, but to a cognitive bias: the brain multiplies problems.

This conclusion was reached through various experiments. The brain multiplies problems because, despite being a fabulous and complex organ, it also has limitations. Such limitations stem from the fact that the mind  tends to create patterns for everything, as this is a way to save energy. However, these general guidelines are misleading.

The important thing about discovering that the brain multiplies problems is that this position allows us to be critical and attentive to how thinking works, to put a limit where it is necessary. Otherwise, the difficulties  and the emotional expense that they imply will be extended more than necessary.

The brain multiplies problems

To explain the mechanism through which the brain multiplies problems, Harvard University psychologist David Levari uses an illustrative comparison. It says that when faced with danger , the brain acts in a similar way to how neighborhood watch systems do.

Such systems are activated when there is a lot of public insecurity in a neighborhood. Their role is to alert to the presence of strangers or suspicious actions that lead to thinking about possible robberies. When they detect that something is wrong, they immediately notify the police to take action on the matter.

These systems usually work, causing insecurity to decrease. The logical thing would be that, in that case, the alerts would also decrease, but this does not happen. What usually happens is that vigilantes begin to see danger signs in situations or actions that previously did not arouse suspicion.

It is as if a state of alarm had been turned on  and it could not go off. The brain works in a similar way. Once the alerts are triggered by the presence of a problem (and every problem implies an implicit danger), it cannot “turn them off” or block them by itself, but instead provides feedback.

A revealing experiment

To reach the conclusion that the brain multiplies problems, several experiments have been used. One of the best known, which even later became a viral test on social networks, was published in the prestigious journal Science . 

To carry out the experiment, 1,000 participants were summoned, all of them with completely normal vision. All were presented with an image made up of 1,000 dots, which had colors ranging from a very deep blue to a deep purple. The different shades were randomly distributed.

Participants were asked to say which dots were blue and which were purple. During the first session, most of them easily identified the blue spots.

However, in subsequent sessions the concept of the color blue seemed to expand more and more. Thus, in the end the volunteers saw as blue even the points that were clearly purple. What does this mean?

The brain bias

The experiment shows us that the brain actually tends to establish patterns more and more rigidly. As a result, participants, who could clearly distinguish between blue and purple at first, were more and more likely to apply the blue color criteria to “everything”.

Why does this show that the brain multiplies problems? When we are faced with a problem, a subjective red flag appears. So we dedicate our efforts to resolve the matter; However, even after doing so, the brain continues to apply the recent risk criteria to those phenomena that do not fall into this category.

An everyday example: a person has an argument with his boss and this leaves him affected. Then he goes to his desk and cannot find his pen, not because it has been lost, but because he is still stunned and his senses somehow remain hijacked. It is not uncommon for a person in that situation to say “today everything goes wrong”, when it is not.

In times of pandemic, this also happens, precisely because we are all facing a big problem. So it is not uncommon for a strong wind, or an earthquake to be interpreted as a sign of the end of time, without being it. Simply, the brain is acting under an alert pattern and it does not stop. We must be careful so that the bias does not prevail.