Brains On Purpose™

Want to communicate well in mediation? Here are a couple of tips for you

One of my favorite books about the brain and how we take in information is by cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham. The book has a memorable title: Why Don't Students Like School. (In April, I blogged about the book before reading it and linked to a review in the Wall Street Journal.)

What does learning, the focus of the book, have to do with conflict resolution? The two are inextricably bound together. As I said in a post about a year and one-half ago:

Resolving conflict typically requires our learning much, including the parties' positions, interests, and stories. Growing as a conflict professional requires that we be learning about ourselves, too, both in the room and away from sessions. We are not the only ones who need to be learning: When parties are able to move towards resolution, they too have learned. Learning causes changes of both brain and mind. ...

Today I see a interview of Willingham about Why Don't Students Like School in USA Today. It holds a couple of tips that can be helpful to us here. First, for those still thinking we need to communicate, teach, and persuade by using the visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning styles:

Q: Ninety percent of people think they're either a visual, auditory or kinesthetic learner. What does that mean? And why do you say that they are wrong?

A: The idea is that people have different ways of learning the same material, or learning styles. A visual learner understands and remembers better by seeing, an auditory learner by hearing, and a kinesthetic learner by touching and manipulating. This idea has been tested repeatedly in the last 50 years and it doesn't work. People differ in their abilities and in their interests, but there is no evidence for differences in learning styles.

Second, here's advice on one excellent way to get information understood: Use stories! We already knew that (some posts at idealawg) but here's a reaffirmation by Willingham:

Stories draw us in (and are easy to remember) because they constantly pose small, solvable mental problems that invite us to interpret the action and predict what will happen next: Why is Scarlett marrying Charles when she doesn't love him? How will E.T. get home?

A bonus of storytelling: Stories hook our curiosity and thus have the potential to calm us down. Click to read about the relationship between curiosity and anxiety. (That's one of the reasons I include curiosity as the "C" in my CARVE Disputes Model™.)

Have you told a story today?

Note: Interview about storytelling in the practice of law.

New documentary on music and the brain is available for viewing until July 7

Click for more information on "Musical Minds," the documentary.

Your Brain at Work: Web site with lots of neuroscience resources and information

Click on over to http://yourbrainatwork.org/ to explore this resource-rich Web site brought to us by the Dana Foundation. Plan to spend a while; there's much to be found at the site.

Why use metaphors in conflicts? Because understanding is remembering in disguise

General Eisenhower to soldier: "Sarge, give me an assessment of the military situation."
Soldier: "Sir, picture a doughnut. We're the hole."
Quoted in Metaphorically Selling

The brain considers new information from the point of view of what it already knows and remembers, so the use of good metaphors is an effective way to communicate. Metaphors facilitate getting your message across in every area of your life, including dispute resolution. Those who have been reading my posts here for a while know that I have recommended metaphor use in the past; I am a metaphor advocate.

Here's what Anne Miller author of Metaphorically Selling has to say:

A metaphor is simply a way of communicating. It's a shortcut to instant understanding. Think of it as a mental equation in which something is compared to something else. Metaphors make complex and unfamiliar things or ideas simple and familiar to the listener, because they compare the unknown to what the listener already knows and accepts.

...

Information + Metaphor = "I see what you mean!"

Dr. Daniel Willingham puts it this way in Why Don't Students Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom. (The title of the section from which I have taken this excerpt is "Understanding Is Remembering in Disguise;" a great way to encapsulate the value of metaphor!)

[We] understand new ideas (things [we] don't know) by relating them to old ideas (things [we] do know). ...

...

The fact that we understand new ideas by relating them to things we already know helps us to understand some principles that are familiar to every teacher [and many skillful negotiators and mediators]. One principle is the usefulness of analogies.

Analogies and metaphors are cousins, both drawing similarities between two different things. Both can assist in understanding. Are you a user?

I know you use analogies everyday. Some examples from Metaphorically Selling:

• "Chew on an idea
• "Plow" through your work
• Return a "mountain" of phone messages
• Check your "inbox" emails
• "Surf" the web
• "Iron out the wrinkles in a speech
• "Mine" data

And are you using them in helping clients to resolve conflict? They're a good way to grease the mediation wheels. (Nah, I don't like that one either. Please suggest something better.)

Download the articles from the 2009 Mind & Life Research Institute here

Click here to read the various articles assigned by this year's Mind & Life Research Institute faculty. The event was held this week and ends tomorrow.

From the brochure [pdf]:

The purpose of the Mind and Life Summer Research Institute is to advance collaborative research among behavioral and clinical scientists, neuroscientists, and biomedical researchers based on a process of inquiry, dialogue and collaboration with Buddhist contemplative practitioners and scholars and those in other contemplative traditions. The long-term objective is to advance the training of a new generation of behavioral scientists, cognitive/affective neuroscientists, clinical researchers, and contemplative scholar/practitioners interested in exploring the potential influences of meditation and other contemplative practices on mind, behavior, brain function, and health. This includes examining the potential role of contemplative methods for characterizing human experience and consciousness from a neuroscience and clinical intervention perspective.

The 2009 Mind and Life Summer Research Institute (MLSRI) will be devoted to the theme of the self, its development in sociocultural and contemplative contexts, and its implications for human flourishing

Don't worry, be happy, see more: Another reason to monitor the conflict moodscape

Some research out of University of Toronto adds to the list of benefits of having a positive mood. From "Seeing More With Rose-Coloured Glasses" (Medical News Today):

A University of Toronto study provides the first direct evidence that our mood literally changes the way our visual system filters our perceptual experience suggesting that seeing the world through rose-coloured glasses is more biological reality than metaphor.

"Good and bad moods literally change the way our visual cortex operates and how we see," says Adam Anderson, a U of T professor of psychology. "Specifically our study shows that when in a positive mood, our visual cortex takes in more information, while negative moods result in tunnel vision. The study appears in the Journal of Neuroscience.

What are some of the advantages of seeing more when in a conflict? To name one: Improved communication can result from paying close attention to people's demeanor, posture, gestures, expressions, and other non-verbal cues. What are other advantages?

In the past, I have posted about ways to regulate moods and emotions. Examples:

• Regulating in-the-way emotions in conflict resolution: Is the difference between a roar and a purr found in the eye of the beholder (or ear of the listener)?
• What's the quickest route from reactive brain to reflective mind (and a new kind of dispute)? Climb a tree
• "What are you feeling?" "What am I feeling?" These questions are tools for brain taming
• From scaredy cat to serene lion: The alchemy of cognitive reappraisal
  

This blog is 2 years old today!

The time has flown for Brains on Purpose™ and me. I am particularly grateful for all the people I have met as a result of this blog, and hope to hear from even more of you in the coming year. Thank you!

The noisy coffin does not tell all: When we are in conflict, our brain interacts with other brains so to study the single brain can be a misleading abstraction

We are not alone and yet much of the neuroscience research looks at just one brain at a time. As Jonah Lehrer says in a recent interview (Edge):

"Neuroscience has contributed so much in just a few decades to how we think about human nature and how we know ourselves," he says. "But how can we take that same rigor, which has made this research so valuable and, at the same time, make it a more realistic representation of what it's actually like to be a human. After all, we're a brain embedded in this larger set of structures."

"You can call it culture, call it society, call it your family, call it your friend, call it whatever it is. ... It's the reason Twitter exists. We have got all these systems now that really make us fully aware of just how important social interactions are to what it is to be human. The question is, how can we study that? Because that, in essence, is a huge part of what's actually driving these enzymatic pathways in your brain. What's triggering these synaptic transmissions and these squirts of neurotransmitter back and forth is thoughts of other people, what other people say to us, interacting with the world at large."

It can be confining and confusing to look at brains individually; this is why the last letter of my CARVE Disputes Model™ of conflict resolution stands for "Ensemble." Lehrer further says:

And the quest goes on: Still looking for mediation music

I am going to figure out how to use music in mediation. (Past posts on music and conflict resolution.) Why am I tenaciously hunting down the right music to use with people in disputes?

Take a look at this documentary "The Musical Brain." You will see how music affects us and our brains in so many dynamic and often moving ways. (And you will get to learn what music does to Sting's brain.)

For those of you interested in this topic, here's some research somewhat related to my quest. (All are PDF.)

"The Influence of Group Singing on Trust and Cooperation" (Listening to music increased trust and cooperation.)

"Music Hath Charms . . . And Can Influence Helpfulness" (US students agreed to take over another person’s work more readily, if they listened to “soothing” music.)

"The Effects of Music on Helping Behavior: A Field Study" (Users of a US university gym agreed to distribute leaflets for a sporting charity more readily if they listened to uplifting music during work-out.)

"Synchrony and Cooperation" (Suggests that "cultural practices involving synchrony (e.g., music, dance, and marching)" increases the willingness to cooperate in social dilemma games.)

Note (added June 1, 2009): On a related use, I see that physicians are employing music as medicine. From "Music as medicine: Docs use tunes as treatment" (msnbc.com):

From Massachusetts General to the Mayo Clinic, patients are hearing the first strains of a harmonious movement — the infusion and inclusion of music in the treatment of ailments, from brain disorders to cancer. This goes beyond the psychological smile favorite songs can induce.

Doctors are increasingly studying — and employing — the physiological dance music does with the body's neurons

Fun overview of how the brain works

Let Dr. Steven Schlozman tell you about the brain here. Don't worry about the zombies. The information is about real, living people's brains, too.

Image credit: JTR.

That fashionable and popular brain! Are neuromyths increasing in dispute resolution? Who creates them?

I am happy to see that neuroscience is being mentioned more frequently by many who are talking and teaching about dispute resolution. On the other hand, I am a little concerned about what is being said about the brain; I'm hearing some neuromyths and assertions that go beyond what the research has proven. Let us be careful not to introduce neuromyths into the dispute resolution arena. Once they get in, repeated and accepted, it will be very hard to weed them out.

What's a neuromyth? From Understanding the Brain: The Birth of a Learning Science:

The brain is fashionable. The media constantly draws in one way or another on the mysteries of this "black box." Such popularity is partly explained by the inherent interest of the subject for most people ("if you are talking about my brain, you're talking about me"), as well as by the richness of new discoveries by neuroscientific research that lend themselves to media coverage. Popular appeal can bring pitfalls. Over the past few years, there has been a growing number of misconceptions circulating about the brain, which have come to be labeled "neuromyths." They have some characteristics in common ... .

Most neuromyths ... share similar origins. They are almost always based on some element of sound science, which

More about the brain and decision making: Another interview with Jonah Lehrer

A number of people have told me that my recent posting of a Jonah Lehrer interview on how we make decisions was appreciated. Obviously the process of deciding is a foundation of conflict resolution so I am linking you to another interview of Lehrer about the brain and decisions, this one from the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. From the Web page of the interview "Jonah Lehrer: Brain Science for the Rest of Us":

[Lehrer's] new book How We Decide ... is a set of cautionary tales about the limits of the rational brain, that peculiarly human pre-frontal cortex, and by implication the limits of rational science. It is not reason — certainly not reason alone — that tells quarterback Tom Brady which receiver should get the pass, or that tells the pilot of a disabled plane how to land it. It’s not even reason that brings the best of our human gifts into balance. Lehrer quotes G. K. Chesterton: “The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.”

Jonah Lehrer identifies himself with the modern doctor who tells you not to choose the MRI for your lower back pain but to study patience, or perhaps Yoga, instead. Not only have MRIs not solved the problem of back pain. “In fact, the new technology has probably made the problem worse. The machine simply sees too much. Doctors are overwhelmed with information and struggle to distinguish the significant from the irrelevant… This is the danger of too much information: it can actually interfere with understanding.”

In the interview, he talks about why neuroscience is becoming so popular and says it's because the science is becoming practical. He also says the way to avoid the consequences of the flaws in our