Anne Riches

Change Leadership

  • Home
  • What We Do
  • How We Do It
  • Why Choose Us
  • About Anne
  • Blog
  • Resources
  • Contact Us

Tunnel vision of the grey matter

16 May 2011 by Anne Riches Leave a Comment

Peter unashamedly was reading email on his Blackberry in a team meeting. He thought the meetings were a total waste of time. The team leader asked everyone for their point of view but, unless it accorded with his own, their opinions were ignored or worst still, met with a cynical or sarcastic remark or look!

As Peter said to one of his team mates: ‘The man has got tunnel vision of the grey matter!’

Interestingly, he may be right!

How our brain filters stuff out

According to an article in Wired by Jonah Lehrer there could be some truth in Peter’s comments. He has an interesting explanation for why we often see or hear only what we want to see or hear.

We know that our amygdala responds to emotionally significant events that involve some sort of threat to us. Our amygdala continuously assesses whether something is a true life/death or physical risk to us.

And because the amygdala does not distinguish between physical and psychological threat, it also actively assesses threat levels in non-physical risk situations like an email from a client, a look from a colleague or the words of the boss.

In both physical and non-physical situations, if the amygdala activates the threat response and we react without using our thinking brain (pre frontal cortex) resulting in inappropriate behaviours, I call that The Almond Effect®.

Sometimes our intuition is wrong

However it seems that there are times when we don’t want to accept what we hear or see because it doesn’t accord with our expectations or our reality, so our brain carefully edits them out, instead ‘searching for evidence that confirms what we already believe.’

Lehrer describes an experiment conducted by Kevin Dunbar in 2003 at Dartmouth College. Dunbar showed students two video clips of two different sized balls falling to the ground. In one clip the balls hit the ground at the same time. In the other the heavier ball landed first.
The students were asked to select the more accurate representation of the law of gravity.

Those students who were not versed in physics believed that it was unrealistic that the balls would land at the same time, an intuition that strikes a chord with me.
However it is wrong as the science shows (Galileo and Newton) that once the balls reach a critical velocity, they would travel at the same rates and so the scenario where they would land together is correct.

You and your ACC and DLPFC

The part of the brain that registers errors and contradictions is the ACC (anterior cingulate cortex). It gets turned on when we see or hear or in any way sense that something is wrong and doesn’t fit with our patterns of experience. I have heard neuroscientists describe it as the ‘Oh Sh*t’ response.

But Dunbar found that there is another part of our brain, the DLPFC (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) that is also involved. When it is activated, it suppresses thoughts that don’t square with our preconceptions.

As Lehrer so eloquently puts it, if the ACC is the “Oh Sh*T” circuit, then the DLPFC is the ‘delete’ key.

Don’t waste your time arguing

Now maybe my DLPFC is helping me out here, but this seems like a great explanation about how people behave when they don’t seem to hear or see something that doesn’t accord with their point of view.

And perhaps, significantly, it’s the differentiating factor between managers who can master their DLPFC and say, ‘that’s impossible’ and those who say, ‘that’s interesting – I wonder why you think that may be possible.’

Clearly the latter attitude is the one more likely to be open to innovative ideas, solve difficult complex problems and demonstrate great leadership.

So maybe Peter was right and those meetings are just a waste of time if the boss is only interested in their own point of view.

I suspect we all suffer from ‘tunnel vision of the grey matter’ occasionally but at least you now know why!

And maybe we need to check our own DLPFC if we can’t resolve a difficult sitation. Are we in fact stuck because we are filtering out other ways of looking at the situation?

Time to put the headlights on!

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • Google
  • Email
  • Print
  • More
  • Reddit
  • Pinterest
  • Pocket
  • Tumblr

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: misc

About Anne Riches

Anne is a Change Leadership presenter, educator, facilitator and mentor, developing managers to be more effective Change Leaders. Read more …

Would you like to receive articles in your Inbox?
Click here to subscribe to CLUES, Anne's free monthly eNewsletter on leadership and change.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Free Newsletter

More info here

Blog Categories

  • Amygdala and The Almond Effect
  • Change Leadership
  • Emotional Intelligence in Change
  • Neuroscience of Change

Our audience of leaders is a very diverse group. Some want to be convinced by hearing the theory, others by how well it connects to their lived experience and some just want to be entertained. Anne’s obvious expertise in her area and experience of life as well as her irrepressible energy as a presenter resulted in her achieving that rare goal of delivering value to all in the room – there was a real buzz.
– Executive Manager Corporate Support, Fairfield City Council

Read more client recommendations

Latest from the Blog

Destroy one fear, Change your life

15 February 2016

Scared of spiders? Performance reviews? Speaking in public? Love this post by Shawn Hunter: Destroy one fear, Change your life. It suggests that if you can conquer one fear, you can develop

Do you stress eat?

9 February 2016

I like this TED talk on breaking a bad habit. It has a practical approach that I think could help.  

Look at me when I’m talking to you

1 February 2016

When I was growing up and my mother wanted to "point out the error of my ways", I remember that she often prefaced her no doubt well-intentioned words of advice with: "Look at me when I'm talking to

Services

  • Workshops and Seminars
  • Facilitation in Challenging Situations
  • Conference Presentations and Breakouts
  • Executive Coaching and Mentoring

Recommendations

I loved the almond theory and will start thinking about putting it to work in the office, not to mention with my hubby.

Thank you for the great breakfast with Anne this morning – lots of very interesting things to think about (like when I came home to a messy house with the tv still on and breakfast debris all over the kitchen and my almond fired up!!
– Attendees NetworkCentral Sydney

Read more client recommendations

Resources

 Newsletter |  Webstore |  Resources

Contact us

  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
Client Access Click Here
  • Home
  • What We Do
  • How We Do It
  • Why Choose Us
  • About Anne
  • Blog
  • Resources
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy

© 2019 The Riches Group Pty Ltd · site by accurate expressions

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.