Do you really know why you do what you do? | Petter Johansson

Experimental psychologist Petter Johansson researches choice blindness — a phenomenon where we convince ourselves that we're getting what we want, even when we're not. In an eye-opening talk, he shares experiments (designed in collaboration with magicians!) that aim to answer the question: Why do we do what we do? The findings have big implications for the nature of self-knowledge and how we react in the face of manipulation. You may not know yourself as well as you think you do.

Check out more TED Talks:

The TED Talks channel features the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design — plus science, business, global issues, the arts and more.

Follow TED on Twitter:
Like TED on Facebook:

Subscribe to our channel:

62 Comments on Do you really know why you do what you do? | Petter Johansson

    • 2:49 Are these pictures of men or women? In this particular selection at 2:49, think they’re women with short-ish hair. Later shown, the pictures for this photographer participant are definitely women. What I’m wondering is if the experimenters asked about the sexual orientation of these research participants ahead of time.

    • When given a “fact” (you picked _this_ face or _this_ political stance), people are making stories about it without considering the possibility that the “fact” conflicts with past “facts” that they’ve been presented with, because those facts are no longer available by memory or otherwise. People, therefore, are looking for reasons to confirm their present position rather than considering all the evidence that they’ve formerly had that rejects their present belief.

  1. I wonder how the test with the faces has gone if it was done with autistic people. They tend to have a good eye for details and perhaps notice the change of cards better.

  2. Interesting although not that surprising, for two reasons. People do not have a habit of having deep discussions, they prefer to have shallow ones. Simply said, most people are shallow, while of course, they hold themselves in high regard. So any opinion they have is probably not based on anything deep. The second, is that people tend to be very emotional about their opinions, not a very good attitude for self reflection. So, again, they dont give themselves the chance to know their own thoughts deeply. I find hope in this technique, it’s a way to get people to see the other side and hopefully become more balanced people.

    • Very good point! I’ve seen this pattern very often in people. The video combined with your comment really gives me a nice view of how we aim at building our personalities.

    • people often struggle to have deeper discussions for a multitude of reasons so it seems quite black and white to simply state its because people are shallow don’t you think? I also wonder about this idea that people hold themselves in high regard – This seems more of a facade to me and is often to hide deep insecurity and because most of us want to be liked. – It also strikes me as unsurprising that people are very emotional about all sorts our emotions are key to our survival – sadly though many cultures are constantly subjecting people to high expressed emotional reactions from many angles such as the media, crap jobs, debts, relative poverty, advertising, news etc

  3. When i realized this that is when i became good at having conversations.
    Essentially it boils down to never ask “why?”. Instead ask something like “do you have a theory of why that is?”
    Query for thoughts, ideas & feelings not facts.

    • @Radical Islam Right, but i am not actually asking why. I am asking “what is your opinion?” The word “why” is not forbidden.

    • well, asking ‘why’ oftens lefts ppl with a blank face realizing they were only repeating what they had heard/read; so I’m all about it. Your polite way of asking is ok but imo it lacks that childish curiosity mood wich can lead to the best conversations

    • ettvanligtkonto: He warn people about this auto answering machine mode inside us talking whenever we hear the question “why?”.
      5:32 “normally no more than 20% of the participants detect this tries”
      Which suggest out of 5 people, 4 have this issue. I think your suggestion just evade the real issue, example: 6:34 “perhaps we make things up all the time”.

    • @fernicar “I think your suggestion just evade the real issue” I don’t think there is an issue.

      People only think the know why they do the things they do, but the actual reasons are hidden within layers and layers of previous experiences.

      So you can sort of say that it is your role to help them figure out the most reasonable alternative.

    • I saw some subtle squirming, tone-rising and nervous laughter from the girl, and the older guy seemed smarmy and faux-naïve, also cleared his throat, blinked strangely and similar tics. Both of these seem to me to indicate some level of deception, keeping their cover story intact. I may just be projecting since I was aware of the ruse, but the guy was searching hard for the trick after answering at 3:56. Lots of micro-expressions. People aren’t necessarily honest when self-reporting.

  4. I am not totally convinced. These various choices are not vastly different. For example, left and right coalitions in Sweden are not as big a difference as Republicans and Democrats in the US, and the coalitions in Sweden would be both to the left for Americans. I think his theory only works when the differences between the choices are small, there are no accurate ways of weighing the choices, or the choices have no obvious detrimental or beneficial consequences.

    • but how do you measure when the choice difference is small and large?… for example, if there is not the extreme present and people do indeed think within their own versions of left and right, then that is the same amount of difference for them that it is for someone who uses larger scale but for the same purposes… you can use this with the faces as well, if someone is used to only certain specific features and sees them in their everyday life, they become receptive to those kids of features and the differences between them, even though there are much larger difference across other features like for example hair colour but because that is not present in that everyday decision process, it does not come up as strongly in the moment… going back to the political system, if you have as you said larger ideological differences like in US, then the things you compare are larger as well, so on the scale it is comparable with having smaller ideological difference within the left but still have to compare those smaller things on a comparable scale

  5. I’m not in agreement with his thesis.

    This seems to be a problem of society having a collective deficiency of observation, conviction (think about this), perhaps self confidence (if you understand what I mean by this as it pertains to this talk then you do and if you don’t you don’t, I don’t care to bother explaining), and education.

    We’ve gotten smarter as a whole due to the advent of the internet while sacrificing facets of our cognitive abilities.

    I think that the people that “fell” within the bullseye the tests were attempting to hit are people that can definitely find a way to better their understanding of self and making cognitive improvements, but haven’t.

    There are definitely those out there, like this gentleman noted, that performed as outliers in these experiments and that is the kind of person we should be striving to be.

    The body only carries the mind and so the mind must be the figurative muscle we are always exercising. These experiments prove that, and I believe this person was interpreting the experiment without taking some of the things I’ve mentioned into account. As the old logical addage goes: Correlation does not equal causation. I think his results aren’t being interpreted correctly in taking an optimal mind into account and not weaker ones and this isn’t an insult to anyone of the participants, it’s a call for all of us to improve ourselves in the mental domain because I believe as humans, we’re better than what this series of experiments attempts to tell us of ourselves.

    • Why do kids like candy? You may explain with a lot of child psychology, their innate brain survival techniques, but to them, they want candy because it is yummy. Your interpretation may be more accurate and true, but it is not true, relatively to the child’s point of view.

      Try to reason for your subject choices in high schools. Most probably that reason was different from what you originally thought of when you choose it.

      The TED guy’s point of view wasn’t that human are weak and need to strengthen their mind, but to tell you that your choices or other people’s choices are not only affected by their knowledge or state of mind, but also by the environment or time delay or other factors.

      To put it simply, don’t explain your choice, answer the question again every time you’re to face, ignore the choice you’ve made and re-answer it again.

  6. I think it has something to do with left right brain phenomena, you know, the same as when you cut a brain in half you get a quiet personality who actually seems to control some parts of the body. I think it also has to do with a lot of people don’t develop language and decision making processes that work together but rather apart. Different sections are responsible for different things and don’t question when one section makes a certain decision. I feel like I made a mess of explaining that lol

    • Hose Clamp interesting. So when asked about a political issue, a person might use only (simplifying of course) the seccion of the brain that controls, let’s say, familiarity or something like that; therefore not actually thinking about it and just going ‘I belong to this group and this group says this so that’s my answer’.

      I’m sure it’s not cientificaly accurate but I think I agree with you.

    • Yarbloco yes that’s my hypothesis and well we’ve done enough experiments, I’m sure if we combed through enough past experiments it might confirm or deny it.

  7. Choice is an overestimated concept. Most of us were raised to believe in the individual nature of our choices, that we choose our own path, and that we must take responsibility for the consequences no matter what. We’d be surprised to know how much our choices are a product of our environment then simply the product of free will.

    • I think it’s because everbody had to be born in the circumstances and to be affected by them. It wasn’t their choices. By the way, free will is kinda an overestimated concept as well.

    • NovaDream it is true that our choices shape the outcome, but what shapes our choices? Isn’t it a combination of past outcomes? I’m not arguing that the brain does not make the choice, but the choice itself is made by the brain’s reaction to the exterior. The thing is, this is such a complex concept with an unimaginable amount of variables we’ll probably never understand, that we came up with the concept of free will and free choice, which is a way to simplify what actually happens.

  8. what this shows to me, is that the participants aren’t invested in the outcome. when that occurs, whether it’s random photos on cards.. or the US election.. or your life partner… people are quite happy to pick something on a whim.

  9. Two strangers faces, which do you prefer? You don’t really prefer either strongly but its an exercise, you have to come up with a choice, a reason out of the nothingness you are feeling(similar to a UK general election where none of the choices seem decent but if you vote for the smaller parties you basically waste your vote) . The card gets switched. You don’t notice. What would happen if you had the choose between a banana and a lemon then the card was switched? I am guessing people would say hang on i chose a banana not a lemon. So maybe if you are a politician or a political party you want to bang on about the things that clearly differentiate you from the other choices or maybe not? Stay bland and play for all the voters who don’t know they don’t know? Interesting video.

    • You’re right about the fruit (though I’d still wonder how many people wouldn’t even mention anything). That leads me to wonder how far in differences between any two selections that the participant would either not mention the switch or not even notice.

    • ToastCrafter ! Im not sure but im think they are people too..at least sometimes so i’d suppose that it is possible xD

  10. when you find an experiment you want someone to try on you, but then you realise that your knowledge that the experiment exists makes it impossible for you to take part in it, cause you already know the game

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*


Shares
Share This