The Self of Thoughts, Feelings

and Behaviors
MODULE #1
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF

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The Self of…
Thoughts

Feelings

Sensations and Behaviors

To understand the self as a holistic being with interconnected
thoughts, feelings, sensations and behaviors
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 THE THINKING SELF

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Ponder on these…
What’s on your mind?

Why do you think about it?

How do you assess about how

you think?

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Case #1
Your nephew describes his new girlfriend as a student who is artistic
and loves poetry. With no other information to go on, it is more
likely that she is studying:
A.) Chinese Literature
B.) Business Management

 How did you arrive at that thought?

*Even if every female student of Chinese Literature is artistic and loves poetry,
the population of Business Management students is so much larger.
( Burkeman , 2011)
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Case #2
Imagine you’re a doctor, faced with the choice of operating on a
cancer patient or recommending a course of radiation instead. In the
long term, operating is best. But in this case, there is a 10% risk of
mortality in the first month following the operation.
Do you take the risk? Why?

*Only half the doctors asked a similar question would operate. But when the
10% mortality rate was rephrased as “90% survival rate,” 85% of the doctors
chose to operate. ( Burkeman , 2011)

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TWO SYSTEMS OF THINKING
SYSTEM 1 SYSTEM 2
Fast Slow
Intuitive Deliberate
Emotional Reflective
Automatic Analytical
Less cognitive effort Complex
(due to practice) Effortful
Reflective
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Stroop Effect

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 Are the
horizontal
lines straight
or not?

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 Functions of the Systems
•System 1 is capable of making quick decisions, based on very little
information
 Fleeting impressions, and the many other shortcuts you’ve developed
throughout your life, are combined to enable System 1 to make these
decisions quickly, without deliberation and conscious effort.

• System 2 is usually engage in types of decisions that require attention and

slow, effortful, considered responses.
Situations like choosing which college to attend, which house to buy, or
whether to change careers would likely require much more thoughtful and
rational approach than just using your gut feeling

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Remember…
 Bothsystems have respective functions and that one is not
necessarily better than the other

While writing a detailed list of pros and cons may be an appropriate

approach for choosing a college or career path (in line with System
2),
applying this approach to the hundreds of tiny decisions we make
every day would prevent us from ever taking action. This is where
System 1 comes in.

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Ponder on these…

• Identify situations which you employ Systems 1 and 2

thinking

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How well did you understand?

Which thinking
2x2= ??? process/system would
300 + 450= ??? you use in this situation?

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  Caught between empty and
heavy lane, which road would
you take???

Which thinking process/system

might you use in this situation?

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 In filling up an
application
form, which
system would
you use?
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How can you focus on the voice
of the person you are talking to
in a crowded and noisy room?

Which system of thinking would

you engage in?

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 INTERACTION OF SYSTEMS 1 & 2
Scenario 1: When there is a problem to be solved
Was the problem solved?

SYSTEM 1 - YES
PROBLEM assesses the
situation -tries to
solve it NO SYSTEM 2
-approaches the
problem in a logical
way

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 INTERACTION OF SYSTEMS 1 & 2
Scenario 2: When there is NO problem (or when stakes are low)
SYSTEM 2 -biased to
SYSTEM 1 DOUBT &
-biased to BELIEVE QUESTION... (but is
Everyday situations
with limited often busy & lazy)
information (e.g.
meeting a new Form opinions & jump
person) into conclusions
Adopt suggestions
with little
modification

INTUITIONS --------- BELIEFS

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Situations wherein the systems are
employed
The CRT mathematical test has shown that intuition is a dominant
force in the minds of medical students. (Tay, Ryan, Ryan, 2016)

Psychology researchers have found that the more complex a task is,
the more likely people are to engage in System 2 decision making.

One interesting experiment, performed by Alter et al., found that

simply decreasing the legibility of the font used in a common
cognitive test made people more likely to switch to System 2.
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Market researchers should keep in mind that the more complex the
research collection process becomes (more question types, complex
answer matrices, thought experiments etc.), the more likely they are to
collect responses generated by System 2. (Since most of the System 1 decision making
process is unconscious, respondents are more likely to offer what they consider to be plausible rationalizations
for their decisions rather than their true underlying attitudes and motivations.)

In situations where there is social pressure to respond in a particular

way, System 2 may even filter these rationalizations to create
“appropriate” responses.

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When making decisions or judgments, we often use mental
shortcuts or "rules of thumb" known as heuristics.
For every decision, we don't always have the time or resources to
compare all the information before we make a choice, so we use
heuristics to help us reach decisions quickly and efficiently.

Sometimes these mental shortcuts can be helpful, but in other cases,

they can lead to errors or cognitive biases.

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COGNITIVE BIASES
Implications:
• Thinking may be prone to systematic errors.

• Some beliefs might not be based on evidence, but we continue to

consider them as “truths.”

• Even though you know what the objective reality is,

it does not change the way you see the lines.

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1. PEAK END RULE
◦People judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its
PEAK and its END...
◦Total sum of pleasantness or unpleasantness is entirely disregarded!

“When people assess an experience, they tend to forget or ignore its

length. Instead, they seem to rate the experience based on two key
moments: (1) the best or worst moment, known as the peak and (2)
the ending [..]

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Examples:
A classic example is childbirth.
if you attend a concert with poor sound quality or performance, yet
the concert ends with your favorite song, your memory of the
experience overall will be more positive.
A bad flight experience on the way home from a vacation can take
away from the overall trip, even if the vacation was essentially
positive.
A breakup of a relationship is also a common example, as we may
vividly recall a heartbreaking or painful breakup.

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Dr. Daniel Kahneman’s Two Selves
REMEMBERING/NARRATING
EXPERIENCING SELF SELF
-Lives through the moment -writes, reads, and replays your
autobiographical history

The experiencing self is intuitive, quick, and unconscious and does not
remember events, and each moment of the experiencing self lasts 3 seconds.
The narrating self is what collects and integrates our experiences into a story. It
reviews our experiences and creates narratives that we experience as our
memory.
Our narrating self does a lot of editing and interpretation. During this process,
changes in our stories occur.

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Significance
Cognitive biases change the way we remember circumstances.

The peak-end effect is a cognitive shortcut our brains use by

focusing our memories on the most intense aspects of an experience
and what the ending is like.

Research supports that an event with a pleasurable peak at the end

will be remembered positively.

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What would you rather go through:

◦Short period of intense joy > long period of moderate

happiness

◦Short period of intense, but tolerable suffering > longer

period of moderate pain

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 2. REPRESENTATIVENESS
◦when people are asked to judge the probability that
an object or event belongs to a category

◦assumption that any object (or person) sharing characteristics with the
members of a particular category is also a member of that category.

"the probability that Steve is a librarian is assessed by the degree to

which his is representative of, or similar to, the stereotype of a
librarian," (Tversky and Kahneman)
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How It Works
When we make decisions based on representativeness, we may be
likely to make more errors by overestimating the likelihood that
something will occur.

Just because an event or object is representative does not mean its

occurrence is more probable.

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 Ponder on these…
Tom is a college student in a state university. He is of high intelligence,
although lacking in creativity. He has a need for order and clarity, and
for neat and tidy systems in which every detail finds its appropriate
place. His writing is rather dull and mechanical, occasionally enlivened
by corny puns and flashes of imagination of the sci-fi type. He has a
strong drive for competence. He seems to have little sympathy for
others & does not enjoy interaction with others. But he does have a
deep moral sense.

What course in Tom most likely enrolled in?

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Examples:

 Consider how members of a jury might determine a defendant's

guilt or innocence because of his/her physical appearance

A farmer, for example, might be seen as hard-working, outdoorsy,

and tough.

A librarian, on the other hand, might be viewed as being quiet,

organized, and reserved.

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 3. ANCHORING AND ADJUSTMENT
“How old is person A?” / “What is person A’s weight?” “Was Mahatma
Gandhi more or less 144 years old when he died?”

Decision is based on:

-ANCHOR based on the given reference point
-ADJUST the anchor (either higher or lower)
◦ In making judgments under uncertainty, people start with a certain
reference point (anchor), then adjust it insufficiently to reach a final
conclusion.
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Consider this…
Imagine that you are buying a new car. You read online that the
average price of the vehicle you are interested in is $27,000 dollars.
When you are shopping at the local car lot, the dealer offers you the
same vehicle for $26,500, which you quickly accept—after all, it's
$500 less than what you were expecting to pay.

Except, the car dealer across town is offering the exact same vehicle
for just $24,000, a full $2,500 less than what you paid and $3,000
less than the average price you found online.

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Remember…
the anchoring effect as a powerful impact on the choices we make,
from decisions about the things we buy to daily preferences about
how to live our lives.

 So the next time you are trying to make an important decision, give
a little thought to the possible impact of the anchoring bias on your
choices.

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GUARDING AGAINST COGNITIVE BIASES

Recognize the signs that you are in a cognitive minefield, slow down, and ask for help
from System 2

Identify practices and tasks that you do and the kind of thinking they demand

“Listen to understand it, rather than listen to answer it.”

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Summary:

INTERACTIONS
SYSTEMS COGNITIVE GUARDING AGAINST
BETWEEN
1&2 BIASES COGNITIVE BIASES
SYSTEMS 1 & 2

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 THE FEELING SELF

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Identify the emotion being evoked in the
following pictures

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WHO IS PAUL EKMAN?
* Clinical Practice:
◦Depression
*Research:
◦Papua New Guinea: Facial expressions are
universal.

◦Studied patients who claimed they were not

depressed and later committed suicide:
MICROEXPRESSIONS
*Current Research:
◦How to respond to others’ emotions
◦Working with Dalai Lama

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 EMOTIONS and its FEATURES
Physiological: biological reactions -
Cognitive: role of the nervous system (brain &
thought processes - neurotransmitters) in emotions
ANTECEDENT:
cause, trigger interpretation of an
event
Behavioral: expressions & response
- Display Rule: variations of
emotional expression across culture

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Antecedent Condition
•Events, contexts, or situations
that trigger an emotion

•Universality of antecedent
events elicit same emotions
across cultures

•Cultural differences

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Cognitive Appraisal

Thoughts and beliefs can

impact how you feel and
how you behave.

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 Physiological
• distinctive patterns of biological activities for each basic emotion
• the role of:
◦ Autonomic Nervous System
◦ Central Nervous System
◦ Neurotransmitters & Hormones

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Emotional Expressions
Display Rule
• cultural rules that dictate how emotions should be expressed;
when and where expression is appropriate

• may require people:

◦ to overtly show evidence of certain emotions even if they do not feel it
◦ to disguise their true feelings

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Theories of Emotion

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Theories of Emotion

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EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE AS A PROCESS
Activating Beliefs Consequences
Event - Evaluations - Emotions
- Actual event - Rational - Behaviors
- client’s - irrational - Other
immediate thoughts
interpretation
of events

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APPLICATION: DEPRESSION (Williams, et al.)
CONSEQUENCES
ACTIVATING EVENT BELIEFS
(emotions and
(antecedent) (cognition)
behaviors)

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 APPLICATION: DEPRESSION (Williams, et al.)
NEW STRESSOR BELIEFS are CONSEQUENCES
reactivated! Depressive
symptoms

“What is wrong with me?’

“Why do I always fall into this
dark hole?”
“Why can’t I snap out of it”
“I am worthless” “I SHOULD NOT BE DEPRESSED!”
“It’s always my fault’
“I’m a failure”
 DOING MODE:
So a new cycle Problem Solving
begins…  BEING MODE: Accept
and allow
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Interconnectedness Among The Three
Components Of The Self

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To be that self which one truly is…

—Søren Kierkegaard

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