Don't Think About Reasons Too Much

Photo: Frontier Academy Art

From time to time, people ask me "Why?" or "How come?" And then, I answer "I don't know." Many people dislike my saying "I don't know." What I mean is that people want to know a reason for something. Of course, I know having a reason for something is important when making a decision and doing something. However, in this story, I want to emphasize "a reason is made after we do or behave something." This is shown by some studies in the field of Neuroscience (Actually, I knew the fact by reading a book by Takeshi Yohrou.). In addition, today I found an article to reinforce my opinion.

It is "Typing Errur? Your Fingers Know Even When Your Brain Doesn't." It says our fingers do something, and then our brain recognize it. I suspect that a mechanism of our speaking can be explained by the same analogy. This is because we sometimes are speaking something without thinking. Our mouth knows, maybe. This unconscious process is what I want to say. In short, our brain doesn't know, but we have behaviors by the other organs: hands, foots, mouth, ears, and nose.

Finally, maybe some people would wonder "Hey, what are you doing when you really need a reason?" For this, I have a tip to make reasons for something immediately. Before explaining about it, I want to introduce kinda another thing but related. Kenichi Omae, a famous business person in Japan, said in his book (although I forgot which books it was written.) "In a presentation, if you mention the three cogent reasons for your opinion, then you could persuade your audiences." In my opinion, this would be right. Also, An experiment written in a book by Noah Goldstein, Steve Martin, and Cialdini Robert depicts that you want to copy soon, but some people are getting in a line in front of a copy machine. Suppose in the situation you want to cut the line because of your hurrying so much. To be succeeded it, adding a reason for cutting the line when you ask someone who is the front of the line a favor for that is much more likely to be acceptable to your favor than not saying a reason, even though the reason is not reasonable (It was surprising for me!). Anyway, we would need to make something reasons to persuade somebody. In my case, I categorize reasons into two groups: dispositional (internal) and situational (external). For example, suppose I went to watch a movie, Public Enemies, in a theater yesterday. Next day, one friend asked me "I heard yesterday you went to watch a movie. I was surprised! I thought you didn't like going a theater. Why did you go?" I answered " Because I like Johnny Depp (this is a dispositional reason), and also yesterday was special day for the theater. So, the ticket was very cheap (this is a situational reason)." And... maybe readers think you should pick one more reason! Please hold on... I have one more strategy. It is called as connectional reason by me lolol. It is a little bit difficult, compared with dispositional and situational. However, I think it is very effective to persuade people. So, let me back the conversation. I would say "My friend invited to me. He said if we go to the theater, we watch the movie starred by Johonny Depp at low price. So, I decided to go!" A hinge of connectional reason is to use aforementioned information, and to combine with these information.

This might seem so systematic. However, really useful. Try it!

But, to be honest, I don't want to make reasons. So, when I am asked reasons, saying "I don't know" is my honest feeling. Ironically, saying something reasons is a kind of compromise for me. If I thought about reasons too much, I could NOT do anything and never move as if becoming 'The Thinker' by Auguste Rodin.

A Day of Safety Driving

To do a homework of social psychology, I was a safety driver last Tuesday.

Photo: comlinkgps.com



On that day, I had an opportunity to drive cars for a long time. This was because I took my friend to a driver’s license office in her car in order for her to take the driving test. Usually, my driving tends to pay attention to other cars, I mean I hardly pay attention to own speed meter.  In fact, we need to adjust to traffic, according to the Washington Driver Guide. So, my speeding is usually 5 to 10 mph over the regulation speed. However, as far as I remember, there is no instruction about adjusting to traffic in Japan where I took driver license at first. We have to obey speed signals in Japan. In short, what I want to say is that my belief or true feeling is to keep or obey speed signals, but here every day I followed others’ behavior. My challenge is to keep driving below the regulation speed.

What was my result of the challenge? I almost accomplished my assignment, throughout driving. However, as I said “almost”, what I mean is that we have a dilemma between keeping the regulation speed and following others’ behavior. When I kept driving at the regulation speed, some cars passed my car. Such behavior was pushing my feeling to drive at faster speed. I was fighting between accomplishing my object as a nonconformist and obeying others’ behavior in my mind. At this time, I considered a question of why people drive at 5 to 10 mph over the speed limit. I thought this is a norm. If everybody kept the regulation speed, I would not care about own speed meter or police officers. However, because some people drive faster than the criteria, our feeling like driving over a little bit, such as 5 to 10 mph, encourage, because everybody does so. This power, unanimity, is strong enough with us.

Finally, I will explain about why I was able to reach the task of keeping the speed limit. The reason why I kept my belief is related to two social psychology concepts: compliance and commitment. In the night before the day, I incidentally heard a story from my host mother. The story was that she was given a ticket for speeding in a school zone, and she paid $271. Obviously, it was my motivation to avoid this kind of punishment, and it was compliance for me. Second, my situation of taking my friend to the driver’s license office made me especially aware of safety driving. Also, though the situation would be a kind of conformity, I needed to show her to a model of good driving. Thus, in advance I decided to keep all of the traffic rules in my mind. I think this is a good example of commitment.

Next day, during driving, I totally forgot to keep to the regulation speed, after losing compliance and commitment. How ironic it was. I thought my feeling or brief was changed by American culture. I would be a conformist because I was so comfortable to follow others.