Intent and impact in the brain

In our society, we exchange information all the time, but what goes wrong between brains during this simple exchange of information? This is post 3 in a series on Impact versus Intent; it’s the neuro-scientific perspective. To help answer our question, we’ll look at the very essence of your brain’s purpose.

The brain’s subjectivity

The brain is a complex organ dedicated to processing information and experiences; it helps you survive and thrive in a complex environment. When your brain is working, you have a mind. When your brain isn’t working, you’re dead and you don’t have a mind. The brain is material but the mind is not. Science still doesn’t fully understand the mind-brain connection, nor do we fully understand what a mind is or where it is. The mind, for instance, is not constrained by the physical limits of the body, it relates to other minds. But we can see the brain, dissect it, measure it, and learn a lot about it.

Somewhere inside your vast, complex neural networks, your brain constructs an inner, subjective representation of objective reality. The brains of almost 8 billion people on this planet each carry a unique, subjective representation of the world. That’s fascinating, but it makes for some problems.

Because we each carry around a different subjective representations of objective reality, it’s nearly impossible to agree on actual intention and perceived impact, even if we agree on what words were spoken.

Here’s the situation:

PERSON SPEAKING: chooses words laced with intention (positive or not) derived from their own subjective inner world.

ACTUAL WORDS SPOKEN: can be objectively verified only if caught on tape.

PERSON RECEIVING THE WORDS: hears words which have an impact on them based on their subjective inner world and the speaker’s intent.

Arguments about ‘what was intended’ or ‘what was the perceived impact’ are really problematic. Two subjective inner representations are arguing about what was objective reality; they can never meet on a level, objective playing field. The most you can hope for is to agree on the actual words spoken, but even that is near impossible.

If we can’t agree on the information transmitted through words, how can we agree on the information transmitted through thoughts, feelings, intentions, impacts and motivations? These are transmitted not so much through words, but through your “social brain”.

The Social Brain & ‘feelings underneath’

The “social brain”[i] is the name given to some brain networks involved in communication with other people: those concerned with empathy (in the anterior cingulate gyrus), emotions (limbic system), motivations and choices (orbitofrontal cortex), monitoring behaviour (insula), dampening emotional reactions (ventro-medial prefrontal cortex), predicting other’s mental states (prefrontal cortex), and altruism, trust, mind-to-mind perception and more.[ii] In these brain circuits you “read” other people and you “say” things through the tone of your voice, the inferences of your words, your hand gestures, body language, posture, looks and eye contact. You, and all of us, transmit a lot of information beyond the words. Under the words, we transmit “feelings underneath”.

Words are precise. Social brain information and feelings underneath are vague; open to misunderstandings. We humans are sly, and can use this to our advantage. Through the social brain, we transmit ‘feelings underneath’ which can be loaded with subliminal messages: I like you, you disgust me, I want to have sex with you, you’re being unfair, that hurt, I’m bored with you, and more. These messages can be felt by others but can be denied by us because we didn’t use words. This saves our reputation but hides our real intentions.

Your intentions are mainly transmitted through your social brain. Under your words, other people’s social brains pick up your intentions in the vague language of ‘feelings underneath’. Sometimes they’re accurate, sometimes they’re not. Eye contact can impart lots of information through vague feelings but is unnerving for some; we need to be careful with this. It’s the power of opening a window into a private world.

If you listen carefully, you listen to their words and to their feelings underneath. You pick up messages in their words, but then read their real intention through facial expressions, eye contact, tone of voice and hand gestures. Your reading may be accurate or you may have “read something into it” that genuinely wasn’t there. You don’t know. Are they lying? Are they genuine? There has to be trust, mediated through the brain chemical oxytocin. It’s very complex.

Application

Your spoken words always sit in a broader context of social brain communication and ‘feelings underneath’. Intention and impact work through this. We are finely attuned to read feelings underneath. I encourage you to always have good intentions when interacting with others. These will be transmitted through your words but also through your social brain: eye contact, tone of voice, body language and more. If, unintentionally, your words have an adverse impact, listen and apologize to fix the situation. Match these with sincere social brain communication that says “sorry” and “I’m listening”. This will quickly fix the feelings underneath and rebuild the bridge of social contact.

You’ll never go wrong when you listen and apologize.

Build bridges of trust rather than walls of distrust.

Aim for good ‘FEELINGS UNDERNEATH’.

The transmission of good intentions through your social brain are your best bet at a good impact.

Take Care

Dr Christian Heim

[i] Senju, Atsushi, and Mark H. Johnson. "The eye contact effect: mechanisms and development." Trends in cognitive sciences 13.3 (2009): 127-134.

[ii] Adolphs, Ralph. "The social brain: neural basis of social knowledge." Annual review of psychology 60 (2009): 693-716.