Hack #42. The Brain Punishes Features that Cry Wolf

The act of focusing on just one object goes hand in hand with actively suppressing everything you have to ignore. This suppression persists across time, in a phenomenon called negative priming.

In the story “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” the young shepherd repeatedly claims a wolf has come to attack his flock. There’s no wolf there. The boy just enjoys seeing all the villagers run up the hill, coming to save him and the sheep. The villagers, naturally, get a bit annoyed at getting panicked and trying to scare off the nonexistent wolf, so when they hear the boy cry, “Wolf!” again in the middle of the night, they don’t bother getting up. But this time there is a wolf. Oh dear. I could say the boy learns his lesson, but he doesn’t: he gets eaten. Morality tale, very sad, etc.

Negative priming is the tiniest psychological root of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” A stimulus, such as a color, a word, a picture, or a sound acts like the cry of “Wolf!” The brain acts as the villagers did, and it has an inhibition to responding to meaningless cries, and this kicks in after only one cry. But nobody gets eaten.

In Action

Negative priming can be picked up only in experiments with careful timing and many trials—it’s a small-scale effect, but it’s been demonstrated in many situations.

Look at the flash card in Figure 3-9, and say what the gray picture is as fast as you can. Speak it out loud.

Figure 3-9. An example negative priming flash card

Now look at Figure 3-10 ...

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