Dr. Andrew Belaveshkin

  What we “see” is a mixture of two completely different streams of information — a top-down and a bottom-up one. One comes from sensory organs, the other from our expectations — and they can blend in the most bizarre ways. When reality is very bad, when there is neither strength nor desire to engage with it, and there is a desperate longing and expectation for improvement and hope — then we begin to go blind. We stop seeing reality and start seeing our own desires, taking what is wished for as what is real. This self-deception effect is well described in the writings of people who survived concentration camps (both Nazi and Soviet). Prisoners begin to believe that the guards actually sympathize with them and are completely on their side — only secretly. Their brain, like Skinner’s pigeon, begins to interpret the most ordinary gestures and words as hidden codes of support and sympathy. And the cruelty of the guards is interpreted by these prisoners as a form of disgui...

Improvement through destruction. One of the most dangerous and persistent cognitive illusions is the belief that people (organizations, markets, things, books, cities, etc.) can be improved by destroying (humiliating, demolishing, violating, etc.) them. Such views are very characteristic of barbaric primitive thinking, which is currently the most widespread and has a biological nature.   Here are the main components of this illusion: all problems arise from something bad, and you can improve your life simply by destroying it; once you destroy the bad, the good will appear by itself; it takes a lot of effort to destroy the bad, while the good grows easily and quickly.   1. Childish thinking.  According to Jean Piaget, children are egocentric in their perception of the world until a certain age. They think that if something exists in their environment, it must simply be there (like air or the sun). Children under 7 years old (and adult "savages") exhibit magical thinking, i...

  Memory and five kinds of mental garbage. It ensures that we never forget how to ride a bike — a truly wonderful aspect. But it also means we can’t escape the far less pleasant memories: the sting of a shameful failure, the deep roots of ideological indoctrination, learned helplessness, addiction, and our entrenched beliefs and judgments. All this mental debris accumulates over time, making us more rigid, narrow-minded, and less curious. We miss out on opportunities and lose the joys available to us. As Alvin Toffler wisely noted, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”   Throughout our lives, we accumulate significant “mental garbage.” Consider the following: 1. Seligman’s dog or learned helplessness. Like Harlow’s monkeys in the “pit of despair”, we fail to act in situations where we have all the necessary means because past actions were punished or rendered futile. The ...

Three duck rules for mental health. 1. Duck and gaslighting. The duck test (reality check).  This rule sounds like this: "if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it is probably a duck." This rule helps establish a fact based on our direct observations and indirect evidence. Sometimes the rule sounds like "maybe he talks like an idiot (abuser, fascist, manipulator, etc.) and looks like an idiot, behaves like an idiot. But you shouldn't be fooled: he really is an idiot." The duck test helps us trust ourselves and be capable of independent judgment despite verbal manipulations – this is an important skill.  After all, nowadays, the weapon of propaganda, abusers, and criminals is gaslighting. The essence of gaslighting is an attack through denying your conclusions manipulation to undermine the sense of reality and one's own adequacy. It includes  attack (are you in your right mind? Are you sick? What's wrong with you? You are...

Use it or lose it. Much talk about what will happen to our cognitive functions when we delegate them to various technologies. Let’s look at this on a concrete, already well–studied example — GPS navigation and its biological analog — spatial orientation. Knowing where you are in space and building its mental models is one of the most important brain functions for survival. In 2014, scientists received the Nobel Prize for the description of certain types of neurons in the hippocampus, “place” and “grid” neurons (“grid cells” in the entorhinal cortex (next to the hippocampus). Our brain builds mental maps and calculates our routes. The rear part of the right hippocampus tracks changes in the number of available path options, the front pars records changes related to distance calculation. However, we stopped using this skill with the advent of GPS navigation. Brain scans have shown that when we plan a route in imagination, our hippocampus is active, and when using a phone, ...

  How can a turned-off phone be harmful? Yes, this is not a typo)) We all know that smartphone addiction is dangerous for our mental health (increased anxiety, etc.), physical health (sedentary lifestyle), and social health (deterioration of relationships). But it is important to remember that even a turned off phone can have a negative impact on our cognitive abilities and our relationships. Scientists call this the “mere presence effect”. When a phone is within sight (even if it is upside down), it still leads to us expending additional cognitive resources on it (thinking about who might have messaged or liked something, resisting the temptation to check it, etc.). All of this leaves fewer cognitive resources available for other tasks. Therefore, in studies, participants perform worse on tests of learning, memory, and attention when a phone is within sight compared to when a notebook is within sight. When we talk to people, the presence of a phone (even a turned of...

A desire that blinds. A long time ago, the sculptor Pygmalion lived in Cyprus. And he fell so in love with the statue he sculpted that the gods revived it, and later she bore him children, one of whom was the son of Paphos — the legendary founder of the city of Paphos, in which I now live. The Pygmalion effect predominantly manifests the magical thinking characteristic of children and primitive tribes when we believe that the power of our desire will change the real world. Of course, sometimes the power of self-fulfilling prophecy is quite natural, especially concerning matters in which we control and participate. wishful thinking However, applying one’s expectations very often leads to wishful thinking. This is not just a distortion of thinking; it is characteristic of all people because our inner state affects perception and thought. If you are given a heavy backpack, you begin to overestimate the mountain’s steepness. If you are thirsty, you see water bubbling and glistening, even w...