Podcast Summary
Understanding the mind through movie surprises: Movie surprises reveal our mental shortcuts and biases, providing insights into the workings of the mind.
Our love for surprises in movies can reveal insights about the way our minds work in real life. Stories exploit our natural tendency to make inferences and fill in gaps, often catching us off guard with unexpected twists. Cognitive scientists like Vera Tobin argue that these surprises can serve as a kind of "brain scan," revealing our mental shortcuts and biases. By studying how we react to surprise endings in movies, we can gain a better understanding of the contours of the mind. So, the next time you're surprised by a plot twist, remember that it's not just a fun moment in a movie, but an opportunity to learn something new about yourself.
Exploiting gaps in attention and flawed inferences: Magicians and storytellers use retrospective surprise to engage and captivate audiences by exploiting our attention and flawed inferences, leading us to believe one thing and then revealing a surprising twist.
Our perception and attention play a crucial role in how we experience magic tricks and narratives. Magicians exploit gaps in our attention and our tendency to make rapid, flawed inferences, while sophisticated narratives surprise us by making us believe we've been mistaken about what's happening in the story. For instance, in M. Night Shyamalan's "The Sixth Sense," the audience is led to believe one thing about the characters and their interactions, only to have the rug pulled out from under them with a surprising twist. This retrospective surprise, where the tables are turned and our understanding of the story changes, is a powerful tool used by magicians and storytellers alike to engage and captivate their audiences. By studying these tricks and surprises, we can gain valuable insights into the way people think and perceive the world around them.
The Sixth Sense uses cognitive biases to masterfully surprise viewers: The Sixth Sense uses cognitive biases like availability and limited attention to manipulate viewers' perceptions and create a surprising ending
"The Sixth Sense" masterfully employs the surprise ending by leading viewers to focus on one explanation, while subtly planting clues for an alternate, less plausible but ultimately correct, reality. The availability bias, our tendency to consider more familiar scenarios as more likely, plays a role in this misdirection. The film's characters, each with unique perspectives, influence what we attend to, and we often overlook discrepancies between their knowledge. The movie also exploits our limited attention and cognitive biases, such as the mother's absence of acknowledgment of Malcolm Crowe, which goes unnoticed until later. This effective manipulation of our cognitive processes highlights the power of storytelling in shaping our perception and understanding of reality.
The anchoring effect and the curse of knowledge influence our understanding of stories: Our initial assumptions and incomplete information shape our perception of reality and characters in stories, leading to biases in understanding.
Our perception of reality and the actions of characters in a story are heavily influenced by our own assumptions and the information we have, even if it's incomplete or implicit. The mother's failure to notice Malcolm Crow in "The Sixth Sense" is an example of this, as is our assumption that the psychologist has recovered from being shot. This phenomenon, where our initial understanding anchors our interpretation of subsequent information, is known as the anchoring effect. Cognitive scientists call the inability to fully suppress our knowledge of certain things and the resulting influence on our understanding of others the "curse of knowledge." These biases shape how we navigate the world and make sense of stories.
The power of initial understanding or 'anchor': Our initial perception of a situation, even if later proven incorrect, can significantly impact our thinking and prevent us from straying too far from it.
Our initial understanding or "anchor" of a situation, even if it's later proven to be incorrect, can still influence our thinking and prevent us from drifting too far away from it. This concept is often used in storytelling through the use of red herrings and plot twists. For instance, in the movie "The Usual Suspects," the audience is initially introduced to the legend of Kaiser Sose through the narration of a limping criminal named Verbal. Despite later discoveries that challenge this initial understanding, the anchor of Kaiser Sose as a powerful and mysterious criminal continues to influence the audience's perception of the story. This phenomenon is a natural aspect of human cognition and can offer insights into how our minds process information.
The power of narrative perspective: Understanding the role of narrative perspective can help create more engaging and persuasive stories, but also make us more susceptible to manipulation
The perspective of the story's narrator plays a significant role in shaping our understanding and interpretation of events. The more immersive and emotionally engaging a narrative is, the more our critical faculties are put on hold, making us more susceptible to being manipulated by the story's framing and perspective. The plot twist in the discussion, where Verbal was revealed to have spun a story to escape, illustrates this concept. Our beliefs and worldview aligned with Verbal's, making us believe the story was real, despite it being a fabrication. As artists, understanding this dynamic can help create more impactful and persuasive stories.
Manipulating our expectations in stories: Stories cleverly use hindsight bias to create surprising twists, playing fair by dropping clues while tapping into our desire to make sense of the story
Films and stories, including "The Usual Suspects" and "The Sixth Sense," cleverly manipulate our expectations and biases, often taking advantage of our sympathy and preconceptions to create surprising twists. Psychologists call this hindsight bias, where we feel we knew it all along after the fact. These stories play fair with us by dropping clues, but the real magic lies in our own desire to make sense of the story and believe we were in on the secret all along. It's the safe thrill of exploration without the potential negative consequences of real life. The surprise and delight we experience when the pieces come together is a testament to the power of storytelling.
Creating satisfying surprises in stories: Well-crafted surprises in stories provide a satisfying experience by creating a sense of discovery and understanding, making the surprise feel like a meaningful 'aha moment' rather than a random event.
Well-crafted surprises in stories provide a satisfying experience for readers or listeners, as they create a sense of discovery and understanding that connects seemingly disparate events. This is similar to the pleasure derived from solving a puzzle or understanding a complex problem. The role of a story is to construct this insightful experience, making the surprise feel like a meaningful "aha moment" rather than a blindside or a random event. According to cognitive scientist Vera Tobin, this is something humans enjoy and seek out. At Hidden Brain, we strive to bring you such stories, and if you've benefited from our work, please consider supporting us through donations at donate.npr.org/hiddenbrain. Our unsung hero this week is Elbert Lee, who ensures our financial stability.
