The Question Is Not IF, but HOW?

Indulge me. Mrs. L talked about this Family Home Evening, but I wanted to present my thoughts on it as well.

Below are 10 groups of five words each. No, these aren't Yoda quotes.

It is possible with each group to form at least one four-word sentence. Look at the words quickly, and then mentally juggle them around until you have a sentence that makes sense, with one word left over, right? So, go ahead, take a minute, and form a sentence with each of the 10 groups.

• Him was worried she forever
• From are Florida oranges temperature
• Ball the throw toss slowly
• Shoes give replace old the
• He observeses occasionally people watches
• Be will sweat lonely they
• Sky the seamless gray is
• Should now withdraw forgetful we
• Us bingo sing play let
• Sunlight makes temperature wrinkle raisins

Wasn't that fun? Do you feel all mentally nimble now for having exercised your beautiful mind?

Except, whatever you think you feel after doing it, your behavior would demonstrate something very specific; you would act older. That sentence-construction activity hides what Malcolm Gladwell in "BLINK: The Power of Thinking without Thinking" calls a priming exercise. Peppered throughout are words alluding to old age. "Gray". "Florida". "Old". "Forgetful". Don't be irritated at the duplicity, there is a purpose to such an exercise. It helps measure what kind of effect we can exert on our unconcious selves.

Consider a study done with this kind of priming exercise. Subjects were brought, one at a time, into a room with a similar list of five-word groupings, and asked to time themselves creating four-word sentences. One half were "primed" with words with aggressive connotations, the other half with patient ones. They were instructed, when they'd completed the sentence exercise, to leave the room, go down the hall, and tell the professor they were finished.

Now here was the actual measurement. The professor was in his office, but a conspirator was in the doorway, talking to the professor, blocking access. What was actually measured was how long the subject would take before interrupting the conversation. It was thought the difference would be minimal; they joked of making sure their timers could distinguish into the hundredths of a second. After, all, it was New York City, how different could the measurements be?

The results were staggering; 82% of the volunteers who had been primed to be polite NEVER interrupted at all.

If you tend, like me, to be dubious, it might be tempting to write off such a test result as an aberration. Or perhaps you are suffering from sympathy irritation? Rassin frassin psychologists, always trying to trick those poor undergrad students. Who wants to be brainwashed into behaving politely anyway?

Fair concerns, but if that's what you are thinking, you are missing the point. Look at how profoundly behavior is influenced ... by what is essentially background noise. The stuff we behold and consume, with our eyes and ears. Do you understand that environment can have such a polarizing effect on how we act?

Another experiment in the book takes two groups of students to answer 42 demanding questions from Trivial Pursuit. Half were asked to take 5 minutes to think beforehand about what it would mean to be a professor and write down everything that came to mind. Those students got 55.6% of questions right. The other half of the studnest were asked to first sit and think about soccer hooligans. They ended up with 42.6% right.

That's a 13% difference, with no other factor involved except their primed thoughts.

So, the question I had while reading this, was how do I prime my thoughts? I feel fantasically ahead of the game, of course, because Mrs. L does such a fantastic job of priming our home for me. I am surrounded by uplifting words.



I know that puts me at great advantage, but I am sure that is not enough. Our thoughts, the music we listen to, the books we read. All prime us for something. If you knew that taking five minutes before a test to ponder the ideal academic, if that five minutes meant you were going to do 5, 10, or 15% better on the test, what kind of an idiot wouldn't take that opportunity? How different would you be if you took five minutes to ponder the ideal parent, the ideal sibling, before getting off of your knees after morning prayer?

How differently would you treat the people you encounter during your daily living if you primed yourself with the scriptures in the morning?

We live in a time of unparralled freedom, our choices bordering on the infinite. How are you using that great freedom to control your environment?