Implementation Intentions and the Modular Mind

In the last blog entry, we looked at Implementation Intentions, developed by Professor Peter Gollwitzer in the early 1990s, and how this technique might help our financial wellbeing. It’s important to read that post first, as it acts as a necessary introduction to this essay. You can read it here,

In this post, we’ll look at a theory of mind that may enhance our thinking about Implementation Intentions and help us to gain extra benefit. This is the theory of the modular mind.

The notion of the modular mind has played a large part in the thinking of cognitive scientists since J. A. Fodor published his ground breaking book, The Modularity Of Mind, in 1983. Fodor’s work has been notably expanded by (Nichols and Stich, 2003), Carruthers (2006) and (Mercier and Sperber, 2017).

The basic idea is that most of our unconscious functioning operates very differently to conscious reasoning, where we can pull in vast amounts of remembered knowledge and deductively process this knowledge to come to any decision.  Rather, the unconscious mind is broken up into a great number of dedicated reflex actions. Fodor imagines each reflex action as a closed off module, with an input, a function, and an output. Fodor himself gives a very vivid example of what he means,

The informational encapsulation of the input systems is, or so I shall argue, the essence of their modularity. It is also the essence of the analogy between the input systems and reflexes; reflexes are informationally encapsulated with bells on. Suppose that you and I have known each other for many a long year (we were boys together, say) and you have come fully to appreciate the excellence of my character. In particular, you have come to know perfectly well that under no conceivable circumstances would I stick my finger in your eye. Suppose that this belief of yours is both explicit and deeply felt. You would, in fact, go to the wall for it. Still, if I jab my finger near enough to your eyes, and fast enough, you’ll blink. To say, as we did above, that the blink reflex is mandatory is to say, inter alia, that it has no access to what you know about my character or, for that matter, to any other of your beliefs, utilities and expectations. For this reason, the blink reflex is often produced when sober reflection would show it to be uncalled for; like panther-spotting, it is prepared to trade false positives for speed. That is what it is like for a psychological system to be informationally encapsulated. If you now imagine a system that is informationally encapsulated in the way that reflexes are, but also computational in a way that reflexes are not, you will have some idea of what I’m proposing that input systems are like. (Fodor, 1983).

It’s the same thing when you’re driving and you see a red light. Your foot is already moving towards the break before your conscious mind even registers that you’ve seen the red light. A module has been created in your unconscious which links an input, “See Red Light,” to an output, “Put Foot On Break.” There’s no reasoning here. The conscious mind can intervene to reverse the reaction, but it will not be able to stop the reaction being initiated, once that module is in place. A key aspect of modularity is this being closed off to the conscious mind and to other modules. Any openness would slow down the reaction – make it hesitant.

Pavlov’s Dog is a famous example of this kind of module formation. During the 1890s, Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov would ring a bell and then feed his dog. After a while, the dog would salivate only on hearing the bell. No food had to be produced. The link between the sound of the bell and the physical response of salivation had been made, i.e. “Bell – Salivation,” had become a module. There was no thought of, “I hear a bell, therefore food must be coming.” That’s how the conscious mind works, and it’s far too slow and inefficient for many situations.

Of course, sports players and musicians have always made use of such modules. The conscious mind would be far too slow and cumbersome in a game of tennis. If you want to get a good player to play badly, just ask them to explain what they’re doing. A famous example of what we’re talking about was when chess master, Gary Kasparov, played against an IBM supercomputer called Deep Blue in 1996. Kasparov won. During the match, scientists measured Kasparov’s temperature and heartbeat. For the whole duration of the match, his temperature and heartbeat did not vary from the normal range. Meanwhile, the supercomputer had to be cooled by industrial fans. While Deep Blue had to go through thousands of possibilities before each move, Kasparov played from the unconscious, using modules that he had built up from childhood. All he had to do was see how the chess pieces were arranged on the board and the next move automatically came into his mind. Somewhere back in his youth he had already created a module connecting that arrangement with the next move he was about to play. He needed to expend very little energy to know what that next move would be, and his conscious mind didn’t get in the way.

Carruthers (2006) takes this idea even further. He sees unconscious desire formation also having a modular structure. When we see something we want – we want it immediately. We don’t have to weigh up the pros and cons and come to a rational decision about whether we find it desirable or not. Our conscious mind wouldn’t be able to stop us desiring it, even if it wanted to. Carruthers goes into detail on this topic, but for our purposes we can say that it’s possible to create unconscious desire modules – and even replace existing desire modules that we may wish to replace. And we saw this in action where Implementation Intention statements were used to shift the desire of dieters from unhealthy foods to healthy foods. We can say that those dieters where creating a module in their unconscious minds, which shifted a desire for unhealthy food to a desire for healthy food.

It’s clear that intention is a very powerful force, which can greatly speed up the creation of unconscious modules. Indeed, intention seems to be at the heart of all learning. There is considerable evidence that human beings are hardwired to pay attention to the intention of others. Carruthers reviews the literature:

By around the age of eighteen months, human infants will copy actions by imitating the agent’s intention. Thus if infants see an adult trying to pull apart two components of an unfamiliar object, then they will replicate the target action themselves, irrespective of whether or not the adult ever succeeds (Meltzoff, 1995). And when infants watch two sequences of action with interesting results, one of which is signalled as intentional (by the actor saying, `There!’ on completing it) but the other of which is signalled as accidental (by the actor saying, `Oops!’), they are much more likely to imitate the former (Carpenter et al., 1998).

The famous “mirror neurons” seem to be central to this process of directing our attention onto actions carried out with intention. Neurologists, such as Professor V.S. Ramachandran, have linked mirror neurons with our ability to feel emotional empathy with other living beings. It’s clear that without this emotional empathy we would never feel any desire to learn anything. Indeed, we would never feel any desire at all, other than the instincts to feed and reproduce. In short, when we see an action with intention in others, say a man reaching for a glass of beer, the motor neurons that drove that action in the man’s brain are mirrored by the same neurons lighting in our brains. Our brains are effectively simulating the action as if we were doing it. This is interesting from our point of view, as we saw from Gollwitzer’s work that an internal stimulus, such as the temptation to eat chocolate, could be read by the mind as an external environmental stimulus.

The following extract from (Agnati et al., 2013) adds credence to the claim that the imagination can take the place of an external stimulus in the process of Implementation Intentions. They suggest that images in our imagination actually light up the same mirror neurons as if we were seeing another person performing an action with intention – or experiencing an emotion.

As pointed out by (Rizzolatti et al., 2009), the mirror mechanism is located not only in centers that mediate voluntary movements, but also in cortical areas that mediate visceromotor, emotion related behaviors. For instance, when a subject observes emotions in others caused by disgusting stimuli or stimuli representing pain, the cingulate cortex and the insula are activated; notably, the same areas are activated also when the subject herself experiences pain or disgust. In other words, the anterior insula and adjacent frontal operculum (IFO) activate when individuals view or become aware of the delight, pain, or disgust of others, as when they experience these emotions first-hand, and this activation is modulated by individual empathic tendencies. In agreement with these findings, IFO lesions disrupt experience and recognition of disgust, suggesting a role for this region in emotional simulation/understanding (Jabbi et al., 2008). Both feeling emotions and recognizing emotions in others appear to be mediated by an integrative mechanism involving at least at a certain extent a common neural substrate. In other words, the translation of a second-person observed behavior into a meaningful first-person percept employs to a great extent the same neural substrates which are involved in carrying out that behavior. Extant data (see Molenberghs et al., 2012) suggest that this holds true for motor behavior, visual, and auditory perception as well as for emotions. These findings provide the basis for a more general hypothesis suggesting the existence of Imagery Neuron Systems (INS), that is, of neural systems capable of making representations of objects and feelings of which the subject has no direct experience. It may also be surmised that mirror neurons are part of such a broader system existing in the human brain and likely in the brain of at least great apes. Furthermore, it could be proposed that mirror systems and more generally INS, by reflecting the relevant cues of the environment use an “analog code” that is the most useful code for the task the brain should tackle in that instance, e.g., a motor code in the case of a movement, an emotional code in the case of a feeling.

To put it in the terms of Lacanian psychoanalysis, intention is always the intention of an other – even if that other is a creation of our own imagination – our own self-image. It will also be clear from the above that the more we develop and refine our emotional lives the greater will be our ability to learn. It’s a cliché in the trading world that emotion should be kept out of it, but nothing could be further from the truth. As Aristotle said, there is no understanding without emotional understanding. Modern neuroscience shows that emotions are the way the body predicts the future – and we wouldn’t have survived this long as a species if we hadn’t become quite good at predicting the future. I’ll discuss emotion as a faculty of prediction in another blog post.

We must also develop and refine our empathy with other human beings and with the natural world around us. A lack of empathy actually denotes poor functioning of the mirror neuronal system and a lack of imagination. These systems are not naturally dull, but can become dull through bad work practices. Ray Dalio, one of the world’s top investors, states that “empathy isn’t just a common courtesy but a way of uncovering the truth and fundamental to making improvement.”

Agnati et al propose this block diagram where SUBJECT B becomes a creation of SUBJECT A’s own imagination. (Agnati et al., 2013.)

We know from sportspeople and musicians that modules can be created by repetition, but traders need a shortcut that can get relatively simple, but vital, tasks done effectively. It’s clear that in the building of unconscious modules, five powerful ingredients can be added to repetition to greatly speed up the process.

1. Intention
2. Attention
3. Imagination
4. Emotion
5. Empathy

I think some degree of repetition will still be needed to enforce the desired behaviour, but the better our use of Intention, Attention, Imagination, Emotion and Empathy the less repetition will be needed. We already have the evidence from Professor Gollwitzer and his team than Implementation Intentions work, but I think that thinking in terms of modules enforces the spell we are casting on ourselves. There’s a certain combination of magic and technology that’s very seductive. Let’s read these lines from Professor Gollwitzer again,

Once people start to lay down how they intend to achieve a chosen goal or goal intention, their general cognitive orientation changes in a direction that facilitates goal achievement. In a number of experimental studies, the following distinct features of the cognitive orientation associated with planning were discovered.

First, processing of information that relates to the implementation of the chosen goal is very effective.

Secondly, an overestimation of the desirability of the chosen goal, as well as an illusory positive view of its feasibility, can be observed.

Thirdly, the implemental mind-set is characterized by a certain closed mindedness with respect to irrelevant information.

The implemental mind-set forms a stark contrast to the cognitive orientation associated with deliberating on one’s wishes and desires in an attempt to set priorities. People who are still deliberating are found to be open-minded and they show an impartial and objective analysis of information that relates to the feasibility and desirability of wishes and desires. (Gollwitzer, 1993).

In the first place, a neuronal technology has been constructed in our brains which processes information more effectively than conscious reason could. Secondly, a kind of enchantment has beguiled us. We have come under the spell of our own intention. We overestimate the desirability of our goal as the poet overestimates the beauty of his beloved, or “like the nightingale which becomes intoxicated with the rose in spring time,” as the poet Rumi puts it. We believe that our ability to reach our goal has increased to the point where the goal is within our grasp. And, thirdly, we have built a wall of fire around our intention, so that competing desires and temptations cannot change our mind or weaken our determination. We are no longer open minded and impartial onlookers

Writing an Implementation Intention Statement

As I said above, six elements are needed to make an Implementation Intention work, i.e., intention, attention, imagination, emotion, empathy and repetition. You must really intend to perform the behaviour. And, to really intend to do it, it must have a real value for you. As traders, we may be in a trade that has lost all energy and direction but we don’t have the quality of mind to just cut it and get out. We might even be in a trade that’s already invalidated by our own criteria – but we don’t have the emotional robustness to take the loss and get out. We may be missing out on trades because of anxiety – or excessive perfectionism. We may even be failing to know what’s going on in the market – or hanging on to a false analysis long after the evidence has shown us to be wrong. Or, worst of all, we’re overleveraged for the situation we’re actually in. All of these destructive behaviours can be changed.

Apart from working on trading behaviours, I’ve personally used Implementation Intentions to improve my relations with other people. For example, a certain person used to regularly provoke feelings of anger in me. I said to myself, “The next time I feel anger rising in me I’ll give this person a warm smile and say a kind word.” I repeated this intention to another person who knew us both. I was amazed how rapidly our relationship changed. Not only did I stop feeling angry, but the person in question stopped saying and doing provocative things. Our natural human empathy was doing its magic. I decided to try the same method to improve another relationship that had been causing me a lot of grief. I had been on bad terms with a family member for a long time. In truth, I felt very uneasy as soon as he entered the same room as me. Smiling and saying kind words was a bit of a leap in this case – I think he would have taken that as a form of aggression. But, I said to myself, “The next time he enters the room I’ll silently feel compassion and kindness towards him.” It was a bit of a struggle at first, but soon I found myself feeling positive towards this person without even thinking of it. Not long after I could feel that the person in question was beginning to respond in kind. The ice was starting to melt. Now we have a much improved relationship.

There’s no fixed way to compose an Implementation Intention, but we humans react well to ritual. When we create a ritual, we are telling ourselves that what we are doing is important. Here is a suggestion of how you might go about such a ritual.

1. Sit quietly by yourself. If you’ve ever practiced meditation, then use what you’ve learned. Try to bring your mind to a calm neutral state. Imagine you are floating in a galaxy of neurons. Allow your mind to marvel at the vastness of this internal universe. Its spellbinding beauty as tens of billions of neurons light up and then fade back into the stellar darkness as they send electric currents down synaptic pathways. Now, you have opened a space for your intention to become manifest.
2. Gently allow your intention to come into view of the mind’s eye. Hold your intention as something very dear to you. Allow your mind to draw in impressions and words. Make associations freely.
3. Allow a full sentence to form. The sentence will contain the time and the place and the how of your action. Say the sentence to yourself with conviction.
4. Imagine yourself carrying out the action. Step by step. Think about how you will feel when you are carrying out the action. You have now decided to implement this intention. There is no turning back. The circle is closed.
5. If possible, repeat your intention to a friend and this will give further closure.

Bibliography

Carpenter, Malinda, et al. “Social Cognition, Joint Attention, and Communicative Competence from 9 to 15 Months of Age.” Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, vol. 63, no. 4, 1998, pp. i-174.

Carruthers, P. (2006). The Case for Massively Modular Models of Mind. Blackwell Publishing.

Fodor, Jerry A. (1983). Modularity of Mind: An Essay on Faculty Psychology. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Gollwitzer, Peter M. Goal Achievement: The Role of Intentions. European Review of Social Psychology. 4(1):141–185.

Mercier, H., & Sperber, D. (2017). The Enigma of Reason. Harvard University Press.

Meltzoff, A. N. (1995). Understanding the intentions of others: Re-enactment of intended acts by 18-month-old children. Developmental Psychology, 31(5), 838–850.

Nichols, Shaun., & Stich, Stephen. (2003) Mindreading. Oxford University Press.

Romero-Fernandez, W., Borroto-Escuela, D. O., Agnati, L. F., & Fuxe, K. (2013). Evidence for the existence of dopamine d2-oxytocin receptor heteromers in the ventral and dorsal striatum with facilitatory receptor-receptor interactions. Molecular Psychiatry, 18(8), 849–855.