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Saturday, February 14, 2009

Distorted Mind


Our perception of how mentally sharp we are has more to do with how we're feeling emotionally than how our cognitive functions are actually working.

In other words when someone says, 'I think my memory has become much worse recently', research suggests that this tells us almost nothing about how their memory is working, but reliably indicates that their mood has been low.

It's quite amazing to think that we have such poor insight into the functioning of our own minds that we 'mistake' low mood for a bad memory, poor concentration or impaired problem solving.

It seems that our ability to have insight into our own mental functioning is not very trustworthy.

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