You watch a sad film and get caught up in your emotions. You cry your eyes out at the dramatic plot —you feel sad for the characters if they suffer, or happy for them when they are successful. It is only when the movie is over that you realize that what you were watching is not real.
But why couldn’t you accept that when you were so absorbed in the movie? It was reported in Science Daily this week that scientists at Case Western Reserve University, US, discovered that people simply cannot think emotionally and logically at the same time.
It has long been known that something different goes on in our brain when we use logic, rather than responding to something emotionally. Thinking logically is a step-by-step process, in which people make decisions through reasoning and find answers rationally. When we think emotionally or empathize (有同感) we look at things from someone else’s point of view and try to feel their pain.
Now scientists have found that thinking logically and emotionally are like the two ends of a seesaw (跷跷板)— when we’re busy empathizing, the part of the brain used for cold-hard analysis is suppressed (抑制). And it’s also true the other way round.
To come to this conclusion, scientists gathered 45 people — men and women — to take brain scans as they solved different kinds of puzzles. Some of the puzzles were tough and involved math and physics and others were social problems that required participants to put themselves in other people’s shoes.
Scientists found that when participants were doing a math problem, the region in their brain that is associated with logical thinking lit up, and when asked to make emotional decisions, the region for emotional thinking lit up. But the most interesting part is that when asked to solve problems that required both logical and emotional responses, the participants always used one of the regions at a time while the other one went dark.
“Empathetic and analytic thinking are... mutually (相互之间地) exclusive (排斥的)in the brain,” said Anthony Jack, leader of the study. “You don’t have to favor one, but cycle efficiently between them, and employ the right network at the right time.”
However, people sometimes ended up using the wrong one. This explains why some people are good at solving complex math problems but have poor social skills. And why even the smartest people get taken in by fake but touching stories.
【小题1】Why does the author mention watching movies at the beginning of the article?| A．To show that we are easily moved by things that are not real. |
| B．To show that sometimes we only use emotional thinking. |
| C．To prove that emotional thinking is powerful. |
| D．To introduce the research based on this kind of experiences. |
| A．logical thinking works differently from emotional thinking |
| B．logical thinking and emotional thinking take turns to function independently |
| C．logical thinking is much more efficient than emotional thinking |
| D．logical thinking and emotional thinking could work together |
| A．people have to frequently switch between different types of thinking |
| B．adopting the wrong thinking mode could have bad results |
| C．people could only either have excellent logical thinking or emotional thinking |
| D．people who think logically could easily be controlled |
