The Angel Effect by John Geiger

Author:John Geiger [Geiger, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781443413619
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2013-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

6

TOBY

THE

SWIMMER

EXECUTIVE FUNCTION VERSUS LOW-ROAD EMOTION

THE CRASH OF AIR FRANCE FLIGHT 447 COULD HAVE been averted. That was the conclusion of French investigators in their final report on the air disaster. They described a “profound loss of understanding” by three experienced pilots after alarms sounded when the aircraft entered a major storm system, ice crystals threw off the plane’s sensors, and the autopilot disconnected. The Airbus A330–200 crashed over the Atlantic Ocean on June 1, 2009, killing all 216 passengers and 12 aircrew while on a scheduled flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. One theory is that the pilots’ inability to mentally function in a state of panic caused the crash: “Under pressure, human beings can lose their ability to think clearly and to properly execute their training.”1

Flight-data recorders recovered after the disaster recorded one of the copilots telling the captain, who had taken a break just before the crisis and rushed back into the cockpit: “We totally lost control of the plane. We don’t understand it at all. We’ve tried everything.” In his analysis of the crash, Jeff Wise, who has made a study of the organic basis for fear, explained, “Psychologists who study performance under pressure are well aware of the phenomena of ‘brain-freeze,’ the inability of the human mind to engage in complex reasoning in the grip of intense fear.” Wise states that in the face of a rapidly accelerating calamity, the pilots could not figure out what was happening to the aircraft: “Despite numerous boldfaced clues to the nature of their problem—including a stall warning alarm that blared 75 times—they were simply baffled.”2

Panic seemed to shut down the pilots’ thinking. Fear centers of the brain do not allow for problem solving but instead fall back on a series of instinctive responses. The Air France pilots were unable to recognize even their simplest problem, which turned out to be that one of them had the stick pulled back the whole time, causing the plane to climb into an aerodynamic stall. Their thinking—their capacity to reason—was closing off, leaving only “instinctive behavior.”

One theory for the sensed presence is that it is a byproduct of such a process, activated by extreme stress. In such a situation conflict arises between the brain’s executive function—controlled cognitive processes like reasoning or decision making that people knowingly employ—and automatic emotions that function unconsciously, below the radar, as it were, such as trembling or blanching, a surge of hormones, and emotional associations with past unpleasantries that trigger unconscious actions. In such situations these controlled and automatic brain systems start to vie for supremacy. As the threat intensifies, the body begins to switch off higher functions, leaving the field open for basic survival responses. As Michael Shermer wrote in The Believing Brain: “At high levels of stimulation (as in extreme environmental conditions and physical and mental exhaustion), low-road emotions can so overrun high-road cognitive processes that people can no longer reason their way to a decision; they report feeling ‘out of control’ or ‘acting against their own self-interest.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.