For the first time her standard motivations failed her and it broke her heart. Screaming at them, crying in front of them, and labeling them Off-The-Wall  did not produce a nomination for Teacher of the Year.

Four weird (proven) approaches from Dr. John A. Bargh, Yale psychologist. Google: appearing in the journal, Science May, '07.

Priming The Nonconscious

a) if you want to influence and persuade strangers, first put them in a position to help you. Humanize your relationship by having them do something for a stranger (you); another successful strategy is where you do something for the stranger.

Ask someone to hold your cup of coffee because your hands are full is a personal act. And when they do it, you are a  stranger no longer. When you hand a child a single M&M, bring a cup of java to an adult, or request a tall child to reach up for the wall map, you have triggered the Law of Reciprocity.

One of you owes a debt that must be repaid. You are in a personal relationship.

b) spray an aerosol shot of cleaning liquid in the air. After ten minutes a faint tang remains accessible to their olfactory sense. Notice how the students become neater about their space. Neatness converts to organized thinking and long-term memory. All it takes is a smell and they are motivated.

c) place a briefcase on your desktop visible to the class. This simple act is a symbol available to prime their nonconscious mind to compete with their peers.

When a visual object subconsciously primes you, you are motivated to learn and remember, not play.

d) print the words Dependable and Support off to the side of the blackboard, and as a flyer on the bulletin board. Request the class to write the words Dependable and Support as just two words in a long sentence. See how many ways you can repeat these two power-commands in the next fifteen minutes.

You are influencing and priming their nonconscious mind to get their act together and act coherently.

A. Einstein said of Quantum Physics, It is subtle, not malicious, and He does not play dice with the universe.

Prime their Unconscious.

Wanna Know Something About How Their Brains Work? When students are feeling good about themselves, they daydream mental movies as heros/heroines, with their eyes opened. Their mood becomes enthusiastic, empowered, bubbling and laughing. Guess what? They are in a learning mode.

The PreFrontal Cortex (PFC) modulates learning and memory, planning and organizing, and our positive and negative emotions. It is in charge of our Executive functions and works from the Top-Down.

We have two PFCs, one on left (language, reasoning) hemisphere, which produces positive emotions. The other PFC is located on the right (pattern recognition and mental imagery) hemisphere; it produces negative emotions.

Students who are daydreaming mental movies of negativity, become stressed, and feel angry, panic and fear. You guessed it, they are not in a learning and long-term memory mode.

How Do You Know

One of the leading scientists on the affect of emotions is Dr. Richard J. Davidson, University of Wisconsin-Madison. When the environment is filled with pictures showing people with negative emotions, there is a pronounced change in mood.

Scientific research measuring the Startle Reflex, facial expressions, and the eye pupils, produce reports from students of personal anxiety, fear and feelings of danger.

Testing ninety students using fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imagery), those with left-brained activation on one side, and right-brainers on the other, described their mental dispositions using opposite emotional words.

Left-brainers operate with a sense of pride, self-esteem, and are expectant of succeeding. The right-brainers exhibit low self-esteem, are scared, and expect to fail.

Amygdala Responses

Pictures around your room, the content of reading text, and the outward emotional attitudes (smiling, frowning) surrounding them, can be controlled.

Just as we know long-term memories require the laying down, encoding and firing of the neurons of the hippocampus, the amygdala modulates negative emotions that give rise to fear and anxiety.

Are you surprised to know students daydream almost 40% of the day, and it is not about learning?

The right hemisphere is involved in the Fight-or-Flight Syndrome, activates the Sympathetic Nervous system, activating adrenalin and acetylcholine, and balancing human emotional responses.

Left PFC active students have the ability to inhibit the negative responses of their right PFC. These students are more Adaptive to their own feelings and environment. Their brain is not hi-jacked by the amygdala into a fit of negativity.

It is their brain that learns, but your choices can help inhibit anti-social behaviors and help you teach.

Endwords

The prefrontal cortex plays a crucial role, leading to a chain-reaction through critical-mass (like a Hydrogen bomb) based on personal emotional control.

Students must discover their ability to adapt their PFC to the classroom experience if they are to succeed in the Knowledge Economy.

Would you agree, Where you are now is more important than How you got here? Balancing our emotions is the key to solving our problems, it helps us overcome the problems we face.

Psychologists who produce positive change suggest, beliefs are a group of associated emotional states. Change the beliefs by changing the mental movies which produce the feelings.

Can you imagine reading three (3) books, articles and reports, and doubling (2x) your long-term memory, in the time others can hardly finish one?

Tell me, is that a competitive advantage for students in school and in their career? Ask us how.

See ya,

copyright 2007

H. Bernard Wechsler
www.speedlearning.org
email: hbw@speedlearning.org

Published August 16, 2007