What Did I Think That Look Meant?
1 — THE EXPERIENCE
Someone’s face.
2 — THE FIRST EXPLANATION
“I’ve done something wrong.”
3 — SOMETHING DOESN’T QUITE ADD UP
Someone’s facial expression doesn’t tell you what they intended.
Sensory information gives your brain evidence.
Your brain still has to infer what that evidence means.
4 — INVESTIGATE
Pause before deciding what the look meant.
- What actually happened?
- What did you experience?
- What did you experience it as meaning?
- What did you already know or expect?
- What was happening in your body?
- What else could explain it?
5 — UNDERSTAND
Your brain predicts.
Your body provides sensory information.
Your past provides learned possibilities.
Language helps categorise what is happening.
Context matters.
Affect contributes information about bodily state.
The brain constructs an experience that makes sense of what’s happening.
6 — EXPERIENCE
Separate what you observed from what you inferred.
What could I discover rather than merely think differently about?
7 — UPDATE
What do you know now that you didn’t know then?
What might your brain have available to predict differently next time?
What will you investigate next?
One experience. One investigation. A different possibility.