One main cause of mindlessness in our lives is our tendency to hold on to previously-formed mindsets. Consider the word mindset for a moment: it very clearly indicates that our mind is, well, set. Whether our mindset is positive or negative, it is inflexible. Ellen Langer states that we become mindless by “forming a mindset when we first encounter something and then clinging to it when we reencounter that same thing (Mindfulness 22).”
Because this type of mindset is formed without much critical thought, Langer calls it a premature cognitive commitment. Sometimes we accept our first impression of something because it seems unnecessary to reflect any further upon it. That impression simply settles in our mind, and without making a conscious decision (mindlessly), we are committed to that view. When the subject comes up again, our perception of it is already colored by our previous experience, rendering us unable to see it differently.
Langer and her colleagues conducted a study in which two groups of participants were told they would be tested for a fictitious disease called chromosynthosis. They were told that the disease was a hearing problem that was similar to colorblindness, in that it was possible to have it and not know it. The two groups were given two different booklets with information about the disease.
One booklet said that 80 percent of the population had chromosynthosis, and asked participants to reflect on what they could do to help themselves if they were determined to have it. The other booklet stated that only 10 percent of the population were affected by the disease, and did not ask participants to reflect on anything. In other words, the first group had much more reason to believe they might have the disease, and were asked to think about it, while the second group went into the test thinking it was unlikely they had the disease, and that the information in their booklet was irrelevant.
The subjects were then asked to listen to two recordings of conversation and mark down the number of “a” sounds they heard on each one. The participants scored their own tests and all of them were revealed to have chromosynthosis. They were then given follow-up tests requiring them to use specific skills that would challenge people who had the disease. The subjects who had previously considered the information in their booklet irrelevant performed worse once they were diagnosed with the disease. The subjects who had considered themselves more at risk of the disease, and therefore considered their booklet more relevant, performed better. Because the disease was not real, presumably both groups of participants should have had an equal chance to do well on a routine hearing test.
The purpose of this study was to see the outcome of a situation in which different groups took in new information in different ways. The group that took in the information in their booklet mindfully, and with reflection, were better able to deal with the challenges of testing. The group that was encouraged not to reflect on the information in their booklet, or to consider it relevant, was much less able to adapt to the follow-up rounds of testing.
One of the scariest examples of this phenomenon is the way in which many people experience social media. Scrolling Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram is something that many of us do mindlessly, while waiting in line at the grocery store or killing time between classes. When we take in information that way, without stopping to think critically about what we we just saw, it can become imprinted in our mind. That article headline or quote from somewhere on the internet can color our future interactions with the subject material. If we’re honest with ourselves, I think most of us can say we have experienced this. Over time, the repetition of this type of experience can lead us down a path toward extreme mental inflexibility, and an inability to critically assess new information as it becomes available to us.
In the realm of music, premature cognitive commitments can be an outgrowth of our insistence on filing music into discreet categories. For example, we label etudes and solos as either “lyrical” or “technical,” as though skill in both areas is not necessary in order to perform any music well. As I found when conducting a survey of college tuba and euphonium teachers during my doctoral degree, there is great disagreement over what constitutes an etude vs. a technical study, or whether there should even be two terms in use at all.
On a more personal level, I know that I have experienced a fixed mindset in my own practice of etudes, solo music, and excerpts. I can attest to the fact that it is very difficult to undo or change the impression I formed of a piece of music upon first hearing or playing it. This is one reason why I do not usually recommend that students begin learning orchestral or band excerpts until they have reached a certain level of proficiency and musical maturity. A tubist will play the Meistersinger excerpt thousands of times over their career, and if their first experience of it is at a young age, then elements of their own underdeveloped technique and musicianship will become encoded into their performance of the excerpt as habit. Those habits will then become much harder to change than if the player approached the excerpt with more experience.
I see now that the exact age of the player is not the determining factor in whether they will be able to update their performance of a piece of music as they develop. It is the mindfulness that the player employs, both in their first experience of the music and in their subsequent experiences, that allows for long-term flexibility. Langer’s advice is simple: question everything, all the time.
Like the mindlessness that comes from repetition of daily routines, predetermined cognitive commitments are an unavoidable side effect of being human. It is incredibly difficult to take in new information mindfully 100 percent of the time. That said, we can certainly remind ourselves to reassess our ideas about the music we play on a regular basis. Regular sight-reading and improvisation, both of which require constant musical decision-making, will also encourage a flexible rather than fixed mindset. In fact, I’m beginning to think that we need an entirely new word to describe our mental approach to music: perhaps the goal should be that our mind should never be “set.”