Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes by Maria Konnikova Page B

in terms of actual behavior. How our brains jump to conclusions is not how we are destined to act. Ultimately, our behavior is ours to control—if only we want to do so.
    What happened when you saw Joe Stranger at the cocktail party is the exact same thing that happens even to someone as adept at observation as Mr. Sherlock Holmes. But just like the doctors who have learned over time to judge based on certain symptoms and disregard others as irrelevant, Holmes has learned to filter his brain’s instincts into those that should and those that should not play into his assessment of an unknown individual.
    What enables Holmes to do this? To observe the process in action, let’s revisit that initial encounter in The Sign of Four , when Mary Morstan, the mysterious lady caller, first makes her appearance. Do the two mensee Mary in the same light? Not at all. The first thing Watson notices is the lady’s appearance. She is, he remarks, a rather attractive woman. Irrelevant, counters Holmes. “It is of the first importance not to allow your judgment to be biased by personal qualities,” he explains. “A client is to me a mere unit, a factor in a problem. The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning. I assure you that the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three children for their insurance-money, and the most repellent man of my acquaintance is a philanthropist who has spent nearly a quarter of a million upon the London poor.”
    But Watson won’t have it. “In this case, however—” he interrupts.
    Holmes shakes his head. “I never make exceptions. An exception disproves the rule.”
    Holmes’s point is clear enough. It’s not that you won’t experience emotion. Nor are you likely to be able to suspend the impressions that form almost automatically in your mind. (Of Miss Morstan, he remarks, “I think she is one of the most charming young ladies I ever met”—as high a compliment from Holmes as they come.) But you don’t have to let those impressions get in the way of objective reasoning. (“But love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things,” Holmes immediately adds to his acknowledgment of Mary’s charm.) You can recognize their presence, and then consciously cast them aside. You can acknowledge that Jane reminds you of your high school frenemy, and then move past it. That emotional luggage doesn’t matter nearly as much as you may think it does. And never think that something is an exception. It’s not.
    But oh how difficult it can be to apply either of these principles—the discounting of emotion or the need to never make exceptions, no matter how much you may want to—in reality. Watson desperately wants to believe the best about the woman who so captivates him, and to attribute anything unfavorable about her to less-than-favorable circumstances. His undisciplined mind proceeds to violate each of Holmes’s rules for proper reasoning and perception: from making an exception, to allowing in emotion, to failing altogether to attain that cold impartiality that Holmes makes his mantra.
    From the very start, Watson is predisposed to think well of theirguest. After all, he is already in a relaxed, happy mood, bantering in typical fashion with his detective flatmate. And rightly or wrongly, that mood will spill over into his judgment. It’s called the affect heuristic: how we feel is how we think. A happy and relaxed state makes for a more accepting and less guarded worldview. Before Watson even knows that someone is soon to arrive, he is already set to like the visitor.
    And once the visitor enters? It’s just like that party. When we see a stranger, our mind experiences a predictable pattern of activation, which has been predetermined by our past experiences and our current goals—which includes our motivation—and state of being. When Miss Mary Morstan enters 221B Baker Street, Watson sees,