Why is the brain protecting us from change?

Happy New Year to you all. With new year comes new years resolutions and our desire to change so how do we do that? Our resistance to change is deeply rooted in the nature side of the personality equation, and nurture tends to be a secondary factor.

Neuroscience researchers describe how early humans were as dependent on social belonging as the basics of food, shelter and warmth. Standing and acceptance in a group were as critical to survival then as they are today, albeit on a more emotional level nowadays. The famous psychologist Abraham Maslow described this in his seminal Hierarchy of Needs model. When a social environment or a person’s position changes, there is a fight or flight response as their sense of stability and normality are threatened. We are hardwired to react badly to this change because we are driven by chemical reactions (emotions) over cognitive reasoning (thought).

This is how it works:

The storage, transmission, and computing of information in our brains are captured and managed by around a hundred billion neurons (brain cells), all in constant communication with each other. These neurons store and transmit more information than you can ever imagine. This operation happens at lightning speed (quite literally) and subconsciously, without you having to think about the process. Whenever you encounter information, a new pathway is laid, and the more this knowledge is repeated, reinforced and relied upon, the stronger this particular pathway becomes. Likewise, when a child learns new skills, develops better balance, becomes braver in certain situations or reacts faster when someone throws them a ball, it results from practice or repetition, and neural pathways laying down deeper roots. As each skill, reaction or piece of information is reinforced, various neurons from across your brain, each performing different functions, come together or are created to set a behaviour in place as a fixture of your personality and ability.

Visual neurons combine with sensory ones and join forces with motor cortices in grey-walled storage facilities, and you gradually become set in your ways. I like to think of this amazing process as ‘brain training’ because we would be useless at everything without it. If we didn’t lay neural pathways (often called muscle memory, although the muscles have little to do with the memory), we would need to learn to walk each morning anew. Talking would be out of the question as we would have to look up the words first, which would mean going back to A, B and C before we could master even a sentence. We would also fear everything because it would all be new to us – life would be a constant horror story. The more you repeat any behaviour, the less you engage your prefrontal cortex (the cognitive thinking zone) the next time you take the action. This is the area of the brain used for paying attention, decision-making, problem-solving and computing new information. It requires huge amounts of energy to operate the prefrontal cortex, which is why higher functioning activities demanding more concentration can make people tired and more prone to errors or emotions.

It will be no surprise that this part of our brain is where we manage change and entertain new ideas. When someone suggests a new path, presents us with the unexpected, or tells us that “things are going to have to change around here”, it is no wonder we are prone to reacting badly or being defensive. Resistance to change is a natural part of our brain’s inbuilt survival system; in this regard, we are all the same.

Children’s brains are like sponges, soaking up huge amounts of information, absorbing it without filter and rarely rejecting any input. Our birth circumstances, early social influences and behavioural habits become set in place and are very difficult to change later in life. This is why each person is so set in their own ways and proves the point that it is not the change (or the way of doing things) that is the problem, but the management of this change. People resist any significant change to what they know or are used to doing. It is not the innovation, procedure or way of working itself – it is the very idea of change.