Have you ever thought about thoughts? Sounds hilarious, doesn’t it? No but, really, have you ever? What is the psychology behind thoughts, the simplest and the mysterious of occurrences. According to American Psychologist Edward Chace Tolman – Our thoughts influence our actions and they are necessary to explain overt behavior.

Thoughts; everybody knows them, has them, enjoys a few and hates some, but the psychology behind them is an interesting chunk of thesis , isn’t it? Scientifically to this day, thoughts remain quite a mystery. American philosopher and historian William James said that the contents of these thoughts are the combination of information from our senses, influenced by feelings, perception and past experiences. The production of thoughts is still unclear, the perception of thoughts is an unsolved dilemma of its own, but those are just the start of the ‘stream of thought.’ 

American cognitive scientist Roger Shepard showed that people can manipulate thoughts. The production leads to perception of thoughts which goes on and converts into an emotion which oftentimes encourages a feeling out of the human, and that is the cycle of a single thought which runs in parallel to the ever shifting lanes as the mind hops from one thought to the other linking every one to one of the others. 

Thoughts, presumably are information passed through the millions of neurons in the brain but the nature and manner of perception of the information is wondrous. The information can form a visual image in one’s head but also make them imagine an audio or an odor. It can also involve the human in the imagination wherein the human is a character in this whole other world. Thoughts can alter feelings and moods and give a new perspective to a past memory. Thoughts are the basic building block of a person’s emotions and mental health alike. 

Here is a fun scenario. Imagine being told the sentence, “You’ve done a very fine job” and then just wonder about the various things it could mean and it would be a rather fun realization as to how thoughts can go awry. The way the sentence is spoken can have numerous connotations based on what the listener’s mood is. The listener might approach and perceive a sentence in an optimistic manner or look at it with a pessimistic view, they could infer that the speaker was angry with them or the speaker praised them, but was that praise sarcastic? Those are all thoughts that a listener is left with, did the speaker mean the sentence as a question or not? Of course, the speaker’s enunciation would’ve its impact on what the listener sees in the conversation but the listener’s thoughts branch out far and wide after an open-ended conversation when a speaker says their words and exits the scene. ‘A very fine job’ can be a way of praise, or a taunt or even an angry sentiment being showcased as it is pointing at a mess that was created. Was that a command from the speaker or was the speaker making a wish? The listener’s recent mood affects what he makes of the sentence but so do their past experiences with the speaker, their inference of the tone, the tone which is a language of its own, their inference of the person and of course, an absolute randomness with which their thoughts jump from one point to the other.

The train of thought can be tracked, but it is almost always moving and that is the thing about thoughts: everybody knows them, has them, enjoys a few of them, hates some of them but really just exists on them at the end of the day.

Imagine if we figure out how to harness the power of thoughts! How beautiful will it be if we are able to use both positive and negative thoughts equally to our benefit? So all we have to do instead of dismissing or running away from the negative ones is acknowledge them, investigate them and find the source for us to know our strengths and limitations to work and move forward.

THINK.