Why is the company named “Lizard Brain?” What is a lizard brain? Are you implying that my EMPLOYEES have lizard brains?
You hear it every now and again. “My lizard brain wants cake.” “Our lizard brain will make us fight.” “My lizard brain turned tail and ran.” It’s a favorite turn-of-phrase of mine, so it’s high time I wrote about what a lizard brain is – and, more importantly, what it’s not.
To put it simply, everyone has a so-called lizard brain. Your lizard brain is the part of your brain that focuses on more primitive parts of your activities, like fleeing from danger, finding food, or passing on your genes. It was named the “lizard brain,” because that’s all a real lizard’s brain is truly focused on.
- When you get hangry, that’s your lizard brain worried that you’re going to starve.
- When you change the way you dress because of someone you like, that’s your lizard brain trying to find a mate.
- When you develop a superhuman jumping ability upon seeing a spider in the shower, that’s your lizard brain.
We like to think of ourselves as highly evolved creatures who make elegant, logically-thought-out decisions, but in reality, our brain is quite primitive, and the world we live in today sort of sprang up around it. We don’t run from predators anymore, but our lizard brain doesn’t know that, and sometimes it acts accordingly.
Here’s the thing about the lizard brain, though – it’s based on science that’s out-of-date and has been largely disproven. The theory for a while was that our brain evolved in stages, and each layer of the more-evolved brain sort of wrapped around the smaller layer of our more primitive brain. This isn’t the case. So, to put it simply, no one has a lizard brain.
That doesn’t mean we can’t use “lizard brain” to talk about human behavior, however. It’s a great way to describe why we do some of the things that we do. Let’s take a look at a learning scenario:
Say I am an employee of a company that is about to switch one of its pieces of software. I struggle a bit with computers, so I’m worried about this change. I have less-than-stellar memories of getting an education, from poor teachers and poor school funding, so I’m really apprehensive about the training they’re going to do. I get to the classroom to be trained on this software, and I sit in the back of the room, because I just want to sort of get through this ordeal as quickly as possible.
As the day progresses, I’m doing okay, I’m following the exercises, but then I hit a snag. Something I’m not getting. I’m trying to do what the trainer is saying, but it just isn’t working. I need help, but I don’t really want to reach out for help, because I don’t want to draw attention to myself – when I did that back in school, I was ridiculed, you see. But then, my buddy, sitting at the computer next to me, leans over, laughs, and says, “What are you DOING? Where ARE you right now?” A couple of other people chuckle, and the trainer sees I’m struggling and starts to come over.
How am I likely to react in this situation? Well, let’s check in with my lizard brain. I’m feeling cornered, which activates a fight-or-flight response, a holdover from when we had to escape predators. My social status is feeling wounded, and my lizard brain wants to protect my social status, because it’s how caveman me would have gotten the best food and the best potential mates. So when the trainer comes over, my lizard brain is going to make what I do next highly unpredictable. I might lash out at someone, I might leave the room, I might try to laugh it off to save face. And even I won’t know what I’m about to do in this situation until I do it. That lizard brain is in control.
The name Lizard Brain Learning comes from the idea that we can’t effectively teach anyone anything until we take care of the lizard brain’s needs first. We need to make sure our learners feel safe making mistakes, we need to make sure we’re not overstimulating them, we even need to make sure our learners are fed! Once we work WITH the lizard brain, instead of pretending we’re the ones driving, learning comes way more easily.