Design Inspiration from Extreme Mental States
As a cognitive designer I am always on the look out for new scientific insights into extreme mental states such as the aesthetic experience, religious beliefs, sudden enlightenment and the like. My hope is that we can use insights into such states to design more cognitive impact into our otherwise mundane services, programs and products.
A recent article, Religious Ideas Burrow into our Brain, tries to unpack the cognitive science of religious belief. The key to their cognitive power lies in the fact that religious beliefs are counter intuitive (concern other worldly entities and events) and yet are strongly endorsed by authority figures such as parents.
This makes good sense to me. Anything with high novelty will catch our attention, anything thing that is novel and otherwise unbelievable (without endorsement or faith) is going to have tremendous cognitive impact. The endorsement or faith resolves the cognitive dissonance associated with holding conflicting beliefs. Both the article, and the book it references, Religion Explain are well worth the read for cognitive designers.
