Do you find that new colleague insufferable, but the rest run away with him? That’s how | Chantal van der Leest

Before I can make my own breakfast, I have to throw treats for the cat. He chases after the kibble like an idiot. If they come to lie just behind a chair leg or under a cupboard, he stalks them as if they are mice. His head close to the ground, his hindquarters swinging hard.

I sometimes secretly don’t throw a kibble to tease him. Then he takes a big sprint, but halfway through he realizes that there is no chunk. He looks around in amazement and then stares at me in astonishment.

Stupid beast, I tease him. But he’s not really that stupid. His brains do exactly what ours do: they predict. Even before we see, hear, feel or experience something, our brains have already figured out what that will probably be.

That’s a good thing. Imagine seeing the whole world as new every minute, that would take an enormous amount of energy and time. There are so many sights, sounds, smells, sensations. It is much more efficient for your brain to think about what will probably happen and to tell your senses what to pay attention to.

So we see what we think we are going to see. Just think of those pictures where you a rabbit or a duck can see. Or do we hear what we think we are going to hear, according to maddening audio illusions that you can find on the internet. Google it ‘green needle brainstorm’. If you think you’re going to hear the word ‘brainstorm’, you will. But if you think you’re hearing ‘green needle’, you clearly hear that. It looks like someone is changing the sound clip, but in reality it’s your brain expecting to hear something different.

It is therefore not surprising that you sometimes experience exactly the same as someone else and yet experience something completely different. Where you see a new colleague as a young dog with fresh ideas, someone else may see him as an annoying know-it-all and snot. Who’s right? Probably both of you. Your colleague is like the picture of the duck and the rabbit. It’s just what you expect to see.

Want to know more about psychology and work? Read Chantal’s books Why Perfectionists Are Rarely Happy, 13 Tips Against Perfectionism (2021) and Our Fallible Thinking at Work (2018).

Watch all our work and career videos here: