Contextualizing Psychophysical parallelism in modern world

Wilhelm Wundt is recognized as one of the founding fathers of Psychology and is known for his work in the area of experimental psychology. He was perhaps the first individual to call himself a Psychologist. One of his famous theory was that of Psychophysical parallelism which says that mental and bodily events happen simultaneously, but without any causal interaction between them.

Let’s consider an example of a person lifting a heavy weight. According to psychophysical parallelism, the mental experience of deciding to lift the weight and the physical action of lifting it occur simultaneously, but they don’t directly cause each other. Let us look at another example from the workplace where a team is involved in a decision making process. The team is discussing a new business proposal and they are sitting, having coffee and understanding the pros and cons. While they are mentally processing the information available, there is a body movement of sipping the coffee as well. The body movements will further change and one individual would nod if she likes the proposal and would smile and show signs of acceptance while the people who do not like it would show different facial expressions and maybe frown at the proposal. This is all happening simultaneously. Hence what Wundt was saying is that in any aspect of life, this keeps happening.

How is it important for this modern world we live in? Well, when it comes to understanding body language and communication, this helps in organizations' understanding in many ways, whether it is in designing apps for phones or rolling out new policies and or even checking in with mental health of employees in remote meetings.

This is a deeply interesting area and if you would like to know more and how it can either help you or your organizations, in terms of creating an effective communication or well-being strategy, I can help.

I am also involved with The Rectangle Institute, an initiative of Rectangle Consulting in providing online Post Graduate Credentials in Psychology - with majors in Organizational as well as Positive Psychology where learners learn these concepts in details.

#psychology #Psychophysicalparallelism #communication