The centipede's dilemma: what it is and what does it tell us about human thought

Concentration is an ally to do things well, an indisputable truth, or is it not? Are there situations where paying attention to what we do can be a disadvantage? Can more concentration be synonymous with worse performance?

Well it turns out that it can be. In the most automated tasks, it happens that, if we stop to think what steps we follow or each small action we do, it may be the case that we lose our rhythm, that we do something wrong that we have done hundreds and hundreds of times.

This idea is what we find in the centipede's dilemma, a curious and counterintuitive situation Before which, if we delve into it, we find all the meaning of it. If you want to discover why it is given, we invite you to continue reading.

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What is the centipede dilemma?

The centipede's dilemma, also called Humphrey's law or task hyper-reflection, is a curious principle that shows that, sometimes mindfulness isn't always positive. The author of this law was the psychologist George Humphrey (1889-1966) in 1923, exposing it in his work “The Story of Man’s Mind” (

The history of the human mind). This dilemma suggests that conscious attention to a task that is usually performed automatically can make it difficult to perform.

Humphrey's Law states that if a person has acquired enough skill to do something automatically, simply stopping at Thinking about it, what steps to follow or what are the specific actions and movements involved in the task, ends up impairing execution.

The reason why this idea is also known as the centipede dilemma is directly related to the way these myriapods walk. To formulate his law, Humphrey was inspired by a very popular poem in the early 20th century, which spoke precisely of a centipede:

A centipede walked happily

Until a mocking toad

He said: "Tell me, in what order do you move your legs?"

He filled her with doubts to such an extent

That he fell exhausted on the road

Not knowing how to run.

Upon learning of this poem, the authorship of which is disputed and attributed to Katherine Craster (1841–1874), Humphrey raised the reflection that no person skilled in his profession needs constant or full attention in routine tasks. If he paid attention, surely his work would go to waste.

This same reflection was taken up by several contemporary psychologists and philosophers of George Humphrey. Among the most interesting intellectuals we find the psychoanalyst Theo L. Dorpat who went one step further and spoke that for a centipede the following question could be fatal: What happens to your thirty-fourth left foot?

The philosopher's reflection is also noteworthy Karl Popper, who cited the centipede dilemma in his book "The body and mind: unpublished writings about knowledge and the body-mind problem." In it he commented that, when we have learned certain movements to the point that they are unconscious, trying to do them consciously interferes with them so seriously that we end up stopping.

Popper gave as an example of this curious phenomenon a real case that happened to the violinist Adolf Busch who, when his professional colleague Bronisław Huberman asked him how to play a passage from Beethoven's Violin Concerto, Huberman replied that it was quite simple. However, when trying to demonstrate it to him he discovered that, suddenly, he was no longer able to execute it with the same precision, speed and grace that he when he did it without thinking about it.

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Humphrey's Law and Conscious Thinking

The idea of ​​the centipede dilemma sounds somewhat shocking and contradictory. How can it be that paying more attention to what we do makes work difficult? We understand that paying more attention to something is increasing the number of mental resources oriented towards that, with which, shouldn't we do the task better? How do you explain that more concentration causes worse performance?

In this life, not everything is black and white, and this can also be observed in the functioning of our executive skills and other cognitive functions. Our brain is a very complex organ, about which we still have a lot to know. Although its premise may seem counterintuitive, the truth is that Humphrey's law has allowed us to better understand the human mind.

It is true that paying more attention to how we do a task usually implies better performance. Nevertheless, skills reach their maximum sophistication and perfection when it reaches the point that they are done unconsciously, without realizing it, something that we can see in tasks as complex but at the same time as automated as driving or writing.

Based on this, the existence of a pyramid of skills has been proposed that would follow the following order:

1. Unconscious incompetence

Unconscious incompetence is the point at which you do not know how to do a certain task nor do you know that you do not know.

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2. Conscious incompetence

Conscious incompetence occurs when it is discovered that you do not know how to do a task, that is, there is ignorance about how to do something but you are aware of it. It is at this time that the learning process would begin.

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3. Conscious competition

Conscious competition takes place when you learn to do something and you are aware that you have learned.

4. Unconscious competence

Finally, we come to the unconscious competition phase. This is the highest point in the pyramid, well being able to call it mastery or mastery of a certain skill. It is the ability to do something well done without thinking too much about what is being done.

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The break in Humphrey's law

The centipede's dilemma or Humphrey's law it would be applied at the moment of having reached the level of unconscious competence, that is, when the person is able to do something without thinking too much about it. The moment they interrupt her and ask her to think and tell us in every step she takes while carries out a certain task or skill, that is when it becomes clumsier, it costs more to do that.

We can see this in a person who knows how to type quickly with the computer keyboard. He has reached the level of mastery in typing when he no longer has to stare at the keyboard to make sure which key you are pressing, it has all of them well memorized and located on the space. However, if we interrupt you and ask you to type exactly one "w", for example, your response time will probably skyrocket or even make a mistake.

And not only in computers, but also in the simplest and most everyday tasks such as tying shoelaces, unlocking a mobile phone, tying a tie or cooking. If we are doing any task that we master and that involves following several steps, in case they ask us which ones are due continue it is quite likely that we will become a bit blank, that we do not know how to continue or, even, we will have to start again from new.

It should be said that Interruption is not necessarily a bad thing, nor does it have to hurt performance all the time. We can understand this in cases where something has been learned incorrectly, situations in which it is It is necessary to break the automation and generate the error to restart the whole process and relearn, this time in the correct.