Neuroscience of Jumping to Conclusions

The Neuroscience of

Jumping to Conclusions

Why We React Before We Think

And What the Five Players in Your Head Can Do About It

An Essay for Students

By Joseph P. McFadden Sr.

and Claude AI

February 2026

Part of the Building Intuition Before Equations Series

www.McFaddenCAE.com

McFadden@snet.net

Introduction: Why This Matters to You

Have you ever said something you immediately wished you could take back? Fired off a text in anger and regretted it thirty seconds later? Picked an answer on a test because it felt right without really thinking it through? If so, welcome to being human. You are running on hardware that is tens of thousands of years old, and it was not designed for the world you live in.

I have spent years doing root cause analysis, teaching, mentoring, and just paying attention to how people—including myself—make decisions. And what I have found is that we have a persistent problem with jumping to conclusions. Notice I said “we.” This is not about you doing something wrong. It is about all of us carrying a brain that was optimized for a very different world.

Our early human ancestors lived in a hostile environment where snap decisions meant the difference between life and death. That quick judgment system worked brilliantly on the savanna. But today, that same system is what causes us to overreact to a social media post, panic on an exam, or say something hurtful before our brain has finished processing what actually happened.

And here is something worth sitting with. Your phone is essentially an alarm system activation machine. Social media platforms, news apps, group chats, notifications—all of them are engineered to trigger emotional responses. That is not an accident. Engagement is their business model, and nothing drives engagement like activating the alarm system in your brain. Every notification taps the part of your brain that detects threats. Every outrage headline is designed to make your alarm fire before the thinking part of your brain even wakes up. Every algorithm is optimized to serve you content that provokes a reaction, not a response.

That means you are walking around with a device in your pocket that is specifically designed to bypass the thinking part of your brain and go straight to the reacting part. Your ancestors had to walk across the savanna to encounter a threat. You just have to unlock your phone. Understanding this does not mean you have to throw your phone away. But it does mean you should recognize that every time you pick it up, you are stepping onto a battlefield that your ancient alarm system was never built for. And the more you understand that, the better chance the thinking part of your brain has of showing up before you do something you regret.

In this essay, I am going to introduce you to five players who live inside your head. They are regions of your brain, and each one has a job, a personality, and a way of operating that you will recognize the moment you hear it. Once you understand who they are and how they work, you will have a framework for catching yourself before you jump—and before the regret that usually follows.

Part One: Why Your Brain Takes Shortcuts

Picture this. You are an early human walking across an open plain. You see a shape in the distance. Rock or lion?

Your brain has two choices. Choice one: assume lion, feel fear, run. If it was a rock, you wasted some energy. No big deal. Choice two: stop, study the shape carefully, weigh the evidence, decide it is a rock. If you are wrong, you became the lion’s lunch.

Over millions of years, the humans who chose option one—the ones who jumped to conclusions—survived. The careful analyzers? They got eaten. So evolution built your brain with a massive bias toward speed over accuracy. That is not a flaw. That is a feature. It just happens to be a feature designed for a world that no longer exists.

Here is the other thing. Your brain uses about twenty percent of your body’s total energy, even though it is only about two percent of your body weight. For our ancestors, calories were precious. So the brain evolved to be efficient—to take shortcuts, use gut feelings, and pattern match rather than doing the hard work of deep analysis.

So what is pattern matching? It is your brain’s ability to quickly compare what you are experiencing right now to something you have experienced before, and then assume the outcome will be the same. You see a shape, your brain says, “That looks like a thing that hurt me before, so it must be dangerous.” You hear a tone of voice, your brain says, “Last time someone sounded like that, they were angry at me.” It is fast, it is automatic, and it is often wrong—because it skips over the details that make this situation different from the last one. Your brain’s alarm system is the undisputed champion of pattern matching. It does not care about accuracy. It cares about speed.

That is why it feels so much easier to pick an answer on a multiple-choice test than to write an essay. Multiple choice lets your brain pattern match. An essay forces your brain to do the expensive, energy-intensive work of constructing and evaluating an argument.

This shortcut system is also why we confuse correlation with causation. Your brain sees two things happen together and immediately assumes one caused the other. Smoke meant fire. A certain sound meant a predator. In the wild, that worked. Today, it leads us to see patterns where there are only coincidences, and certainty where there should be curiosity.

Part Two: Meet the Five Players in Your Head

So far I have been talking about your alarm system, your memory center, and the thinking part of your brain. Those are accurate descriptions, but they are also forgettable. And if you forget them, they cannot help you.

Here is something I have learned from years of teaching engineering. When you want to truly understand something—whether it is a material, a system, or a part of your own brain—you have to get to know its personality. Every material has characteristics that reveal who it is and how it behaves under pressure. Steel bends before it breaks. Glass shatters without warning. Aluminum fatigues quietly until it fails. You discover these personalities by studying them, testing them, and paying attention to how they respond.

Your brain regions are no different. Each one has a personality—a way of operating, a speed, a strength, and a blind spot. And the best way I have found to make those personalities stick, to make them real enough that you can catch them in action in your own life, is to turn them into characters.

So let me introduce you to the five players in your head. I give them names and appearances because it makes them easier to remember, easier to talk about, and honestly, easier to work with when you catch them running your life. These names are not random. Each one was chosen for a reason rooted in the science.

Amy — The First Responder — Your Right Amygdala

Amy is your right amygdala. A small, almond-shaped structure deep in your brain. She is your rapid alert system. Her job is to scan everything coming in through your senses and spot anything that might be important—threatening, rewarding, or surprising. When she spots a signal, she flags it as important and triggers your fight-or-flight response before your conscious mind even knows what happened.

I named her Amy because it flows naturally from “amygdala,” and I gave her a female identity. She is around ten to twelve years old, blue eyes, pigtails, always leaning forward, animated hands, ready to point at something. When I introduce these characters to students, especially younger ones, they light up. Giving the brain regions names and personalities turns an abstract neuroscience lesson into a story—and stories are how our brains were built to learn.

Here is the key thing about Amy. She fires roughly six times faster than the part of your brain that does reasoning. That means the emotional reaction—the racing heart, the clenched jaw, the urge to fire back—shows up before the thinking. The feeling arrives first. The analysis arrives second. And in that gap? That is where jumping to conclusions lives.

Amy is not the bad guy. She kept your ancestors alive. But she has one major limitation: she cannot tell the difference between a real threat and a fake one. A lion in the grass and a mean comment on your phone look the same to Amy. A genuine danger and a teacher asking a tough question trigger the same alarm. Her job is to spot the signal. Her job is not to figure out what is actually happening.

Amyr — The Signal Tuner — Your Left Amygdala

Amyr is Amy’s fraternal twin. He is your left amygdala, and he has the same core mission as Amy: spot what matters, flag it, get the brain’s attention. They are both protectors, both fast, both emotionally real. They are your first responders as a team.

I picture Amyr as the same age as Amy—a bright-eyed boy, calm but alert. Where Amy leans forward with animated hands, Amyr stands a little more grounded, maybe holding a small notebook. They are fraternal twins: same job, same drive, but slightly different style.

Here is the neuroscience. You actually have two amygdalae, one on each side of the brain. They are a paired system with a lot of overlap. Both do the same core work: rapidly tagging things as important or threatening and helping drive your body’s response. But research shows some subtle differences in how they tend to operate. The right amygdala—that is Amy—tends to be faster and more automatic. She is the instant siren. The left amygdala—that is Amyr—tends to be more sustained and interpretive. He is the one who holds the alert a little longer, calibrating the urgency. Think of it this way: Amy spots the signal. Amyr helps calibrate how loud the alarm should be.

Together they work as a unit. Amy says, “Possible threat—act!” Amyr says, “Threat level moderate—stay alert.” They are not deciding what to do about it. They are making sure the brain pays attention.

The Hippo Twins — Your Memory Team — Your Two Hippocampi

Just like you have two amygdalae, you have two hippocampi—one on each side of the brain. And just like Amy and Amyr, the Hippo twins are a paired system with the same core mission but slightly different strengths.

Their core job? They are your brain’s episode and context engine. They bind together the who, the what, the where, and the when into memories. If Amy and Amyr are the alarm, the Hippo twins are the librarians who run to the back of the library to pull up files. They are the ones who can say, “Hold on—I have seen something like this before, and it turned out differently than expected.”

I picture them as two young hippopotamuses wearing saddlebags on a college campus. A bit corny, sure—but definitely memorable. Here is where it gets interesting. The two Hippos carry different things in their saddlebags.

Hippo Books is the left hippocampus. He carries saddlebags stuffed with books and flashcards. He leans toward verbal and narrative memory—he stores the story. The who, what, when, and why. He is the one who remembers the episode, the conversation, the sequence of events. His tagline: “Stores the story.”

Hippo Maps is the right hippocampus. He carries saddlebags stuffed with maps and a compass. He leans toward spatial memory and navigation—he stores the map. The routes, layouts, and locations. He is the one who remembers where things happened and how to get around. His tagline: “Stores the map.”

Together, the Hippo twins provide the context that Amy and Amyr lack. When the amygdala twins fire their alarm, the Hippo twins search your memories to figure out if the current situation really matches past threats or if Amy and Amyr are overreacting. They are the bridge between a raw emotional reaction and an informed evaluation.

The problem? The Hippo twins need time to do their work. Amy and Amyr often act before the Hippos can finish searching the stacks. That is why you sometimes react first and remember later—when we think, “Oh wait, this happened before and it was fine.” That is the Hippo twins arriving late to the conversation.

PFC — The Executive — Your Prefrontal Cortex

PFC is your prefrontal cortex. He sits behind your forehead, and he is the boss. He handles executive functions: planning, reasoning, weighing consequences, evaluating evidence, and making deliberate decisions. If Amy and Amyr are the alarm and the Hippo twins are the librarians, PFC is the executive who reviews all the evidence and decides what to actually do. His tagline: “Plans the path. Keeps you on track.”

I chose to make PFC male, and specifically a young man around twenty-five years old, for a reason grounded in developmental neuroscience. The prefrontal cortex is the last part of the brain to fully mature. In females, it develops a bit earlier, but in males, it is not fully online until approximately age twenty-five. That means if you are a student reading this, your PFC is still under construction. He is learning. He is getting stronger. But he is not at full power yet. Which is exactly why understanding this system matters so much right now.

Think about what that means. Amy and Amyr have been fully operational since you were born. They were running at full power when you were a toddler throwing a tantrum in the grocery store. They were running at full power when you were in middle school and everything felt like the end of the world. They have been online and firing for your entire life.

PFC? He just started showing up to work. For years, Amy and Amyr have been running the show essentially unopposed. No executive to review their decisions. No one asking, “Wait—is this really a threat?” You have spent your whole life reacting first and thinking second, not because something is wrong with you, but because the thinking part was not built yet. Now PFC is coming online. He is new to the job and still learning. But the fact that you are here, reading this, trying to understand your own wiring? That is PFC doing his work. That is him getting stronger in real time.

PFC is slow but accurate. He is the one who can override Amy and Amyr’s alarm when the evidence does not support a panic response. He can say, “Yes, I feel angry, but is this actually what I think it is? What am I assuming? What do I actually know?”

But PFC has a weakness. When Amy and Amyr’s alarm is loud enough, PFC’s signal gets drowned out. Neuroscientists call this an amygdala hijack. In those moments, the executive is offline and the twins are running the show. That is what is happening when you “see red.” When you say something you immediately regret, or send that message you wish you could unsend.

Part Three: Why You Confuse Correlation with Causation

Now that you know the five players, here is how they connect to one of the biggest thinking errors I see in the classroom and in life: confusing correlation with causation.

Amy and Amyr are a correlation engine. They see two things happen together and immediately link them. That is their survival programming. Two events co-occur? Must be related. Your friend looked at you weird and then you got a bad grade? They must have jinxed you. A new school policy started and your favorite teacher quit? The policy must have caused it.

PFC is the causation evaluator. He is the one who can stop and ask: is this really cause and effect, or just a coincidence? Are there other explanations? Could both things be caused by something else entirely?

But PFC needs time and energy. Deep thinking is metabolically expensive. Your brain literally burns more calories doing it. So your brain, that ancient energy optimizer, would rather let Amy and Amyr’s quick pattern match stand than spend the resources to let PFC investigate.

This is exactly why multiple-choice tests feel easier than essays. Multiple choice lets Amy and Amyr pattern match. Essays force the Hippo twins and PFC to do the heavy lifting. It is not that you are lazy. It is that your brain is wired to conserve energy. Understanding that wiring is the first step to working around it.

The Group Chat: All Five Players in Action

Let me show you how all five players work together in a real situation. Imagine you open your phone and see a group chat between your friends. They are making plans for Friday night. Nobody mentioned it to you. Nobody invited you.

Watch what happens inside your head. Amy fires instantly. Threat detected. You have been excluded. They do not like you. Your chest tightens, your face gets hot. Amyr holds the signal a beat longer and calibrates: threat level high. This feels like rejection. Social danger. Before you have even finished reading the messages, you are already composing an angry text or withdrawing into silence. The amygdala twins have already decided what this means: they are leaving you out on purpose.

But now the Hippo twins start arriving. Hippo Books pulls up the episode files. Wait—remember last month when you thought the same thing? Turned out they made the plans during lunch when you were in a different class. They just forgot to loop you in. And two weeks before that, you were the one who accidentally left someone out of a plan. It happens. Hippo Maps adds spatial context: you were not even in the same building when this conversation started. They were all sitting together in the cafeteria.

Now PFC steps in with the important questions. Do I actually have evidence that this was intentional? Is it possible this is just a coincidence and not a conspiracy? What would happen if I simply asked, “Hey, that sounds fun—mind if I join?”

Notice the difference. Amy and Amyr’s version ends with a ruined friendship and a night spent feeling terrible. PFC’s version ends with a text message and probably an invitation. Same situation, completely different outcome—depending on who you let drive.

Part Four: The Pause Protocol—Your Four-Step System

Knowing about Amy, Amyr, the Hippo twins, and PFC is useful, but what really matters is this: what do you do when you catch the twins firing? How do you create enough space to let the Hippos and PFC do their jobs?

I call this the Pause Protocol. It is four steps, and it is designed to work with your brain’s architecture, not against it.

Step One: Feel It—Notice Amy and Amyr’s Alarm

Do not try to suppress what you are feeling. That backfires. Instead, notice the physical signs: racing heart, heat in your chest, clenched jaw, tight shoulders, the urge to immediately say or do something.

These sensations are Amy and Amyr doing their job. They are data, not orders. The twins are raising their hands. They are not giving the final answer.

Step Two: Name It—Call the Hippo Twins to the Front

Research by neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman shows that simply naming an emotion—saying “I am feeling angry” or “I am feeling defensive”—actually reduces amygdala activation. Saying it is neurologically different from just feeling it. The act of labeling starts to recruit PFC and calms Amy and Amyr down.

Then ask the Hippo twins’ questions. Hippo Books asks: Have I felt this before? What happened last time? Is this story familiar? What did I learn? Hippo Maps asks: Where am I? What is the setting? Does this place or situation match what I think it does? This pulls up the context that Amy and Amyr’s raw alarm is missing.

Step Three: Pause and Question—Let PFC Do His Job

With Amy and Amyr acknowledged and the Hippo twins providing context, PFC can step in. Ask yourself: What am I assuming right now? What evidence do I actually have? Am I confusing correlation with causation? What would I advise a friend to do in this situation?

That last question is powerful. Psychologists call it Solomon’s Paradox. We consistently give better advice to others than to ourselves. Stepping outside your own situation gives PFC the distance he needs to think clearly.

Step Four: Choose—Respond Instead of React

A reaction is Amy and Amyr on autopilot. Fast, emotional, often regretted. A response is PFC in the driver’s seat. Thoughtful, evidence-based, aligned with who you actually want to be.

This does not mean being slow or passive. Sometimes urgency is real. But even fast action filtered through PFC is different from a knee-jerk reaction. The difference is agency. You are choosing your action instead of being dragged into it.

Part Five: Practice Makes Pathways

Fair warning. This will not work perfectly at first. You are fighting millions of years of evolutionary wiring. You will miss. You will react. You will regret. That is normal.

But every time you catch yourself—even after the fact, even if you catch it an hour later and think, “Oh, that was Amy and Amyr”—you are building the neural pathway. You are training your brain to pause. You are making PFC a little stronger and giving the Hippo twins a little more time.

Some things that help:

Mindfulness practice, even ten minutes a day, strengthens PFC’s ability to manage Amy and Amyr. So what is mindfulness? It is the practice of deliberately paying attention to what is happening right now, in this moment, without judging it. It might be as simple as sitting quietly and noticing your breathing. When your mind wanders—and it will—you gently bring it back. That is it. That is the exercise. What you are actually doing is training PFC to notice what Amy and Amyr are doing without automatically obeying them. You are building the muscle that says, “I see the alarm, but I am going to observe it instead of reacting to it.” Over time, this creates a small but powerful gap between stimulus and response—and that gap is where your freedom lives.

Journaling after emotional events helps the Hippo twins file better memories for next time. And here is something most people do not realize: the Hippo twins do their best filing work while you sleep. During sleep, your brain replays the events of the day and the Hippos sort through them, deciding what to store and what to discard. Hippo Books processes the narrative—the who said what and why. Hippo Maps processes the spatial context—the where it happened and the layout of the scene. Emotionally charged memories get priority processing, which means the things that triggered Amy and Amyr the hardest are the ones the Hippo twins are most likely to file for future reference. That is why journaling before bed is so powerful—you are essentially giving the Hippo twins a better organized inbox to work with overnight. And that is also why sleep deprivation is so dangerous for decision-making. When you do not sleep enough, the Hippo twins cannot do their job properly, which means PFC has less context to work with the next day, and Amy and Amyr run the show more often.

Practicing on low-stakes situations, pausing before responding to a mildly annoying text, builds the habit you can use in high-stakes moments.

And most importantly: be kind to yourself when you fail. The goal is not perfection. The goal is progress. More pauses. Fewer regrets. A little more space between the alarm and the action.

Conclusion: You Are Not Your First Reaction

You are carrying the nervous system of a savanna survivor into classrooms, group chats, family dinners, and job interviews. Your brain wants to survive, save energy, and act on its first prediction. That system worked for hundreds of thousands of years. It is less well suited to a world that rewards nuance, patience, and the ability to tell the difference between correlation and causation.

But here is the remarkable thing. Your brain can change. Neuroscientists call it plasticity. You are not a prisoner of your wiring. You have the ability—through awareness, practice, and understanding—to give PFC a fighting chance against Amy and Amyr’s speed. You can learn to treat your gut reactions as signals, not commands. You can build the habit of pausing, naming, questioning, and choosing.

The jump to conclusions is in our nature. But so is the ability to notice the jump, question it, and choose a different path. That ability—the power to watch your own thinking and change course—may be the most uniquely human thing about you.

The more you understand your wiring, the less it controls you. And in a world that seems designed to set off Amy and Amyr at every turn, that understanding might be the most important thing you ever learn.

Be a driver, not a passenger.

Now go do the work.

Joseph P. McFadden Sr.

Engineer • Lifelong Learner • Holistic Analyst

Combating Engineering Mind Blindness, One Student at a Time

Remember, every failure tells a story—and understanding that story is the key to prevention.

www.McFaddenCAE.com

McFadden@snet.net