Why We Lower the Head in Deep Thinking

1912

WHY HEAD IS LOWERED

GENERALLY THE ACCOMPANIMENT OF DEEP THOUGHT

However, One May Take His Choice of Various Scientific Reasons Assigned for This Practically Universal Habit.

It is a regular part of the education of a Mussulman to learn how to balance his head in order to aid his memory, an exchange says. Although the natives of other countries do not make this a matter of training, it is noticeable that the habit of bowing the head when in deep thought is customary with all humans, even when they do not know why they do it. Closing the eyes can readily be explained by the desire to shut out the sight of objects that might otherwise confuse the brain activities, but the simple act of bending the neck seems to have special significance whether the eyes are closed or not.

Lessening one blood supply and increasing another appears to bring into contact and use an impression on the brain which has not been used frequently or not for a long time.

The innumerable individual mannerisms count for but little, for the habit of contracting the jugulars and carotids and then letting loose the whirlpool seems to be universal and important. The physicians cannot tell us why, for the actual workings of man's brains are still a mystery to a large extent, but men do contract the arteries mentioned and loosen the others instinctively in an effort at concentrated thought.

Bowing the head to conceal thought is also common, although we know of no country where that is a part of one's education. This is doubtless due to a desire not to look a person directly in the eye.

The honest man, searching his brain for truth, thus makes the same obeisance to his instinct as the clever rascal seeking to hide a trick too dangerous for human observation.

Ask the ordinary cheat his price for produce and almost invariably he makes the sign of humility. His head drops forward and frequently his eyelids follow. Intelligent rogues, who do not wish to be found out, avoid thinking of their crimes in the presence of certain people. Instead, they endeavor to concentrate their thoughts upon something distant from the facts, as if they feared a too plain mental picture might be observed by other than their own individual egos.

This fear may be justified in that experience which we all have at some time when a person ransacking his memory for a forgotten thing hears it spoken of by one who has made no effort to think it up, but has merely read it from the brain of the thinker before the thinker himself has put it into words.

—The Daily Commonwealth, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, December 19, 1912, page 3.