Accidentally Drinking Ketchup instead of Beer

Factual Questions
1

This has happened to me. While eating dinner, my mind tell me “Me thirsty.” I reach for my beer. As my eyes pass over my fries, my mind chimes in with “French Fries need more ketchup,” so I grab the ketchup bottle and squirt ketchup in my mouth. What gets me out these events is that my hands perform to appropriate actions for the particular item regardless of what I actually wanted to do. Is there a name for this sort of jumbling of actions. “Being an idiot,” has a nice ring to it, but it seems to have more to do with non-conscience actions.

2

this would be better in MPSIMS? :slight_smile:

3

No, Bosda, I think he’s looking for a nifty psychiatric term to describe his condition.

4

No, I think it’s a perfectly good GQ.

I do that with spices (salt instead of pepper), liquids (water instead of milk), remotes (TV instead of VCR). Or what irks my wife: we drive across town, and I’ll take the route that takes me closest to the store from which I deliver pizza, instead of the fastest route.

There’s definately a process of 1) starting to do one action 2) thinking of a similar action 3) combining them in a humorous fasion.

5

I often catch myself chalking my beer. However, I don’t often take a sip of my pool cue.

Is this phenomenon at all similar to picking up an full container and it’s finding it’s empty? Or when you’re ascending/descending stairs and you think there’s another step? Your muscles react (ie: jerking the cup sharply upward or stepping in mid-air) before your mind has a chance to catch up.

6

In human-computer interaction – that branch of computer science and psychology which is concerned with user interfaces – this type of slip is known as a description error. A description error occurs when you carry out the correct action on the wrong object, and is usually caused by distraction.

Other types of errors:

  1. Data-driven errors – unconscious processing of external data interferes with what you intended to do. For example, you are introduced to the buxom Jane Best and accidentally address her as Jane Breast.

  2. Associative-activation errors – internal thoughts interfere with what you intended to do. For example, all day long you are thinking of the lovely Jane Best. When you go home to your wife, you accidentally call her Jane instead of Margaret, and get a black eye as a result.

  3. Loss of activation errors – you simply forget what it is you’re supposed to be doing.

  4. Capture errors – a frequently-performed activity takes over your intended action. For instance, you have just spend the last hour chopping carrots. Someone hands you a chocolate bar to eat, and you start chopping that too.

  5. Mode errors – you think you are in one state but you are actually in another. For instance, you are a businesswoman who regularly travels between Iceland and Cuba. Sometimes when you are in Iceland, you accidentally talk to people in Spanish, or sometimes you address the Cubans in Icelandic.

Hope this helps. :slight_smile: