Hypothesis Machines

My research psychology professor said something today that got me thinking.  He said that he's pegged the brain as a machine where it's main job is to create hypotheses.  The only problem is we rarely test these hypotheses out.  Every second of every day, the brain is trying to explain things, making guesses, making assumptions.

When you see/hear/whatever something, your brain automatically tries to make sense of it - it creates a guess as to why whatever is happening is happening.  Sometimes there will be more support for some hypotheses than others, but that's besides the point.

He pointed out one example in particular - he was sitting in his car in a parking lot behind another car that was waiting for a third car to pull out of a parking spot.

Okay, so my professor is the green car, the car pulling out of the spot is the red car, the car waiting to pull into the spot is blue, and the car waiting to pull into the empty spot blocked by my professor is purple.
What he said was this:  His wife was outside the car, waiting or walking or.. can't remember. xD  And she heard the purple car calling my professor... names... because he was blocking the empty space.  See though, he clearly couldn't go anywhere - he wasn't being a jerk, he was waiting behind another car.

What the purple car did was see that my professor was blocking the spot and automatically explained it to himself that the driver in the green car was a jerk... that was his hypothesis.  He didn't consider the alternate options - he didn't go test out this hypothesis either.  He didn't go up to my professor and say, 'I think you're a jerk, mind if I find out for sure?'

See, formed an explanation, but didn't bother to test it or consider alternatives.

It makes me wonder how often this happens. xD  See someone doing something and automatically explain it to yourself without giving the person the benefit of the doubt or maybe even going up to them and asking why they're doing what they're doing.  I've done it, you've done it, we've all done it - we make a guess and don't bother trying to find out the real answer.  And it also makes me wonder about the range of situations this happens it - it probably occurs without us realizing it's happening. @@

Cool to think about, eh? :D