Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, you're walking to stuff to go
Speaker 1: in your mind. My name is Robert Lamp. I'm Julie Douglass. Julie,
Speaker 1: have you engaged in a good staring contest? Reson? I'm
Speaker 1: trying to do it with you right now. Don't blink.
Speaker 1: I didn't. Don't kind of like narrow my eyes. Maybe
Speaker 1: I used see the things you never know when you
Speaker 1: go sometimes, I guess, so, yeah, but yeah, this is
Speaker 1: something that I used to engage in with my brother
Speaker 1: all the time. Yeah, did you Did you tend to win?
Speaker 1: Or is it a stalemate? Did you just both stare
Speaker 1: at each other un till your eyeballs dried up? And
Speaker 1: he's pretty competitive, so I probably just got tired of
Speaker 1: it after a while and blinked just to end it.
Speaker 1: Staring is weird. It is a strange thing. I feel
Speaker 1: like we've touched this before. But like, the more you
Speaker 1: stare at somebody, the weirder it becomes, the weirder their
Speaker 1: face becomes, and they start looking like just alien monster creatures,
Speaker 1: you know, just because you you begin to to take
Speaker 1: sort of the default version of what they look like,
Speaker 1: and and and deconstruct it. Well, remember when we were
Speaker 1: looking at the Bloody Mary studies about staring into the
Speaker 1: mirror and if you stare hard enough and long enough,
Speaker 1: your brain starts to freak out. And because it's just
Speaker 1: staring at that one bit and starting to sort of say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start throwing all sorts of weird images in here.
Speaker 1: So hopefully you're not sitting in front of someone and
Speaker 1: staring at them so intently that that's happening. But you're right,
Speaker 1: it does kind of cause you to to sort of
Speaker 1: reconfigure everything. Yeah. Now, I will say in in these
Speaker 1: podcast recording sessions, I tend to make more eye contact
Speaker 1: with you than I make with most people because we
Speaker 1: are directly across from each other, and if I'm not
Speaker 1: looking at the my notes are staring off into the
Speaker 1: whole distance. Uh, then I'm having to engage with you
Speaker 1: because this is kind of a conversation performance that we
Speaker 1: do here. It's true, and you know, we're taking visual
Speaker 1: cues off of each other too, like hey, wrap it up,
Speaker 1: or hey, yeah that's really interesting. More and more so, Yeah,
Speaker 1: steering obviously is something that we do as humans for
Speaker 1: a variety of reasons, and yet it's a bit of
Speaker 1: a mystery, right Yeah. And then there's there're whole these
Speaker 1: whole elements too of uh you know, personal space and
Speaker 1: the cheesemo. Um. A friend of mine was sent me
Speaker 1: some sort of Facebook correspondence because he is friends with
Speaker 1: all the people who went to high school with UM,
Speaker 1: follows them on Facebook. So they'll inevitably say just weird
Speaker 1: and stupid things or things that just don't really sink
Speaker 1: with your own personal worldview, including like one dude who
Speaker 1: lifts a lot and maybe doesn't do a lot of lifts,
Speaker 1: lifts weights, lifts, you know, hits the gym and then
Speaker 1: he starts off on this whole diet tribe that that
Speaker 1: kind of breaks the world down into into those who
Speaker 1: lift and those that don't, or those that lift a
Speaker 1: lot and those that don't lift as much. And and
Speaker 1: it was about like making eye contact with individuals on
Speaker 1: the train or on the street, and how every and
Speaker 1: and implying that every incident of this with men making
Speaker 1: eye tak contact with each that it is a stare
Speaker 1: down to see who is the alpha a k who
Speaker 1: lives the most. Okay, well, that's very interesting for two reasons.
Speaker 1: One is, and this is auncdotal, of course, but when
Speaker 1: I've been at gym's before, I have noticed that people
Speaker 1: who are lifting are always staring at themselves, like really,
Speaker 1: like you noticed this, and they don't break in the mirror.
Speaker 1: In the mirror, they're like staring almost like the person
Speaker 1: in the mirror is the aggressor. Okay. So the second
Speaker 1: thing about that, like they're like they're in an ape
Speaker 1: that doesn't realize that the ape in the in the
Speaker 1: mirror is their own reflections, right, that keeps staring at me?
Speaker 1: Can't they see me with all my weight? But I
Speaker 1: have noticed that over and over again. And David Turberg
Speaker 1: at all of the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands,
Speaker 1: and uh in some other researchers, they wanted to see
Speaker 1: if this is really true that we stare for dominance,
Speaker 1: that this is really automatic for humans. So they devised
Speaker 1: a test in which participants were presented different colored ovals
Speaker 1: and different colored dots. Seems pretty straightforward, right, What they
Speaker 1: were advised to do is to try to popping up
Speaker 1: on the screen in front of you. Yeah, those those
Speaker 1: ovals are popping up on the screen. They're the same
Speaker 1: color as the dots, and they're saying, hey, just visually
Speaker 1: matched that oval to the dot when it comes up.
Speaker 1: But they're sneaky the researchers, because a split second before
Speaker 1: the oval appears, a face of the same color appeared
Speaker 1: with either angry, happy, or neutral expression. Okay, So what
Speaker 1: they were doing is they were testing to see how
Speaker 1: long it took for people to look away from faces
Speaker 1: with different emotions, and they compared this data with a
Speaker 1: questionnaire that the participants completed that measured how dominant they
Speaker 1: were in social situations. So if you had some of
Speaker 1: the weightlifters here, no doubt they would rate, you know,
Speaker 1: pretty high on social dominance. So the results were that
Speaker 1: people who are more motivated to be dominant were slower
Speaker 1: to look away from angry faces, and then people who
Speaker 1: were motivated to seek rewar gazed at the happy faces longer. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, the assumptions were right here is that
Speaker 1: there is a bit of face or eyes staring in
Speaker 1: terms of dominance and trying to say this is this
Speaker 1: is a space that I'm occupying and I'm dominating right now.
Speaker 1: It's weird because on one level I totally buy that,
Speaker 1: but on the other It's like I think about, like
Speaker 1: being on the train and if someone is like staring
Speaker 1: at me with crazy eyes, I'm going to look away
Speaker 1: because it just doesn't make like why would I. Why
Speaker 1: would I engage that person? Like? Why would I? It's like,
Speaker 1: all right, you're an alpha. It's great that you know
Speaker 1: you're covering your own vomit. But your alpha, So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna let you. But that's the extreme extreme, right, that's
Speaker 1: the crazy eyes. What if someone is just like, what
Speaker 1: if there's another you, Robert who just happens to be
Speaker 1: across from you staring at you? Well, I I would
Speaker 1: not stare back. Probably. I mean, do I know this
Speaker 1: other me? Or do I say, oh, that's me, that's
Speaker 1: my topplicating You don't know you. I don't me. You're
Speaker 1: a stranger, okay, just another person of my general making model. Yes,
Speaker 1: well no, I wouldn't want to really make eye contact
Speaker 1: with him. Why would I do that? Okay, So I
Speaker 1: can't believe I'm admitting this. But there's a seven year
Speaker 1: old in my neighborhood. He was kind of a toughie,
Speaker 1: and he's always kind of saying like awful things to people.
Speaker 1: And I mean he's seven, right, so you don't take
Speaker 1: him that seriously. But I have to say that I
Speaker 1: was backing out of my driveway not too long ago.
Speaker 1: Then he was. He was like trash talking, and I
Speaker 1: knew he was trashing for backing out of your driveway.
Speaker 1: I don't know this kid, I'm telling you anyway, So
Speaker 1: I backed at the car and then you know, I
Speaker 1: was parallel with him. He's on his bike, and I
Speaker 1: sat there and I stared. I did the stair thing,
Speaker 1: and I didn't even know at the time that that
Speaker 1: was what I was doing. But I wasn't going to
Speaker 1: roll down the window. So young man, don't trash talk, right,
Speaker 1: But you know, I just sat there and gave him
Speaker 1: the what I now understand was the dominant stare huh.
Speaker 1: And we sat there and it was finally him who
Speaker 1: broke it. But that was my way of saying, step off, kid,
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to get to work. See now, I
Speaker 1: find that if i'm if I'm at the train and
Speaker 1: there's somebody like that, not a seven year old kid
Speaker 1: that's threatening me. Yeah. And by the way, I know
Speaker 1: how lame it is to do a stare off with
Speaker 1: a seven year old. I get it. But now you
Speaker 1: had to put your foot down. I think you did
Speaker 1: the right thing here. But but I find that there's
Speaker 1: someone that's being a little starry or being a little
Speaker 1: kind of like, you know, tough guy in the train.
Speaker 1: Like my gut instinct, if I'm thinking about it, if
Speaker 1: I'm engaging in it and letting my ego engage in
Speaker 1: in this kind of thing, which is probably a bad
Speaker 1: idea to begin with, my response will be to not
Speaker 1: acknowledge them at all, to sort of like stare straight
Speaker 1: past them or through them. Um so is it so?
Speaker 1: In my own mind, I'm thinking, I'm not engaging with you,
Speaker 1: so you can't possibly be the alpha in this situation
Speaker 1: because I can't even see you. You're so non alpha.
Speaker 1: I like that. I like that. It's like, there's nound
Speaker 1: really stupid. When I actually take it out into language,
Speaker 1: it makes sense. I mean, it's all pretty stupid because
Speaker 1: it's like the idea of like dudes on a train
Speaker 1: having to establish a hierarchy of who's tough and who isn't,
Speaker 1: and who lifts and who lifts more. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's utterly ridiculous, and and I want and I my
Speaker 1: instinct is to just throw it all out and say
Speaker 1: that it's all just a bunch of molarchy. But I
Speaker 1: do have to acknowledge there's these social dynamics exist. They do,
Speaker 1: and staring is a really big way to try to
Speaker 1: ferret out the emotional states of others anyway, right, because
Speaker 1: if you were on the train you saw crazy eyes,
Speaker 1: you have readed your days because you knew that was
Speaker 1: no good. You're not gonna lock eyes. That's not good
Speaker 1: news for you. They're going to think I want to
Speaker 1: talk exactly, and you don't want to talk um. In
Speaker 1: the article why we stare even when we don't want
Speaker 1: to buy Dan Muslaf writing for Wired, she says that
Speaker 1: humans are highly social animals, and rather than remaining among
Speaker 1: our family or heard from birth to death, we venture
Speaker 1: out and we have to do this in a safe way.
Speaker 1: So we have evolved a rough screening process with this stare.
Speaker 1: And she says that you know you're sweeping. Stare is
Speaker 1: giving you all sorts of data that gets processed in
Speaker 1: your magdala. Now, this is the area of the burning
Speaker 1: that is associated with emotions and judgment, and so that's
Speaker 1: how you deem if a person is safe or if
Speaker 1: they're dodgy, and you've got that split second reassembly of
Speaker 1: their face. By the way, while you're doing this um
Speaker 1: in your mind's eye, and when you're reassembling that person's face,
Speaker 1: you're looking for things like does this person look familiar
Speaker 1: to me? Does this person have an emotion of sadness, happiness? Anger? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Do they do? They look like they're a part of
Speaker 1: my group? They look like that they are merely out
Speaker 1: in my group now because they're lost. Do they look
Speaker 1: like they have some sort of malicious intent? And yeah,
Speaker 1: we do all of this without even really thinking about it. Uh.
Speaker 1: In fact, we we often do this kind of thing
Speaker 1: and then feel bad about it. You know. If you'll
Speaker 1: you'll be like, how, who's that shady guy walking down
Speaker 1: my street? And then a part of you like, no, no, uh,
Speaker 1: he probably has a legitimate reason to be here. He
Speaker 1: might be a missionary or a salesman. Don't jump to conclusions.
Speaker 1: But they're still that part of your brain that instantly
Speaker 1: passes judgment, right, And in the article, it's that that
Speaker 1: whole part of like why we stay even we don't
Speaker 1: want to. We're doing this too again, as you say,
Speaker 1: like fare it out, like is this person here for
Speaker 1: harm or good or what's going on us? Or are Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and they were saying in the article, or Dan
Speaker 1: Muslaf was saying that if the person deviates greatly from
Speaker 1: the norm, for for instance, if the person had a
Speaker 1: face transplant, right, that's probably about as much as you
Speaker 1: can debat it from the norm. Then then your stare
Speaker 1: really gets locked down because now your brain is again
Speaker 1: reassembling the face, trying to make sense of it and
Speaker 1: knowing that it doesn't make sense, so it's trying to
Speaker 1: fill in those gaps, and you're going to stay a
Speaker 1: longer and longer and longer. Yeah, it's I mean, when
Speaker 1: you encounter any level of disfigurement or even just like
Speaker 1: mild not even disfigure but even like mild a symmetry,
Speaker 1: well not even not mild a symmetry, but say, um,
Speaker 1: a symmetry that you haven't seen before, because you certainly
Speaker 1: easily get used to a symmetry in any individual's face
Speaker 1: or like like one eyes looking off a little bit
Speaker 1: to the side, but the first time you encounter it
Speaker 1: can be a little a little off putting. But if
Speaker 1: it's something severe, if you get into that weird space, again,
Speaker 1: where every instinct in your body is to look and
Speaker 1: analyze and forget what's going on. But then you feel
Speaker 1: just increasingly bad about doing it because we've all been
Speaker 1: told from an early age, because in an early age,
Speaker 1: we don't know, and that that's when we do things
Speaker 1: like stare at a diminutively sized individual in a grocery
Speaker 1: store and point at them and ask our mother what
Speaker 1: they are. My sister did that. Um, that's when we
Speaker 1: we don't really understand the social constraints we have to
Speaker 1: work with, and we're told above all else, do not
Speaker 1: point at people who are different, do not stare at
Speaker 1: people who are different. Uh, But we have that strong
Speaker 1: instinct to do so. Right. Largely humans are not meaning jerks.
Speaker 1: They're just trying to figure out the discrepancies. Yeah. Like
Speaker 1: I was in a nursing home once visiting my grandmother
Speaker 1: and there was an individual there that and I was
Speaker 1: again I didn't want to stare, So I don't even
Speaker 1: really have a clear version of their vision of what
Speaker 1: this person looked like in my mind because I didn't
Speaker 1: go back for more details because it felt wrong. But
Speaker 1: I remember their face was like just a black hole.
Speaker 1: And I'm not even sure how that worked kind of
Speaker 1: physical level, but it it was that it was it
Speaker 1: was weird because there was the pole to stare and
Speaker 1: it was a very strong poll uh that that I
Speaker 1: just had to really push it down with all the
Speaker 1: social rules that were in place, and you do you
Speaker 1: have to tell your brain to shut that off, right, um.
Speaker 1: And this is something we do all the time, right,
Speaker 1: because we don't want to make others feel uncomfortable with
Speaker 1: our stairs. Yeah. Well, another aspect of the whole others
Speaker 1: in us safe and risk all. You know, disease factors
Speaker 1: into that as well. Does this person look like they
Speaker 1: are healthy? And if they are not healthy, then how
Speaker 1: does that factor into my acceptance of their um, their
Speaker 1: their presence within the boundaries of my group? Right, there's
Speaker 1: your amygdala at work trying to make all right. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we will get into uh, not only the idea of
Speaker 1: us staring at other people, but the thing that individuals
Speaker 1: are staring at us. All right, we are back in
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb. Have you ever had the sense that someone
Speaker 1: was staring at you? He turned around and and lo
Speaker 1: and behold, that person was staring at you. I do
Speaker 1: get the feeling that people are staring at me sometimes,
Speaker 1: but again, since I tend to be more passive, my
Speaker 1: reaction is to not engage them and to continue looking
Speaker 1: at my book or out the window or if I
Speaker 1: but but if I can, then I might try to
Speaker 1: check a reflection to see if I'm being stared at
Speaker 1: to confirm okay. But then there are alway those those
Speaker 1: moments too. What do you look up from whatever you're
Speaker 1: doing and someone's eyes dart away from you, and then
Speaker 1: instantly you you think, oh, they were staring at me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I have to say I've felt that way before,
Speaker 1: or like you felt like someone was staring at you
Speaker 1: happened and behold they were. And this is called the
Speaker 1: psychic staring effect. It's that idea that you can really
Speaker 1: sense this, that this might be, you know, another one
Speaker 1: of our senses that we have um or the converse
Speaker 1: of this is that you yourself could stare so intensely
Speaker 1: at someone else that you could cause them to turn
Speaker 1: around and look at you, like a cartoon effect for
Speaker 1: the eyeballs, like come out of the head um and
Speaker 1: elongate and actually hit something that they're looking at. Yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it happens all the time, right yeah. Yeah. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: according to skeptic Um, the first scientific studies of what
Speaker 1: is called PSC were reported in by British psychologist Edward B. Titchener.
Speaker 1: He was interested to know if this was a thing,
Speaker 1: because it feels real when when you're experiencing it, it
Speaker 1: feels like you're actually sensing someone stairs. Yeah. But now,
Speaker 1: all of the studies he did, they were all negative. So, um,
Speaker 1: we don't know how many subjects were involved or how
Speaker 1: actually the studies were conducted, but we do know that
Speaker 1: his findings at least were negative. But along comes someone
Speaker 1: called Rupert Sheldrick, and he's done several informal and formal
Speaker 1: studies that show that PSC is real ish. Um, you
Speaker 1: know his studies would bear that out. Now, others who
Speaker 1: have tried to replicate the studies get negative results. Um.
Speaker 1: And when they replicate his studies, by the way, they're
Speaker 1: they're using random process and other strict controls that he
Speaker 1: has been criticized for not using. Well that's a red
Speaker 1: flag right there, right, So yeah, it's always a red
Speaker 1: flag if you can't replicate the results over and over
Speaker 1: and right. Um, So I would say, at best, the
Speaker 1: jury is still out. At worst, it does seem like
Speaker 1: this is something that is it's not a thing with
Speaker 1: a capital ty. Yeah, it's researching the material. I really
Speaker 1: had to fall into the suspicion that it is not
Speaker 1: a thing, that it's merely um, a combination of two things. Really.
Speaker 1: First of all, it's it's about superstition and uh. And
Speaker 1: then the other side of it is that, of course
Speaker 1: it is a it's a false positive. Okay. This goes
Speaker 1: into the whole idea of error management theory, which we've
Speaker 1: we've touched on before in discussing belief in the supernatural,
Speaker 1: belief in lucky charms, uh, various things that are not real.
Speaker 1: So when it comes to cognition, we have two types
Speaker 1: of errors cognition and dealing with situations of uncertainty. You
Speaker 1: can make a type one era, a false positive, in
Speaker 1: which we decide that a risk or benefit exists when
Speaker 1: it does not. Okay. So we make a type one
Speaker 1: error when we think that there's a savor tooth tiger
Speaker 1: behind us and then they're not there. Okay. Then there's
Speaker 1: a type two error, a false negative, and this entails
Speaker 1: failing to notice a risk or benefit that exists. So
Speaker 1: this is when we think there might be a savor
Speaker 1: tooth tiger, but we don't act on it, and then
Speaker 1: we're eating, so we made a We're like, oh, I
Speaker 1: don't think there's anything there, and then we're consumed. So
Speaker 1: it's better to think that there might be that savoth.
Speaker 1: You can argue the nature selects for those who jump
Speaker 1: to conclusions, because if I react every time like there's
Speaker 1: a savor tooth tiger tiger, then it more likely that
Speaker 1: I will react correctly when the savory tooth tiger actually
Speaker 1: comes for me. And likewise, if I always assume there's
Speaker 1: no savor tooth tiger on the other side of the
Speaker 1: high grasses, then I have increased odds of winding up
Speaker 1: in a savor tooths belly. Okay, So that falls in
Speaker 1: line perfectly with a study in Current Biology by the
Speaker 1: University of Sydney called humans have an expectation that gaze
Speaker 1: is directed for them. I think the title because if
Speaker 1: someone's looking at me, they might have some some ill intentions.
Speaker 1: So it's the same thing. Yeah, So the idea is
Speaker 1: that we always think that people are staring at us,
Speaker 1: so or we always expect that they are. So if
Speaker 1: you feel like there's a sense like, oh, someone's staring
Speaker 1: at me right now, you may look around quickly and
Speaker 1: just assume that person is staring at you. So the
Speaker 1: researchers say that this is largely protective, as you say,
Speaker 1: and that many primates, a direct gaze is threatening or aggressive,
Speaker 1: and you'd want to make sure that you didn't miss this, right,
Speaker 1: you'd want to know if someone was trying to threaten you.
Speaker 1: So what they did, of course, is they took some
Speaker 1: participants with computer generated faces in front of them, and
Speaker 1: then they made it difficult for the observer for the
Speaker 1: participants by obscuring the direction of the gaze by rotating
Speaker 1: the heads slightly from previous positions, and they asked the
Speaker 1: participants to judge the relative gaze directions. Overwhelmingly, uh, when
Speaker 1: they were in these uncertain positions, people will more likely
Speaker 1: to judge that even this computer generated face was staring
Speaker 1: directly at them. So, you know, just a tiniest little
Speaker 1: bit of the gaze change, they think, oh, it's still
Speaker 1: looking at me, even when it wasn't. So that's why
Speaker 1: the researchers say this is something that perhaps we're just
Speaker 1: hardwired to believe that people are staring at us. So
Speaker 1: if you I'm sure you've seen this in the notice
Speaker 1: this in the train before. If someone is sitting across
Speaker 1: from you with sunglasses on, don't you for a while think,
Speaker 1: I know you're staring at me, staring at me? What
Speaker 1: are you thinking? Are are And then you realize suddenly, okay,
Speaker 1: they have sunglasses on. They could be asleep right now.
Speaker 1: It's true. Yeah, but I but I often find myself
Speaker 1: in the past. I don't really wear sunglasses much in
Speaker 1: the train anymore, but I have worn sunglasses on the
Speaker 1: train and have thought to myself, I have free reign.
Speaker 1: I can stare at whoever and wherever I want to.
Speaker 1: And so I'll stare at this person or I'll stare
Speaker 1: at that person. You know. Um, so I I know
Speaker 1: if I'm doing it, other people are doing it. So
Speaker 1: it's just the wild West open there. But isn't it
Speaker 1: just because you don't have that data, your mind goes
Speaker 1: a little bit crazy and you just assume that again,
Speaker 1: I'm going to make that U I'm gonna make that
Speaker 1: type one error. I'm just gonna assume that they're looking
Speaker 1: at me and then take either the you know, take
Speaker 1: it either as a compliment or a threat. There you go.
Speaker 1: So the next stage of this research is to try
Speaker 1: to figure out if this bias, this cognitive cognitive bias
Speaker 1: really is learned orientate and what it might tell us
Speaker 1: about other mental conditions, because it's shown that people who
Speaker 1: have autism are less able to tell whether someone is
Speaker 1: actually looking at them or is there ring at them,
Speaker 1: and then people with social anxiety, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: have a higher tendency to think that they are under
Speaker 1: the stare of others more often. So it's interesting bit
Speaker 1: of research there see what they tease out on them.
Speaker 1: Cool and like I said, I feel like it has
Speaker 1: a direct correlation with a lot of the research that
Speaker 1: we've looked at in the past about superstitious beliefs in
Speaker 1: the idea that a lucky charm works, et cetera. Right,
Speaker 1: we do it because it makes sense for us to
Speaker 1: go ahead and believe that this is the case. Now,
Speaker 1: we've talked a lot about staring and faces. Uh, people
Speaker 1: are are looking at my face, I'm looking at other
Speaker 1: people's faces. But there's another type of staring that goes goes,
Speaker 1: goes around, and that of course is staring at body. Parts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is where we get into objectification. Right, You're
Speaker 1: not just staring at someone, You're staring at some aspect
Speaker 1: of that person. We have mentioned this study before, but
Speaker 1: Sarah your face, she's an assistant professor and lead author
Speaker 1: of the study Seeing Women as Objects said, we introduced
Speaker 1: and tested the sexual body part recognition bias hypothesis that
Speaker 1: women versus men's bodies would be reduced to their sexual
Speaker 1: body parts in the minds of perceivers. And this is
Speaker 1: called global processing of data data rather than locals. So
Speaker 1: in other words, what they did is they they took
Speaker 1: images of clothes men and women, and they put them
Speaker 1: in front of two hundred and twenty seven people, equally
Speaker 1: men and women, and they were shown a sequence of
Speaker 1: images before two images settled on their screen. One was
Speaker 1: of the original image and the other showed the groin area,
Speaker 1: the groin age, if the groinage, and men and women
Speaker 1: were more likely to recognize body parts when shown images
Speaker 1: of women. Okay, again, this is that that global and
Speaker 1: then both were more likely to recognize the whole image
Speaker 1: when shown pictures of men. What does this say? It
Speaker 1: so that we look at men as complete people, whereas
Speaker 1: women we look at them in just parts and men
Speaker 1: and women. So we use global processing with men and
Speaker 1: we use a local processing with women, Okay, and then
Speaker 1: not to say that we cannot look at women with
Speaker 1: global processing. And in fact, I would challenge anyone out
Speaker 1: I mean, especially the men out there, that if you
Speaker 1: find yourself using local processing, uh, you know, just sort
Speaker 1: of without thinking about it, like oh, I'm looking at
Speaker 1: that person's but like it at least, like turn on
Speaker 1: global processing for a minute and think, oh, I wonder
Speaker 1: what his or her hopes and dreams are. Well, what
Speaker 1: I think is interesting about that is that both men
Speaker 1: and women women do it. So if I'm on the
Speaker 1: train and another woman comes on, if I'm not conscious
Speaker 1: of it, most likely I'm maybe looking at this person
Speaker 1: in parts as well and not thinking like what's she
Speaker 1: going to have for dinner tonight, but more like, look
Speaker 1: at those elbows. Those are some sharp elbows. I bet
Speaker 1: they could really deliver a lot of paint. Um, yes,
Speaker 1: something like that. But it made me think about Marina Uppermomitch. Okay,
Speaker 1: So she is a performance artists. We've talked about her before, fascinating.
Speaker 1: She has an exhibit, or had an exhibit called the
Speaker 1: Artist is Present, and it was a retrospective of her
Speaker 1: work over the past forty years, and she has done
Speaker 1: a lot with objectification. In fact, in one of her
Speaker 1: performance pieces, I believe, she was naked and she had
Speaker 1: a bunch of objects around her. It was like a feather,
Speaker 1: and then there was also a gun. Was it loaded,
Speaker 1: I can't even remember that detail. I can't remember if
Speaker 1: it was loaded either, But there was a knife, There
Speaker 1: was all sorts of things. There was a flower, and
Speaker 1: she allowed the audience to choose what they might do
Speaker 1: with those objects, and she said it was awful that
Speaker 1: that overwhelmingly after a period of time passed and one
Speaker 1: person did something that was sort of out of the
Speaker 1: norm with one of those objects, other people felt normalized
Speaker 1: by it. And she had, you know, knives held up
Speaker 1: to her. She did have one person wielding the gun,
Speaker 1: and um, so it was really an exploration of like
Speaker 1: how easy it is to objectify someone, particularly a woman.
Speaker 1: So this, uh, this exhibit that she had The Artist
Speaker 1: is Present is really sort of away the opposite of that,
Speaker 1: a way to sort of take that objectification turn it
Speaker 1: around on its head. And she would sit across from
Speaker 1: someone at a table and that and that way, the
Speaker 1: audience member was just one person just sitting across from her,
Speaker 1: and she would stare at them for ten minutes and
Speaker 1: they at her. And that way, they had to look
Speaker 1: at her fully as a human being, and she had
Speaker 1: to look at them fully as a human thing. And
Speaker 1: what's it's you know, it seems pretty like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about? Why is that? Are just
Speaker 1: two people sitting across from each other. But it turns
Speaker 1: out this is a really powerful experience because, as we
Speaker 1: discussed in our podcast on performance art, you very seldom
Speaker 1: sit across from someone and look in their eyes for
Speaker 1: ten minutes straight, even your loved ones. And so people
Speaker 1: just started crying and felt overwhelming and like they were
Speaker 1: just in love with her. That was some of the things, uh,
Speaker 1: some of the things that were said that she saw
Speaker 1: them finally as a person um and here she is
Speaker 1: a stranger to them, you know. And again, that's one
Speaker 1: of the things that makes podcasting so weird, because we're
Speaker 1: in here for like an hour and there's an absurd
Speaker 1: amount of eye contact going on. Yeah, but I mean
Speaker 1: for ten minutes, you and I don't just sit there
Speaker 1: and stare at each other. Well that would be that
Speaker 1: would be weird and arguably it would be a real
Speaker 1: pain to listen to. Well, what I think is interesting
Speaker 1: about what Abramovich was doing is that And I don't
Speaker 1: know if she was aware that she was gaming people
Speaker 1: in a way, but um, she was sort of manipulating
Speaker 1: their feelings. And she did have an accomplice come behind
Speaker 1: and take their wallet about five minutes. Then there was
Speaker 1: they funded the whole thing. Well, you know, I gotta
Speaker 1: get creative in the arts, uh. And Jake Kellerman's paper
Speaker 1: Looking and Loving the Effects of Mutual Gaze on Feelings
Speaker 1: of Romantic love, researchers took seventy two unacquainted undergraduate students,
Speaker 1: split them into male female parents, and then they studied
Speaker 1: the effects that two minutes, just two minutes of uninterrupted
Speaker 1: mutual eye contact had on their feelings toward one another.
Speaker 1: And they found that if the two strangers gazed into
Speaker 1: each other's eyes for those two minutes, they later reported
Speaker 1: that they had increased feelings of affection or even passionate
Speaker 1: love towards that person. Now they did this, um and
Speaker 1: in other ways where they weren't asked to actually like
Speaker 1: actively steer into each other's eyes, but just be with
Speaker 1: each other for two minutes. They were free to look
Speaker 1: at the person's hands or so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: And in that case they did not report those feelings.
Speaker 1: But there's something about connecting staring into the eyes for
Speaker 1: that long, uninterrupted that causes those feelings. And so I
Speaker 1: wasn't too shocked when, um, when I began to think
Speaker 1: about some of the things that popped up from Abrabois performance,
Speaker 1: like there's a website called Marina made Me Cry or
Speaker 1: Marina Abraboma which made me cry, um, Because that's the
Speaker 1: the sort of deep held feelings that are in there
Speaker 1: that when you connect with a person on that level
Speaker 1: that come out. It reminds me to the study of
Speaker 1: the two documentary to excellent documentary films, um Baraka and
Speaker 1: Sam Sara, but by the same filmmakers. Have you seen
Speaker 1: either of those? I assume you've seen you have seen,
Speaker 1: and I've seen Baraca, but that was a long time ago,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't so about it, and and then you
Speaker 1: were terribly mortified by that. Well, Um, as you'll remember
Speaker 1: in both of these films, and this is not a
Speaker 1: technique that's limited just to Sam Sara and Baraca. But
Speaker 1: they'll have these scenes where they'll be an individual from
Speaker 1: a different culture and they'll just be standing there, uh,
Speaker 1: filmed staring at you. So in a sense, you're you're
Speaker 1: forced to make eye contact with this individual and connect
Speaker 1: with this this uh, this subject of this uh, this
Speaker 1: portrait not only as a subject, isn't as an object,
Speaker 1: but as a person. And it it's really emotionally evocative,
Speaker 1: right again, because now you're you're considering them as the whole. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you're you're you're watching them breathe and you're you're
Speaker 1: you're staring into their eyes. I'm saying you exist, I exist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then someone next to you in the theater says,
Speaker 1: cut it out. Quit talking to the screen, Quit telling
Speaker 1: the screen it exists. We're trying to watch a movie here.
Speaker 1: But going back to the old staring contest, and I
Speaker 1: wasn't really prepared for the staring contest. I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to get out of losing it, but I've kind of
Speaker 1: forgot what the rules were, because apparently the rule is
Speaker 1: not that you lose by looking away, but you lose
Speaker 1: by blinking alone, which seems kind of silly. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: that's the dominance factor, right, like, I will not blink
Speaker 1: and and I will be so intense and aggressive that
Speaker 1: I will win this. I totally I need to have
Speaker 1: a rematch with my brother, clearly, maybe you can do
Speaker 1: it over Skype or something. Yeah, I think we're going
Speaker 1: to FaceTime maybe. Um. So, of course, blinking, though, is inevitable,
Speaker 1: and we do it something like fifteen to twenty times
Speaker 1: a minute. Well, we have to lubricates the cornea, and
Speaker 1: if you're not blinking enough, it's it's not good for
Speaker 1: the eye, right, and it's dislodging little bits of dirt
Speaker 1: and dust that get in there. But this is a
Speaker 1: really interesting revelation that has recently come out in paper
Speaker 1: published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Speaker 1: Researchers found that people tend to blink at predictable moments,
Speaker 1: and they blink a lot more than they need to.
Speaker 1: So you don't need to blink fifteen to twenty times
Speaker 1: a minute just to lubricate your eyeball or dislodge something.
Speaker 1: So you've got these predictable moments that you blink at.
Speaker 1: So if you're reading, you tend to blink at the
Speaker 1: end of each sentence. If you're listening to someone speak,
Speaker 1: you may blink when the speaker pauses between statements. And
Speaker 1: if a group of people are all watching the same video,
Speaker 1: everyone tends to blink at the same time when the
Speaker 1: action briefly lags. I was trying to remain conscious of
Speaker 1: my blinking just now, and I did find that I
Speaker 1: would blink whenever you would have a stop in the sentence.
Speaker 1: I know. Actually I wish that we had had given
Speaker 1: everybody a tip off before I read that to see
Speaker 1: if they were doing the same thing. But maybe you
Speaker 1: guys out there are being aware of that as well. Well.
Speaker 1: As I say this, think about when you when you
Speaker 1: blink towards Brill and the slivey toads, did Guay and
Speaker 1: Gimble in the way, when did you blink? You know?
Speaker 1: I think it might have matched up. So there's more
Speaker 1: to it, though. This is the really cool thing, and
Speaker 1: it's uh blinking, It turns out is a way that
Speaker 1: we get a quick refresher for our brains. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: since we're resetting the visuals that we're taking in, which
Speaker 1: I find find really interesting. It's it's like I'm looking
Speaker 1: at a painting and then I blink and then maybe
Speaker 1: I'm looking to a new part of the painting and
Speaker 1: I'm seeing it a new Each time we blink, we're
Speaker 1: kind of re establishing the scenario for the brain. In
Speaker 1: a sense, we're kind of updating the the the image
Speaker 1: like a like a security camera that doesn't have a
Speaker 1: constant stream but merely updates every it's refreshing and refocusing.
Speaker 1: And of course someone tested this out to Mommy Nicano
Speaker 1: along with other researchers, scan the brains of ten volunteers
Speaker 1: in an f m R I machine while they watched Okay,
Speaker 1: check this out, Mr Bean. Why Mr Bean, I do
Speaker 1: not know, but they watched the show Mr Bean why
Speaker 1: they were being scanned, And it turns out when the
Speaker 1: volunteers blink, the activity correlated with increased blood flow to
Speaker 1: the default mode network, which we know is the seat
Speaker 1: of midline chatter in our brain, but also is associated
Speaker 1: with a state of rest, or rather wakeful rest. So
Speaker 1: the Mr Bean show also contained momentary blackouts, so those
Speaker 1: were built into the shows and volunteers would see nothing
Speaker 1: in these blackouts actually lasted for the same amount of
Speaker 1: time that a blink does, and what they found is
Speaker 1: that the brain did not respond in the same way,
Speaker 1: and that that area that's were related to the default
Speaker 1: mode network was not activated. And that leads to this
Speaker 1: conclusion that blinking is something that is that's much more
Speaker 1: than just a temporary blackout um that that it is
Speaker 1: serving a purpose to refocus our efforts and our thoughts.
Speaker 1: So in a sense, if we're engaging in some sort
Speaker 1: of like alpha mare stare down and we're not blinking,
Speaker 1: what we're saying is, yeah, I don't need to reset this.
Speaker 1: I see everything I need to see right here. I
Speaker 1: don't need any new information. That's right. That's right, Better
Speaker 1: step off, that's right. I'm the zen master of all
Speaker 1: stimuli coming in right now, going rods, some rods. So
Speaker 1: take that in with you next time you you're on
Speaker 1: the train, you're at the mall, you're pulling out of
Speaker 1: your driveway, and there's somebody that needs a serious stare down. Um,
Speaker 1: now you know a little more about why you feel
Speaker 1: this compulsion to either engage with the staring or to
Speaker 1: run from it, or or indeed why the blinking occurs,
Speaker 1: because you're you're updating the information that is before you,
Speaker 1: and probably that person isn't staring at you, but it's
Speaker 1: good for you to be aware of your surroundings. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: calm down a little bit. You're probably not being stared
Speaker 1: at unless you know there is something like stuck to
Speaker 1: the back of your shirt or something, and in case
Speaker 1: in that case, maybe somebody will say something or toilet
Speaker 1: paper trailing down from your pants, But don't worry about that.
Speaker 1: It's just random stuff of life. A little ninnis all right. Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're gonna go ahead and um and
Speaker 1: call it a day on this podcast. The robot is
Speaker 1: on vacation, so we hope that he's having a great time.
Speaker 1: Where did you go, Abiza? Yeah? Wow, Well he loves
Speaker 1: he loves the music scene there. He does volleyball, so
Speaker 1: those are his passions, so we hope he's living it up. Um.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you wanted to touch base with
Speaker 1: us about staring, about blinking, we would love to hear
Speaker 1: from you. What is your weird social dynamic with individuals
Speaker 1: uh in regard to staring? And what is is there
Speaker 1: any truth to this whole? Like is the world really
Speaker 1: about duds who lift and doos who don't lift? And
Speaker 1: then what is it like? What's it like? As a
Speaker 1: woman to engage in this uh, in this world of staring,
Speaker 1: in this world of justification, and the seeing of individuals
Speaker 1: as uh as a pile of parts rather than a whole.
Speaker 1: All of that's fair game. You can find us in
Speaker 1: the usual places our main homepage, Stuff to Alow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com, Facebook, and Tumbler where we were Stuff
Speaker 1: to Ablow your Mind, Twitter where we are blow the Mind,
Speaker 1: and YouTube where we are mind stuff. And if you
Speaker 1: are a lifter and you refute my anecdote about this
Speaker 1: aggressive staring into the mirror sent me straight, let me know.
Speaker 1: Let us know your feelings by dropping a line at
Speaker 1: Blood of the Mind at discovery dot com for more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com