Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: And my name is Robert Lamb, I'm Christian and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And hey, this is part two of our
Speaker 1: seventeen Ignobles series. That's right. If you haven't listened to
Speaker 1: the first one, I recommend that you go back at
Speaker 1: least listen to the first twenty minutes because we set
Speaker 1: up the stage for what ignobells are, how we've covered
Speaker 1: them in the past before, and what we're doing here today.
Speaker 1: This is really a continuation of us observing the prizes.
Speaker 1: That being said, if there was ever a multipart episode
Speaker 1: that you could just drop in at any point, it's
Speaker 1: this one. This is a bag yeah, because because basically
Speaker 1: we're just taking the ten different winners for the two
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen Ignoble prizes, we divvy them up and we're
Speaker 1: each like taking the lead on a different study discussing
Speaker 1: why it's cool, why it's funny, and exactly what the signs.
Speaker 1: In the last episode, we talked about liquid cats, cave bugs,
Speaker 1: and digury do therapy, along with weird coffee mugs, and
Speaker 1: now we're gonna get into even weirder stuff. Okay, So
Speaker 1: the first prize we're going to discuss today is the
Speaker 1: Economics Prize, ordered to Matthew Rocklough and Nancy Greer quote
Speaker 1: for their experiments to see how contact with a live
Speaker 1: crocodile affects a person's willingness to gamble. Okay, this sounds
Speaker 1: like something out of a out of a James Bond
Speaker 1: film right here. I'm imagining that this is like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, based in Louisiana or Florida or something where
Speaker 1: live crocodiles are a common sighting and then you may
Speaker 1: go gambling it. Based in Australia, you can gamble and
Speaker 1: you can handle saltwater crocodile. Right, Yeah, So the paper
Speaker 1: is called never Smile at a crocodile. Betting on electronic
Speaker 1: gaming machines is intensified by reptile induced arousal. Actually, there,
Speaker 1: we should put an asterisk on the statement in that
Speaker 1: title there, because that that's partially true depending on what
Speaker 1: kind of gambler you are and some other things about you.
Speaker 1: It was published in the Journal of Gambling Studies in
Speaker 1: and so there are a lot of slot machines studies.
Speaker 1: That the whole episode that right, and I think we
Speaker 1: could do more. Robert and I have talked about doing
Speaker 1: episodes entirely on rat slot machine studies or I mean,
Speaker 1: there's just tons of research on slot machines, and there's
Speaker 1: a reason for the slot machines or as the literature
Speaker 1: refers to them, electronic gaming machines or e g m s.
Speaker 1: They're kind of a perfect predator. They're like brilliantly designed
Speaker 1: to exploit vulnerabilities in human psychology and risk management behavior,
Speaker 1: gambling with e g m s tends to produce this
Speaker 1: state of what's known as autonomic arousal. You and I
Speaker 1: would just probably call this excitement, you know, physiological sensation
Speaker 1: of excitement in the body that the brain tends to
Speaker 1: interpret sometimes in the case of gambling, interprets as a
Speaker 1: lucky streak, which keeps you gambling, and it leads to
Speaker 1: this vicious cycle where it's more and more arousing and
Speaker 1: you just keep wanting to bet more and more money.
Speaker 1: Autonomic arousal not to be confused with reptile induced arousal. Well, no,
Speaker 1: I mean, reptiles could create a state of aucomic arousal,
Speaker 1: but yeah, not one and the same thing one could
Speaker 1: lead to the other. So I think e g M
Speaker 1: s are an interesting thing to study, and this kind
Speaker 1: of research really matters because they fit into a similar category.
Speaker 1: Uh that that I would put social media interface design
Speaker 1: in this this successful technology design that is actually better
Speaker 1: at its job than is good for us. What do
Speaker 1: y'all think about that? With like social media interfaces that
Speaker 1: I would say, it's a great success story in terms
Speaker 1: of designing technology. But success doesn't necessarily mean morally good
Speaker 1: or good for our lives. Well, I think we When
Speaker 1: I think of a slot machine, I instantly think of
Speaker 1: like somebody that's kind of shackled there to the machine
Speaker 1: and they're just pushing buttons, uh, And there's this idea
Speaker 1: that it's going to pay off for them, and then
Speaker 1: maybe it does pay off a little bit, and then
Speaker 1: they keep going. And with with social media, you do
Speaker 1: see a some more situation. Someone has their phone out,
Speaker 1: they're constantly checking this feed or that feed, this social
Speaker 1: media appor that or another. And the win in this case,
Speaker 1: I guess would be somebody contacting them directly or some
Speaker 1: sort of response. Howbody like that I get on my
Speaker 1: or you might even you might even have a real win.
Speaker 1: You could have a meaningful interaction with somebody you care
Speaker 1: about on social media, or you might come across an
Speaker 1: interesting article that you're glad you read. Those are the
Speaker 1: little winds, but maybe it just keeps you playing. After that,
Speaker 1: we're speaking more little on our is social media making
Speaker 1: us crazy? Episode from last year? And I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, the literature basically assumes and they're
Speaker 1: still looking into this of course that like the same
Speaker 1: parts of our brain that are lit up by gambling
Speaker 1: or lit up by social media. I think I think
Speaker 1: that's a highly successful and correct analogy. Uh so for
Speaker 1: social media interfaces that the job they're trying to achieve
Speaker 1: generally is maximizing time on site. They want to keep
Speaker 1: you on that platform as long as possible and keep
Speaker 1: you looking at stuff and clicking on ads and all that.
Speaker 1: Is that why we do those hour long Facebook lives
Speaker 1: every Friday? I don't, Well, that's why Facebook wants us
Speaker 1: doing those things. Yeah, I don't know what our reason is.
Speaker 1: Maybe we're just slaves to the machine. But you didn't
Speaker 1: know that. Basically, Yeah, the machine says you need to
Speaker 1: do this, and we basically turned it around and said, Okay,
Speaker 1: we'll do it, but if we're gonna do right, we'll
Speaker 1: change it from the inside. Sure, yeah, that's what we're doing.
Speaker 1: We're changing the machine. Man. But the electronic gaming machines,
Speaker 1: I would put them in the same category. But instead
Speaker 1: what they're seeking is not maximizing time on site, but
Speaker 1: maximizing time on machine. Because when they maximize time on machine,
Speaker 1: this tends toward infinity of losses for the player. It
Speaker 1: leads to playing two extinctions industry term. Basically, the machine
Speaker 1: getting all your cash and then making you come back
Speaker 1: to play again when you've got more are draining the
Speaker 1: host dry of its precious blood. So unless you want
Speaker 1: to make gambling illegal or something, one of the best
Speaker 1: defenses against this type of machine is for independent researchers
Speaker 1: to study the psychology of gaming, basically to understand how
Speaker 1: these machines exploit our brains, so we can build up
Speaker 1: defense behaviors that people could employ independently to resist the machines,
Speaker 1: or maybe so you could impose regulations on what types
Speaker 1: of things these machines can do. Well, like what one
Speaker 1: of the issues that we got into before was what
Speaker 1: happens when a machine is speaking to you in a
Speaker 1: human voice or using other kind of anthropomorphic forms, like
Speaker 1: if if you were to pass a lot and says, look,
Speaker 1: you can have slot machines, but they can't look like
Speaker 1: beautiful women. They can't look like cartoon characters. That's they
Speaker 1: can't be a cowboy that says, howdy, partner, put coins
Speaker 1: in me. And that is actually a meaningful thing because
Speaker 1: studies have shown that you might spend more money in
Speaker 1: a slot machine that seems more humanoid and less mechanical.
Speaker 1: So the tons of studies like this, there's just a
Speaker 1: prolific slot machine research. This is one example that is
Speaker 1: maybe the weirdest one I've ever come across, but I
Speaker 1: like it. So Rock Lofting Career decided to study this
Speaker 1: strange condition. What happens when you have the opportunity to
Speaker 1: gamble on an e g M after you've just held
Speaker 1: a saltwater crocodile. The so the subjects are tourists at
Speaker 1: the Kurana Saltwater Crocodile Farm in Kowonga, Queensland, Australia. It
Speaker 1: was a hundred and three subjects, forty one of them female,
Speaker 1: uh ages eighteen to sixty six. And here's the experiment
Speaker 1: under two different conditions. Subjects would be given money. They'll
Speaker 1: give you twenty bucks, and then they ask you to
Speaker 1: play a laptop simulated e g M sort of a
Speaker 1: slot machine simulator written in visual basic on a laptop
Speaker 1: computer where you would get to gamble with the money
Speaker 1: they just gave you. And the two different conditions were this,
Speaker 1: you could either play this game or right before you
Speaker 1: walk into the crocodile farm or right after you have
Speaker 1: cradled a one meter long saltwater crocodile in your hands.
Speaker 1: So there are some independent variables going into this. Right
Speaker 1: you've got obviously the control condition and the test condition
Speaker 1: did you just walk in or have you handled a crocodile,
Speaker 1: and so that is supposed to correspond to your level
Speaker 1: of arousal. They did a galvanic skin conductance test to
Speaker 1: to sort of check this and say, okay, we're people
Speaker 1: actually showing physiological signs of arousal, and they determined yeah,
Speaker 1: people who held crocodiles were physiologically aroused. But the other
Speaker 1: independent variables would be problem gaming status, like do do
Speaker 1: you have any of the risk factors for being a
Speaker 1: problem gambler or affective state? Are you having negative feelings
Speaker 1: right now, and so they'd established that by a questionnaire
Speaker 1: UH that they administer at the time of the test,
Speaker 1: like are you having emotions that we'd usually classify as
Speaker 1: negative affect or positive affect? And then the deependit variables.
Speaker 1: This is what they were seeing. Was was coming out
Speaker 1: from those variables was bet size, how much you bet,
Speaker 1: speed of betting, how asty bet, and final payouts like
Speaker 1: what what's your your bottom line at the end of
Speaker 1: the game. And the results they found where that compared
Speaker 1: to people in the control group, holding a crocodile could
Speaker 1: affect problem gamblers in a couple of different ways. If
Speaker 1: you held a crocodile and had negative emotions, you actually
Speaker 1: placed lower than average bets on the e g M.
Speaker 1: So if you're somebody who's at risk for problem gambling,
Speaker 1: they hand you a crocodile and you don't like it
Speaker 1: and you have negative emotions, you'll actually it will tamp
Speaker 1: down your problem gambling behaviors. You're less likely to spend
Speaker 1: more interesting But if you are a problem gambler or
Speaker 1: have these you know, risk factors for problem gambling, and
Speaker 1: you hold a crocodile and you don't have negative feelings
Speaker 1: about it, you actually place much higher than average bets
Speaker 1: on the e g M. That's what I imagined would happen,
Speaker 1: That there's some kind of like I held this dangerous
Speaker 1: animal and everything turned out okay, so now I'm willing
Speaker 1: to take more risks. Well, So here's how the researchers
Speaker 1: interpreted it. I'll see what you guys think about this.
Speaker 1: The way they interpreted it is that they're going on
Speaker 1: what's known as the two factor model of effective states.
Speaker 1: So the way they think affective states tend to happen
Speaker 1: is that we first of all experience physiological arousal, like
Speaker 1: there are feelings in the body that tell you something
Speaker 1: of emotional significance is happening, and then secondary to that,
Speaker 1: you cognitively think about it and give it some kind
Speaker 1: of meaning or significance or cause. So what would happen,
Speaker 1: say if, um, you suddenly a car is driving head
Speaker 1: on at you in the highways. First you have the
Speaker 1: feelings in your body there's some kind of arousal, and
Speaker 1: then you use your sense data and your thoughts to
Speaker 1: kind of say, okay, here's why that's happening. I'm afraid
Speaker 1: because a car is coming at me um. And so
Speaker 1: what that means, though, is that the feelings of arousal
Speaker 1: in the body are not necessarily linked to their actual causes.
Speaker 1: It's just something that we sort of figure you're out
Speaker 1: secondary to having the feeling. And so the way that
Speaker 1: might work in a gambler is if you do something
Speaker 1: dangerous or something arousing, like holding a dangerous reptile, you
Speaker 1: can you get this physiological sense of arousal. But the
Speaker 1: gambler who doesn't have fear emotions really about that animal
Speaker 1: or any other kind of negative emotions, can just interpret
Speaker 1: that free floating arousal as a lucky streak. So it's like,
Speaker 1: I'm pumped up by what just happened, and I'm that
Speaker 1: means I'm good to go. Let's gamble. I'm I just
Speaker 1: had the crocodile. I'm ready to drop some cash. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's content content free arousal that you can interpret in
Speaker 1: any schema you want. And for the problem gambler, that
Speaker 1: schema may very well be the feeling of luckiness or
Speaker 1: the feeling of being on a roll. So I gotta
Speaker 1: ask you, then, how well do you think Kenny Rogers
Speaker 1: the gambler would do based on his crocodile experience was it.
Speaker 1: Maybe here's the thing he maybe he was talking about
Speaker 1: a crocodile. You've got to know when to hold the
Speaker 1: crocodile and when to run. See, that would actually be
Speaker 1: more specific. I've got issues with Kenny Rogers the Gambler
Speaker 1: who doesn't because I think it fits into this category
Speaker 1: of advice that is not actually specific enough to matter. There.
Speaker 1: There's tons of advice like that out in the world.
Speaker 1: You'll read these, you know, inspirational quotes. People have whole
Speaker 1: books like this where they offer advice, but the advice
Speaker 1: is actually completely generic. It's essentially like telling somebody you
Speaker 1: should figure out what the right thing to do is.
Speaker 1: It's like a fortune cookie. Yeah, and so in the
Speaker 1: in the song, it's you've got to know when to
Speaker 1: hold them, no, when to fold them. That's not advice.
Speaker 1: Advice would be telling me what to judge that on,
Speaker 1: Like how should I know when to hold them? Uh,
Speaker 1: this is completely an aside. But if you want some fun,
Speaker 1: look up the video of him performing that song on
Speaker 1: The Muppet Show in the eighties. Now he does he
Speaker 1: does give us some advice. You never count your money.
Speaker 1: I want you sitting at the table that Okay, I'll
Speaker 1: give him that. That is specific advice. I'll take that.
Speaker 1: But you've got to know when to hold them, no
Speaker 1: one to fold them. That's not advice, that's just generic
Speaker 1: fortune teller stuff. But anyway, I wanted to come back
Speaker 1: to the study because there are some masterisks we should
Speaker 1: put on this. Number one is I want to clarify
Speaker 1: that this only seemed to be the case for problem gamblers,
Speaker 1: So like holding the crocodile, just for normal people who
Speaker 1: do who did not have these risk factors for being
Speaker 1: a problem gambler, did not seem to intensify betting, and uh,
Speaker 1: like these would be people for whom gambling is not
Speaker 1: a novel experience, but maybe holding a crocodile is, whereas
Speaker 1: from for me, holding a crocodile is the novel experience,
Speaker 1: as is using a slot machine. Right, so you you
Speaker 1: probably would not place higher bets or or have intensified
Speaker 1: gambling or reward seeking behaviors after holding a crocodile, or likewise,
Speaker 1: somebody who had a strict rule like, yeah, I play
Speaker 1: the slot machines when I go to the casino, but
Speaker 1: I only spend five dollars and once that's gone. I'm done,
Speaker 1: and I never break that rule. Right. Yeah, So people
Speaker 1: who don't exhibit these behaviors, this doesn't apply to them.
Speaker 1: It does seem to apply to people who are risk
Speaker 1: for problem gambling. But there is a limitation to the study.
Speaker 1: Essentially that they did not have a lot of people
Speaker 1: in their sample group who showed problem gambling behaviors or
Speaker 1: or risk factors. So one thing would be that they
Speaker 1: should probably try to replicate this to have more confidence
Speaker 1: in the in the result with a larger sample group
Speaker 1: that has more problem gamblers, and it just to make
Speaker 1: sure that they're getting a real effect and this isn't
Speaker 1: just noise. Now. Remember also, the thing is that even
Speaker 1: among the problem gamblers, it was only when you don't
Speaker 1: have any negative moods or negative feelings about holding the
Speaker 1: crocodile that it leads to these intensified behaviors. If you
Speaker 1: have these negative moods, you report it actually kind of
Speaker 1: seems to moderate your gambling behavior. And so that sets
Speaker 1: up this quote I want to read from the paper.
Speaker 1: Quote in some low intensity negative moods, such as boredom
Speaker 1: or mild anxiety, contribute to large bets among at risk players.
Speaker 1: Whereas high autonomic arousal without negative moods also produces relatively
Speaker 1: large wagers. Taken together, the results suggest that betting among
Speaker 1: at risk players may be motivated both by attempts to
Speaker 1: alleviate low arousal dysphoric moods and by high arousal induced
Speaker 1: positive expectations of winning money. Yeah, totally. This lines up
Speaker 1: with the social media thing as well. I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. So it's like when you when you're
Speaker 1: a problem gambler and you participate in these gambling behaviors,
Speaker 1: it seems you may be trying to counteract basically like
Speaker 1: low level unpleasantness and seeking high arousal, high reward pleas
Speaker 1: you know, high high pleasure interactions. Right, But if you're
Speaker 1: like absolutely in the pits emotionally, you're probably not going
Speaker 1: to be likely to gamble as much as that the
Speaker 1: person who's just sort of low level and happy, right,
Speaker 1: a little bit anxious, a little bit bored, that's the
Speaker 1: target show. Yeah, So what's the what what's the overall
Speaker 1: takeaway from this? Is there any kind of crocodile based
Speaker 1: regulation that might be employed to help problem gambling? Well,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say crocodile based. I mean, I think it.
Speaker 1: Studies like this actually do matter, like that, this is
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that can help us understand the
Speaker 1: psychological states that lead to problem gambling and can help
Speaker 1: people either individually can help people come up with strategies
Speaker 1: to avoid problem gambling behaviors if they know, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: here's the state I'm in when I'm vulnerable. I know
Speaker 1: when I'm in that state, I should, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: not be around electronic gaming machines or something like that.
Speaker 1: Like you can devise behaviors to protect yourself from your
Speaker 1: own impulses, or you could also devise regulations on society,
Speaker 1: like if we find out that in general, people are
Speaker 1: just much more susceptible to electronic gaming machines under certain
Speaker 1: psychological conditions, you could try to keep gaming machines from
Speaker 1: being around in places where you would expect people to
Speaker 1: be in those conditions. Or you end up you end
Speaker 1: up having just like some sort of a B S
Speaker 1: question that pops up on the screen. Uh, please write
Speaker 1: your depression level and if you and if you and
Speaker 1: if you ad it too appropriately, then it won't let
Speaker 1: you play right, And then you do it again and
Speaker 1: you just click the number that's required, like an age gate.
Speaker 1: They have a test in the machine to see if
Speaker 1: you're okay or you having kind of like no, no
Speaker 1: real strong negative emotions, but experiencing high arousal. I don't
Speaker 1: know how you test for that, but but if you
Speaker 1: detect that, it's like you better not gamble right now.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you wanted to do it physiologically, you
Speaker 1: could actually do a galvanic skin conductance test, you know,
Speaker 1: like you could test for arousal with a physical test
Speaker 1: and not a questionnaire. Yeah, I can see that, you like,
Speaker 1: put your arm into a cuff of some sort and test.
Speaker 1: It's like you're too aroused. You can't, can't play right now.
Speaker 1: But then you come back to the again, to the
Speaker 1: the question, how much energy, how much effort, how much
Speaker 1: design are slot machine makers going to be willing to
Speaker 1: put into you know, basically protecting the host organs? Well,
Speaker 1: of course, I mean when we did our last slot
Speaker 1: machine episode, we had somebody right in who worked for
Speaker 1: a gaming design company and they were like, you know,
Speaker 1: I think you you were a little too harsh on us.
Speaker 1: You were a little too negative about slot machines. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to demonize them too much, because I
Speaker 1: can understand, like, under plenty of conditions, they might just
Speaker 1: be a fun thing people do, Like if they've got
Speaker 1: certain limits on how much they bet, it might just
Speaker 1: be a cool recreational activity. I don't have a problem
Speaker 1: with that, but I think we should recognize that certain
Speaker 1: people have conditions that make them vulnerable to this and
Speaker 1: that can be incredibly destructive in their lives. Well, I
Speaker 1: think one of the things that we observed in that
Speaker 1: episode is that the origins of the slot machine were
Speaker 1: very mundane and fun. It was about, uh, administering a
Speaker 1: prize in a simple game, not unlike you know, like
Speaker 1: a trivia machine or something in bars today. But the machine,
Speaker 1: as machines do, uh, they they evolved, They took on
Speaker 1: more advanced forms, they were designed to take on more
Speaker 1: advanced forms. They became better and better at at carrying
Speaker 1: out their their key bit of programming, which was, you know,
Speaker 1: drain the sucker of its coin, the original Facebook algorithm.
Speaker 1: Have you guys noticed this trend in video games lately
Speaker 1: when you're in like an immersive world video game, that
Speaker 1: there is almost always a gambling component to it, Like
Speaker 1: if you're in like Skyrim you can gamble. If you're
Speaker 1: in Red Dead Redemption, you can gamble. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: remember what the most recent one. Oh, the Witcher. I
Speaker 1: was playing one of those Witcher games. It's like, everywhere
Speaker 1: you go you can sit down and gamble. I would
Speaker 1: say that the games like that incorporate gambling elements even
Speaker 1: outside of the gaming within the gaming things. So in
Speaker 1: a lot of these games, you can walk up to
Speaker 1: a slot machine and play it, or you can play cards,
Speaker 1: but also when you're in the world, there are variable
Speaker 1: reward payouts where, for example, if your achievements yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you might kill certain enemies or something, and
Speaker 1: they've got goodies they give you when you loot them,
Speaker 1: and you notice you don't get the same thing every time.
Speaker 1: It's not guaranteed. It's variable payouts, just like a slot machine,
Speaker 1: and the variable payouts are a psychological hack. The variable
Speaker 1: payouts make us think like, oh, it could be really
Speaker 1: big next time. I'm gonna keep doing it. That's what
Speaker 1: leads to grinding and video games. Yeah, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I wonder though, if there's something about the actual placing
Speaker 1: of gambling into those games that psychologically gets players to
Speaker 1: play longer. Yeah, I think that could very well be.
Speaker 1: All right. On that note, we're going to take a
Speaker 1: break and when we come back, we're going to jump
Speaker 1: into the Cognition prize. Alright, we're back cognition. You say,
Speaker 1: what have we got here? We have a paper titled
Speaker 1: is that Me or My Twin? Lack of self face
Speaker 1: recognition advantage in identical Twins. I saw this and as
Speaker 1: we were doing the research for this yesterday a headline
Speaker 1: popped up that was related to this. Apparently, Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: when your phone does facial recognition as a way to unlock,
Speaker 1: like as as a password, it has trouble with identical twins. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I wonder if what you're about to reveal to
Speaker 1: us is related in a way. In a way, So,
Speaker 1: this is a paper that came out in and it's
Speaker 1: from a an Italian and Spanish team and it was
Speaker 1: published in p Los one it. Uh, Before we get
Speaker 1: into it, I do want to just touch basically on
Speaker 1: the idea of identical twins. And uh, we've had some
Speaker 1: episodes in the past. I've dealt with twins a little bit,
Speaker 1: but I don't know, like I can't remember we've done
Speaker 1: a deep dive. I know that we have some identical
Speaker 1: twins out there listening to the show. I know that
Speaker 1: we have parents of identical twins, siblings of identical twins, etcetera.
Speaker 1: For a lot of us, though, our main point of
Speaker 1: reference for identical twins ends up being fiction because how
Speaker 1: many of example, how many examples can you think of of,
Speaker 1: like weird twins or twins with a paranormal link. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's played up for the uncanny nous. I mean they
Speaker 1: push it to creepy links and things like The Shining
Speaker 1: or Dead Ringers. Yeah. Uh, and I and I say this,
Speaker 1: I mean I have written stories about creepy twins before,
Speaker 1: because they it does become a useful way of examining yourself,
Speaker 1: examining identity, uh, at least if you're out an outside
Speaker 1: or if you're not an identical twin. Likewise, I'm glad
Speaker 1: you mentioned dead Ringers because you also see it used
Speaker 1: over and over again in films. Sometimes it feels like
Speaker 1: just pure actor or director vanity, Like let's have this
Speaker 1: actor play two characters. Why have one James Franco when
Speaker 1: you can have to James Franco is playing slightly different
Speaker 1: James Franco twins. Yeah, yeah, I immediately thought of that.
Speaker 1: That recent movie about the Crab Brothers legend where Tom
Speaker 1: Hardy plays both the oh yeah, he plays he plays
Speaker 1: identical twins. Uh. There was the recent Fargo season they
Speaker 1: had identical twins played by the same actor. It's done
Speaker 1: so many times that you get tired of it after
Speaker 1: a while, unless there's a really compelling reason to have
Speaker 1: identical twins played by single actor. I just got to
Speaker 1: throw in that one of my favorite words in all
Speaker 1: of science is the word for identical twins, the monozygotic twins. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the monosygotic twinka. It is utilized in this paper quite
Speaker 1: a bit now on top of so so basically it
Speaker 1: comes down to the idea that for us non twins,
Speaker 1: identical twins are a way to unravel ourselves. They perplex
Speaker 1: us and they toy with our sense of self perception.
Speaker 1: And as the researchers on this, uh, this paper, this
Speaker 1: two thousand fIF paper point out, science has generally overlooked
Speaker 1: the conundrum of self facial recognition in identical twins. We
Speaker 1: have a lot of twin studies out there, but there
Speaker 1: hasn't been a lot of papers that have looked at.
Speaker 1: What happens when an identical twin looks at a photograph
Speaker 1: or image of representation of their own face. Do they
Speaker 1: experience some kind of cognitive dissonance? Yeah, because consider for
Speaker 1: for the for the rest of us, for those of
Speaker 1: us who are not identical twins. Um, self facial recognition
Speaker 1: is is a major thing, and it may be a
Speaker 1: cognitive prerequisite for theory of mind, our ability to imagine
Speaker 1: the mind state of others. Because just think of all
Speaker 1: the times you've looked in a mirror, you've taken a selfie,
Speaker 1: or if you've looked at a picture of yourself and
Speaker 1: you think, ah, who's that handsome devil? You know? And
Speaker 1: then you answer that question, you you tell yourself who
Speaker 1: that handsome devil is? Yeah? Why why is he making
Speaker 1: a smile like that? What's that twinkle in his eyes? Um,
Speaker 1: it's the evil twin? Well, you know, I'm I'm painting
Speaker 1: in in in shades of vanity here, But there's a
Speaker 1: there's a basic cognitive process that's going on when you
Speaker 1: do that. You are identifying yourself and thinking about who
Speaker 1: you are. Well, I mean people respond in hilarious, obsessive
Speaker 1: ways to their own reflection when you notice it, like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a reason that a lot of places
Speaker 1: will put mirrors near elevators where people need to wait
Speaker 1: for things. People just time flies. When you're looking in
Speaker 1: a mirror, you can obsessively gaze into this image, right,
Speaker 1: rather than worry about the people that are next to
Speaker 1: you in the elevator. Yeah, and there's a there's a
Speaker 1: similar uh, cognitive process going on when you look at
Speaker 1: any face. You look at a loved one's face, you
Speaker 1: look at a stranger's face. There's still this theory of
Speaker 1: mind exercise that's going on. And what you're saying, who
Speaker 1: is that handsome devil or who is that person with
Speaker 1: you know, some brarow on, you know, whatever the case
Speaker 1: may be, You're looking at the face and you're trying
Speaker 1: to figure out who they are, at least insofar as
Speaker 1: it relates to you. I've had like the opposite experience
Speaker 1: with this, and I don't want to take us too
Speaker 1: far off track, but when I used to ride the train,
Speaker 1: the windows on the train were curved in such a
Speaker 1: way that when you saw your own reflection in it,
Speaker 1: your face was distorted a little bit, and it would
Speaker 1: look like my forehead had ridges or something, or like
Speaker 1: it was just it's kind of like a fun house mirror,
Speaker 1: and I'm yeah, clings, that was exactly what it looked
Speaker 1: like to me. Yeah, and uh, it was fascinating. I
Speaker 1: would sit there and look at it for for the
Speaker 1: whole ride and just kind of wonderment, like what if
Speaker 1: I actually did look like that? You know. So there
Speaker 1: is a weird sort of obsessiveness with our own uh reflection,
Speaker 1: but also like just a slight variation on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you see this in in skype
Speaker 1: calls and FaceTime calls where everyone's looking at their own
Speaker 1: picture instead of the camera. Maybe they're looking at other
Speaker 1: people's pictures. I noticed it with my son because he's
Speaker 1: just when I when I put him on FaceTime calls
Speaker 1: with relatives, he's just captivated by the own little, the
Speaker 1: little version of his own face, and he's not even
Speaker 1: thinking about the call, much less someone on the other line.
Speaker 1: And this underlines a basic reality. Our own face grabs
Speaker 1: and retains attention longer than any other face out there, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, loved one, stranger, etcetera. And this, according to
Speaker 1: the researchers, occurs with both upright and inverted faces. So
Speaker 1: we process upright faces faster usually, but we also have
Speaker 1: the similar process that goes on when the face is
Speaker 1: upside down. In fact, our ability to recognize our own
Speaker 1: face holds true even in cases of severe face blindness,
Speaker 1: accept in cases of just really catastrophic neurological or psychiatric disorder.
Speaker 1: Another fun word the term there, I guess would be
Speaker 1: auto prosopagnosia. Prosopagnosia is face blindness. Yes, so even in
Speaker 1: cases of severe face blindness, again, your own face is
Speaker 1: still going to um have a special place in uh
Speaker 1: in in facial recognition. Okay, but there is a So
Speaker 1: what we're getting at here is with the twins in particular,
Speaker 1: they lack the ability to recognize their own face. And
Speaker 1: these these twins that have a similar face to them, well,
Speaker 1: I mean basically it comes comes down to the fact
Speaker 1: that it's going to mess with this system because the
Speaker 1: basic fact here is that if you have an identical twin,
Speaker 1: then looking at your own face, looking at a representation
Speaker 1: of your own face, it's not instantly going to be
Speaker 1: your face. It could be your twins face. And and
Speaker 1: so we're looking at this to see like what's different
Speaker 1: without identical twins, and then what this reveals about our
Speaker 1: own about everyone else's facial recognition process. Now, there are
Speaker 1: a few other factors you have to take into account, so, uh,
Speaker 1: self face processing is a right hemisphere um exercise, and
Speaker 1: it's impaired in individuals with schizotypal traits. Also, extroverts, who
Speaker 1: typically have better social skills, they recognize a higher number
Speaker 1: of faces than introverts. Lower face recognition is associated with
Speaker 1: increased social phobia. So in all of this, personality plays
Speaker 1: a role in facial recognition as well, twin or not.
Speaker 1: So this is good because it gives me a reason
Speaker 1: to explain to my wife why I mix up like
Speaker 1: actors and actresses all the time, because she's like, you
Speaker 1: just think everybody looks alike, and well, no, it's because
Speaker 1: actually I have lower face recognition because of my increased
Speaker 1: social phobia. So, given all of of what we've discussed
Speaker 1: so far, uh monosa gottic twins they pose an interesting
Speaker 1: exception to the uniqueness of the self face because again,
Speaker 1: when we see a representation of our own face, we
Speaker 1: instantly know who that is. There's no room for doubt,
Speaker 1: and the idea here with an identical twin, there's going
Speaker 1: to be at least a little room for doubt, you know. Granted,
Speaker 1: if one has an evil goatee or something, it's gonna
Speaker 1: throw things out the window a bit. But for the
Speaker 1: most part, uh, this is this is interesting to look
Speaker 1: at because it turns things on its on there on
Speaker 1: its head a little bit. So. Past predictions have been
Speaker 1: made related to this that twins might have trouble with
Speaker 1: self identification as they identify more as a duo. Also,
Speaker 1: identical twins might sometimes mistake photos of their twin or
Speaker 1: their self. That's been the previous thinking on this. Also,
Speaker 1: another past study indicated that while humans can you usually
Speaker 1: identify themselves in a mirror by age two, uh, you,
Speaker 1: there have been cases where two year old twins discriminate
Speaker 1: their own faces from the face of their co twins
Speaker 1: only of exposed to the facial stimuli for a longer
Speaker 1: period of time, So there might be a delay at least.
Speaker 1: And studies have looked at young twins and their ability
Speaker 1: to work out these faces. But prior to this study,
Speaker 1: no one had really looked at the ability of adult
Speaker 1: twins to tell their faces apart. Okay, so what do
Speaker 1: we find out all right. Well, basically, the the overall
Speaker 1: aim of the paper, according to them is quote in
Speaker 1: the light of these premises, the main objective of the
Speaker 1: present study was to examine at both configural that's based
Speaker 1: on the whole face and featural that's based on details
Speaker 1: of the face processing levels, whether despite their physical similarity,
Speaker 1: twins would be better at recognizing their own face compared
Speaker 1: to their co twin faces. So what they did is
Speaker 1: they presented groups of twins with upright and inverted images
Speaker 1: of their faces, those of a twin and a control
Speaker 1: image of a non twin, so just some other person.
Speaker 1: They used tin monosygonic right handed gender balanced healthy twin
Speaker 1: couples that's the exact wording from the paper, and tin
Speaker 1: right handed gender balanced healthy controls all white Caucasians in Rome,
Speaker 1: where they where the study was held, and the control
Speaker 1: participants the non twins. Using the study for balance, they
Speaker 1: were matched with sex matched close friends or relatives, all
Speaker 1: people they've known at least three years, so there'd be
Speaker 1: a level of familiarity. This resulted in two days of tests.
Speaker 1: First they did personality tests, then they did the facial tests,
Speaker 1: and these were the results. Identical twins they said, seem
Speaker 1: to lack the self identification advantage. However, the absence of
Speaker 1: the self advantage depends on how much the twins report
Speaker 1: that they physically resemble each other. Okay, so adult twins
Speaker 1: can't pick themselves out of a lineup as easily as
Speaker 1: most adults can, but this is mitigated by whether they
Speaker 1: look all that much like their identical twin. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to drive home that it is. We're not
Speaker 1: saying that twins can't tell each other apart in there,
Speaker 1: but that there is not basically not as easily. It
Speaker 1: also depends on their anxious and avoid an attachment style.
Speaker 1: And they found out that quote self and co twin
Speaker 1: faces share very similar featural, configural and matching processes, but
Speaker 1: differ with respect to the higher order stages of face processing.
Speaker 1: So this is a study. Honestly, there's so many studies
Speaker 1: that the Igno Bell covers that I'm like, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: of course that the nobles chose that one or their
Speaker 1: studies that come out and you're like, oh, I can't
Speaker 1: wait till they feature this one. They give this one,
Speaker 1: they need noble prize. I I honestly didn't see what
Speaker 1: was that funny about this one is Yeah, it seems
Speaker 1: like right exactly. I guess maybe it's the idea of
Speaker 1: looking at your own face upside down again, Like if
Speaker 1: we had watched the ceremony this year, I imagine they
Speaker 1: would have done some kind of visual gag or whatever
Speaker 1: you know, related to this specifics. But it doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to have an inherent gag quality to it. There's no
Speaker 1: crocodile being held already using a gambling machine. There's a
Speaker 1: liquid cats. Yeah, so it's I have trouble figuring out.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm glad they highlighted it. It's a case
Speaker 1: where yeah, it's a cool study and I'm glad more
Speaker 1: eyes are on it because it does it is important. Uh.
Speaker 1: The take home here is again not that twins are
Speaker 1: freaky or anything. Rather, we're looking at a slight tweaking
Speaker 1: of the basic visual, safe self faced recognition, and it
Speaker 1: illuminates what's going on in all of us now. The
Speaker 1: researchers also argue that their findings match up with the
Speaker 1: self referrent phenotype matching theory that we recognize our kin
Speaker 1: by implicitly or explicitly comparing the similarity of other people's
Speaker 1: appearance to our own. So that's another potential takeome from
Speaker 1: the from the study. And again, I know we have
Speaker 1: some identical twins out there, We have parents of identical twins,
Speaker 1: family members and friends of identical twins. We would obviously
Speaker 1: love to hear from all of you about this particular paper,
Speaker 1: and we'd like to hear from evil twins as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: evil twins jump in. All right, let's take one more break,
Speaker 1: and when we get back, I'm going to talk to
Speaker 1: you guys about big years. Alright, we're back. This potato
Speaker 1: has big ears. Oh that's interesting that you went there.
Speaker 1: So there is actually a variety of slang around the
Speaker 1: world for talking about big ears, whether it's potatoes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well no, but in the UK, Uh, they are sometimes
Speaker 1: called bat ears. I had not heard that before, or
Speaker 1: wing nut, which I thought wing nut was a completely
Speaker 1: different thing. I assume that this is talking about big
Speaker 1: ears on humans, not on other animals. Yeah, yeah, uh.
Speaker 1: And Hindus seem to find big ears desirable because of
Speaker 1: comparisons to the elephant god Ganesha. The French compare big
Speaker 1: ears to cabbage, Hungarians compare them to donkey ears, and
Speaker 1: the Polish compare them to pig ears. Now, this is interesting.
Speaker 1: The Chinese believe that long ears predict prosperity and longevity.
Speaker 1: And this is the most important to this paper that
Speaker 1: I'm about to present to you and its purposes. I
Speaker 1: also want to say, all of those like statements about
Speaker 1: various societies around the world, I didn't look that up
Speaker 1: that came out of this original paper here. This is
Speaker 1: yet another Ignoble winner. It is the Anatomy Prize winner
Speaker 1: for the article why do you old men have big ears? Oh? Man?
Speaker 1: Because it's true? Right? It turns out it is true,
Speaker 1: but it's this is why it's funny, right. The idea
Speaker 1: is that it's one of these things that we all assume,
Speaker 1: but it does turn out that there's there's some reality
Speaker 1: to it. They've done lots of measurements, so let's get
Speaker 1: into it. I'm trying to picture pig ears and I
Speaker 1: can't what a pig ears look like. Oh, they're they're
Speaker 1: big and flopped. Well, sometimes they're floppy, It depends on
Speaker 1: the pig. Yeah. Oh, they're kind of like dog ear,
Speaker 1: they're kind of like pit bull ears. Yeah yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: So the idea for this paper actually came about this way.
Speaker 1: Nineteen members of the Thames Faculty of the Royal College
Speaker 1: of General Practitioners. We're just sitting around brainstorming and the
Speaker 1: first question that came up to them was why do
Speaker 1: we old men have big ears? And then they realized
Speaker 1: they were like, well, wait a minute, actually, we need
Speaker 1: to confirm that old men's ears are bigger and they
Speaker 1: get bigger in the first place. So this study was
Speaker 1: conducted by Dr James A. Heath Cut and he was
Speaker 1: a general practitioner in Bromley at the time. This is
Speaker 1: in the nineties. The paper was published in So they
Speaker 1: asked routine patients who were coming in for surgery consultations
Speaker 1: if it was okay if they measured their ears as
Speaker 1: part of this research along with it. When the group
Speaker 1: was thirty plus years old, from either sex and from
Speaker 1: any racial group that came in. Interestingly, none refused. Everybody
Speaker 1: was cool, measure my ears. This sounds fun and they
Speaker 1: recorded this along with the patient's age, and at this
Speaker 1: time they got two hundred and six people to participate in.
Speaker 1: The study showed that as these participants got older, their
Speaker 1: ears grew on an average of point to two millimeters
Speaker 1: a year. What the study didn't explain is why ears
Speaker 1: keep growing when the rest of the body stops. That
Speaker 1: seems to be odd, right. The thing about this study
Speaker 1: is it doesn't explain another thing. What if you're a
Speaker 1: taller person and like Robert, Robert is taller than I am.
Speaker 1: Robert's taller than Joe. So what if Robert has longer
Speaker 1: ears simply because he's taller, and then as he gets older?
Speaker 1: You know, so there's some discrepancies that they didn't really
Speaker 1: fill in here with you long legs, big ears, yeah,
Speaker 1: and well, and plus when you get older, you're gonna
Speaker 1: be more stooped over, whereas the ears are not going
Speaker 1: to get stooped over to go. So I could see
Speaker 1: that being the illusion of like, oh, this this old person,
Speaker 1: they're shrinking except for their ears, which there's there's no
Speaker 1: limited sight. Yeah. Uh. And they also didn't answer, for instance,
Speaker 1: like all of the elderly people that they checked their ears,
Speaker 1: they were all English because they're all in this one
Speaker 1: small spot, so they hadn't didn't really replicate it across
Speaker 1: cultures or ethnicities. Right, So this study was actually replicated
Speaker 1: in Japan in nine and they found the same thing. Yes,
Speaker 1: ear length still correlates with age, even when it is
Speaker 1: corrected for height. But still there's all these alternative interpretations
Speaker 1: that remain. So for instance, are people who are young
Speaker 1: now when they turn old, are they also going to
Speaker 1: see their ears age in the same way. Is ear
Speaker 1: length changing and getting bigger as you get older? Is
Speaker 1: it environmental? And if it's environmental, what could be responsible
Speaker 1: for big years. One of the questions was literally the
Speaker 1: idea that the people who were older at the time
Speaker 1: that they were doing this study, when they were younger,
Speaker 1: it was more common for their parents to box or
Speaker 1: scrub their children's ears, so they thought, well, maybe that
Speaker 1: could have affected it. I mean, my guess on the
Speaker 1: size would just be flesh drooping effects, yeah, or something
Speaker 1: that related to the way the ear grows, like the
Speaker 1: inner um, the inner portions of the ear kind of
Speaker 1: growing out the ear like a tree, like every year
Speaker 1: he gets a new ring. Yeah. I mean, maybe that's
Speaker 1: how aliens will categorize human captives that they alright, measure
Speaker 1: the ears, see how old this one is. But heath
Speaker 1: Cut didn't really account for any of that in his study,
Speaker 1: So I turned to another UH analysis of this. Because
Speaker 1: the study is over twenty years old, I looked at
Speaker 1: Alice Sheryl Caswell's research on this for Improbable Research, so
Speaker 1: the organization that puts out the ignobles. So this is
Speaker 1: where it came about from. So Alice addresses in her paper.
Speaker 1: First of all, the original study is very patriarchal because
Speaker 1: it focuses on men. Now that's only in the title.
Speaker 1: She acknowledges that the Japanese and subsequent German studies confirmed
Speaker 1: that old women have big ears too. But I do
Speaker 1: want to point out that is just poor phrasing of
Speaker 1: the British study. It was clear that they didn't discriminate
Speaker 1: on participants based on gender. I think they were just
Speaker 1: using the old men term jokingly because talking about yeah,
Speaker 1: they had based the entire study on this joke on
Speaker 1: his hook, Yeah exactly. Now, the German study was conducted
Speaker 1: in two thousand and seven, and they used photos instead
Speaker 1: of measuring like real ears. I imagine they must have
Speaker 1: been to scale these photos. They they used photos of
Speaker 1: one thousand, four hundred and forty eight years and they
Speaker 1: measured them in fifteen different ways, and they found that
Speaker 1: female ears show a lesser increase than those of men.
Speaker 1: So so far, across these three studies we've learned that yes,
Speaker 1: people's ears grow as they get older. Yes, women's ears
Speaker 1: also grow along with men's ears, but that it seems like,
Speaker 1: at least in the German study, that female ears have
Speaker 1: lesser increase. So that is really the gist of all
Speaker 1: of these studies. I think they're awarding an older study,
Speaker 1: you know, because Alice came along and was like, hey,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, this deserves a second look. Now, why
Speaker 1: is it funny? Well, because of the whole hook of
Speaker 1: the whole old men have big ears thing, we all
Speaker 1: just assume that to be true. Nobody ever thought you'd
Speaker 1: sit down and actually measure people's ears with a ruler
Speaker 1: or like a what do you call it, like a
Speaker 1: tape measure or something like that. Right, but it does
Speaker 1: seem to be actually important and the reason why there's
Speaker 1: still questions to be answered. We still don't know why
Speaker 1: ears keep going when the rest of the body stops, right,
Speaker 1: and then the gender difference in the rate of growth
Speaker 1: seems like that's it's something important as well, especially in
Speaker 1: terms of just understanding human biology and anatomy. Well, you
Speaker 1: know it also you have to wonder too about ear
Speaker 1: rings and piercings and various you know, which is gonna
Speaker 1: It's gonna vary from culture to culture. But in many
Speaker 1: cases you're going to have more females than males using
Speaker 1: the piercings. And is that going to increase length of
Speaker 1: of low? And I think of about like my friends
Speaker 1: in the punk scene who got like lots of ear
Speaker 1: rings and got like big gage is placed in their
Speaker 1: lobes and how their ears look. Now that could be
Speaker 1: an effect as well. So there you go with some
Speaker 1: environmental possibilities. I don't know about boxing or scrubbing though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we're potentially looking though at sort of accidental body
Speaker 1: modification of the human ear, sort of like cultural long
Speaker 1: term modification. Or we're looking at at some sort of
Speaker 1: gender dimorphism of of Homo sapiens where men end up
Speaker 1: having longer ears over time. Yeah, I'm inclined to agree
Speaker 1: with Joe. I mean, I haven't done the research, but
Speaker 1: I would assume that it's similar to like why you
Speaker 1: get bags under your eyes, right, Like over time, the
Speaker 1: um facia underneath your skin just loosens and the you
Speaker 1: know it droops basically, And so I think the ears
Speaker 1: are probably the same, like the cartilage around the ears
Speaker 1: stay I would imagine stays the same, but the other
Speaker 1: stuff starts drooping down. Yeah, all right, so there you
Speaker 1: have it. We've covered this episode the use of saltwater
Speaker 1: crocodiles on problem gamblers. We've looked at facial recognition and twins,
Speaker 1: and then the size of old man ears. So if
Speaker 1: you have any anecdotes or maybe some of your own
Speaker 1: research to share with us on these topics, you can
Speaker 1: find us on Facebook. We're on Twitter, we're on tumbler,
Speaker 1: and we're on Instagram. We've also got our fantastic Facebook
Speaker 1: discussion group. Yeah, the discussion module. You can find it
Speaker 1: on our Facebook page. That's where fans of the show
Speaker 1: hang out, interact, talk about recent episodes, or sometimes share
Speaker 1: potential topics with us. Yeah, and if you want to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us directly, you want to answer
Speaker 1: the question do your ears hang low? Do they wobble
Speaker 1: to and fro? We want to know about that and
Speaker 1: how it relates to this earloab study that Christian has
Speaker 1: been discussing. You can email us at below the Mind
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com