Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to bow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and um Julie Douglas or
Speaker 1: am I? I don't know. You're dressed like Julie Douglas,
Speaker 1: so you must be Julida. I do have my Julie
Speaker 1: Douglas uniform on today. It's true. Described the Julie Douglas uniform. Yeah, well, uh,
Speaker 1: it's pretty boring. Actually, it's usually like monochrome, you know.
Speaker 1: I've got some dark jeans on with the dark top,
Speaker 1: you know, and some dark shoes kind of like a
Speaker 1: like a German sensibility. Okay, I'll go with that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a little ust here. Yeah. What about you, Robert Lamb,
Speaker 1: what's sort of what sort of role are you taking
Speaker 1: on here with your clothes? Well? I tend to favor
Speaker 1: of course, as anyone who knows from the videos that
Speaker 1: we put out. Since you may wonder, wow, Robert Lamb
Speaker 1: seems to have like three things that you wear, and
Speaker 1: this is true. I tend to gravitate around blue jeans,
Speaker 1: a T shirt of some kind, and then a hoodie
Speaker 1: of some kind of which and then these things will
Speaker 1: gradually wear out and I'll get replacements, and so it
Speaker 1: it didn't even point. I'll have like two or three
Speaker 1: versions of the same shirt or the same hoodie. It's
Speaker 1: kind of the pattern I've been in. But I love
Speaker 1: the hoodie because it Uh. My thing with it is
Speaker 1: that on one level, it feels kind of monastic. You know,
Speaker 1: I kind of feel like I'm in the name of
Speaker 1: the Rose and there. And therefore, when I come into
Speaker 1: work and I sitting under my desk and I get
Speaker 1: out some books and pull up some studies on the
Speaker 1: on the laptop, I can I can sync up my
Speaker 1: hoodie here, and I feel kind of like I'm I'm
Speaker 1: I'm a monk engaged in serious, um focused study and uh.
Speaker 1: And then there's also the fact that I can I
Speaker 1: can kind of zip up the hoodie and it's like
Speaker 1: it hugs me, and I get this like tight feeling,
Speaker 1: like I'm I'm tightly contained and therefore maybe even more
Speaker 1: focused on when I'm working on you know, when you
Speaker 1: say it's like your study hoodie, or you think about
Speaker 1: Natalie from the Facts of Life had like a special
Speaker 1: outfit that you would wear, including a hoodie. I believe
Speaker 1: she studied. So yeah, I mean it's true that you
Speaker 1: you put on certain clothes to feel a certain way,
Speaker 1: to act a certain way, and that is what we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about today. We're going to zone in
Speaker 1: on this, but we're also going to talk about something
Speaker 1: called embodied cognition, which is this idea that there's lots
Speaker 1: of stuff that influences the way that we behave, the
Speaker 1: way that our mind processes information. Yeah, it's one of
Speaker 1: these areas where on the surface of things, we all
Speaker 1: know that the way you dress changes, the way you
Speaker 1: carry yourself, the way you feel about yourself. But when
Speaker 1: you actually look at it and you examine and you
Speaker 1: take it out, and you you know, take some distance
Speaker 1: on and sort of move the concept around in your
Speaker 1: hand a little bit, you realize how strange and wonderful
Speaker 1: it really is. It is. And um, embodied cognition and
Speaker 1: clothed cognition what we're talking about today. These are two
Speaker 1: fairly new fields of thought in terms of how humans behave.
Speaker 1: Behavioral psychology is something that has been, you know, particularly
Speaker 1: in the seventies, a very big field of study, and
Speaker 1: that's the theory of learning, based upon the idea that
Speaker 1: all behaviors are acquired through conditioning, right um. Cognitive psychology
Speaker 1: whichs probably been more of the reining field as of late,
Speaker 1: and this is concerned with internal mental states as well
Speaker 1: as how people acquire, process and store information, and that
Speaker 1: also delves into neuroscience and linguistics in order to explain
Speaker 1: human behavior. And the whole thing kind of treads the
Speaker 1: mind body problem as well a little bit when we
Speaker 1: talk about what am I in my brain and my
Speaker 1: body and what is this interplay between mind and body
Speaker 1: and and how does it all factor into who and
Speaker 1: what I am? Well, that's what I like about embodied cognition. Again,
Speaker 1: this this newer field because it does take into account
Speaker 1: this idea of acquired behaviors or behaviors that are pretty
Speaker 1: much moved along by how we process information. But it
Speaker 1: also has this idea of like, what if we are
Speaker 1: all just a bunch of paper dolls performing the role
Speaker 1: of whatever paper outfit we stick on for that day. Now,
Speaker 1: that's that's pretty actionist, and there's more to it than that,
Speaker 1: of course, but it's more of this idea of we're
Speaker 1: all walking around in these physical cages we put over
Speaker 1: ourselves and all the trappings that go along with it,
Speaker 1: and this does inform our mental states and how we
Speaker 1: operate in the world. Now, one of the concepts we're
Speaker 1: dealing here here with here is positive contagent uh, and
Speaker 1: this refers to the belief of transference of beneficial properties
Speaker 1: between animate persons and objects to previously neutral objects. Now,
Speaker 1: we've talked about this concept a bit in the past
Speaker 1: in reference to lucky charms magical objects. The idea that
Speaker 1: that that an object that belonged to a person that
Speaker 1: is now dead is somehow on varying levels, either on
Speaker 1: an avert level, like you're can look at a watch
Speaker 1: and be like, the spirit of my father is in
Speaker 1: this watch, or it may be a very sort of
Speaker 1: almost subconscious thing where you end up aspiring a lot
Speaker 1: of meaning to the watch, even if you don't actually
Speaker 1: believe it has some sort of magical power to it
Speaker 1: or some sort of actual spiritual residence. Yeah, but that
Speaker 1: does kind of there's a of a voodoo nest about it, right,
Speaker 1: bet you feel um. A good example of this is
Speaker 1: the study putting like a pro the role of positive
Speaker 1: contagion and golf performance and perception. And in that study,
Speaker 1: what was found is that people who believe that they
Speaker 1: were using the professional golfers. Putter perceived the size of
Speaker 1: golf holes to be larger than they actually were, and
Speaker 1: they had a better performance and they sunk more puts
Speaker 1: because they thought they were harnessing this magic of the
Speaker 1: pros um equipment. Yeah, they had the professional equipment. And
Speaker 1: then therefore, and I love how the study boils down
Speaker 1: to the fact that they actually saw the whole is bigger.
Speaker 1: It wasn't. It's not just a matter of oh, well,
Speaker 1: they had better equipment, and then they were a little
Speaker 1: boosted up ego wise, and they performed a little better,
Speaker 1: they were a little more confident. But no, they actually
Speaker 1: saw the whole as bigger um. And again, this is
Speaker 1: one of those studies that really drives them something that
Speaker 1: I think we all already know. You you already hear
Speaker 1: a lot of people say, well, you know, if you
Speaker 1: want to be a professional about something, you know, make
Speaker 1: sure you have the right equipment, because that's going to
Speaker 1: make the difference. And you're gonna feel more confident in
Speaker 1: your abilities if you actually buy confident tools, right, you're
Speaker 1: gonna feel prepared and ready to take the task on.
Speaker 1: And what I like about that positive contagion is. It's
Speaker 1: a nice little entryway into this idea of embodied cognition,
Speaker 1: because these embodiment theories are trying to understand the mind
Speaker 1: is a set of physical processes derived throughout the brain
Speaker 1: in the body of a human, ultimately serving his or
Speaker 1: her actions in the physical world. That study also reminds
Speaker 1: me of a little bit of Holy Scripture. I'm going
Speaker 1: to read here for you. Bring it on. When the
Speaker 1: star belly children went out to play ball, could a
Speaker 1: plain belly get in the game? Not at all. You
Speaker 1: could only play ball of your bellies head stars, and
Speaker 1: the plain belly children had none up on ours. That
Speaker 1: was one of my favorite books. A Star Belli Sneeches
Speaker 1: by Doors and that is a great example of how
Speaker 1: people can sometimes behave depending on how they're branded or
Speaker 1: how they brand themselves. They branded with the star or
Speaker 1: they branded without the star and it is. That's a fabulous,
Speaker 1: fabulous children's book that really boils down a lot of
Speaker 1: the ridiculousness of of human culture and how we work.
Speaker 1: That you can easily apply it to do some of
Speaker 1: the topics we're discussing here today. Yeah. Um, And we'll
Speaker 1: talk more about that when we get to in clothes cognition.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to point out something called the Embodiment
Speaker 1: Lab at Barnard College at Columbia University. And what they
Speaker 1: say is that in the lab they explore hypotheses that
Speaker 1: flow for the assumption that the mind exists to serve
Speaker 1: the body. And it's as several implications of this philosophical
Speaker 1: stance that have guided our research are One that it
Speaker 1: is not only true that the mind can influence the body,
Speaker 1: but the body can influence the mind. Two, when we
Speaker 1: think or feel, our mental representations will be directly related
Speaker 1: to perception and action. And three, that's setting the perceptual
Speaker 1: and motor functions of various thoughts, feelings and brain states
Speaker 1: can help us to understand why, when, and how they
Speaker 1: come about. Okay, so that's all good and will that's
Speaker 1: that's sort of the philosophical basis of this. But let's
Speaker 1: put some rubber to the road here. What we're talking
Speaker 1: about are the studies that have to do with um,
Speaker 1: this is the classic one. Let's say a warm cup
Speaker 1: of coffee versus an iced coffee and how it might
Speaker 1: actually make someone think their cognitive process. And we've brought
Speaker 1: this up before, but I wanted to bring this up again. Um,
Speaker 1: this is this idea of warm drink, warm feelings. Yale
Speaker 1: psychologists Williams and Barg found that when they let participants
Speaker 1: hold this warm cup, the participants judged others to be
Speaker 1: more sociable and this is a characteristic of personality dimension warm. Right.
Speaker 1: So further, when when participants briefly had a warm pack
Speaker 1: on their necks, they themselves became more generous and other
Speaker 1: acts of kindness that they studied in that but which
Speaker 1: is why you should always bring a cup of coffee
Speaker 1: to someone if you were about to ask them something difficult, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and maybe even if you're going into a job interview, right,
Speaker 1: bringing some coffee, bringing bringing a warm pack to put
Speaker 1: on your your future boss's neck, that won't be creepy
Speaker 1: at all they look at the job. Yeah. Another really
Speaker 1: interesting aspect of this is the handwashing zone. Now, there's
Speaker 1: an excellent book on on this title Clean, A History
Speaker 1: of Personal Hygiene Impurity by Virginia Smith that I recommend
Speaker 1: to everyone. I think it may have UM touted it
Speaker 1: here on the podcast before, but one of the core
Speaker 1: arguments in this book is that not even an argument.
Speaker 1: It is just an analysis that throughout human history we
Speaker 1: have this idea of hygiene, and then we have these
Speaker 1: other ideas of spiritual purity, moral purity, um, pure thoughts, etcetera, um,
Speaker 1: and these become intertwined as as we as we evolved
Speaker 1: in as human culture builds up, you know, like detritus
Speaker 1: and uh, until we really have difficulty separating one idea
Speaker 1: from the next. Yeah. Again, this sort of like positive
Speaker 1: contagion or actually a negative contagion. Yeah, because they're plenty
Speaker 1: of examples of something that has been For instance, at
Speaker 1: our house, we were out of out of tinfoil, so
Speaker 1: I had to cover the cat's wet food with a
Speaker 1: little piece of cellophane, and then I secured the cellfane
Speaker 1: around it with one of my wife's the hair ties,
Speaker 1: and and so the hair tie was not touching cat
Speaker 1: food at all, but I had to I realized that
Speaker 1: in doing this I might not be actually defiling the
Speaker 1: hair tile. It wasn't it wasn't made impure in any
Speaker 1: kind of physical sense, but there was a spiritual contamidation
Speaker 1: of it by being that close to ground up animal parts,
Speaker 1: and therefore could never be used on hair asbo to say,
Speaker 1: I totally get that because I don't even like a
Speaker 1: hairbrush to be on my kitchen countertop. But it kind
Speaker 1: of freaked me out. Yeah, and we talked about this
Speaker 1: in terms of water purification. You know, there's just everything
Speaker 1: that needs to be purified for human consumption has to
Speaker 1: be purified in the real but also in the imagined
Speaker 1: realm of of purity. Well, um knowing does the purity
Speaker 1: coming to play when you think about handwashing? But there's
Speaker 1: something called the clean slate effect and spiked W. S
Speaker 1: lee In. Norbert Schwartz of the University of Michigan asked
Speaker 1: subjects to rank top ten CDs they'd like to own
Speaker 1: from a list of thirty, and then they chose to
Speaker 1: keep either their fifth or their sixth ranked disk. Okay.
Speaker 1: So this is where they introduced like, oh, which one
Speaker 1: should I have? Okay? You really touching those top picks?
Speaker 1: How many did they have to pick? Thirty? No, out
Speaker 1: of thirty, they had to be their top ten, but
Speaker 1: then they could keep their fifth or sixth. Okay, So
Speaker 1: they're in lines the problem here because it's not the
Speaker 1: bottom of the ten, it's not the top pick, right,
Speaker 1: So presumably there's some sort of like a consternation involved
Speaker 1: with us. So what they had them do is they
Speaker 1: have the subjects evaluate some hand soap. Some just stared
Speaker 1: at it while others used it. Okay, And now the
Speaker 1: subjects who didn't use the soap ranked their chosen CD
Speaker 1: about two places higher than the one didn't pick, so
Speaker 1: they they elevated it. And and this is the cognitive
Speaker 1: This is is that some of us sometimes have when
Speaker 1: we're trying to make decisions, right, just thinking about the step,
Speaker 1: not even even using just the idea of soap. The
Speaker 1: soap is a symbol working on the human mind exactly.
Speaker 1: So um So those who didn't get to wash their hands,
Speaker 1: basically they increase their value on their chosen option. And
Speaker 1: again that's the cognitive dissonance. You're going to double down
Speaker 1: in the face of adversity. And those who wash their hands,
Speaker 1: the relative rankings of the two CDs remained about the same,
Speaker 1: and their angst, they say, according to this was erased. Okay.
Speaker 1: Now they did this again with jam. They had the
Speaker 1: participants had to choose between two different jams that they
Speaker 1: always used to be jams. And it's kind of jam
Speaker 1: study or another jam study before. Okay, So instead of
Speaker 1: washing their hands. We're talking about handwives considering the handwipes,
Speaker 1: are using the handwipes. And again, uh, those people who
Speaker 1: use the handwipes, they came back and they had a
Speaker 1: more um pragmatic perspective about the jam. They didn't overrate
Speaker 1: their experiences with the jams, whereas those people who didn't
Speaker 1: get to wash their hands didn't have that clean slate
Speaker 1: effect and and and kind of be able to wash
Speaker 1: away their consternation. Yeah. I mean it's kind of like
Speaker 1: the whole idea of like taking a shower to cleanse
Speaker 1: the soul as well as the body, that fresh flight
Speaker 1: effect where you're like, all right, I'm all new, I'm good.
Speaker 1: Well have you ever done that before when you're trying
Speaker 1: to turn something around in your mind, trying to get
Speaker 1: another perspective on it, and you're like, you know what,
Speaker 1: nothing's working here. I'm at a stop. I'm just going
Speaker 1: to take a shower and lo and behold, you come
Speaker 1: out on the other side of that shower with new
Speaker 1: ideas or a new perspective. Yeah. I think I do
Speaker 1: some of my best thinking in the shower in the morning.
Speaker 1: It's true. Yeah, I don't know, but I'm assuming. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. Yeah, well, I like sometimes I take too long,
Speaker 1: like because someone just standing there hot water hit me
Speaker 1: in the face. Ideas are running and it's a good time.
Speaker 1: Your wife is like, hey man, you're running up the bill. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, there's also something to be said because it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's before I have the coffee. And we've talked about,
Speaker 1: you know, in the past. I have a coffee focuses
Speaker 1: the mind, but it cuts down on that unhinged random thinking.
Speaker 1: It's a hallmark of creativity. So I'm having the shower
Speaker 1: before I have my coffee, So that would that's also
Speaker 1: like I'm at my freshest then. And I also haven't
Speaker 1: taken any coffee to rain in the wild stallions of
Speaker 1: my imagination. I don't know why they're stallions. They're more now,
Speaker 1: they're really probably more like muskrats, the wild muskrats. Mind,
Speaker 1: I think I preferred stallions. Stallions is a little overdoing it,
Speaker 1: even I'm gonna be realistic about my creative abilities, I know.
Speaker 1: But it's got a nice like seventies shiny machen to it. Um,
Speaker 1: all right, so let's stop talking about stallion in the showers. Um,
Speaker 1: Let's get to clipboards. Because I love clipboards, and I
Speaker 1: think every job I've ever had, I have kiddingly walked
Speaker 1: around with the clipboard to pretend like I was doing something.
Speaker 1: It makes you really does make you feel like you're
Speaker 1: doing something. I still have my clipboard when I was
Speaker 1: in newspapers here and I just use it for mundane
Speaker 1: purposes now, like holding papers onto a board. But back
Speaker 1: then I remembered it was like it was almost like
Speaker 1: a scepter. Like if I had the clipboard, I felt like, yes,
Speaker 1: I am in control because I have this thing and
Speaker 1: there's their papers on it and everything, well papers on
Speaker 1: it and everything turns out to be important, but more
Speaker 1: important in some of these studies is the actual weight
Speaker 1: of the thing itself, and it turns out that that
Speaker 1: weight is really important and that people will think about
Speaker 1: their own self importance engage other aspects of the world
Speaker 1: in conjunction with this weight. Yeah, we're looking at study
Speaker 1: where people holding a clipboard that was weighted so as
Speaker 1: to be heavier overestimated the value of foreign currencies by
Speaker 1: any indicating how many euros they believe they would need
Speaker 1: to pay exchange currencies. Yeah, and now they were given
Speaker 1: these clipboards. The participants in the study, and they were
Speaker 1: told to fill things out. Okay, so they had an activity.
Speaker 1: They weren't just holding and they weren't tell me how
Speaker 1: you think about the Euros now, yeah, And they had
Speaker 1: no idea whether or not theirs was heavier or lighter
Speaker 1: than than other people in the study. Um. And this
Speaker 1: was by the way published in psychological Science. Dr Josman
Speaker 1: and his colleagues Daniel light Laken's and Thomas W. Schubert
Speaker 1: explored this idea about the body conflating weight in importance.
Speaker 1: And they were also asked to consider different countries and
Speaker 1: their leadership. And then again those people who had heavier
Speaker 1: clipboards and they really deliberated a lot more than the
Speaker 1: people who had lighter clipboards, and they thought that their
Speaker 1: opinion was more sought out than their their light clipboard counterparts. Wow.
Speaker 1: So you know. And in our previous episode we talked
Speaker 1: about symbols and the power of symbols and how they
Speaker 1: affect our minds because we're just taking them in the
Speaker 1: course of our day, and then in the in the
Speaker 1: form of the clipboard, in the form of the coffee cut,
Speaker 1: we're talking about symbols that we actually take into our
Speaker 1: hand and in the sense make a part of our body.
Speaker 1: And therefore we uh, we we wrap ourselves in the
Speaker 1: trappings of the symbol. That's true, right, yeah, that's we're
Speaker 1: saying all the other sort of trappings that we put
Speaker 1: around us, that we hold, that we imbue with some
Speaker 1: sort of value that gets taken up into our brains
Speaker 1: and and it informs the way that we actually cogitate.
Speaker 1: So it's pretty cool stuff. And then we should probably
Speaker 1: take a break, and when we get back, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about this idea of paper dolls. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back, and uh, we're about to get into in
Speaker 1: clothes cognition. You know, when I was telling Holly Fry
Speaker 1: of History stuff what we were doing today, she just went, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, RuPaul has a thing on that group. Paul
Speaker 1: is her spirit animal by the way, yeah, or her
Speaker 1: spirit god. I shouldn't say animal, her spirit god. And
Speaker 1: uh she said that he says everybody is born naked
Speaker 1: and everything else's drag. Well, you know, modern cultural sociologist
Speaker 1: described the human body as an unfinished body, a body
Speaker 1: created by nature but finished by humans, and so each
Speaker 1: of us calls up on various bodies various various times
Speaker 1: throughout our lives. It's kind of like the idea of
Speaker 1: the cyboard, you know, where we're all cyboards because we're
Speaker 1: all using technology, we're wearing it, or it's in our
Speaker 1: body or it's some part of us. And clothing is
Speaker 1: a part of us as well. The human body is
Speaker 1: born unfinished. We finish it with our clothing and technology,
Speaker 1: and that is the version of ourselves that we see well.
Speaker 1: And that's an idea of these the paper dolls that
Speaker 1: we just kind of put on these different outfits and
Speaker 1: then we perform whatever aspects of it that we are
Speaker 1: subconsciously or consciously thinking about in terms of how we
Speaker 1: move around in the world. It's like a Barbie doll, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, like there's the naked Barbie doll that is
Speaker 1: just like flung around in the bathtub. But then they're
Speaker 1: the outfit that transformed Barbie and all of these other people.
Speaker 1: Astronaut Barbie. Yeah, it was there, just uh it wasn't
Speaker 1: there a Mars curiosity uh over Barbie something that recently
Speaker 1: came out. But you know when she still looks like Barbie,
Speaker 1: I have to say, and we've talked about her weird dimensions.
Speaker 1: And this is why, right, because she would topple over
Speaker 1: if you actually fully formed Barbie with her, her current
Speaker 1: dimensions would top over on Mars though. Good question, very
Speaker 1: good question. Alright, So, um, the best example of the
Speaker 1: cloth cognition because there are not many examples by the way, Um,
Speaker 1: this is again a fairly new field of study. Examples.
Speaker 1: I mean, we can sit here and sir rattle out
Speaker 1: anecdotally all day long. Um, but I wanted to point
Speaker 1: out three studies by Adam D. Glinsky. He is a
Speaker 1: professor at the Kellogg School of Management or Western University,
Speaker 1: and he presented his information in the Journal of Experimental
Speaker 1: Social Psychology. Um. They also, yeah, they told coined the
Speaker 1: term in cloth cognition. They did. And by the way,
Speaker 1: Glinsky got the idea for this from watching The Simpsons,
Speaker 1: the TV show really Max Power No no, no. Um, Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know which episode title it was, but basically
Speaker 1: he was watching kids, all the kids school, and they
Speaker 1: were outside and they were made to wear these gray
Speaker 1: uniforms and they were very subdued and calm, and then
Speaker 1: it began to rain and all of the dye came
Speaker 1: off the uniforms and these rainbow colors emerged from their clothes,
Speaker 1: and the kids went bersark u and he said, he said,
Speaker 1: I started thinking about the clothes you wear in the
Speaker 1: meaning behind this clothes. If you put on a black
Speaker 1: T shirt, become more aggressive, you put on a nurse's uniform,
Speaker 1: you become more helpful. And then he crafted these three
Speaker 1: studies having to do with a lab coat. Huh. Well, again,
Speaker 1: it comes down to the idea that that all of
Speaker 1: these things have symbolic meaning, and the lab coat carries
Speaker 1: a lot of symbolic meaning. You look at someone in
Speaker 1: a lab coat, maybe holding a clipboard or some medical
Speaker 1: instrument as well, and maybe other symbols that are combining
Speaker 1: to create this kind of hyper cycle. But but there's
Speaker 1: the idea that this is the person who's highly educated,
Speaker 1: This is the person that I should trust on some level. Careful,
Speaker 1: It is careful, attentive, attentive, that is clean and with
Speaker 1: this us that one before though that kind of ups
Speaker 1: and downs on that one. It's clean and it is
Speaker 1: it is going to potentially safe me. Yes, And this
Speaker 1: is that's all embodied in this lab coade which Glinsky
Speaker 1: and the researchers used in these three studies. Now, what
Speaker 1: Glinsky also wanted to to really hone in on is
Speaker 1: this idea of our attention and how we direct it.
Speaker 1: Because we have talked about before directed detention is a
Speaker 1: scarce and finite mental resource, um, and we we have
Speaker 1: talked about it in the context of ego depletion and
Speaker 1: different ways of trying to game that the attention span
Speaker 1: that we have. So what they did is they in
Speaker 1: one of the studies, they use something called a Stroop test. Now,
Speaker 1: this is how they fared out people's ability to perform
Speaker 1: on a concentration task while assuming or subconsciously assuming these
Speaker 1: identities in this case the lab coat. So if you
Speaker 1: look at a stroop task, it's it's fairly easy straightforward
Speaker 1: because it's a very visual task. You're asked to identify
Speaker 1: or I should say it's very easy and straightforward to
Speaker 1: understand what you're being asked to do, but it's not
Speaker 1: easy to do for your mind. Um, You're asked to
Speaker 1: identify the color of the word represented in front of
Speaker 1: you on a screen. The problem is that the word
Speaker 1: says red, but the letters that spill it out are blue. Ah,
Speaker 1: and your brain goes what, So what your brain has
Speaker 1: to then do is sets out the meaning versus the
Speaker 1: visual representation, and as a result, there's a fairly high
Speaker 1: error rate here, So it's a great way of trying
Speaker 1: to gauge someone's engagement or attention spam. Huh. Well, you
Speaker 1: know this test reminds me of the the awesome Internet
Speaker 1: video Don't hug me, I'm scared. It's sort of like
Speaker 1: a children's show and they're singing about creativity and then
Speaker 1: it gets a little dark and they agree never to
Speaker 1: be creative again. But it's the part where they're talking about, well,
Speaker 1: how do you how do you engage creativity, how do
Speaker 1: you act creatively? Creatively? And how do you think creatively?
Speaker 1: And the lead character of the singing Little Notebook says,
Speaker 1: one thing that you can do is you can get
Speaker 1: a collection of sticks and leaves and spell out your
Speaker 1: favorite color, which is in a sense using using ground brown,
Speaker 1: using green to spell out something like red. Yes, I
Speaker 1: believe they do this to children. Yeah, yeah, the strip
Speaker 1: test with that exact video. And then they get to
Speaker 1: the part where their void just takes them all down,
Speaker 1: but until they start crying, it is interested. The one
Speaker 1: character spells green with the green and brown sticks and
Speaker 1: all and and that is ruled not a creative color.
Speaker 1: And in a sense it isn't a creative color because
Speaker 1: it's playing right into the dictation of the test. So
Speaker 1: maybe there's more to that part of the video than
Speaker 1: I gave it credit previously. It's possible. It's possible, but
Speaker 1: it's a great example of how your mind is having
Speaker 1: to try to make sense of the visual representations as
Speaker 1: opposed to the word representation. And I really do think
Speaker 1: they should do that with five year old and then
Speaker 1: watch their brains melt um. I did want to point
Speaker 1: out though, that this was this was the centerpiece of
Speaker 1: the first experiment, in which fifty eight undergraduates were randomly
Speaker 1: assigned to wear a white lab coat or street clothes,
Speaker 1: and those who wore the white lab coats made about
Speaker 1: half as many errors on incongruent trials as those who
Speaker 1: wore regular clothes on the Stroop test. That's pretty impressive, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, half as many just by wearing the coat.
Speaker 1: And the second experiment, seventy four students were randomly assigned
Speaker 1: to one of three options, wearing a doctor's coat, wearing
Speaker 1: a painter's coat, which by the way, was the same
Speaker 1: coat as the doctor's coat. They just called it the
Speaker 1: pner's coat or seeing a doctor's coat. And then they
Speaker 1: were giving given a test for sustained attention, and they
Speaker 1: had to look at two very similar pictures side by
Speaker 1: side on the screen and spot four minor differences, writing
Speaker 1: them down as quickly as possible. So those who were
Speaker 1: the doctor's coat, um, they found more differences than those
Speaker 1: who were wearing the same coat that was called the
Speaker 1: painter's coat, or those who were just wearing street clothes. Now,
Speaker 1: the third experiment had students either wear the doctor's coat
Speaker 1: or the painter's coat, and they were told to notice
Speaker 1: a doctor's lab coat displayed on the desk in front
Speaker 1: of them for for a long period of time, and
Speaker 1: all three groups had to write essays about their thoughts
Speaker 1: and the coats, and then they were tested again for attention.
Speaker 1: And it turns out this group that were the doctor's code,
Speaker 1: they showed the greatest improvement in attention. So what does
Speaker 1: this mean. It means that they were embodying this cognition
Speaker 1: of what it is to be a doctor and these
Speaker 1: ideals of being attentive, of being well educated, of being
Speaker 1: on point. Yeah, you put you step into the symbol,
Speaker 1: you take it on yourself and you you you then
Speaker 1: appear as that symbol and then you were thinking as
Speaker 1: that symbol as well. You're taking on the guys of
Speaker 1: the doctor, even if you're not actually thinking, Hey, I'm
Speaker 1: wearing a doctor's coat. Now, how bet I can go
Speaker 1: in there and perform surgery? Well, And this is what
Speaker 1: is interesting about the study is that it begins to
Speaker 1: to question, like, what are their aspects of our culture
Speaker 1: are bringing up these ideas and having us fall in line.
Speaker 1: So you think about police uniforms or inmate of forms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the inmate uniform sends the signal that you are just
Speaker 1: like everyone else, You're just a number. And also you're
Speaker 1: going to stand out if you if you go, if
Speaker 1: you escape from here, you're stripped of your identity right like,
Speaker 1: not only you're taking from from the rights that you
Speaker 1: had as someone in the outside world who could cook
Speaker 1: whatever you wanted for breakfast, go wherever you wanted. Now
Speaker 1: you're on the inside and you can't even express yourself
Speaker 1: as an individual. Uh. Someone who is a police officer,
Speaker 1: you know he or she has these these colors, these darker,
Speaker 1: very serious colors. Yeah, the gleaming badgement to enforce this
Speaker 1: idea of uh, you know, security in order. And then
Speaker 1: there are nuns. Yes, how do you explain nuns? Well,
Speaker 1: in one sense of the uniform, I mean in the
Speaker 1: y of the habit, well, you do get a sense
Speaker 1: of you know, darkness and light, very very somber outfit,
Speaker 1: you know, masking a lot of the body and creating
Speaker 1: this sort of Penglin like demeanor. And they're veiled. They
Speaker 1: are brides of Jesus, right, the brides. So um again,
Speaker 1: all this stuff going on to sort of you know,
Speaker 1: operate as these underpinnings of how we perceive the world
Speaker 1: and how we move around in it. Um. I feel
Speaker 1: like all of these symbols, though there's there's also a
Speaker 1: counter interpretation of the symbol, Like the cops uniform for
Speaker 1: many people becomes a symbol of tyranny and abusive power.
Speaker 1: The symbol of the doctor can also become a symbol
Speaker 1: of bad news, a symbol of of being taken advantage of,
Speaker 1: or you know, or certainly a symbol of of of
Speaker 1: privilege to and privileged power. Yeah. I was thinking about
Speaker 1: this in terms of Dr Leo Spaceman. Yes, gemin Drm
Speaker 1: from thirty Rock who is the ridiculous doctor who shouldn't
Speaker 1: at all be a doctor, And but he's wearing the
Speaker 1: coat at all times, and then he's spewing nonsense and
Speaker 1: everybody just sort of goes, Okay, it looks like a doctor.
Speaker 1: And he's he's has a nice speaking voice, even though
Speaker 1: everything he's saying it's complete garbage, complete garbage. And I
Speaker 1: think that they're making some sort of comment on that,
Speaker 1: like just put it, you know, a doctor's lab coat
Speaker 1: on someone and immediately they have authority on all things.
Speaker 1: Now a more relatable thing that I think we can
Speaker 1: all point to in our own life, like what do
Speaker 1: you feel like when you dress up fancy? Do you
Speaker 1: ever fancy yourself up awkward like heels are or the
Speaker 1: devil stilts? Yeah? H now do you? But do you
Speaker 1: ever not you're not wearing the heels that do you
Speaker 1: ever feel like you ever dress fancy and feel fancy
Speaker 1: in any way? Like? Is there ever a positive connotation
Speaker 1: to that? I don't know. I mean, just don't dress
Speaker 1: fancy that often. So I'm pretty comfortable in my skin.
Speaker 1: So if I decided to put something fancy on, it's fine,
Speaker 1: but it's not I don't go around like pretending like
Speaker 1: I've got a really long like cigarette holder or anything. Well,
Speaker 1: how about this, um, what do you wear when you
Speaker 1: go to yoga? You have a special garments you wear
Speaker 1: just for yoga, A long velvet dress might Stevie next dress.
Speaker 1: But you do have like yoga pants or something. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: So when you wear the yoga pants even before you
Speaker 1: go to yoga, or if you're wearing them when you're
Speaker 1: not going to yoga, do you find yourself sort of
Speaker 1: entering the mindset of one who goes to yoga. I
Speaker 1: feel stretchy, Sure, yeah, I feel flexible. I'm more open
Speaker 1: to people. You know, I don't know. I might be
Speaker 1: well because I kind of feel that way. I feel
Speaker 1: like if I'm if I'm wearing yoga pants, even if
Speaker 1: I'm not going to yoga, I do feel a little
Speaker 1: more relaxed. I think it wears off of me, you know.
Speaker 1: M I always remember my dad coming home from work
Speaker 1: and coming home from his like very serious suit. We're
Speaker 1: talking about a vest with his suit and suspenders, all
Speaker 1: the accouterments of business life and shedding that as soon
Speaker 1: as he came home, taking a shower and then coming
Speaker 1: out in in all of his like you know, cotton
Speaker 1: um leisure ware, I guess you call it. And it
Speaker 1: was so funny because it was that transformation from day
Speaker 1: to evening. Yeah, so I guess there is a bit
Speaker 1: of that role playing going on. Yeah. Well, like I said,
Speaker 1: we could set here and rattle off possible examples of
Speaker 1: this all all all day long about how we wear
Speaker 1: something different makes It's like what happens when you wear uh,
Speaker 1: you know, ceremonial dark robes with pentagrams on them. You
Speaker 1: feel a little more in touch with occult phenomena and
Speaker 1: U and the secrets and mysteries of life. It maybe
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to try to have and see you
Speaker 1: think about the next time you dress up for occult ritual. Well,
Speaker 1: I wanted to, uh, just swing this little ditty by everybody.
Speaker 1: This is from the Stanford Encyclopedia Philosophy about embodied cognition.
Speaker 1: It says, quote, the genuine insight about the nature of
Speaker 1: consciousness that embodied cognitive science has generated is that the
Speaker 1: character of visual experience results from the way we are
Speaker 1: dynamically hooked up to the world. Since for a motor
Speaker 1: coupling with the environment is crucial in providing the organism
Speaker 1: with the pro pre aceptive kinesthetic feedback necessary for the
Speaker 1: senses of ownership and movement. When we touch an object,
Speaker 1: for example, we do not exclusively have experience of it,
Speaker 1: but while touching and being touched, we experience ourselves moving,
Speaker 1: including the feeling of controlling our own body and action.
Speaker 1: The account of that agency, the sense of controlling one's
Speaker 1: body originates and processes that evolve for interaction with the environment,
Speaker 1: that is, mechanisms for sensory processing and motor control, suggests
Speaker 1: that embodied experience underpins self awareness. And I thought about
Speaker 1: that in the context of the lab code. If you
Speaker 1: feel the texture and the weight of that clothing, that
Speaker 1: you begin to transform it into your actual motor skills,
Speaker 1: your cognitive skills, and truly embody it. Yeah, very cool.
Speaker 1: I mean, it just comes down to this fact that
Speaker 1: we are the cloth. The clothing makes the man. The
Speaker 1: clients they say, you know, the clothing is a part
Speaker 1: of who we are and how we interface with the world. Now,
Speaker 1: one quick example we forgot to mention is it is
Speaker 1: Halloween for Halloween, to what extent do we end up
Speaker 1: taking on the the the mental image of the thing
Speaker 1: that we are dressing up as like what were you
Speaker 1: for Halloween? Most recently, I really don't like to dress
Speaker 1: up for Halloween. But then I think it's because miss
Speaker 1: my costumes have been a failure. But last time it
Speaker 1: was a fifties housewife with like a fake turkey in
Speaker 1: barbiturates that was strapped to me. That's pretty good. I
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, you well, at some point recently I
Speaker 1: dressed up as a as a cop. Because this is
Speaker 1: several years ago, but my wife and I dressed up
Speaker 1: as the main character from Raising her Own Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: so but I'm glad that she was a cop. Sorry,
Speaker 1: she was a cop, and I was a a bank
Speaker 1: Robert with a panty on my head, you know. So,
Speaker 1: so I guess you know, when I dressed up is
Speaker 1: that character. I kind of had to feel a little
Speaker 1: bit like that character. So I felt good natured and
Speaker 1: maybe a little goofy and suffocated, Yeah, and suffocated and
Speaker 1: prone to um, you know, robbing liquor stores and a
Speaker 1: new appreciation for pantyhose and in the trials and tribulations
Speaker 1: of that. Yeah. Alright, some some food for thought as
Speaker 1: we move into this fall season and we in character Halloween.
Speaker 1: Pretty soon. Yeah. Again, keep all this in mind as
Speaker 1: you dress up for costume party, as you dress up
Speaker 1: for your daily life, because we'd love to hear about you.
Speaker 1: Is there a uniform that you have to wear, it
Speaker 1: being an official uniform or sort of an unofficial uniform,
Speaker 1: because like I remember, when I was working a newspaper,
Speaker 1: the unofficial uniform I had to wear with this like
Speaker 1: awful khaki pants, like the kind of balloon up in
Speaker 1: the crotch whenever you sit down. Those are awful, and
Speaker 1: uh that it was. It became a part of how
Speaker 1: I felt about myself while I was working there. So
Speaker 1: so what kind of uniform do you wear? What kind
Speaker 1: of uniform are you forced to wear? And then what
Speaker 1: kind of clothing do you wear to change the way
Speaker 1: you feel about yourself? Let us know, we'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. You can find us that all the
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Speaker 1: But stuff to Blow your Mind dot com that's the membership. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can find our videos on stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com to so check those out and
Speaker 1: make sure to drop us a line. You can do
Speaker 1: that at blow the Mind at Discovery dot com. For
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is that
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