WEBVTT - Human Paper Dolls: Enclothed Cognition 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:05.960 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:15.080 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to bow your Mind. 0:00:15.160 --> 0:00:18.040 My name is Robert Lamb, and um Julie Douglas or 0:00:18.079 --> 0:00:21.000 am I? I don't know. You're dressed like Julie Douglas, 0:00:21.040 --> 0:00:23.040 so you must be Julida. I do have my Julie 0:00:23.040 --> 0:00:30.520 Douglas uniform on today. It's true. Described the Julie Douglas uniform. Yeah, well, uh, 0:00:30.560 --> 0:00:33.640 it's pretty boring. Actually, it's usually like monochrome, you know. 0:00:33.720 --> 0:00:36.160 I've got some dark jeans on with the dark top, 0:00:36.560 --> 0:00:39.400 you know, and some dark shoes kind of like a 0:00:39.479 --> 0:00:42.959 like a German sensibility. Okay, I'll go with that. Yeah, 0:00:43.000 --> 0:00:45.880 it's a little ust here. Yeah. What about you, Robert Lamb, 0:00:45.920 --> 0:00:49.200 what's sort of what sort of role are you taking 0:00:49.200 --> 0:00:51.720 on here with your clothes? Well? I tend to favor 0:00:51.840 --> 0:00:54.040 of course, as anyone who knows from the videos that 0:00:54.080 --> 0:00:57.360 we put out. Since you may wonder, wow, Robert Lamb 0:00:57.360 --> 0:01:00.320 seems to have like three things that you wear, and 0:01:00.360 --> 0:01:03.720 this is true. I tend to gravitate around blue jeans, 0:01:04.600 --> 0:01:06.560 a T shirt of some kind, and then a hoodie 0:01:06.560 --> 0:01:09.440 of some kind of which and then these things will 0:01:09.480 --> 0:01:11.840 gradually wear out and I'll get replacements, and so it 0:01:11.840 --> 0:01:13.559 it didn't even point. I'll have like two or three 0:01:14.120 --> 0:01:16.319 versions of the same shirt or the same hoodie. It's 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:18.240 kind of the pattern I've been in. But I love 0:01:18.400 --> 0:01:21.399 the hoodie because it Uh. My thing with it is 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:24.200 that on one level, it feels kind of monastic. You know, 0:01:24.280 --> 0:01:26.120 I kind of feel like I'm in the name of 0:01:26.120 --> 0:01:28.800 the Rose and there. And therefore, when I come into 0:01:28.800 --> 0:01:30.720 work and I sitting under my desk and I get 0:01:30.720 --> 0:01:32.560 out some books and pull up some studies on the 0:01:32.600 --> 0:01:35.080 on the laptop, I can I can sync up my 0:01:35.240 --> 0:01:38.360 hoodie here, and I feel kind of like I'm I'm 0:01:38.360 --> 0:01:43.399 I'm a monk engaged in serious, um focused study and uh. 0:01:43.480 --> 0:01:45.440 And then there's also the fact that I can I 0:01:45.440 --> 0:01:47.840 can kind of zip up the hoodie and it's like 0:01:47.880 --> 0:01:50.120 it hugs me, and I get this like tight feeling, 0:01:50.200 --> 0:01:53.320 like I'm I'm tightly contained and therefore maybe even more 0:01:53.360 --> 0:01:55.520 focused on when I'm working on you know, when you 0:01:55.560 --> 0:01:57.680 say it's like your study hoodie, or you think about 0:01:57.720 --> 0:02:00.760 Natalie from the Facts of Life had like a special 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:03.000 outfit that you would wear, including a hoodie. I believe 0:02:03.400 --> 0:02:06.320 she studied. So yeah, I mean it's true that you 0:02:06.320 --> 0:02:08.480 you put on certain clothes to feel a certain way, 0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:10.519 to act a certain way, and that is what we're 0:02:10.560 --> 0:02:13.120 going to talk about today. We're going to zone in 0:02:13.160 --> 0:02:15.000 on this, but we're also going to talk about something 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:18.639 called embodied cognition, which is this idea that there's lots 0:02:18.639 --> 0:02:21.160 of stuff that influences the way that we behave, the 0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:23.880 way that our mind processes information. Yeah, it's one of 0:02:23.880 --> 0:02:26.720 these areas where on the surface of things, we all 0:02:26.760 --> 0:02:28.600 know that the way you dress changes, the way you 0:02:28.680 --> 0:02:32.320 carry yourself, the way you feel about yourself. But when 0:02:32.320 --> 0:02:34.440 you actually look at it and you examine and you 0:02:34.520 --> 0:02:36.680 take it out, and you you know, take some distance 0:02:36.720 --> 0:02:38.799 on and sort of move the concept around in your 0:02:38.800 --> 0:02:42.000 hand a little bit, you realize how strange and wonderful 0:02:42.040 --> 0:02:46.800 it really is. It is. And um, embodied cognition and 0:02:46.840 --> 0:02:48.959 clothed cognition what we're talking about today. These are two 0:02:49.000 --> 0:02:52.480 fairly new fields of thought in terms of how humans behave. 0:02:53.280 --> 0:02:57.120 Behavioral psychology is something that has been, you know, particularly 0:02:57.160 --> 0:02:59.840 in the seventies, a very big field of study, and 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:01.960 that's the theory of learning, based upon the idea that 0:03:02.000 --> 0:03:07.000 all behaviors are acquired through conditioning, right um. Cognitive psychology 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:10.680 whichs probably been more of the reining field as of late, 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:13.360 and this is concerned with internal mental states as well 0:03:13.400 --> 0:03:16.640 as how people acquire, process and store information, and that 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:20.160 also delves into neuroscience and linguistics in order to explain 0:03:20.240 --> 0:03:22.519 human behavior. And the whole thing kind of treads the 0:03:23.520 --> 0:03:25.880 mind body problem as well a little bit when we 0:03:25.919 --> 0:03:28.280 talk about what am I in my brain and my 0:03:28.360 --> 0:03:31.400 body and what is this interplay between mind and body 0:03:31.440 --> 0:03:33.880 and and how does it all factor into who and 0:03:33.960 --> 0:03:37.840 what I am? Well, that's what I like about embodied cognition. Again, 0:03:37.880 --> 0:03:41.880 this this newer field because it does take into account 0:03:41.960 --> 0:03:46.360 this idea of acquired behaviors or behaviors that are pretty 0:03:46.440 --> 0:03:49.880 much moved along by how we process information. But it 0:03:49.960 --> 0:03:52.280 also has this idea of like, what if we are 0:03:52.800 --> 0:03:55.960 all just a bunch of paper dolls performing the role 0:03:56.000 --> 0:03:58.920 of whatever paper outfit we stick on for that day. Now, 0:03:58.920 --> 0:04:01.440 that's that's pretty actionist, and there's more to it than that, 0:04:01.600 --> 0:04:04.240 of course, but it's more of this idea of we're 0:04:04.280 --> 0:04:06.640 all walking around in these physical cages we put over 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:10.200 ourselves and all the trappings that go along with it, 0:04:10.320 --> 0:04:14.240 and this does inform our mental states and how we 0:04:14.280 --> 0:04:16.560 operate in the world. Now, one of the concepts we're 0:04:16.600 --> 0:04:19.520 dealing here here with here is positive contagent uh, and 0:04:19.600 --> 0:04:23.320 this refers to the belief of transference of beneficial properties 0:04:23.360 --> 0:04:28.000 between animate persons and objects to previously neutral objects. Now, 0:04:28.240 --> 0:04:30.279 we've talked about this concept a bit in the past 0:04:30.320 --> 0:04:36.159 in reference to lucky charms magical objects. The idea that 0:04:36.160 --> 0:04:38.320 that that an object that belonged to a person that 0:04:38.400 --> 0:04:42.320 is now dead is somehow on varying levels, either on 0:04:42.400 --> 0:04:44.080 an avert level, like you're can look at a watch 0:04:44.120 --> 0:04:45.919 and be like, the spirit of my father is in 0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:47.839 this watch, or it may be a very sort of 0:04:47.839 --> 0:04:50.360 almost subconscious thing where you end up aspiring a lot 0:04:50.400 --> 0:04:53.440 of meaning to the watch, even if you don't actually 0:04:53.480 --> 0:04:55.839 believe it has some sort of magical power to it 0:04:55.960 --> 0:04:59.040 or some sort of actual spiritual residence. Yeah, but that 0:04:59.160 --> 0:05:02.000 does kind of there's a of a voodoo nest about it, right, 0:05:02.640 --> 0:05:05.120 bet you feel um. A good example of this is 0:05:05.160 --> 0:05:08.040 the study putting like a pro the role of positive 0:05:08.040 --> 0:05:11.919 contagion and golf performance and perception. And in that study, 0:05:12.480 --> 0:05:14.240 what was found is that people who believe that they 0:05:14.240 --> 0:05:17.919 were using the professional golfers. Putter perceived the size of 0:05:18.000 --> 0:05:21.880 golf holes to be larger than they actually were, and 0:05:21.960 --> 0:05:24.880 they had a better performance and they sunk more puts 0:05:25.000 --> 0:05:28.200 because they thought they were harnessing this magic of the 0:05:28.240 --> 0:05:32.279 pros um equipment. Yeah, they had the professional equipment. And 0:05:32.320 --> 0:05:34.960 then therefore, and I love how the study boils down 0:05:34.960 --> 0:05:36.880 to the fact that they actually saw the whole is bigger. 0:05:36.920 --> 0:05:38.480 It wasn't. It's not just a matter of oh, well, 0:05:38.520 --> 0:05:40.840 they had better equipment, and then they were a little 0:05:41.120 --> 0:05:43.200 boosted up ego wise, and they performed a little better, 0:05:43.200 --> 0:05:44.920 they were a little more confident. But no, they actually 0:05:44.920 --> 0:05:48.479 saw the whole as bigger um. And again, this is 0:05:48.480 --> 0:05:50.240 one of those studies that really drives them something that 0:05:50.279 --> 0:05:52.480 I think we all already know. You you already hear 0:05:52.520 --> 0:05:53.760 a lot of people say, well, you know, if you 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:55.920 want to be a professional about something, you know, make 0:05:55.960 --> 0:05:58.040 sure you have the right equipment, because that's going to 0:05:58.120 --> 0:05:59.760 make the difference. And you're gonna feel more confident in 0:05:59.800 --> 0:06:03.760 your abilities if you actually buy confident tools, right, you're 0:06:03.800 --> 0:06:07.039 gonna feel prepared and ready to take the task on. 0:06:07.760 --> 0:06:11.760 And what I like about that positive contagion is. It's 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:15.200 a nice little entryway into this idea of embodied cognition, 0:06:16.040 --> 0:06:18.920 because these embodiment theories are trying to understand the mind 0:06:19.120 --> 0:06:22.520 is a set of physical processes derived throughout the brain 0:06:22.920 --> 0:06:25.680 in the body of a human, ultimately serving his or 0:06:25.680 --> 0:06:28.640 her actions in the physical world. That study also reminds 0:06:28.680 --> 0:06:30.640 me of a little bit of Holy Scripture. I'm going 0:06:30.680 --> 0:06:32.360 to read here for you. Bring it on. When the 0:06:32.400 --> 0:06:34.839 star belly children went out to play ball, could a 0:06:34.880 --> 0:06:37.120 plain belly get in the game? Not at all. You 0:06:37.120 --> 0:06:39.719 could only play ball of your bellies head stars, and 0:06:39.720 --> 0:06:43.000 the plain belly children had none up on ours. That 0:06:43.200 --> 0:06:45.679 was one of my favorite books. A Star Belli Sneeches 0:06:45.680 --> 0:06:50.360 by Doors and that is a great example of how 0:06:50.520 --> 0:06:54.720 people can sometimes behave depending on how they're branded or 0:06:54.760 --> 0:06:56.840 how they brand themselves. They branded with the star or 0:06:56.880 --> 0:06:59.760 they branded without the star and it is. That's a fabulous, 0:07:00.200 --> 0:07:02.680 fabulous children's book that really boils down a lot of 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:06.880 the ridiculousness of of human culture and how we work. 0:07:07.480 --> 0:07:10.080 That you can easily apply it to do some of 0:07:10.120 --> 0:07:13.000 the topics we're discussing here today. Yeah. Um, And we'll 0:07:13.040 --> 0:07:15.360 talk more about that when we get to in clothes cognition. 0:07:15.400 --> 0:07:17.920 But I wanted to point out something called the Embodiment 0:07:18.200 --> 0:07:22.280 Lab at Barnard College at Columbia University. And what they 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:25.320 say is that in the lab they explore hypotheses that 0:07:25.400 --> 0:07:28.520 flow for the assumption that the mind exists to serve 0:07:28.560 --> 0:07:32.160 the body. And it's as several implications of this philosophical 0:07:32.200 --> 0:07:35.440 stance that have guided our research are One that it 0:07:35.560 --> 0:07:37.960 is not only true that the mind can influence the body, 0:07:38.000 --> 0:07:41.680 but the body can influence the mind. Two, when we 0:07:41.800 --> 0:07:44.920 think or feel, our mental representations will be directly related 0:07:44.920 --> 0:07:48.720 to perception and action. And three, that's setting the perceptual 0:07:48.760 --> 0:07:52.080 and motor functions of various thoughts, feelings and brain states 0:07:52.080 --> 0:07:54.520 can help us to understand why, when, and how they 0:07:54.560 --> 0:07:58.040 come about. Okay, so that's all good and will that's 0:07:58.120 --> 0:08:01.800 that's sort of the philosophical basis of this. But let's 0:08:01.800 --> 0:08:04.280 put some rubber to the road here. What we're talking 0:08:04.320 --> 0:08:07.440 about are the studies that have to do with um, 0:08:08.080 --> 0:08:11.080 this is the classic one. Let's say a warm cup 0:08:11.120 --> 0:08:16.040 of coffee versus an iced coffee and how it might 0:08:16.120 --> 0:08:20.560 actually make someone think their cognitive process. And we've brought 0:08:20.640 --> 0:08:24.160 this up before, but I wanted to bring this up again. Um, 0:08:24.200 --> 0:08:27.160 this is this idea of warm drink, warm feelings. Yale 0:08:27.200 --> 0:08:30.520 psychologists Williams and Barg found that when they let participants 0:08:30.560 --> 0:08:33.680 hold this warm cup, the participants judged others to be 0:08:33.760 --> 0:08:39.040 more sociable and this is a characteristic of personality dimension warm. Right. 0:08:39.559 --> 0:08:42.720 So further, when when participants briefly had a warm pack 0:08:42.760 --> 0:08:46.800 on their necks, they themselves became more generous and other 0:08:47.240 --> 0:08:50.480 acts of kindness that they studied in that but which 0:08:50.520 --> 0:08:52.680 is why you should always bring a cup of coffee 0:08:52.679 --> 0:08:56.080 to someone if you were about to ask them something difficult, right, Yeah. 0:08:56.240 --> 0:08:59.040 And and maybe even if you're going into a job interview, right, 0:08:59.200 --> 0:09:02.000 bringing some coffee, bringing bringing a warm pack to put 0:09:02.040 --> 0:09:05.400 on your your future boss's neck, that won't be creepy 0:09:05.400 --> 0:09:08.280 at all they look at the job. Yeah. Another really 0:09:08.320 --> 0:09:13.120 interesting aspect of this is the handwashing zone. Now, there's 0:09:13.160 --> 0:09:16.439 an excellent book on on this title Clean, A History 0:09:16.440 --> 0:09:19.240 of Personal Hygiene Impurity by Virginia Smith that I recommend 0:09:19.280 --> 0:09:22.120 to everyone. I think it may have UM touted it 0:09:22.160 --> 0:09:25.120 here on the podcast before, but one of the core 0:09:25.200 --> 0:09:28.360 arguments in this book is that not even an argument. 0:09:28.360 --> 0:09:31.600 It is just an analysis that throughout human history we 0:09:31.640 --> 0:09:34.880 have this idea of hygiene, and then we have these 0:09:34.920 --> 0:09:41.679 other ideas of spiritual purity, moral purity, um, pure thoughts, etcetera, um, 0:09:41.760 --> 0:09:45.960 and these become intertwined as as we as we evolved 0:09:46.000 --> 0:09:48.800 in as human culture builds up, you know, like detritus 0:09:49.320 --> 0:09:53.400 and uh, until we really have difficulty separating one idea 0:09:53.440 --> 0:09:56.000 from the next. Yeah. Again, this sort of like positive 0:09:56.000 --> 0:10:00.240 contagion or actually a negative contagion. Yeah, because they're plenty 0:10:00.240 --> 0:10:03.160 of examples of something that has been For instance, at 0:10:03.160 --> 0:10:05.520 our house, we were out of out of tinfoil, so 0:10:05.559 --> 0:10:08.760 I had to cover the cat's wet food with a 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:12.600 little piece of cellophane, and then I secured the cellfane 0:10:12.600 --> 0:10:14.720 around it with one of my wife's the hair ties, 0:10:15.559 --> 0:10:17.720 and and so the hair tie was not touching cat 0:10:17.800 --> 0:10:20.680 food at all, but I had to I realized that 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:24.040 in doing this I might not be actually defiling the 0:10:24.080 --> 0:10:28.520 hair tile. It wasn't it wasn't made impure in any 0:10:28.600 --> 0:10:32.960 kind of physical sense, but there was a spiritual contamidation 0:10:33.040 --> 0:10:35.880 of it by being that close to ground up animal parts, 0:10:36.280 --> 0:10:38.640 and therefore could never be used on hair asbo to say, 0:10:38.679 --> 0:10:41.080 I totally get that because I don't even like a 0:10:41.080 --> 0:10:43.360 hairbrush to be on my kitchen countertop. But it kind 0:10:43.360 --> 0:10:45.280 of freaked me out. Yeah, and we talked about this 0:10:45.320 --> 0:10:49.079 in terms of water purification. You know, there's just everything 0:10:49.120 --> 0:10:51.880 that needs to be purified for human consumption has to 0:10:51.880 --> 0:10:54.559 be purified in the real but also in the imagined 0:10:54.600 --> 0:11:00.640 realm of of purity. Well, um knowing does the purity 0:11:01.080 --> 0:11:03.040 coming to play when you think about handwashing? But there's 0:11:03.080 --> 0:11:05.880 something called the clean slate effect and spiked W. S 0:11:05.960 --> 0:11:09.400 lee In. Norbert Schwartz of the University of Michigan asked 0:11:09.400 --> 0:11:12.760 subjects to rank top ten CDs they'd like to own 0:11:12.800 --> 0:11:15.160 from a list of thirty, and then they chose to 0:11:15.240 --> 0:11:19.120 keep either their fifth or their sixth ranked disk. Okay. 0:11:19.160 --> 0:11:21.120 So this is where they introduced like, oh, which one 0:11:21.160 --> 0:11:25.280 should I have? Okay? You really touching those top picks? 0:11:25.679 --> 0:11:27.920 How many did they have to pick? Thirty? No, out 0:11:27.920 --> 0:11:29.800 of thirty, they had to be their top ten, but 0:11:29.840 --> 0:11:33.079 then they could keep their fifth or sixth. Okay, So 0:11:33.280 --> 0:11:35.320 they're in lines the problem here because it's not the 0:11:35.320 --> 0:11:38.120 bottom of the ten, it's not the top pick, right, 0:11:38.200 --> 0:11:42.680 So presumably there's some sort of like a consternation involved 0:11:42.720 --> 0:11:46.120 with us. So what they had them do is they 0:11:46.200 --> 0:11:50.080 have the subjects evaluate some hand soap. Some just stared 0:11:50.120 --> 0:11:53.800 at it while others used it. Okay, And now the 0:11:53.840 --> 0:11:57.240 subjects who didn't use the soap ranked their chosen CD 0:11:57.360 --> 0:12:01.400 about two places higher than the one didn't pick, so 0:12:01.480 --> 0:12:04.880 they they elevated it. And and this is the cognitive 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:07.640 This is is that some of us sometimes have when 0:12:07.679 --> 0:12:10.720 we're trying to make decisions, right, just thinking about the step, 0:12:10.800 --> 0:12:12.920 not even even using just the idea of soap. The 0:12:13.040 --> 0:12:16.400 soap is a symbol working on the human mind exactly. 0:12:16.520 --> 0:12:19.720 So um So those who didn't get to wash their hands, 0:12:19.720 --> 0:12:22.800 basically they increase their value on their chosen option. And 0:12:22.800 --> 0:12:25.080 again that's the cognitive dissonance. You're going to double down 0:12:25.080 --> 0:12:29.160 in the face of adversity. And those who wash their hands, 0:12:29.240 --> 0:12:32.439 the relative rankings of the two CDs remained about the same, 0:12:32.800 --> 0:12:37.160 and their angst, they say, according to this was erased. Okay. 0:12:37.200 --> 0:12:40.000 Now they did this again with jam. They had the 0:12:40.000 --> 0:12:42.800 participants had to choose between two different jams that they 0:12:42.880 --> 0:12:46.320 always used to be jams. And it's kind of jam 0:12:46.360 --> 0:12:49.720 study or another jam study before. Okay, So instead of 0:12:49.760 --> 0:12:52.840 washing their hands. We're talking about handwives considering the handwipes, 0:12:52.880 --> 0:12:56.600 are using the handwipes. And again, uh, those people who 0:12:56.840 --> 0:12:59.679 use the handwipes, they came back and they had a 0:13:00.360 --> 0:13:06.559 more um pragmatic perspective about the jam. They didn't overrate 0:13:06.600 --> 0:13:09.160 their experiences with the jams, whereas those people who didn't 0:13:09.200 --> 0:13:11.240 get to wash their hands didn't have that clean slate 0:13:11.240 --> 0:13:15.480 effect and and and kind of be able to wash 0:13:15.559 --> 0:13:18.079 away their consternation. Yeah. I mean it's kind of like 0:13:18.120 --> 0:13:20.600 the whole idea of like taking a shower to cleanse 0:13:20.640 --> 0:13:23.560 the soul as well as the body, that fresh flight 0:13:23.600 --> 0:13:25.720 effect where you're like, all right, I'm all new, I'm good. 0:13:26.240 --> 0:13:28.400 Well have you ever done that before when you're trying 0:13:28.400 --> 0:13:30.280 to turn something around in your mind, trying to get 0:13:30.280 --> 0:13:32.199 another perspective on it, and you're like, you know what, 0:13:32.520 --> 0:13:35.760 nothing's working here. I'm at a stop. I'm just going 0:13:35.800 --> 0:13:38.840 to take a shower and lo and behold, you come 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:40.679 out on the other side of that shower with new 0:13:40.720 --> 0:13:43.280 ideas or a new perspective. Yeah. I think I do 0:13:43.360 --> 0:13:45.880 some of my best thinking in the shower in the morning. 0:13:46.840 --> 0:13:50.000 It's true. Yeah, I don't know, but I'm assuming. Yeah, 0:13:50.040 --> 0:13:52.800 that's true. Yeah, well, I like sometimes I take too long, 0:13:53.000 --> 0:13:55.120 like because someone just standing there hot water hit me 0:13:55.160 --> 0:13:58.120 in the face. Ideas are running and it's a good time. 0:13:58.280 --> 0:14:02.200 Your wife is like, hey man, you're running up the bill. Well, 0:14:02.240 --> 0:14:04.680 you know, there's also something to be said because it's uh, 0:14:04.720 --> 0:14:06.920 it's before I have the coffee. And we've talked about, 0:14:07.440 --> 0:14:09.439 you know, in the past. I have a coffee focuses 0:14:09.480 --> 0:14:13.240 the mind, but it cuts down on that unhinged random thinking. 0:14:13.240 --> 0:14:16.640 It's a hallmark of creativity. So I'm having the shower 0:14:16.760 --> 0:14:19.520 before I have my coffee, So that would that's also 0:14:19.680 --> 0:14:22.520 like I'm at my freshest then. And I also haven't 0:14:22.560 --> 0:14:26.000 taken any coffee to rain in the wild stallions of 0:14:26.040 --> 0:14:28.360 my imagination. I don't know why they're stallions. They're more now, 0:14:28.360 --> 0:14:32.080 they're really probably more like muskrats, the wild muskrats. Mind, 0:14:32.240 --> 0:14:34.960 I think I preferred stallions. Stallions is a little overdoing it, 0:14:35.040 --> 0:14:38.400 even I'm gonna be realistic about my creative abilities, I know. 0:14:38.480 --> 0:14:42.920 But it's got a nice like seventies shiny machen to it. Um, 0:14:43.280 --> 0:14:46.240 all right, so let's stop talking about stallion in the showers. Um, 0:14:46.320 --> 0:14:49.000 Let's get to clipboards. Because I love clipboards, and I 0:14:49.000 --> 0:14:52.520 think every job I've ever had, I have kiddingly walked 0:14:52.520 --> 0:14:55.800 around with the clipboard to pretend like I was doing something. 0:14:55.920 --> 0:14:57.520 It makes you really does make you feel like you're 0:14:57.520 --> 0:15:00.440 doing something. I still have my clipboard when I was 0:15:00.480 --> 0:15:03.280 in newspapers here and I just use it for mundane 0:15:03.320 --> 0:15:06.680 purposes now, like holding papers onto a board. But back 0:15:06.720 --> 0:15:08.880 then I remembered it was like it was almost like 0:15:08.920 --> 0:15:11.440 a scepter. Like if I had the clipboard, I felt like, yes, 0:15:11.480 --> 0:15:13.320 I am in control because I have this thing and 0:15:13.360 --> 0:15:16.240 there's their papers on it and everything, well papers on 0:15:16.240 --> 0:15:19.240 it and everything turns out to be important, but more 0:15:19.320 --> 0:15:21.600 important in some of these studies is the actual weight 0:15:21.680 --> 0:15:24.640 of the thing itself, and it turns out that that 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:28.640 weight is really important and that people will think about 0:15:28.680 --> 0:15:32.640 their own self importance engage other aspects of the world 0:15:33.200 --> 0:15:36.120 in conjunction with this weight. Yeah, we're looking at study 0:15:36.120 --> 0:15:38.560 where people holding a clipboard that was weighted so as 0:15:38.560 --> 0:15:42.920 to be heavier overestimated the value of foreign currencies by 0:15:42.920 --> 0:15:45.240 any indicating how many euros they believe they would need 0:15:45.280 --> 0:15:49.160 to pay exchange currencies. Yeah, and now they were given 0:15:49.200 --> 0:15:51.880 these clipboards. The participants in the study, and they were 0:15:51.920 --> 0:15:54.800 told to fill things out. Okay, so they had an activity. 0:15:54.840 --> 0:15:57.520 They weren't just holding and they weren't tell me how 0:15:57.560 --> 0:15:59.760 you think about the Euros now, yeah, And they had 0:15:59.800 --> 0:16:02.120 no idea whether or not theirs was heavier or lighter 0:16:02.120 --> 0:16:05.520 than than other people in the study. Um. And this 0:16:05.640 --> 0:16:08.520 was by the way published in psychological Science. Dr Josman 0:16:08.600 --> 0:16:12.000 and his colleagues Daniel light Laken's and Thomas W. Schubert 0:16:12.040 --> 0:16:16.160 explored this idea about the body conflating weight in importance. 0:16:16.560 --> 0:16:20.880 And they were also asked to consider different countries and 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:23.800 their leadership. And then again those people who had heavier 0:16:23.840 --> 0:16:27.440 clipboards and they really deliberated a lot more than the 0:16:27.520 --> 0:16:30.400 people who had lighter clipboards, and they thought that their 0:16:30.480 --> 0:16:35.800 opinion was more sought out than their their light clipboard counterparts. Wow. 0:16:35.840 --> 0:16:37.960 So you know. And in our previous episode we talked 0:16:37.960 --> 0:16:39.960 about symbols and the power of symbols and how they 0:16:39.960 --> 0:16:42.680 affect our minds because we're just taking them in the 0:16:42.680 --> 0:16:44.480 course of our day, and then in the in the 0:16:44.520 --> 0:16:46.400 form of the clipboard, in the form of the coffee cut, 0:16:46.640 --> 0:16:50.160 we're talking about symbols that we actually take into our 0:16:50.200 --> 0:16:53.160 hand and in the sense make a part of our body. 0:16:53.720 --> 0:16:56.840 And therefore we uh, we we wrap ourselves in the 0:16:56.880 --> 0:17:00.240 trappings of the symbol. That's true, right, yeah, that's we're 0:17:00.240 --> 0:17:02.280 saying all the other sort of trappings that we put 0:17:03.160 --> 0:17:06.520 around us, that we hold, that we imbue with some 0:17:06.600 --> 0:17:10.840 sort of value that gets taken up into our brains 0:17:11.119 --> 0:17:13.800 and and it informs the way that we actually cogitate. 0:17:14.680 --> 0:17:16.600 So it's pretty cool stuff. And then we should probably 0:17:16.600 --> 0:17:17.919 take a break, and when we get back, we're going 0:17:17.960 --> 0:17:28.679 to talk about this idea of paper dolls. All right, 0:17:28.720 --> 0:17:31.359 we're back, and uh, we're about to get into in 0:17:31.440 --> 0:17:34.040 clothes cognition. You know, when I was telling Holly Fry 0:17:34.080 --> 0:17:37.680 of History stuff what we were doing today, she just went, oh, yeah, 0:17:37.720 --> 0:17:41.880 of course, RuPaul has a thing on that group. Paul 0:17:41.960 --> 0:17:44.560 is her spirit animal by the way, yeah, or her 0:17:44.600 --> 0:17:48.080 spirit god. I shouldn't say animal, her spirit god. And 0:17:48.280 --> 0:17:51.520 uh she said that he says everybody is born naked 0:17:51.720 --> 0:17:56.040 and everything else's drag. Well, you know, modern cultural sociologist 0:17:56.280 --> 0:18:00.000 described the human body as an unfinished body, a body 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:03.680 created by nature but finished by humans, and so each 0:18:03.680 --> 0:18:07.760 of us calls up on various bodies various various times 0:18:07.760 --> 0:18:09.560 throughout our lives. It's kind of like the idea of 0:18:09.560 --> 0:18:12.280 the cyboard, you know, where we're all cyboards because we're 0:18:12.280 --> 0:18:14.719 all using technology, we're wearing it, or it's in our 0:18:14.760 --> 0:18:17.399 body or it's some part of us. And clothing is 0:18:17.400 --> 0:18:20.159 a part of us as well. The human body is 0:18:20.200 --> 0:18:22.800 born unfinished. We finish it with our clothing and technology, 0:18:23.000 --> 0:18:25.960 and that is the version of ourselves that we see well. 0:18:25.960 --> 0:18:28.040 And that's an idea of these the paper dolls that 0:18:28.080 --> 0:18:29.879 we just kind of put on these different outfits and 0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:32.840 then we perform whatever aspects of it that we are 0:18:32.880 --> 0:18:36.919 subconsciously or consciously thinking about in terms of how we 0:18:36.960 --> 0:18:39.479 move around in the world. It's like a Barbie doll, right, 0:18:39.520 --> 0:18:42.199 I mean, like there's the naked Barbie doll that is 0:18:42.240 --> 0:18:45.080 just like flung around in the bathtub. But then they're 0:18:45.080 --> 0:18:49.000 the outfit that transformed Barbie and all of these other people. 0:18:49.320 --> 0:18:52.960 Astronaut Barbie. Yeah, it was there, just uh it wasn't 0:18:53.000 --> 0:18:57.440 there a Mars curiosity uh over Barbie something that recently 0:18:57.480 --> 0:18:59.399 came out. But you know when she still looks like Barbie, 0:18:59.440 --> 0:19:01.840 I have to say, and we've talked about her weird dimensions. 0:19:01.880 --> 0:19:04.560 And this is why, right, because she would topple over 0:19:04.680 --> 0:19:08.000 if you actually fully formed Barbie with her, her current 0:19:08.000 --> 0:19:12.640 dimensions would top over on Mars though. Good question, very 0:19:12.680 --> 0:19:16.720 good question. Alright, So, um, the best example of the 0:19:16.800 --> 0:19:20.560 cloth cognition because there are not many examples by the way, Um, 0:19:20.600 --> 0:19:23.640 this is again a fairly new field of study. Examples. 0:19:23.640 --> 0:19:25.480 I mean, we can sit here and sir rattle out 0:19:25.640 --> 0:19:29.480 anecdotally all day long. Um, but I wanted to point 0:19:29.480 --> 0:19:32.199 out three studies by Adam D. Glinsky. He is a 0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:36.200 professor at the Kellogg School of Management or Western University, 0:19:36.240 --> 0:19:39.880 and he presented his information in the Journal of Experimental 0:19:39.880 --> 0:19:43.800 Social Psychology. Um. They also, yeah, they told coined the 0:19:43.920 --> 0:19:46.800 term in cloth cognition. They did. And by the way, 0:19:46.920 --> 0:19:50.320 Glinsky got the idea for this from watching The Simpsons, 0:19:50.359 --> 0:19:54.520 the TV show really Max Power No no, no. Um, Well, 0:19:54.560 --> 0:19:57.200 I don't know which episode title it was, but basically 0:19:57.240 --> 0:20:00.800 he was watching kids, all the kids school, and they 0:20:00.800 --> 0:20:03.000 were outside and they were made to wear these gray 0:20:03.119 --> 0:20:07.600 uniforms and they were very subdued and calm, and then 0:20:07.600 --> 0:20:09.920 it began to rain and all of the dye came 0:20:09.960 --> 0:20:12.919 off the uniforms and these rainbow colors emerged from their clothes, 0:20:12.960 --> 0:20:16.920 and the kids went bersark u and he said, he said, 0:20:16.960 --> 0:20:18.840 I started thinking about the clothes you wear in the 0:20:18.880 --> 0:20:21.320 meaning behind this clothes. If you put on a black 0:20:21.359 --> 0:20:23.919 T shirt, become more aggressive, you put on a nurse's uniform, 0:20:24.000 --> 0:20:26.560 you become more helpful. And then he crafted these three 0:20:26.600 --> 0:20:31.240 studies having to do with a lab coat. Huh. Well, again, 0:20:31.280 --> 0:20:34.240 it comes down to the idea that that all of 0:20:34.240 --> 0:20:37.440 these things have symbolic meaning, and the lab coat carries 0:20:37.480 --> 0:20:39.320 a lot of symbolic meaning. You look at someone in 0:20:39.320 --> 0:20:43.280 a lab coat, maybe holding a clipboard or some medical 0:20:43.280 --> 0:20:46.119 instrument as well, and maybe other symbols that are combining 0:20:46.160 --> 0:20:49.000 to create this kind of hyper cycle. But but there's 0:20:49.040 --> 0:20:51.200 the idea that this is the person who's highly educated, 0:20:51.359 --> 0:20:54.880 This is the person that I should trust on some level. Careful, 0:20:55.040 --> 0:20:59.600 It is careful, attentive, attentive, that is clean and with 0:20:59.760 --> 0:21:02.120