Speaker 1: My Welcome to stot to Blow Your Mind, the production
Speaker 1: of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and we're back with part three of our talk about queueing.
Speaker 1: And the previous episodes we talked about the mechanics of
Speaker 1: various kinds of queuing and lining up for things, queuing psychology,
Speaker 1: queuing in traffic, and the particular anguish of of line
Speaker 1: cutting or line or que jumping, as as they might
Speaker 1: say in Great Britain. Uh. And there was a thing
Speaker 1: I wanted to start off with today, which was following
Speaker 1: up on study I brought up in the previous episode
Speaker 1: because there was another thing about it that I found
Speaker 1: really interesting and I forgot to mention last time. Uh. So, Rob,
Speaker 1: you remember last time we talked about the Stanley Milgram
Speaker 1: experiments with line cutting in the nineteen eighties. Yes, Stanley
Speaker 1: Milgram sending his um his agents out into the world
Speaker 1: to cause havoc in the lines, to disrupt lines and
Speaker 1: uh and so discord for the purposes of his studies. Yes,
Speaker 1: roving bands of actors to go throughout the city of
Speaker 1: New York and cut lines all over the place just
Speaker 1: to see what happened. Uh. And it's mentioned in the
Speaker 1: study that the main types of locations, the ones that
Speaker 1: are named are train stations and betting parlors. So cool um.
Speaker 1: But but anyway. The study was published in the Journal
Speaker 1: of Personality and Social Psychology N. Six. It was by
Speaker 1: Mill Gram, Hillary J. Liberty, Raymond Toledo, and Joyce Wackenhut
Speaker 1: and was called Response to Intrusion into Waiting Lines. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so to quickly review some of the main things
Speaker 1: they found. They found that obviously people did not like
Speaker 1: when somebody cut in line in front of them, but
Speaker 1: most of the time the line cutter basically got away
Speaker 1: with it. I went back to check the exact numbers
Speaker 1: and across all of the different conditions, about twenty two
Speaker 1: percent of the time people attempted to eject then jumper
Speaker 1: through verbal objections. They might yell at them or tell
Speaker 1: them to go to the back of the line and
Speaker 1: so forth. Uh. And then about ten percent of the
Speaker 1: time they would somehow physically interact with the line cutter.
Speaker 1: And this could range from you know, aggressively tapping them
Speaker 1: on the shoulder or tugging the sleeves saying like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, what are you doing to actually grabbing or
Speaker 1: shoving them out of the line. That was about ten
Speaker 1: percent of the time, But you might hear from those
Speaker 1: numbers that the majority of the time the line cutter
Speaker 1: basically got in, you know, got away with, maybe not
Speaker 1: more than just hostile stairs. Yeah, I mean it makes
Speaker 1: you realize that part of it is just how susceptible
Speaker 1: are you too, I guess social cues, but also just
Speaker 1: the the ravages of social shaming, Like if you are
Speaker 1: completely unashamed, then you can probably get yourself right to
Speaker 1: the front of the line a lot of the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the question is how many people are that shameless
Speaker 1: that That's one of the main things I want to
Speaker 1: come back to you here now. Just to mention a
Speaker 1: couple of other things. One of the other things they
Speaker 1: found was not surprisingly, people behind the line cutter were
Speaker 1: more likely to object than people in front of them.
Speaker 1: And the other thing they found was that you could
Speaker 1: really put a damper on the overall reaction to line
Speaker 1: cutting by inserting what the authors called buffers. And these
Speaker 1: would be other actors, other experiment ers posing as normal
Speaker 1: rule following line standards who do not react when the
Speaker 1: line intrusion occurs, so you just have another experiment or
Speaker 1: stand in the line, and then the line cutter comes
Speaker 1: and cuts right in front of them, and they don't react.
Speaker 1: They just stand there passively. People in the rest of
Speaker 1: the line are also much less likely to react when
Speaker 1: there's somebody like that there, which indicates that we tend
Speaker 1: to look to other people for clues about how best
Speaker 1: to react when we see an apparent violation of q justice,
Speaker 1: and we especially look to the person directly behind the intrusion.
Speaker 1: The person directly behind the line cutter has this special
Speaker 1: obligation to object, and if they don't, other people in
Speaker 1: the line are much less likely to speak up. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I realized that there were actually a few other interesting
Speaker 1: things about the study that I didn't get to in
Speaker 1: the last episode, and I wanted to bring them up now.
Speaker 1: And one is again a demonstration of the profundity of
Speaker 1: the sense of norms governing queuing, demonstrated by the fact
Speaker 1: that despite people getting away with line cutting most of
Speaker 1: the time without major objections from the line, the actors
Speaker 1: who had to carry out these experiments were absolutely mortified
Speaker 1: by what they were doing to such an extent that
Speaker 1: the authors had to to like include a section of
Speaker 1: their right up describing the reactions of the experimenters themselves,
Speaker 1: And I just want to read from this. The several
Speaker 1: experimental confederates reported highly negative affect associated with the task
Speaker 1: of intruding into lines. Before each trial, many of the
Speaker 1: confederates procrastinated at length, often pacing nervously near the target area,
Speaker 1: spending as much as half an hour working up the
Speaker 1: nerve to in rude. For some, the anticipation of intruding
Speaker 1: was so unpleasant that physical symptoms such as pallor and
Speaker 1: nausea accompanied intrusions. Reactions of this type have been reported
Speaker 1: previously by Garfinkel and Milgrim and sabini Uh. They constitute
Speaker 1: the quote inhibitory anxiety that ordinarily prevents individuals from breaching
Speaker 1: social norms, and indicate that the internal restraints against intruding
Speaker 1: into lines play a significant role in assuring the integrity
Speaker 1: of the line. So again, just a powerful demonstration of
Speaker 1: the profundity of the line cutting taboo, at least in
Speaker 1: you know, New York in the nineteen eighties. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean this makes sense. I know I've been in the
Speaker 1: situation where I'll get to the front of the line,
Speaker 1: and there'll be something out the line, like I need
Speaker 1: to go get enough exchange a package or something, you know,
Speaker 1: to exchange one product for another, and the cashier will
Speaker 1: tell me, we'll just come back up to the front
Speaker 1: of the line when you get this taken care of. Which,
Speaker 1: on one level, okay, I have the permission of the
Speaker 1: teller or you know whoever the individual of of semi
Speaker 1: power is in the scenario. But I also know that
Speaker 1: the people behind me may not have that information, especially
Speaker 1: if I'm gone long enough for one or two people
Speaker 1: to cycle through. Like, how are they supposed to know
Speaker 1: that I am I'm not a line cutter, And I
Speaker 1: can't help but be anxious about that. I know exactly
Speaker 1: what you're talking about. Yeah, Like the fear that, even
Speaker 1: if you have a legitimate excuse, just the fear of
Speaker 1: the appearance of not having a legitimate excuse is terrifying. Right,
Speaker 1: You feel like you need to announce yourself when you
Speaker 1: get back in and like loudly proclaim that you're not
Speaker 1: cutting in line. You're supposed to do it as if
Speaker 1: you're in a Tim Robinson sketch. I'm supposed to be
Speaker 1: doing this, But so another really interesting question here in
Speaker 1: the Milgram study is that despite the fact that the
Speaker 1: taboo on cutting in line is so strong, people often
Speaker 1: tended to get away with it. Nonetheless, only in a
Speaker 1: minority of cases did the line actually ban together to
Speaker 1: verbally or physically try to eject the intruder. Rather, as
Speaker 1: we mentioned last time, the defense of the qu integrity
Speaker 1: was primarily local rather than systemic, and it depends heavily
Speaker 1: on the behavior of the person directly behind the line cutter.
Speaker 1: So the question is why is this, Like the fear
Speaker 1: of cutting in line is so strong that it makes
Speaker 1: a person who's about to do it for the sake
Speaker 1: of a scientific experiment go pace in the lobby for
Speaker 1: half an hour and maybe like nearly vomiting a garbage can,
Speaker 1: And yet the majority of the time the line can't
Speaker 1: get it together to defend itself against a cheater. You
Speaker 1: know that those two things would seem to be kind
Speaker 1: of in contradiction with each other. What's going on here? Well,
Speaker 1: Milgram and co authors had some ideas about this, which
Speaker 1: they lay out in their discussion section. I thought these
Speaker 1: were interesting, so I wanted to go through them. One
Speaker 1: of them is that most natural lines are composed people
Speaker 1: who are strangers to each other, leading to a general
Speaker 1: reticence in social engagement. Here, and they hypothesized that lines
Speaker 1: composed of people familiar to one another might be much
Speaker 1: more likely to act in a unified defensive way more effectively.
Speaker 1: But the other thing they point out here that I
Speaker 1: thought was really interesting was about the actual spatial arrangement
Speaker 1: of the line. So when you have people lined up
Speaker 1: in a normal American style queue for something, everybody's facing
Speaker 1: the same direction and thus no person is facing anyone else.
Speaker 1: And they argue that this actually discourages group cooperation. So
Speaker 1: like if the people in the line could look at
Speaker 1: each other's faces more easily and see how everybody else
Speaker 1: was reacting more easily, unified defensive action might be more common.
Speaker 1: This makes sense because I have I when I am
Speaker 1: in the line for security at the airport. You the
Speaker 1: way that the line is typically arranged. You know, it's
Speaker 1: snaking back and forth. You're going to be facing sometimes
Speaker 1: you know two different rows of people that are facing you. Uh,
Speaker 1: you may make eye contact with them, or at least
Speaker 1: you'll see their face. And it is this this situation
Speaker 1: where you're forced to acknowledge on some level of the
Speaker 1: humanity of all the other people in line. You know,
Speaker 1: it's I'm not saying it's a real icebreaker of a
Speaker 1: of a of an environment. You know, you don't feel
Speaker 1: like you're bonding at the soul level with all of
Speaker 1: these people, but but I could see where Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a more humanizing experience than just simply standing, um,
Speaker 1: you know, in line, one after the other, just looking
Speaker 1: at the back of everybody's head. I know the experience
Speaker 1: you're talking about. Yeah, so a a snaking serpentine line
Speaker 1: may be different than a single file or I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess they're both single file than a straight line
Speaker 1: that doesn't have any angles where you can look back
Speaker 1: at other line standards. Another thing cutting against people's defense
Speaker 1: of the queue as a whole might be that mounting
Speaker 1: a systemic attack against an intruder in the line. So
Speaker 1: if that's going to involve you, like approach sing them
Speaker 1: or something like that, that might cause people to lose
Speaker 1: their own place in line. So when you're standing in line,
Speaker 1: you're very concerned with like making sure that the people
Speaker 1: around you know where your place in the line is
Speaker 1: and not leaving that place and leading to any confusion
Speaker 1: or perhaps forfeiting the time you've already spent waiting, so
Speaker 1: you're you're more likely to just keep your head down
Speaker 1: and not get into situations that could cause disruption of
Speaker 1: the line system and in keeping without the third issue
Speaker 1: that milgraman co author's raises the right quote, A system's
Speaker 1: resilience depends not only on its capacity to defend against disturbances,
Speaker 1: but also its capacity to ignore, adjust to, and tolerate them.
Speaker 1: Although confrontation with the intruder would serve to maintain the
Speaker 1: physical order of the line, it may risk the escalation
Speaker 1: of a localized incident into a general freacas, threatening the
Speaker 1: disintegration of the entire system. By not challenging the intruder,
Speaker 1: a cue may protect the system against the hearance of disorder.
Speaker 1: As Schwartz has written, and this was from a paper
Speaker 1: in nineteen quote, the chaotic dissolution of the que can
Speaker 1: be forestalled not only by the default of deviance, but
Speaker 1: also by its contingent toleration. This is great. This lines
Speaker 1: up with some of the stuff we were talking about
Speaker 1: last time, like to what extent is it worth it
Speaker 1: to confront a single or even a couple of of
Speaker 1: line breakers if it is going to potentially escalate things
Speaker 1: to the point where saying nobody gets that bagel sandwich
Speaker 1: that you're waiting in line for, or you don't get
Speaker 1: the bagel sandwich because you are going to jail. Uh
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. Uh. So, yeah, you don't, you don't.
Speaker 1: You can't be so um uh you know, married to
Speaker 1: the idea that the line must not be broken, because
Speaker 1: then otherwise the line could just fall into chaos and
Speaker 1: then once more you're in Tim Robinson sketch instead of
Speaker 1: functioning line. Right, I was trying to think of a comparison.
Speaker 1: It almost makes me think, like, um, imagine you're you're
Speaker 1: playing Monopoly with a number of friends and you're all
Speaker 1: high and out having a good time. I think maybe
Speaker 1: you're a Monopoly hater, but whatever, whatever, somebody, let's just say,
Speaker 1: for the sake of argument, that you were enjoying Monopoly. Uh,
Speaker 1: and you you're having a great time. Everybody's playing the game,
Speaker 1: and you happen to notice another character cheats another character,
Speaker 1: Like they reach into the bank and they lift out
Speaker 1: a hundred and they tuck it under and nobody else sees.
Speaker 1: Do you bring it up? Because on one hand, you
Speaker 1: don't like cheating, that that's undercutting the spirit of the game.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, if you bring it up,
Speaker 1: you're gonna ruin the whole game, Like nobody's having fun
Speaker 1: after that point. Yeah, I don't. I would argue that
Speaker 1: that is in keeping with monopoly experience. You need to
Speaker 1: reach that point where nobody's having fun anymore and relationships
Speaker 1: are ruined. But um, but no, I think I think
Speaker 1: that's Seriously, I think that that's that's a that's a
Speaker 1: fair comparison. Um, this probably isn't as good of an example,
Speaker 1: but I was thinking maybe perhaps of playing Dungeons and Dragons,
Speaker 1: like what happens you're the dungeon master or you're the player,
Speaker 1: and you realize you forgot to apply a certain well,
Speaker 1: maybe you had an extra attack, you could have made
Speaker 1: a couple of rounds ago or there. The monster had
Speaker 1: some other extra like a legendary effect that it could
Speaker 1: have utilized, and you forgot to do it. You've got
Speaker 1: to be willing to roll with the fact that, Okay,
Speaker 1: we didn't do that, but but we can't if we
Speaker 1: go back in time, if we try and backtrack, we're
Speaker 1: going to disrupt the experience, We're going to derail the
Speaker 1: train to some extent, and you just have to keep
Speaker 1: moving forward. Right, Sometimes you just have to incorporate and
Speaker 1: tolerate a single malfunction in the system in order to
Speaker 1: not risk stopping the progress of the system in a
Speaker 1: way that would completely derail it. Right. And then they
Speaker 1: got a fourth point that I also thought was really interesting.
Speaker 1: They argue that allowing the intruder to remain in line
Speaker 1: serves the system in another way, namely co opting those
Speaker 1: who are a threat to its survival. Once an intruder
Speaker 1: is part of the line, she or he has an
Speaker 1: investment in its continued existence. Okay, that's kind of kind
Speaker 1: of true. I can see that. So that means is
Speaker 1: that basically saying, well, okay, the person who just cut
Speaker 1: in line, they think the rules don't apply to them.
Speaker 1: But it's not like they don't think the rules apply
Speaker 1: to anyone. They might be the type to to tell
Speaker 1: someone else not to cut and to enforce the rules
Speaker 1: to some extent, or at least agree with the rules,
Speaker 1: like you can't. I guess the thing is, you can't
Speaker 1: exploit a system if you completely disregard all aspects of
Speaker 1: the system, that's true. I mean, once they have cut
Speaker 1: in line successfully, now they've got a stake in maintaining
Speaker 1: the line, and you'd rather maintain the line and get
Speaker 1: out of there than have everything to send into chaos.
Speaker 1: And it is kind of like that realization that the
Speaker 1: line is not just about me getting my bagel sandwich,
Speaker 1: it's about everybody being able to get a bagel sandwich
Speaker 1: in uh, you know, a reasonable amount of time in
Speaker 1: in a in an effective manner. Yeah. And and this
Speaker 1: also really gets to something we talked about in the
Speaker 1: last episode, and we'll be backed up by by more
Speaker 1: stuff we look at in this episode, which is that
Speaker 1: by and large, studies find that people do regard queuing
Speaker 1: in lines not just as a an economic proposal where
Speaker 1: people are trying to maximize their own self interested value, right. Instead,
Speaker 1: people are regarding them more like a social system that
Speaker 1: has norms, and it has a kind of code to it,
Speaker 1: and it has roles within it, and there's a general
Speaker 1: interest in maintaining the integrity of the social system, whether
Speaker 1: or not it personally directly benefits you. So anyway, I mean,
Speaker 1: I thought that was interesting about this stuff. In the
Speaker 1: conclusion of the Millgram study here because it's finding that
Speaker 1: a que is like a social system. It's got these
Speaker 1: norms and roles, and the there is extremely strong internal
Speaker 1: pressure to obey these norms. But the inherent physical and
Speaker 1: social mechanics of the single file line sometimes work against
Speaker 1: the line's ability to defend itself systematically. And then I
Speaker 1: wanted to read one more thing that I thought was interesting.
Speaker 1: For their their conclusion, they write, quote, what is the
Speaker 1: main bonding mechanism of the queue? It resides in replicated segments.
Speaker 1: The principal focus for each person in line is the
Speaker 1: space between himself or herself and the person standing just
Speaker 1: in front. This is the space the quere will defend
Speaker 1: most vigorously. If the quere is to defend the line
Speaker 1: at all, A willingness to object to intrusions quickly attenuates
Speaker 1: with positions further down the line. The que will hold
Speaker 1: together if each member defends the space immediately in front,
Speaker 1: which the qure often experiences as a zone of special responsibility.
Speaker 1: The queue is thus articulated through a series of overlapping zones,
Speaker 1: each centering on the individual standing in line and extending
Speaker 1: a few removes forward and a remove behind. The queue
Speaker 1: is segmental in structure, and as often occurs in systems
Speaker 1: of linear composition. Segmental structures are particularly likely to arise
Speaker 1: in short lived systems formed through accretion of their constituent units,
Speaker 1: as in the case of waiting lines. So a line
Speaker 1: is both a coherent social system that has incentives for
Speaker 1: defending its integrity from end to end, but in practice
Speaker 1: it is modular in nature. It's built out of an
Speaker 1: assembly of smaller social units with their own local responsibilities,
Speaker 1: and that this is characteristic of many types of self
Speaker 1: organizing structures that people come up with. When you don't
Speaker 1: have a top down mandate for how something should be organized,
Speaker 1: you you tend to get a kind of modular structure
Speaker 1: like this with lots of little local rules of enforcement.
Speaker 1: And it also makes me think about other ways that
Speaker 1: social systems premised on a kind of holistic sense of
Speaker 1: of coherence also rely on strong local modules. Like I
Speaker 1: think about the the tendency of militaries to really put
Speaker 1: emphasis on the relationship between each member and their direct
Speaker 1: superior you know, kind of like the space right in
Speaker 1: front of you in line, as opposed to being overly
Speaker 1: concerned about what's going on too far or below your rank. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was just thinking about this. So I think that
Speaker 1: the role of various units in a much larger force. Thankank, Thank.
Speaker 1: Before we leave the subject of line cutting, I also
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about a study I came across that
Speaker 1: concerns line cutting that I found positively heartwarming. Is again, no,
Speaker 1: it is not. It's one that that starts off sounding
Speaker 1: like it's going to be kind of grim and mean,
Speaker 1: but actually is heartwarming in the end, or at least
Speaker 1: a possible interpretation of it is. Uh So, the next
Speaker 1: study I wanted to talk about is by Felix Oberholzer
Speaker 1: G and it was published in Kick Close in I
Speaker 1: think two thousand three, or perhaps republished in two thousand
Speaker 1: and six. But anyway, it's called a market for time
Speaker 1: fairness and efficiency and waiting lines. And so this takes
Speaker 1: an economic look at ed waiting in line and the
Speaker 1: author here writes in the abstract quote in situations of
Speaker 1: excess demand, many firms use waiting lists to allocate products
Speaker 1: and services among their customers. The resulting allocation is likely
Speaker 1: to be inefficient, creating opportunities for parado improving trades among
Speaker 1: those who are waiting in line. So a note about parado.
Speaker 1: So parado efficiency is a concept that you will sometimes
Speaker 1: hear invoked by economists. Basically, parado means gains without compensating losses.
Speaker 1: So a parado improvement is when you take some initial
Speaker 1: situation and you change it so that at least one
Speaker 1: person in it is better off and nobody is worse off.
Speaker 1: So anywhere in any system that you can find opportunities
Speaker 1: for parado improvements, that's a good thing. Basically it means
Speaker 1: wins without compensating losses. So that would be for instance,
Speaker 1: if there was a rule against wearing a hat in
Speaker 1: the office, and nobody in the office had really thought
Speaker 1: about this, but one person really to where I hat
Speaker 1: in the office. You know, if you can change that
Speaker 1: rule and it doesn't offend anybody, and that one person
Speaker 1: gets to where a hat in the office, then they're
Speaker 1: good to go. Like that is a parado improvement. Yes, yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: Or you can often think about parado improvements in types
Speaker 1: of trades of things, or even in in giving, even
Speaker 1: in exchanges of goods, even if you're not being compensated.
Speaker 1: One example, I was trying to think of an example.
Speaker 1: Here's one I thought of all right. Let's say we're
Speaker 1: both sitting in a waiting room, we're both bored, and
Speaker 1: I pick up two books from the table beside me.
Speaker 1: One is written in English, which I read, and the
Speaker 1: other is written in Spanish, which I do not read.
Speaker 1: And let's say you, the person sitting next to me,
Speaker 1: you are also bored. You would also like some reading
Speaker 1: material you have none, and you do read Spanish. It
Speaker 1: would be a parado improvement for me to just hand
Speaker 1: over the book that's in Spanish to you, right, because
Speaker 1: you are getting something out of it, but it is
Speaker 1: of no use whatsoever to me. It is a gain
Speaker 1: for you at no loss to me. Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: And they're also basically any good situation of economic barter
Speaker 1: where where both parties are are fully satisfied with the
Speaker 1: deal or those can be characterized by parado improvements as well,
Speaker 1: you know the classic like I have more apples than
Speaker 1: I can use, you have more milk than you can use.
Speaker 1: We trade some with each other, we can both feel
Speaker 1: like we're better off than we started. And so the
Speaker 1: author here is trying to apply this parado improvement thing
Speaker 1: to the queuing context. So they say, in the queuing context,
Speaker 1: the trading of places is rare, and inefficiencies often persist
Speaker 1: over time. So, for example, you might have a situation
Speaker 1: where I'm really short on time, and it would be
Speaker 1: very valuable to me to pay a fee to skip
Speaker 1: to the head of the line, maybe to pay everybody
Speaker 1: in line to skip ahead of them. And in some situations,
Speaker 1: other people who are waiting in line, who are not
Speaker 1: particularly in a rush, might prefer to take my money
Speaker 1: and wait a little bit longer. And yet while there
Speaker 1: are forms of this, I was thinking about how you
Speaker 1: don't see this happening much in many like wild type
Speaker 1: queuing scenarios, and when you do, it's usually not paying
Speaker 1: the other people waiting in line. Instead, you'd probably like
Speaker 1: pay the the service provider or the store rather than
Speaker 1: the other people, so they're just waiting longer and getting
Speaker 1: nothing in return. Yeah, Like at the airport, it's totally
Speaker 1: understood that yes, some people paid extra so they get
Speaker 1: to go on first, and some people may may take
Speaker 1: some sort of like a flight credit in return for
Speaker 1: changing their flights around that sort of thing. But so
Speaker 1: this study wanted to look at what happens if you
Speaker 1: directly offer incentives to the other people waiting too, people
Speaker 1: waiting in line, So you offer to pay people if
Speaker 1: you can cut in front of them. How do people
Speaker 1: react to that? So to test people's reactions, the author
Speaker 1: here tried it out with several volunteers. He staged experiments
Speaker 1: in the following location. So it was a cafeteria at
Speaker 1: the University of Pennsylvania, a food court in the vicinity
Speaker 1: of the university, and Amtrak train station, and a Department
Speaker 1: of Motor Vehicle service center in Philadelphia. And so the
Speaker 1: experiment goes like this. You are standing in line, you
Speaker 1: are close to the front of the line, and somebody
Speaker 1: walks up to you and says, can I go in
Speaker 1: front of you? And then from here you get one
Speaker 1: of five different conditions. Either they simply ask you that
Speaker 1: and they offer you nothing, or in the other four,
Speaker 1: they hold out a varying sum of cash in their
Speaker 1: hand and offer to pay it to you to let
Speaker 1: them cut in front of you. So this would be
Speaker 1: one dollar, three dollars, five dollars, and ten dollars. And
Speaker 1: the author does note that the wait times in these
Speaker 1: scenarios were generally low, averaging less than three minutes or so,
Speaker 1: so it seems like the money should be a pretty
Speaker 1: good trade. Like, you know, if somebody says, hey, I'll
Speaker 1: give you ten dollars to wait an additional one to
Speaker 1: two minutes or something, I mean, that's that seems like
Speaker 1: a good deal. I mean, especially if you're waiting on
Speaker 1: that that bagel sandwich like that, that will probably cover
Speaker 1: the cost of the bagel sandwich, at least a large
Speaker 1: part of it. So there are three principal findings here.
Speaker 1: First of all, the compensation does have the expected effect.
Speaker 1: People who were offered more money were more likely to
Speaker 1: let someone cut in front of them, and the more
Speaker 1: generous to offer, the more likely people were to accept it,
Speaker 1: So ten dollars was the most likely to get you
Speaker 1: a spot in the line. But second, here's the really
Speaker 1: counterintuitive part. Most people in the experiment actually rejected the money.
Speaker 1: So most of the people who let the experiment or
Speaker 1: cut ahead of them said no, it's okay, you can
Speaker 1: keep the money. As some took it, but the majority
Speaker 1: would not take it. I mean, I guess I would
Speaker 1: be at least heavily tempted not to take it, just
Speaker 1: on just because it's weird, you know, like I was
Speaker 1: talking earlier about, Like there's the there's the desire to
Speaker 1: get to the front of the line in a reasonable
Speaker 1: amount of time, to not have people cut in front
Speaker 1: of you, but also to not have weird interactions with people.
Speaker 1: And if somebody's offering you three to ten dollars to
Speaker 1: get ahead of you in line, like it's gotten weird.
Speaker 1: It's already weird. Yeah, I feel the same like I.
Speaker 1: Once I read this result, I started to think, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that does seemed like how I would probably react.
Speaker 1: I would probably be like, yeah, okay, you can go. No,
Speaker 1: I don't need the money, it's okay. Uh. And the
Speaker 1: interesting thing was that these two principles hold true at
Speaker 1: the same time, so people the more people offered to pay,
Speaker 1: the more likely people were to say, yeah, you can
Speaker 1: get in front of me, even when the people wouldn't
Speaker 1: take the money. So the increasing price made a difference
Speaker 1: even though people weren't taking it. I wonder what the
Speaker 1: study would have been like if they also included offers
Speaker 1: of like someone coming up and saying, I will I
Speaker 1: will give you this toad if you let me get
Speaker 1: in front of you in line, you know, because it
Speaker 1: would probably be the similar thing where if someone just
Speaker 1: came up and asked from a place in line, I
Speaker 1: might say, I'm sorry, and I think you should get
Speaker 1: to the back and just wait. Maybe I would say that,
Speaker 1: and I don't know, but if someone came up and
Speaker 1: they were offering me the toad, I would not take
Speaker 1: the toad for various reasons. But but also I might
Speaker 1: just say, yeah, go ahead, Like, if you're willing to
Speaker 1: put yourself out there and offer me a live toad
Speaker 1: for this place in line, then I think you should
Speaker 1: have it because you want it more than I think.
Speaker 1: That's a reasonable interpretation. So I just want to read
Speaker 1: a couple of passages from overholdzer g here about how
Speaker 1: how to read what happened in the study uh. The
Speaker 1: author writes, quote prices play an unusual role in these exchanges.
Speaker 1: In economic theory, prices are indicators of scarcity, and they
Speaker 1: compensate producers for the cost of making desired products available
Speaker 1: and then a little bit later in the market for
Speaker 1: time studied in this paper, However, prices do not serve
Speaker 1: a compensating function, possibly because individuals view it as unfair
Speaker 1: to exploit a situation of excess demand. In other words,
Speaker 1: people have resistance to gouging or to exploiting a situation
Speaker 1: where somebody appears to really need something and then picking
Speaker 1: up at the same time. Most individuals act as if
Speaker 1: they were compensated, accepting price signals as indicators of scarcity
Speaker 1: and trading time when the welfare gains for doing so
Speaker 1: appear particularly large. Um. So, so this is an interesting contradiction. Again,
Speaker 1: Why does the money make a difference even if people
Speaker 1: feel social pressure not to exploit the demand for time? Essentially,
Speaker 1: if people feel a moral compunction not to que gouge.
Speaker 1: And I think a reasonable interpretation here one that's been
Speaker 1: offered is that maybe the amount of money is a
Speaker 1: signal of the intruder or the desire of the or
Speaker 1: the potential intruders desperation. The fact that they're offering to
Speaker 1: pay more money is a sign that they really need
Speaker 1: to get through whatever this is more quickly. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: like to come back to our bathroom example. If someone
Speaker 1: comes up to you, it's like, I will give you
Speaker 1: a thousand dollars if you will let me go into
Speaker 1: this bathroom stall ahead of you. You know that it
Speaker 1: sounds like they really need to go. Yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 1: I think this is interesting. What could have been just
Speaker 1: to study about people's monetary self interest and desire for
Speaker 1: cash actually might be a demonstration of something else. It
Speaker 1: could be pointing to a kind of widespread jen a
Speaker 1: role sensitivity to other people who appear to be in
Speaker 1: some kind of stress or crisis. Yeah, so I don't
Speaker 1: know that kind of that kind of put the bellows
Speaker 1: in the heart furnace for me. But anyway, I want
Speaker 1: to see all kinds of follow ups on this, going
Speaker 1: with your idea offering things other than money, going up
Speaker 1: to people near the front of the line at the
Speaker 1: DMV and saying, hey, can I cut in front of
Speaker 1: you if I give you a live chicken. I've got
Speaker 1: one other thing though that that was hovering in my
Speaker 1: mind thinking about this, which is the role of uh,
Speaker 1: the other people in line. So if you're letting somebody
Speaker 1: cut in front of you, you're also letting that person
Speaker 1: cut in front of everybody behind you, right, And so
Speaker 1: I would feel a kind of pressure about that that
Speaker 1: maybe just wouldn't be like oh, I want to get
Speaker 1: out of here faster, but also a social pressure from
Speaker 1: the rest of the line thinking like oh, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want them to judge me. Yeah, yeah, like
Speaker 1: they're not offering me a toad or me a dollar
Speaker 1: I had. I was standing in a line several weeks ago,
Speaker 1: and it was it was a hot day, and we
Speaker 1: were waiting in line for um, like a a shave ice,
Speaker 1: and it I had this kind of insane thought that
Speaker 1: I was probably caused by the heat, where I was like,
Speaker 1: why aren't we all standing in line to each get
Speaker 1: a shave ice. Why don't we just all put together
Speaker 1: a single order and have one person place the order
Speaker 1: for all the shave ice that we need? Um? And
Speaker 1: then I realized that that was that was ludicrous. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: and also underlines again why we have the line to
Speaker 1: begin with. Even though it's it's it can be annoying.
Speaker 1: It can be hot in the line. Uh and it
Speaker 1: can you can have delusional thoughts as the sun beats
Speaker 1: into your scalp. But at the same time, it's better
Speaker 1: than trying things like that. I thought you were gonna say,
Speaker 1: why don't we all band together, knock over the shave
Speaker 1: ice stand and just grab the ice for ourselves and run.
Speaker 1: That's like the next level of breaking it down, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, We're all going to just place a
Speaker 1: mass order together and just totally overwhelm this place, then
Speaker 1: why not just physically overwhelm it and just just everything
Speaker 1: just collapses into chaos and nobody really gets a shave ice.
Speaker 1: Maybe some people like just get a handful of syrup
Speaker 1: or some plain ice, that sort of thing. Oh that's right,
Speaker 1: I guess, because you can't abscond with the labor of
Speaker 1: the shave ice maker, right right. It's not like they
Speaker 1: have them just all pre made back there right now.
Speaker 1: One interesting aspect of waiting in line is, of course,
Speaker 1: how the experience plays with the relativity of time. And
Speaker 1: I don't think we have to explain the experience of
Speaker 1: time as a relative thing all that much. I mean,
Speaker 1: the basic is always time flies when you're having fun,
Speaker 1: and the reverse of that is that time can almost
Speaker 1: stand still when you're not having fun. Standing in line
Speaker 1: is often brought up as an example of this. Sure though,
Speaker 1: it is interesting to how meditative activities can sometimes feel
Speaker 1: like either of these examples. You know, you can either
Speaker 1: sort of interesttate where you don't realize that time is fasting,
Speaker 1: is passing as fast as it is even if things
Speaker 1: not something you would define as fun, and other times
Speaker 1: attempting to meditate or engage in some sort of meditative
Speaker 1: activity can really feel like it's it's bringing the nowness
Speaker 1: down to a crawl. You know. Another important distinction here
Speaker 1: is the difference between how long time feels in the
Speaker 1: moment versus how long it feels in retrospect, right, which
Speaker 1: is something we've talked about before. I assume you're mainly
Speaker 1: emphasizing how it feels in the moment. Yeah, So I
Speaker 1: wanted to look at how standing in line affects the
Speaker 1: individual's perception of the flow of time. So I looked
Speaker 1: at the paper time Flow How Consumption Practices Shape consumers
Speaker 1: temporal Experiences by Nicholas Warman and Junas Roca, published two
Speaker 1: thousand fifteen in the Journal of Consumer Research. Time flow
Speaker 1: is that one of the sequels to time cop Uh No,
Speaker 1: it could be though, right. Um. Anyway, the researchers wanted
Speaker 1: to see how different factors impacted this perception of time. Now,
Speaker 1: instead of studying people waiting in line for a bagel sandwich,
Speaker 1: they looked at waiting in line to play paintball and
Speaker 1: in to engage in extreme free skiing. Uh. These are
Speaker 1: both activities. They write the detail a lot of waiting
Speaker 1: followed by intense bursts of activity. Oh, that's interesting. So
Speaker 1: they're they're not just waiting to like get a product
Speaker 1: or a service, They're waiting for some kind of extremely
Speaker 1: stimulating experience. Right, So you know this this is certainly
Speaker 1: a particular look at waiting that you know, may not
Speaker 1: seem as relatable to some of the other examples we've
Speaker 1: talked about. But but I still think it's very interesting
Speaker 1: because they ultimately identified five elements that they think need
Speaker 1: to be in place for consumers to experience a balanced
Speaker 1: flow of time. So I'm just gonna roll through them
Speaker 1: here and just summarize them first, bodily routines and skills,
Speaker 1: and so they compare this to yoga and quote one
Speaker 1: of the most gripping temporal experiences for example, but follows
Speaker 1: us when we have to hold our breath. So this
Speaker 1: basically comes down to what is the body doing while
Speaker 1: it's waiting uh? Next plans and moods? So is the
Speaker 1: person waiting uh in line or otherwise fixed on a
Speaker 1: particular game plan, of course or course of action? What
Speaker 1: happens when you get to the front. And I found
Speaker 1: this very interesting thinking again about waiting in line for
Speaker 1: the like the the t s A for air airline security,
Speaker 1: because when I'm at least my experience is when I'm
Speaker 1: waiting in line, I'm not just gazing off into the
Speaker 1: middle distance anticipating finally getting done with this. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about that crunch point towards the front. Am I going
Speaker 1: to have both my passport and my son's out in time?
Speaker 1: Am I going to have them facing the right way?
Speaker 1: Am I going to have the things that need to
Speaker 1: go separately from my body through the check or those arranged?
Speaker 1: I like all this stuff rushing through my head, and
Speaker 1: I'm probably freaking out a little bit about it because
Speaker 1: I'm nervous about getting in trouble with the t s
Speaker 1: A agent because I don't have the right thing lined up.
Speaker 1: So I feel like that's a situation where, especially towards
Speaker 1: I get closer to the front of the line, line UH,
Speaker 1: time is always feels like it's moving too fast rather
Speaker 1: than too slow for me. Yeah, they call these the
Speaker 1: teleo effective structures. Yes, the UH And this is for
Speaker 1: a much more basic question. This just makes me wonder
Speaker 1: how waiting in line is different when you're waiting in
Speaker 1: line for something you want to do versus something that
Speaker 1: you don't want to do but have to do. Yes, okay.
Speaker 1: The next the third thing they identified rules and regulations
Speaker 1: the effects of formalized temporal framing of a practice. So
Speaker 1: that's just like how long will this take? How long
Speaker 1: is it is it expected to take? Um? You know,
Speaker 1: how much of the weight is just factored into the experience?
Speaker 1: And then is your current weight longer or shorter than
Speaker 1: what that should be? Next up material set up technology.
Speaker 1: So this comes down to the gear the setting. UM. Like,
Speaker 1: for instance, if you're dealing with something like free skiing,
Speaker 1: it's you know, getting your skis ready lined up. If
Speaker 1: it's paintball, it's like checking your equipment to make sure
Speaker 1: you're ready to blast paintballs. UM. Ultimately, is the gear
Speaker 1: in the setting are they slowing you down? Or is
Speaker 1: it speeding things up? Um? So it's not all that
Speaker 1: relatable to most standing in line scenarios, I imagine, but
Speaker 1: it's interesting and it does also remind me again of
Speaker 1: the t s a example, do I have all my
Speaker 1: stuff prepared? The and then the next area is cultural
Speaker 1: understanding quote formed by the discourses, cultural tropes, or value
Speaker 1: systems that play a role in the social organization of
Speaker 1: practices unquote. So this would be things like team spirit
Speaker 1: or a concern for safety on the part of participants.
Speaker 1: So are you waiting in line like a bunch of
Speaker 1: gloom individuals who just want your your chance to shoot paintballs?
Speaker 1: Or are you like a team you know, are you
Speaker 1: like the the our heroes in Big Trouble in Little
Speaker 1: China when they're waiting in that elevator you know, yea,
Speaker 1: they're feeling good. It's a bonding experience. They're about to
Speaker 1: go down and you know, and fight the good fight.
Speaker 1: Are you like that? Or you know, is a situation
Speaker 1: where like, yeah, we're waiting in line, but it's because
Speaker 1: they're doing safety checks up the up the line and
Speaker 1: making sure that everything is good to go, Like what
Speaker 1: is the the cultural understanding of the line you're in?
Speaker 1: So the researchers here they argue that the misalignment of
Speaker 1: these elements is what can cause experiences of drag or
Speaker 1: rush uh, and that it falls to the designers and
Speaker 1: overseers of such waiting experiences to take these different factors
Speaker 1: into account um, which you know, again makes me think
Speaker 1: of like what kind of messaging are you putting forth
Speaker 1: when people are waiting in line, say at the airport,
Speaker 1: you know, is there is there messaging about how this
Speaker 1: is about safety and this is about protecting you. Um uh,
Speaker 1: stuff of that nature. Um or is that kind of
Speaker 1: messaging absent? It is interesting to think about the the
Speaker 1: temporal distortions going in both directions, because almost all of
Speaker 1: the stuff I've read about about perception of time in
Speaker 1: in waiting in queues is is about people feeling like
Speaker 1: they're waiting too long. But yeah, it's interesting you bring
Speaker 1: up the idea of like airports and like sort of
Speaker 1: like being rushed through at certain points of a line. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: where you're like, oh, I'm not ready, I don't feel ready.
Speaker 1: I don't really want it to be my turn yet.
Speaker 1: Though I have encountered that too when ordering food. If
Speaker 1: you're if you're way towards the front of the line,
Speaker 1: of the line isn't that short, and you don't know
Speaker 1: what you want yet, then perhaps you, like me, you
Speaker 1: don't want to be that person who's just you know,
Speaker 1: standing and himming and hying and trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what they want while other people are frustrated behind you.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be inclined to to say, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: still figuring it out. Why don't you go ahead of me? Now,
Speaker 1: Another thing about the perception of time when waiting that
Speaker 1: I've read, at least as a generalization and a number
Speaker 1: of articles about this is that, Um, one thing that
Speaker 1: is particularly painful is not understanding what's going on in
Speaker 1: a line, Like when there's uncertainty, you don't know why
Speaker 1: you're waiting, or you don't know how long you're going
Speaker 1: to be waiting. That uncertainty can itself be a major
Speaker 1: problem for people waiting for things. Yes, yeah, yeah, Like
Speaker 1: which which line am I in? Is this the line
Speaker 1: for the beer or the line for the bracelet for
Speaker 1: the beer? Um? What boarding group did they announce? Am
Speaker 1: I hanging out with the right people? Am I in
Speaker 1: the line to board with group five? Or am I
Speaker 1: standing with the people who are waiting for five to
Speaker 1: finish so that six can go? Uh? Like, all of
Speaker 1: this can just breed unending frustration. Now, this least to
Speaker 1: the next thing I wanted to talk about, And that's
Speaker 1: so waiting and uncertainty. Um, because there's there's another aspect
Speaker 1: of waiting, not so much waiting in line, but waiting
Speaker 1: in general. Uh, you know, we're not always waiting on
Speaker 1: bagel sandwiches or the chance to blast strangers with paintballs.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we're waiting on potentially bad news, a wash and uncertainty,
Speaker 1: and it can be an extremely grading experience. UM. Someone
Speaker 1: argue that it can be as difficult as actually receiving
Speaker 1: the news, UM, which which is interesting and you know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to be life and death. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously when you're talking about um matters of health and wellness,
Speaker 1: this can be tough. But it can also be tough
Speaker 1: with things like grades uh, um, you know, finding out
Speaker 1: what's wrong with your automobile. I experienced that in the
Speaker 1: last twenty four hours, where it's like I was feeling
Speaker 1: like this just totally unnecessary level of bodily stress over
Speaker 1: not knowing why my airbag light was on, you know,
Speaker 1: uh so but so so just waiting on on hearing
Speaker 1: the actor hearing what's wrong with something. Even that is
Speaker 1: again has nothing to do with your your your ultimate
Speaker 1: health and happiness. It can it can have this, uh,
Speaker 1: this kind of semi debilitating effect on you. So I
Speaker 1: wanted to look at a few different studies dealing at
Speaker 1: least in part with this experience, and I think all
Speaker 1: of them involved, you see riverside worry and waiting expert
Speaker 1: Kate Sweeney who has explored this quite a bit and
Speaker 1: has has pointed out that a lot of this comes
Speaker 1: down to repetitive rumination over the past and repetitive worry
Speaker 1: about the future. Uh. You know, for for the airport example,
Speaker 1: I imagine it would equate to did I pack everything
Speaker 1: right and remember to take out that pocket knife? And
Speaker 1: will the T S A agent be mean to me
Speaker 1: when I get to the front of the line and
Speaker 1: I don't have my um, you know, my passport facing
Speaker 1: the right direction. That sort of thing, and UM while
Speaker 1: waiting in line or otherwise can always be dull when
Speaker 1: it is unpleasant. Uh. These are often the factors involved.
Speaker 1: And I think you could probably expand I mean that
Speaker 1: that kind of flows into a lot of things we've
Speaker 1: talked about regarding UM, you know, the default mode network
Speaker 1: in the past, thinking about the past and the present,
Speaker 1: and how we can turn you know, things like pain
Speaker 1: into into into something like suffering. Sure, so what do
Speaker 1: we end up doing? Well, we engage in various coping
Speaker 1: activities to alleviate the feeling UM such as and these
Speaker 1: are the ones that that Sweeney highlights distraction. Okay, this
Speaker 1: is the big one. We've already touched on this before.
Speaker 1: You know, reaching for your phone, uh, you know, looking
Speaker 1: at your your your email or your social media, or
Speaker 1: playing a game checking the news distraction. Distraction is generally
Speaker 1: regarded to be a good way to cope with waiting. Uh,
Speaker 1: take your mind off of things, do something else, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, throw yourself at your work, busy yourself. Right,
Speaker 1: And while this seems to be the case. According according
Speaker 1: to Sweeney, along with Rankin and Walsh, co authors of
Speaker 1: the twenty eight team paper published in Personality and Social
Speaker 1: set in this and Social psycho Psychology bulletin a Better
Speaker 1: Distraction um, distractions, even good ones, do not always work,
Speaker 1: and they point to several studies showing people who reported
Speaker 1: exerting more effort to distract themselves during a weight displaying
Speaker 1: higher levels of worry. So the efforts to distract oneself
Speaker 1: also seem to predict poor self reported health and greater
Speaker 1: sleep disruption. So the take home here is distraction can work,
Speaker 1: but it's not not a silver bullet, and it can
Speaker 1: certainly backfire many of these cases. Perhaps to state the obvious,
Speaker 1: I guess that would probably depend highly on on what
Speaker 1: kind of distraction you're seeking, right, right, Some are inherently
Speaker 1: better than others. Yeah, and and and she gets into
Speaker 1: some of that in a bit here. Um. Another thing
Speaker 1: they point to is flow states. So we've talked about
Speaker 1: this before in the show. Is a general means of
Speaker 1: compating the the ruinous powers of the default mode network. However,
Speaker 1: they argue that a flow state requires several conditions, quote,
Speaker 1: the presence of perceived challenges, the opportunities for action that
Speaker 1: stretch without over extending existing skills, and clear uh proximal goals,
Speaker 1: coupled with immediate feedback on one's progress. Flow states are
Speaker 1: really interesting in this regard. And if you're not familiar
Speaker 1: with the concept, you can think about it as doing
Speaker 1: something that is that is challenging enough that it's not boring,
Speaker 1: but easy enough that you are continuously successful at it.
Speaker 1: Uh And so it's like, you know that that's sort
Speaker 1: of like a video game that is just at the
Speaker 1: perfect level of difficulty that it's just hard enough that
Speaker 1: you're always on the edge of failing, but you keep succeeding.
Speaker 1: And the weird thing is it can be ephemeral, especially
Speaker 1: if you're going after it, right, because trying to achieve
Speaker 1: a flow state can be frustrating. And then once you're
Speaker 1: in the flow state, you're probably not reflecting on the
Speaker 1: fact that you're in a flow state. Yeah, being in
Speaker 1: a flow state is inherently non reflective. You're just sort
Speaker 1: of in the moment. So the authors here they argue
Speaker 1: that the flow state seems to be the best candidate
Speaker 1: to combat waiting, worry, and uncertainty related distresses. They conducted
Speaker 1: a study using a hundred and fifty law students and
Speaker 1: found that mindfulness meditation served to postpone the phenomenon of bracing.
Speaker 1: This is when you prepare for the worst, which can
Speaker 1: be useful, more useful than optimism, especially like sort of
Speaker 1: blind optimism, easy, easy, even, but not, they write, if
Speaker 1: it occurs too early in the process. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's one thing to prepare yourself for the worst case
Speaker 1: scenario towards the end, But if you're preparing yourself for
Speaker 1: the worst case scenario for the entire run of whatever
Speaker 1: the exercise might be, Uh, you know that that can
Speaker 1: be a miser inducing experience, right, And some people have
Speaker 1: the tendency to over prepare for the worst by doing
Speaker 1: what we might call rumination, you know, obsessing with the
Speaker 1: worst possible outcomes things could take and just going through
Speaker 1: per mutations of them over and over again in your brain,
Speaker 1: which I guess is only really useful and to the
Speaker 1: extent that it actually does help you prepare. Most of
Speaker 1: the time people would go beyond the point where it's
Speaker 1: helping them prepare, and it's just making them further more
Speaker 1: and more miserable. Yeah, a lot of times it can
Speaker 1: essentially become a kind of fantasizing about doom and you know,
Speaker 1: preparing a script for a situation that that ultimately does
Speaker 1: not occur anyway. In this study, they found that mindfulness
Speaker 1: meditation worked even when only practice fifteen minutes once a week,
Speaker 1: though they acknowledge that meditation is not for everyone and
Speaker 1: does not necessarily come easy. Um And I feel like
Speaker 1: this is something I've seen stressed in some other writings
Speaker 1: recently talking about how you know. So, I feel like
Speaker 1: scientific studies are one thing, but when more generally meditation
Speaker 1: and meditative practices are recommended, sometimes this is not taken
Speaker 1: into account or it's not um stressed enough to the
Speaker 1: individual that achieving this this, uh, this this state of
Speaker 1: mind might be difficult and might even be disruptive in
Speaker 1: the short term. You know, well, sure, even if you
Speaker 1: get a collection of good scientific studies finding that on
Speaker 1: average mindfulness meditation does give you some kind of positive
Speaker 1: psychological outcome, those are those results are still just on average.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're gonna have whatever chunk of the study
Speaker 1: cohort that it didn't actually do that for Yeah, and
Speaker 1: not if your brain is the same. Not every emotional
Speaker 1: um array is the same, so uh, definitely worth taking
Speaker 1: into account. Now. Another Sweeney research paper, this one from nineteen,
Speaker 1: looked at another tactic to overcome the worries of waiting uh,
Speaker 1: inducing a feeling of awe or a state of wonder
Speaker 1: and this was this was interesting as well. So they
Speaker 1: point out that meditation can help. Flow states can help,
Speaker 1: but again, these may simply not be easily achievable for everyone.
Speaker 1: Um And this this makes sense, right, if you're like
Speaker 1: super stressed out over something and you're anticipating some bad news,
Speaker 1: It's it's one thing to think I should do some meditation,
Speaker 1: I should do some yoga, but it's it's another thing
Speaker 1: to actually do that. Sometimes it's just not feasible, where
Speaker 1: it's just not going to happen because you know, nobody's
Speaker 1: gonna step in and make you do it, or you
Speaker 1: just don't. You just don't have you in in you
Speaker 1: like every everybody struggles different uh, etcetera. Uh. But this
Speaker 1: is where they bring up the idea of of the
Speaker 1: awe that comes with a deeply moving piece of music
Speaker 1: or a work of film, which again is going to
Speaker 1: be very um subjective. Uh. But uh, I want to
Speaker 1: get into the details of the study because it's quite interesting.
Speaker 1: So seven twenty nine participants took a fake intelligence test um,
Speaker 1: so basically, you know, it's like an i Q test um,
Speaker 1: and then they're they're they're all gonna the ideas that
Speaker 1: people will have this anxiety over what the results will be.
Speaker 1: Oh well, let's say I'm smart. Let's say I'm not smart. Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm nervous. So while waiting on these results, the
Speaker 1: participants watched one of three videos. Video one, an awe
Speaker 1: induction video of a sunrise with stirring music. Sounds good.
Speaker 1: Number two, a positive control video of cute animals, also
Speaker 1: sounds good. But but again, when's the last time that
Speaker 1: a cute animal video actually gave you a sense of awe,
Speaker 1: I mean the sense of awe, but not a sense
Speaker 1: of awe. And then finally number three, video number three,
Speaker 1: a neutral video about how padlocks are made. Speak for yourself.
Speaker 1: Is that neutral? Uh? In this experiment it's neutral, though
Speaker 1: I could again it is kind of subjective, and I
Speaker 1: know that it could be. I know that in certain
Speaker 1: states of mind, um, various videos and documentaries about the
Speaker 1: mass production of things like padlocks can certainly have that
Speaker 1: kind of effect on people. Definitely true. So when he
Speaker 1: found that people watching the awe video the Sunrise the
Speaker 1: Stirring music experienced significantly greater positive emotion and less anxiety
Speaker 1: during the period waiting, so Sweeney brings up watching an
Speaker 1: episode of Planet Earth as a potential way to go
Speaker 1: about this. Though my mind instantly went to two thousand
Speaker 1: and one of Space Odyssey, especially the first uh what
Speaker 1: the first half hour, so where you get the dawn
Speaker 1: of man, plus the introduction to the space station and
Speaker 1: space travel and so forth. Well, I'd be right there
Speaker 1: with you, except I'd say, for for people who aren't
Speaker 1: exactly the kind of weirdo we are, maybe maybe a
Speaker 1: nature documentary might be more generally effective. I don't know, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, again, it's going to be subjective. What gives
Speaker 1: you a sense of all I think it's worth Again,
Speaker 1: you know, this is highly subjective. This is just one study,
Speaker 1: but it's it's a good enough case that I feel
Speaker 1: like it wouldn't be the worst advice in the world
Speaker 1: for for people to think, Okay, what is my awe video?
Speaker 1: What is the thing that I can turn to if
Speaker 1: if I could do with some relief whilst waiting on
Speaker 1: some you know, potentially bad news, or just for the
Speaker 1: results from some stressful situation. I mean, what is all? All?
Speaker 1: I think is uh generally understood to be sort of
Speaker 1: the recognition of something grander than oneself, you know, and
Speaker 1: that that could be a million different things. I mean,
Speaker 1: for some people that's like the religious thing about like
Speaker 1: God or the spirit of the cosmos beyond other For
Speaker 1: other people that could just be something about the biosphere
Speaker 1: or the universe or the earth. Um. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's just a recognition of some broader context or greater power.
Speaker 1: And so when you think about those kinds of things,
Speaker 1: it tends, I think, maybe to make one's own problems
Speaker 1: or worries feel smaller. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's like,
Speaker 1: what is your monolith? Your MONOLITHU might just be watching
Speaker 1: the monolith seen from two thousand and one. It might
Speaker 1: be watching like an incredible athletic performance, you know, like
Speaker 1: that can that can be inspiring as well, Like I
Speaker 1: it is legitimately inspiring to see the athletic feats that
Speaker 1: some people were capable of of producing. You know, sure,
Speaker 1: now I want to look at it. Just briefly mentioned
Speaker 1: one more Sweeney study, mainly because it it relates to
Speaker 1: something we've covered on the show in the past. Uh.
Speaker 1: Sweeney inen looked at the effects of our old friend Tetris.
Speaker 1: Tetris effect speaking of flow states, yeah yeah, yeah, go
Speaker 1: go listen to our episodes on Tetris back in the
Speaker 1: Vault for an overview of how this would work. But
Speaker 1: Sweeney found that Tetris could provide a quote state of
Speaker 1: perfect detachment, a shortcut to flow. That's interesting. It lines
Speaker 1: up with some of the things we talked about in
Speaker 1: that episode that Tetris is an almost perfect engine for
Speaker 1: creating that sort of you know knife's edge of of
Speaker 1: just challenging enough. You know. It's funny. We went three
Speaker 1: whole episodes about queuing and waiting on things, and and
Speaker 1: yet I feel like we've just barely waded into the
Speaker 1: shallows of this. There's like, there's so much stuff on
Speaker 1: the subject. We could do a whole podcast, I think
Speaker 1: about a queuing and waiting for things. I don't think
Speaker 1: we even mentioned Tom Petty at all. Did weigh Tom Petty.
Speaker 1: That's the hardest part. Yeah, even though that song came
Speaker 1: up in numerous study introductions that I came across. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I well, I can't recall of and if it was
Speaker 1: if they were the papers or the sometimes the the
Speaker 1: articles about the studies. But I saw Tom Petty mentioned
Speaker 1: a couple of times. Do you have a favorite Tom
Speaker 1: Petty song? Um? I really like Won't Back Down. That's
Speaker 1: a great one. That's a great one. That one, That
Speaker 1: one kind of builds you up, you know, that one's
Speaker 1: like yeah, yeah, I can do it. But yeah, Tom
Speaker 1: Petty in general, Tom Petty is usually a good listen.
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of I like you wreck Me.
Speaker 1: That's a great one. Yeah he did one. Yeah he didn't. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm sure he did more than one duet, But what's
Speaker 1: the big duet? I'm trying to remember do it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't remember a duet. Oh, Stevie Nicks, stop dragging
Speaker 1: my heart around. That's a great Oh yeah of course,
Speaker 1: so yeah, that is a good one. Can't go wrong.
Speaker 1: Not liking to Petty would be like not liking bread,
Speaker 1: just like somebody says that you're like, what, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go and close it out there. But we'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from everybody, uh about these episodes on waiting?
Speaker 1: How do they relate to your experiences? Um? If you
Speaker 1: were to stockpile like a an AWE DVD or an
Speaker 1: AWE video file, uh for hard times, what would that be?
Speaker 1: I'm generally curious to know what is your two thousand
Speaker 1: and one of Space Odyssey. In the meantime, if you
Speaker 1: would like to listen to other episodes of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind, you can head right over to the
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed, where you will
Speaker 1: find all of our episodes. You'll find new episodes of
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Artifact
Speaker 1: on Wednesday, Listener Mail on Monday. On Friday's we do
Speaker 1: a little weird how cinema. That's our time to just
Speaker 1: talk about a weird and interesting film for a little
Speaker 1: bit and then on the weekends we do or we
Speaker 1: run um and then on Sunday's usually nothing. Sometimes there's
Speaker 1: a promo for another show on Sunday. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it just depends how it goes. Huge things as a
Speaker 1: ways to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic
Speaker 1: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
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