Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind from how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
Speaker 1: what would you like in your sandwich? Would you like? Wait?
Speaker 1: First of all, would you like rye bread, wheat bread,
Speaker 1: white bread, pumpernickel bread, or banana bread? JUNI sour do? Yes?
Speaker 1: Sour dough? Would you like it wheat Saturday? Yes? And
Speaker 1: would you like European wheat sour dough. You're a sweet
Speaker 1: sour dough. Um, I will like the European sweet sour dough. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're already feeling tired. Well, yeah, this is the
Speaker 1: This is the way I feel whenever I go to
Speaker 1: a place where they do like any kind of a
Speaker 1: sandwich assembly line, where you go in and there's there's
Speaker 1: an individual there that's gonna build you a sandwich. Sometimes
Speaker 1: they have the hilarious title of sandwich artists. Uh, and
Speaker 1: but they are sandwich artists. Well, an artist doesn't add
Speaker 1: for my input on the art. I'm just like, hey,
Speaker 1: give me, give me one art, and they're like, here's
Speaker 1: the art, and I'm like, that's great. You're so creative
Speaker 1: in your creation of that you don't go into an
Speaker 1: art gallery and then there's an artist standing there and uh,
Speaker 1: he's like, so do you like usurrealist or you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's no of that. So you go through this line.
Speaker 1: You have to pick the bread, you have to pick
Speaker 1: which vegetables, you have to pick which meat if you're
Speaker 1: going with meat, or which fake meat if you don't
Speaker 1: want to go with that. Cheese options, different dressings, Um
Speaker 1: you want to heat it up or not? Do you
Speaker 1: want to cut in half? I mean, it just it
Speaker 1: goes on and on, and by the end of it,
Speaker 1: you just feel exhausted because you had to make so
Speaker 1: many decisions and generally for a very limited uh you know, payoff,
Speaker 1: especially if you're on some of the some of the
Speaker 1: more you know, mainstream sandwich shops. I like this analogy
Speaker 1: of the way that we move through life, right, because
Speaker 1: that's what it feels like. You feel like you've got
Speaker 1: to backup people behind you, right, and you're getting rushed
Speaker 1: through your decisions. A NonStop sandwich line for a really
Speaker 1: crappy sub that's life right. Possibly, possibly, hopefully you have
Speaker 1: a sandwich artist who could perhaps liven it up a
Speaker 1: little bit. Um, but this actually nawse on thist, These
Speaker 1: constant choices, these being bombarded by what we have to
Speaker 1: move through every day just to to sort of get
Speaker 1: things done. Yeah, it's called the decision fatigue. And it's
Speaker 1: a real thing. It's a real thing, and it's it's
Speaker 1: been sort of making the rounds are recently over the
Speaker 1: past few years, but but especially in the last few
Speaker 1: days because and by the time this says the last
Speaker 1: few weeks, because there was a New York Times article
Speaker 1: about it, and it forced everyone to re examine their
Speaker 1: lives and the decisions, the multiple decisions that make up
Speaker 1: every hour of the day, and what it's doing to
Speaker 1: us on a on an emotional and physical level. It's
Speaker 1: really interesting. So we are going to draw from this
Speaker 1: article h called do you Suffer from Decision Fatigue? In
Speaker 1: New York Times. UM, and I recommend that you guys
Speaker 1: check it out. It's pretty long, but it's definitely worth it,
Speaker 1: you know, like ten or so. UM. I mean, I
Speaker 1: thought it was interesting that the article pointed out that
Speaker 1: the word decide shares the same etymological route with the
Speaker 1: word homicide, meaning that on a linguistic level, we realize
Speaker 1: that we're killing off all of our other options, which
Speaker 1: sort of float away into some sort of unseen parallel
Speaker 1: universe for us. Exactly, it's kind of like every time
Speaker 1: we make a decision, we're we're we're extrapolating, We're imagining
Speaker 1: a future in which we make the choice. Be it
Speaker 1: something like I wonder if what would happen if I
Speaker 1: decide to go with the rye bread or if I
Speaker 1: go with the plain bread. What if I get the
Speaker 1: salad opposed to what if I get the soup? And
Speaker 1: then with larger things too, it's like, well, what have
Speaker 1: I major in in English versus what if I major
Speaker 1: in pre law? That kind of thing, right, And of
Speaker 1: course you can even see instances of this in quantum
Speaker 1: suicide for instance. Right. Um, But from you know, our
Speaker 1: day to day basis of having to deal with the
Speaker 1: minutia um, it's really easy to start to over inflate
Speaker 1: the importance of a choice, right because we can think,
Speaker 1: you know, all of the storylines and books and movies
Speaker 1: for helping us to feel that every single choice we
Speaker 1: make could alter the reality that we are living well.
Speaker 1: But the thing is that it kind of could. It
Speaker 1: may not know, but mostly probably not right. And that's
Speaker 1: the problem with it is we were not omniscient beings, right, right,
Speaker 1: But but there is you know, it's like the butterfly effect,
Speaker 1: which is which relates to chaos theory, um, which is
Speaker 1: on the surface, the idea that say, a butterfly flaps
Speaker 1: its wings on one side of the world and the
Speaker 1: cascading effects from that one little um of action will
Speaker 1: cause a hurricane on the other side of the world.
Speaker 1: And this was created by a weatherman, right, um, neurologists
Speaker 1: working with computer models. Yeah, okay, Edward Lawrence, right. And
Speaker 1: so it's just a theory right obviously that we we
Speaker 1: don't know if the action of a butterfly's wings and
Speaker 1: just example you know, yea of how this works, of
Speaker 1: how chaos theory works. Um. But it again, you apply
Speaker 1: your day to day decisions and you can really start
Speaker 1: to perhaps overweigh them. Yeah. There's a great line from
Speaker 1: Coral McCarthy. I believe this one is in No Country
Speaker 1: for Old Men, where a character says that every moment
Speaker 1: in your life is is a turning and everyone at
Speaker 1: choosing somewhere you made a choice, and all followed to this.
Speaker 1: The accounting is scrupulous. The shape is drawn, no line
Speaker 1: can be erased. I had no belief in your ability
Speaker 1: to move a coin to your bidding. How could you.
Speaker 1: A person's path through the world seldom changes, and even
Speaker 1: more seldom will it change abruptly. And the shape of
Speaker 1: your path was visible from the beginning. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of this kind of thing, and Court McCarthy with him
Speaker 1: ruminating over um, the effects of choices and the choices
Speaker 1: we make. There's a there's a part in UM all
Speaker 1: the Pretty Horses where characters, Uh. There are two characters
Speaker 1: and they're about to make a decision regarding a third
Speaker 1: character and um, and one of the characters turns to
Speaker 1: the other and says, you know, every time you do
Speaker 1: something stupid in your in your life, you can always
Speaker 1: trace it back to one decision. And that decision is
Speaker 1: never like the stupid decision, but it's the decider, uh,
Speaker 1: in this timeline. It's where you split off from the
Speaker 1: timeline where you wouldn't make this really dumb choice versus
Speaker 1: the one where you do well. But in this explains
Speaker 1: why we drive ourselves exactly, because in retrospect we can
Speaker 1: always trace it back and say that was you know,
Speaker 1: it was insignificant, But what have I done the other thing?
Speaker 1: It's I mean, it's a big part of grief too.
Speaker 1: Like whenever someone dies, um that we care about, we
Speaker 1: can always trace it back to these little insignificant moments
Speaker 1: and be like, what if that had gone the other way?
Speaker 1: And you know what have it had? Uh? It's still
Speaker 1: an insignificant moment out of many insignificant moments. It just
Speaker 1: sort of happens to loop into a very elaborate um
Speaker 1: timeline of events, uh when we look back at it
Speaker 1: from the present. So so yeah, it's easy to get
Speaker 1: strung out over choices to the point where we end
Speaker 1: up fretting over which bread to order with our sandwich,
Speaker 1: even though generally this is not the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that the spirals out of control, one thing that you
Speaker 1: wouldn't normally worry about. Um. The New York Times article
Speaker 1: again that do you suffer from decision fatigue? Says that
Speaker 1: we have a finite store of mental energy for exercising
Speaker 1: self control. And this was basically witnessed time and again
Speaker 1: through a series of experiments carried out by social psychologist
Speaker 1: Roy Baumeister. And we're gonna talk a lot about some
Speaker 1: of the experiments that that he and his colleagues undertook. Um.
Speaker 1: It is the reason why otherwise reasonable people do illogical things,
Speaker 1: right from flying off the handle and rage to buying
Speaker 1: junk food when you didn't mean to, or flying off
Speaker 1: the handle and rage at junk food right right, slapping
Speaker 1: that junk food upside it's head um, to spending big
Speaker 1: bucks on stuff that you regret later you think, why
Speaker 1: in the world did I do that? Kind Yeah, impulse splies.
Speaker 1: It's because, as bow Master says, you are experiencing ego depletion. Yeah.
Speaker 1: To to run some of this down again, it's to
Speaker 1: really simplify it. It's kind of like the idea that
Speaker 1: the mind is this hustle. And anyone who ever has
Speaker 1: ever worked out knows, um, you know, with with weights
Speaker 1: or anything, knows that there's like this whole idea of
Speaker 1: you know, it's like reps versus weight. Are you gonna
Speaker 1: are you gonna pick up a ten pound weight? Like
Speaker 1: ten times? Are you gonna pick up a hundred pound
Speaker 1: weight once? That sort of thing. Again, I'm not a weightlifter,
Speaker 1: so maybe this may not be a perfect example, but
Speaker 1: but still it's like if you pick up a small
Speaker 1: weight enough times, your arms will get as tired as
Speaker 1: if you picked up something really heavy once. Well you
Speaker 1: know what. And and as a side note on the
Speaker 1: mind body connection, did you know that if you are
Speaker 1: exercising and say doing reps and really focusing on your
Speaker 1: arms that day, that when you go to sleep at night,
Speaker 1: the part of the brain that controls the functions of
Speaker 1: your arms is actually going to be much more active
Speaker 1: in sleep than the other parts of your brain. So
Speaker 1: there there's connections. Idea that energy expended is being manifested
Speaker 1: in the body. And again this is this is borne
Speaker 1: out by a lot of about Masters research, which is
Speaker 1: really cool. So if I have to go through a
Speaker 1: line and choose every single option that goes into the
Speaker 1: creation of my sandwich, and then I have to make
Speaker 1: a decision about like who to fire at work or
Speaker 1: something later on, I'm picturing like a big wig and
Speaker 1: you know, New York going through a sandwich line here,
Speaker 1: cigar in here. Yeah, so let's just do that. Let's
Speaker 1: give him a cigar. Yeah, I was giving a cigar
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah. By by the by the time that
Speaker 1: you have picked out your sandwich, you have made all
Speaker 1: these choices. You're less um prepared to make a big
Speaker 1: choice later in the day. Well, that's the problem is
Speaker 1: that when you have been bombarded by all these little decisions,
Speaker 1: by the time four o'clock rolls around, you do not
Speaker 1: want to make the big decision that you have to
Speaker 1: make for the day. You do don't want to have
Speaker 1: to push the red button, so to speak, because you're
Speaker 1: seriously going to be incapacitated, because your mental energy is
Speaker 1: already going to fold up on top of itself and say,
Speaker 1: I want to batten down the hatches. I want to
Speaker 1: make the safest choice for myself, which is not always
Speaker 1: the right choice, right, and I don't want to think
Speaker 1: about it that much. UM. Usually, like you would want
Speaker 1: to be the kind of person who was like someone's like, hey,
Speaker 1: you want to I need you to come help me
Speaker 1: move furniture, and you're like, great, I'm gonna go lift
Speaker 1: some weights first, Like that wouldn't make any sense, right, Well,
Speaker 1: but you could immediately before it, right right. I understand
Speaker 1: what you're saying is that you don't want to fatigue
Speaker 1: yourself in the muscle. I mean, the brain is like
Speaker 1: a muscle, and and you don't necessarily want to do that. Um,
Speaker 1: but I think it's really interesting because it does explain
Speaker 1: why we do what we do. Bau Master says, no
Speaker 1: matter how rational and high minded you try to be,
Speaker 1: you can't make a decision of decision without paying a
Speaker 1: biological price. It's different from ordinary physical fatigue. You're not
Speaker 1: consciously aware of being tired, but you're low and mental energy.
Speaker 1: The more choices you make throughout the day, the harder
Speaker 1: each one becomes for your brain. Eventually it looks for shortcuts,
Speaker 1: usually in either one of two very different ways. One
Speaker 1: shortcut is to become reckless okay, to act impulsively instead
Speaker 1: of expending the energy to first think through the consequences.
Speaker 1: Um And they use this example in the article sure
Speaker 1: tweet that Phoe know what could go wrong? Right? The
Speaker 1: other shortcut is the ultimate energy saver, do nothing instead
Speaker 1: of agonizing over decisions, avoid any choice. Ducking a decision
Speaker 1: often creates bigger problems in the long run, but for
Speaker 1: the moment, it eases the mental string. You're you're basically
Speaker 1: differring mental anguish. And you've talked. You said something about
Speaker 1: a Japanese proverb. Japanese proverb that basically says, by by
Speaker 1: doing nothing, all problems are solved by by refusing to
Speaker 1: come to a decision. You're solving that problem one way
Speaker 1: or another, but probably not in the way that is
Speaker 1: beneficial to you. Right, And I'm sure we've all been
Speaker 1: there at one point or another and understand that. So um,
Speaker 1: a bunch of studies have basically carried out this this
Speaker 1: um idea that ego depletion and its effect on willpower
Speaker 1: is actually pretty stunning. Um. Initially these studies would focus
Speaker 1: on food, right, because how what better way could you
Speaker 1: study at someone's willpower and the ability to self censured
Speaker 1: than by throwing a bunch of donuts at exactly literally
Speaker 1: throwing them at them. That there was a postdoc fellow
Speaker 1: in bomb Muster's lab and she had an epiphany about
Speaker 1: the laboriousness of all those choices. After going through the
Speaker 1: process of registering for gifts for her upcoming wedding, she
Speaker 1: found that she was incredibly exhausted just when she went
Speaker 1: to go and register for gifts. Yeah, weddings are a
Speaker 1: huge suck on the whole decision portion of the brain
Speaker 1: because it's it's NonStop decisions beforehand and then afterwards to
Speaker 1: is you're deciding, Uh, you know which, like which picture
Speaker 1: you're gonna pick up for your album's situations where people
Speaker 1: don't get their wedding album actually completed until you know,
Speaker 1: years after the marriage or you know, begins or after
Speaker 1: the marriage ends. Yeah. Well, and I will tell you
Speaker 1: too that the first time I went to get register
Speaker 1: with my husband, I kind of had a not a
Speaker 1: melt down in which I was crying, but I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, we need to leave. I don't know what
Speaker 1: towels to get. I don't I never considered towels. I
Speaker 1: never considered this. I'm picturing you being physically removed in
Speaker 1: tears from Craton Barrel by security. Yeah. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I can't go there anymore, which is fine, but I
Speaker 1: can shop online. Um. But basically she had a hunt here.
Speaker 1: So the labs set out to replicate a sort of
Speaker 1: quasi department store of wedding gifts, and they had two
Speaker 1: groups peruce the offerings. Group one had to make a
Speaker 1: decision about what one item they could keep at the
Speaker 1: end of the experiment, okay, Group two was asked to
Speaker 1: give their opinions on the products and if they had
Speaker 1: ever used similar products in the last six months. So
Speaker 1: Group one has to make decision, group too not so much. Um.
Speaker 1: Both groups were then given a classic impulse control test.
Speaker 1: I love us holding your hand in ice water for
Speaker 1: as long as you can so group one. The deciders
Speaker 1: I lasted for just twenty eight seconds, but the non
Speaker 1: deciders sixty seconds on average, so almost double. You know, this,
Speaker 1: this physical manifestation was found in this, this very simple
Speaker 1: impulse control test. Now they did this over and over
Speaker 1: a so the more decisions you make, the less control
Speaker 1: you have over holding your hand and water. Right, So
Speaker 1: it's not just that you're making decisions, but your actual
Speaker 1: physical being is going to be decided by this as well. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's not the abstract you know, becomes a concrete thing.
Speaker 1: So when g Gordon Liddy did the famous thing with
Speaker 1: the cigarette lighter under his palm, he was basically saying,
Speaker 1: try me, I haven't made a decision in weeks. You know,
Speaker 1: It's like he's got that's never find Um, I'll go
Speaker 1: with it. But anyway, this is an illuminating study. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And it was a sea change in studying the ego
Speaker 1: uh depletion effect because it really had this idea of
Speaker 1: no matter what it was tied to um, you know,
Speaker 1: these choices could have an effect on your willpower, even
Speaker 1: if it was just something that wasn't that important. Um.
Speaker 1: So they began to do this over and over again,
Speaker 1: and they even saw this and car buyers. Right, there
Speaker 1: was an experiment in which they had real customers spending
Speaker 1: their own money and they had to choose, for instance,
Speaker 1: among four styles of gearship gearshif not, thirteen kinds of
Speaker 1: wheel rims, twenty five configurations of the engine and gearbox,
Speaker 1: and a palette of fifty six colors for the interior.
Speaker 1: See I'm already I'm feeling fatigued and um. As they
Speaker 1: started picking out features, customers would like carefully weigh the
Speaker 1: choices at first, but then fatigue would set in and
Speaker 1: they'd start to go into default options. Okay, well you know,
Speaker 1: essentially at the end of this exercise they were like, okay,
Speaker 1: give me whatever, um, And they left the dealership by
Speaker 1: paying extra two thousand dollars in options that they probably
Speaker 1: didn't want, but because they had this barrage of choices
Speaker 1: put forth, which is sort of a typical sales technique, right,
Speaker 1: especially at car dealerships. Yeah, a nefarious tactic of the
Speaker 1: hard self like get somebody in a room and do
Speaker 1: not let them leave until they make a decision, or
Speaker 1: rather make the decision you want them to make. Right.
Speaker 1: And at this point you've probably put a lot of
Speaker 1: research in time into finding the car that you want,
Speaker 1: negotiating it UM, and then trying to meet out these
Speaker 1: details about what you want the final project to look like.
Speaker 1: You know, you've probably been there for five hours and
Speaker 1: you're like, fine, if you will let me leave this
Speaker 1: dealership with my car, I will pay two thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: It's essentially what you're saying, without even knowing that you're saying.
Speaker 1: There's I actually ran across another study that also involves UM.
Speaker 1: This one involves cake as well, UH, which is which
Speaker 1: is always fun. And this was a Stanford University Graduate
Speaker 1: School of Business test where they had they had two
Speaker 1: groups UH in one. In one group, the subjects were
Speaker 1: asked to remember a one digit number, which is pretty easy,
Speaker 1: and then the other group was asked to remember seven
Speaker 1: digit number and H Then they were asked to walk
Speaker 1: down the hallway to where they would have to report
Speaker 1: this number, and along the way UH coworkers would come
Speaker 1: to them and offer them either a big slice of
Speaker 1: chocolate cake or a bowl of fruit salad, and uh
Speaker 1: by by a huge, huge percentage, those who were trying
Speaker 1: to remember the seven the seven digit numbers picked the
Speaker 1: cake over the fruit salad. So the idea was that
Speaker 1: the people trying to remember the seven digit number were
Speaker 1: already taxing their brain enough to where they lacked sufficient
Speaker 1: mental energy to stand up to the temptation of the cake,
Speaker 1: and therefore their impulse control was compromised. Well, yeah, they
Speaker 1: haven't remember a seven digit number. There just wasn't enough
Speaker 1: gas in the tank to resist cake. Also, it should
Speaker 1: note that again in this article that's on long. Um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can intend. Uh. There are instances of these studies
Speaker 1: over and over again, and we're not obviously going to
Speaker 1: talk about all of them. All of them involved cake
Speaker 1: is weird. Yeah, a lot of suites in these studies, Um,
Speaker 1: but they do bear out this familiar idea that you know,
Speaker 1: your willpower is going to be greatly affected and um,
Speaker 1: so much so that there's something called the Marti Gras effect.
Speaker 1: And we're going to get to that right after this break.
Speaker 1: This podcast is brought to you by Intel, the sponsors
Speaker 1: of Tomorrow and the Discovery Channel at Intel. We believe
Speaker 1: curiosity is the spark which drives innovation. Join us at
Speaker 1: curiosity dot com and explore the answers to life's questions.
Speaker 1: And we're back the Mardy Gras effect. So let's let's
Speaker 1: get down to it. This involves beads and streets lined
Speaker 1: with people and partial nudity, partial nudity and a string
Speaker 1: of parades and spicy food right. M Yes, to the
Speaker 1: degree that it is a metaphor for this idea that
Speaker 1: you could exert better willpower later if you indulge yourself
Speaker 1: with something pleasurable. Now, this is the idea that bown
Speaker 1: Master and into his colleagues had, so to refresh it's
Speaker 1: with Mardy Gras. Marty Gras immediately proceeds lent, which is
Speaker 1: a period of of fasting or what, Well, you're giving
Speaker 1: up something you choose what you're going to give up.
Speaker 1: For a lot of people, this may be alcohol, um
Speaker 1: or it maybe something kind of weenye like well, I'm
Speaker 1: going to give up fried foods or using the word
Speaker 1: cloaca in a podcast, why would you do that? Well,
Speaker 1: that's what that's what we're doing next year. Get ready.
Speaker 1: That's the thing. In accordance with the Marty Gras fact though,
Speaker 1: before we gave up using the word floaca in a podcast,
Speaker 1: we would have an all out cloaca blowout podcast edition
Speaker 1: where it was just NonStop discussion of feel like cloaca
Speaker 1: and articles, right, yeah, so the a yeah and then
Speaker 1: yeah exactly. So if you could make for a fascinating podcast,
Speaker 1: which but the but the idea with Marty Grays you
Speaker 1: have the big old party because you're going to be
Speaker 1: good for over a month afterwards, with occasional breaks for
Speaker 1: feast days beef steaks, Feast days, Feast days beef steaks
Speaker 1: like beef steaks coming to the equation. There are different
Speaker 1: feast days where they're like holy celebrated days. So it's
Speaker 1: all right to break your lent faster. We'll see. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't know a lot about this lent thing, but
Speaker 1: that just seems like cheating. We'll see. Nine. My mother
Speaker 1: in law thought the same thing. She was like, she
Speaker 1: was like, I don't know about these feast days in
Speaker 1: and I'm like, but but but a priest told me this.
Speaker 1: This is this is legit. But anyway, but yes, they
Speaker 1: so they you know, in this lab, they took the
Speaker 1: same tact, right like we're gonna go ahead and try
Speaker 1: to get these groups to indulge. And so what they
Speaker 1: did is they gave two groups milkshakes. Sounds good right. Um.
Speaker 1: One was tasteless, low fat glop, absolute glop, right, a glock,
Speaker 1: but a milkshake nonetheless tas. The other one was decadent,
Speaker 1: calorie laden and and yummy. Right. So the researchers expected
Speaker 1: that the decadent milkshakes would perform better on willpower tesk right.
Speaker 1: So the result is that both groups performed well on
Speaker 1: these these tasks that they were given after they consumed this,
Speaker 1: and it was a head scratch until they figured out
Speaker 1: that the gluca glucas was mitigating the ego depletion and
Speaker 1: sometimes completely reversing it both of the milk shapes. So
Speaker 1: basically you had is you had these two groups and
Speaker 1: they were going through similar to the other study where
Speaker 1: they were given choices and their willpowers being eroded. They
Speaker 1: took break, they had the milkshakes, they came back to
Speaker 1: do some more difficult tasks. They both performed really well.
Speaker 1: So they thought, oh this this uh, this experiment went
Speaker 1: terribly awry. It didn't meet our expectations. But what they
Speaker 1: figured out is that it was the actual glucose in
Speaker 1: the milkshake. It didn't really matter whether or not it
Speaker 1: was calorie laden or delicious or you know, it was
Speaker 1: the actually the food itself that was tripping the mind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So again and again in lab experiments dealing with self
Speaker 1: control exercises, researchers found that people naturally gravitated towards sugary,
Speaker 1: glucose filled snacks when given the choice between say, like
Speaker 1: potato chips and candy. It's and and it's really effective, right,
Speaker 1: but it's a temporary fix. And researchers also took dieters,
Speaker 1: which is the classic group that you would want to study, right,
Speaker 1: forty five women. What they did is they showed them
Speaker 1: pictures of food, and they scan their brains okay, And
Speaker 1: then they made them watch a comedy a film okay,
Speaker 1: and they made them suppress their laughter. It just seems,
Speaker 1: you know, okay, um, not not exactly cruel. But what
Speaker 1: they're trying to induce was ego depletion because it takes
Speaker 1: a lot of mental energy to try to do something
Speaker 1: that is coming to you naturally, right, and also you're
Speaker 1: you're robbing yourself with a little reward center ding right,
Speaker 1: because we all know that laughter in comedy is is
Speaker 1: something that lights up our brains. So afterwards, they showed
Speaker 1: these the group food images again and they scan their
Speaker 1: brains again, and what they found is that there's more
Speaker 1: activity in the nucleus incumbents, which is the ward of
Speaker 1: the ward center, and less activity in the amigda, which
Speaker 1: processes emotions and control impulses. So their ability to exercise
Speaker 1: um willpower was compromised. And could see this in the scan, right.
Speaker 1: And then the researchers wondered what a shot of glucose
Speaker 1: could do if they added that to the scenario, and
Speaker 1: they found that the brain changes were completely reversed, which
Speaker 1: is what I talked about earlier. So again this link
Speaker 1: is born out in the scan as well. It's not
Speaker 1: just it sounds like a big excuse, right, like I've
Speaker 1: I've had to make so many choices today and that's
Speaker 1: why I did this. I think you call this that
Speaker 1: the double made me do it, uh rationale, But in
Speaker 1: fact you do see real evidence that this is something
Speaker 1: that is working at play and uh really eroding our
Speaker 1: confidence and our ability to make decisions and making wise
Speaker 1: decisions too. Yeah, sort of like I was thinking in
Speaker 1: terms of the TV show Madman, kind of like a
Speaker 1: Don Draper effect, where Don Draper has a lot of
Speaker 1: decisions to make about who he's gonna fire and who's
Speaker 1: going to be mean to generally Peggy um and uh
Speaker 1: and and so he makes all these decisions and at
Speaker 1: the end of the every show it's pretty much Don
Speaker 1: Draper doing something really stupid. There you go, you just
Speaker 1: cracked the writer's secret right there. Yeah. Yeah, if only
Speaker 1: he had a little glucose shot, then he would just
Speaker 1: be you know, well, he has most narrat shots throughout
Speaker 1: the the late morning, afternoon, and evening, but it's just
Speaker 1: not the glucose ones. But they saw listen judges too.
Speaker 1: They saw this in it Israeli parole board. They studied
Speaker 1: the judges there and they found that they would grant
Speaker 1: parole much more so in the morning than in the afternoon.
Speaker 1: And so if you had a ten o'clock case, you
Speaker 1: were pretty lucky, right, you probably would get parole because
Speaker 1: you're getting more thought into it. They're making more thoughtful,
Speaker 1: informed decisions, right, they're not as inundated at three o'clock. Sorry,
Speaker 1: you're probably not gonna get parole. And Uh, they apply
Speaker 1: this glucose test to them as well. So they started
Speaker 1: giving them a little snacks throughout the day and whoa,
Speaker 1: right after the snack, guess what you were going to
Speaker 1: get parole? Huh. So it's pretty amazing to see a
Speaker 1: lot of in play. And that's really cupcake. Is the
Speaker 1: take home here a deconan smoothie? Perhaps? Yeah, But the
Speaker 1: reason that the in case you're wondering why they weren't
Speaker 1: granting parole is because this really was the safest choice
Speaker 1: for them, because they were essentially deferring the decision because
Speaker 1: they could say to themselves, I can I'm gonna bat
Speaker 1: down the hatches on my mental energy because I know
Speaker 1: that this case is going to come up again at
Speaker 1: six months, two months, a year, and I can decide
Speaker 1: them this feels like the safer choice. Okay, well that
Speaker 1: this seems like a solid I mean, I'm taking you
Speaker 1: outside of a criminal um, you know, injustice scenario. The
Speaker 1: idea of deferring the choice of of sort of trusting
Speaker 1: another body with your choices, uh, seems like a good
Speaker 1: way to deal with decision fatigue, Like instead of going
Speaker 1: stepping through every process in getting the sandwich, just the
Speaker 1: way you want it, or think you might want it
Speaker 1: to be able just to point and say I will
Speaker 1: have the number three. Well, and that's and you're trusting
Speaker 1: your sandwich artists or whoever to give you the type
Speaker 1: of sandwich you would want. And of course that that, um,
Speaker 1: that sort of makes a lot of us knee jerk,
Speaker 1: especially Americans, because we like our choice so much, right right,
Speaker 1: even with our most mundane things like Okay, what sort
Speaker 1: of crappy sandwich am I gonna get? Yeah, I should
Speaker 1: have complete free reign to just just have no vegetables
Speaker 1: at all, just me. Yeah. Yeah. And there have been
Speaker 1: studies that suggest that less choices make more sense for us. There's,
Speaker 1: you know, less fatigue that we're experiencing. Um, perhaps we're
Speaker 1: happier with less choices. I tell you one example of
Speaker 1: like in my case when it comes to listening to music,
Speaker 1: I tend to absorb a lot of my music through
Speaker 1: mixed podcasts, so to a certain extent, instead of saying,
Speaker 1: I wonder what albums I'm gonna listen to for the
Speaker 1: next hour or two hours, or which individual tracks I'm
Speaker 1: going to choose to listen to instead, I'm going to trust, uh,
Speaker 1: this individual DJ to give me a nice assortment of
Speaker 1: tracks that I wouldn't In that way, I don't have
Speaker 1: to have to find out who these artists are. I
Speaker 1: don't have to to go out and discover new things.
Speaker 1: I will let this guy discover things and deliver them
Speaker 1: to me in a as a sonic meal. So and
Speaker 1: that this person is vetted for you, right, so it
Speaker 1: feels like, okay, I can seed my control over to
Speaker 1: this person. Well, either it's somebody that I trust already,
Speaker 1: like you know it's a it's a it's a DJ
Speaker 1: I follow, or since a lot of these are you know,
Speaker 1: they did to be podcast properties, so um it may
Speaker 1: say it's like the Solid Steel Radio show, or um
Speaker 1: like a Body Tonic podcast or any of these other
Speaker 1: music podcasts. There'll be multiple DJs that come through, So
Speaker 1: then there's like a larger level. Am I trusting that
Speaker 1: particular podcast to give me a DJ I can trust,
Speaker 1: who will then give me music I can trust? Okay?
Speaker 1: So this actually um is similar to a jam study
Speaker 1: believe it or not or jelly for further, folks who
Speaker 1: don't prefer jam and and not asn't kick out the jams,
Speaker 1: but is then spread on the jam as in PB
Speaker 1: and j jam. Right. Sheina I Anger, a professor of
Speaker 1: business at Columbia University, conducted a study in which she
Speaker 1: her research assistant set up a booth of samples of
Speaker 1: Wilkins and Sons jams. Seems innocent enough, right, Every few hours,
Speaker 1: they switched from offering a selection of twenty four jams
Speaker 1: to a group of six jams. On average, customers tasted
Speaker 1: two jams regardless of the size of the assortment, and
Speaker 1: each person received a cub on good for one dollar off. Okay,
Speaker 1: the really interesting part of this is that sixty percent
Speaker 1: of customers were drawn to the large assortment, while only
Speaker 1: stopped by the small one. But thirty percent of the
Speaker 1: people who had sampled from the small assortment decided to
Speaker 1: buy jam, as opposed to only three percent of those
Speaker 1: people confronted with a big assortment of jelly. So that again,
Speaker 1: here's this, here's this idea that you have this wide assortment,
Speaker 1: you have all of these choices, and you're going to
Speaker 1: back away. Whereas you cull it down a little bit,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, your sales go from three percent
Speaker 1: to so yeah, So like with me, it's like I
Speaker 1: would rather choose one of eighteen podcasts versus one out
Speaker 1: of you know, several hundred DJs versus like one artist
Speaker 1: out of you know, hundreds and hundreds represented in those mixes.
Speaker 1: It's just easier to refine it down. And I guess
Speaker 1: in a much larger way people make these choices when
Speaker 1: they choose various religions, philosophies, um political ideologies, because you're
Speaker 1: sort of saying, I want instead of going through and
Speaker 1: customizing your preferences, like the sandwich, you will just say,
Speaker 1: you know what, give me the Catholic sandwich, give me
Speaker 1: the um Tea party sandwich, give me the you know,
Speaker 1: give me the give the Zen Buddhist sandwich, give me
Speaker 1: the Hindoo sandwi. You know, It's like you're you're saying,
Speaker 1: give me those set of of preordained preferences. Uh, and
Speaker 1: let me take that on because I I generally like
Speaker 1: the shape of that sandwich and the look of it.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to trust the various factors in that
Speaker 1: sandwich to do me right. All right, Right, So I
Speaker 1: feel like, okay, give me the atheist sandwich because that
Speaker 1: that works, and and I'm going to run with that model.
Speaker 1: And it's but then something. The only thing is what
Speaker 1: if you get that sandwich and you really don't like lapenas?
Speaker 1: So do you learn to like kalepenas? Maybe you do.
Speaker 1: I mean again, this is it's really interesting if you
Speaker 1: apply it to the way that we we wield our
Speaker 1: choices in the world and why you sometimes look back
Speaker 1: and think, how how did I make that choice? That
Speaker 1: seems so rational in the moment, but now it seems
Speaker 1: like how how could I have made that choice? Or
Speaker 1: what if the sandwich ends up containing say, um, you
Speaker 1: know baby seal or condor patties, you know, like some
Speaker 1: sort of endangered species, and you're but you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: but the rest of the sandwich is so good. I
Speaker 1: just accepted the bad with the good for the You've
Speaker 1: just minimized your choice to witness relocation. My friend, you
Speaker 1: got to put your mustache on. But no, wonder you know,
Speaker 1: we get ourselves in a tizzy because did you know
Speaker 1: that three to four hours of our day is spent
Speaker 1: in some sort of state of desire? Okay, okay, ballmeister again.
Speaker 1: This guy his group gave pre programmed blot berries to
Speaker 1: more than two hundred people for a week. The phones
Speaker 1: went off at random intervals, prompting the people to report
Speaker 1: whether they were currently experiencing some sort of desire or
Speaker 1: had recently felt a desire. They collected more than ten
Speaker 1: thousand momentary reports than this is from Morning Tonight, and
Speaker 1: the results suggested that people spend between three and four
Speaker 1: hours a day resisting desire or some sort of urge
Speaker 1: and uh. As the New York Times article put it,
Speaker 1: if you tapped four or five people at any random
Speaker 1: moment in the day, one of them would be using
Speaker 1: willpower to resist a desire. And the most common desires
Speaker 1: eat in sleep right makes sense, followed by leisure activities,
Speaker 1: and then followed by the urge to have sex. The
Speaker 1: three or four hours of this it seems like a lot.
Speaker 1: It does. I mean, obviously this is not, you know,
Speaker 1: in in constant three or four hours state of desire,
Speaker 1: but it does. It does tie in rather nicely with
Speaker 1: the you know, the the idea that that's that the
Speaker 1: desire is one of the roots of suffering in the world. Well,
Speaker 1: this is the this idea of this temptation that that
Speaker 1: sort of throws us off, and that's why our old
Speaker 1: magdala is taken up there so to speak, trying to
Speaker 1: keep us on the street and narrow. Well, that's well,
Speaker 1: there you go. That's uh. So that's pretty fascinating and
Speaker 1: it is one of those things that definitely forces you
Speaker 1: to take another look at your life and look at
Speaker 1: the the numerous decisions that fill it and uh and
Speaker 1: and perhaps figure out ways where we can cut down
Speaker 1: on the number of decisions we're taxing our brain with
Speaker 1: at the expense of the decisions we really need to make.
Speaker 1: So that's the truth. That's that's that's sort of my takeaways,
Speaker 1: Like try to eat more consistently throughout the day, right
Speaker 1: so I can make better decisions. Try to make the
Speaker 1: decisions earlier in the day. Yeah, and uh and uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know what else, and believe what other people
Speaker 1: tell you to listen to and uh and why you
Speaker 1: know fun get some good vetted people to make some
Speaker 1: decisions for you. I mean seriously, it's like it saves
Speaker 1: so much time and energy if you can just find
Speaker 1: like a good DJ or a good uh or maybe
Speaker 1: there you know it's a it's a particular blogger you
Speaker 1: agree with them, or a movie critic. I mean seriously,
Speaker 1: like when it comes to finding out whether you want
Speaker 1: to watch rain go or not. It's nice to be
Speaker 1: able to just turn to Eager and see, like, all right, Eber,
Speaker 1: what do you think of it? You give it four stars? Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll give it. Yeah, that's true. Stick in Google and
Speaker 1: getting like ten different results, going through like and mucking
Speaker 1: through a bunch of them and saying like, well, I
Speaker 1: don't know who's this guy? Should I vet him? He
Speaker 1: liked listening? You know, it's just just pick somebody you
Speaker 1: like and go with it. There you go. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: that's the answer to life right there. Well, hey, we
Speaker 1: have some listener mail. We kind of neglected it in
Speaker 1: the last few podcasts because we either I either forget
Speaker 1: to print it out or we end up going a
Speaker 1: little too long and don't really have time for it. Uh,
Speaker 1: and maybe we went too long today. I don't know.
Speaker 1: We'll find out. We have some email here from a
Speaker 1: listener by the name of Jonathan Jonathan Wright, Senuss, Hi, Robert,
Speaker 1: and Julie. I'm catching up on your podcast, having started
Speaker 1: listening to it after listening to the other How Stuff
Speaker 1: Works podcast over a hundred podcasts, but I listened a
Speaker 1: lot on the road. I listened to the one on
Speaker 1: subliminal messaging. Today, I think it's your fifty newest. When
Speaker 1: talking about smells, it reminded me of a store I
Speaker 1: bet you would love. There's a great outdoor mall in
Speaker 1: San Diego, California called Corton Plaza. There is a Cinnamon
Speaker 1: Roll Bakery was bought out by Cinnamon unfortunately, but there's
Speaker 1: an exhaust event from the inside the kitchen that pumps
Speaker 1: cinnamon roll smell into the walkway in front of the store.
Speaker 1: Maybe not subliminal as much as pure evil, but was
Speaker 1: always a great It was always such a clever idea.
Speaker 1: Now if you walk a few more doors down there
Speaker 1: is a sparky house of glue, close your eyes and
Speaker 1: you can appreciate, really appreciate the smell wafting from their
Speaker 1: fan delicious rendered horse paste and so so that's that's fascinating. Um.
Speaker 1: And of course I think we discussed that the cinnamon
Speaker 1: bun smell is is really powerful when it comes to
Speaker 1: controlling people. Yeah, that's right, it's it's the siren song
Speaker 1: of temptation. Yeah, one would have to make a Ulysses
Speaker 1: pack to discover it. Which, by the way, if you
Speaker 1: if you're listening to this podcast, and you have not
Speaker 1: listened to our one um uh, the the accompanying podcast
Speaker 1: that we did on procrastination. Uh, stop putting on putting
Speaker 1: it off and listen to that, because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of crossover between the two companion. We also heard from
Speaker 1: a listener by the name of Trent, and Trent rights
Speaker 1: in and hit some some very interesting things to say
Speaker 1: about our Religion and Space episode. He says, Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I've actually been meaning to send this email for a
Speaker 1: while and I'm only just getting around to it. There
Speaker 1: you go, Procrastination against UM. I enjoyed your podcast on
Speaker 1: religion in Space and thought Robert's comment on taking the
Speaker 1: best bits from different religions very interesting. However, I do
Speaker 1: see some problems, the main one being what if there
Speaker 1: are parts of a religion that may not seem to
Speaker 1: be beneficial according to currently held ideas, and it isn't
Speaker 1: much later that it turns out to be quite beneficial.
Speaker 1: I am thinking of one example in particular. I am
Speaker 1: a Jehovah's witness, and we take the Bible's instruction to
Speaker 1: abstain from blood very literally, including the refusal of blood transfusions.
Speaker 1: For years, we have been looked down upon by not
Speaker 1: only the medical community but people in general because of
Speaker 1: our refusal to accept accept blood transfusions. However, in part
Speaker 1: due to the witness witnesses, huge advances in bloodless surgery
Speaker 1: and medicine have been made and it is now accepted
Speaker 1: by many medical practitioners that it has many advantages and
Speaker 1: in almost all cases is more beneficial than a traditional
Speaker 1: blood transfusion, which leads me to the next point of
Speaker 1: the email. UM a show suggestion. I think a podcast
Speaker 1: on bloodless surgery would be interesting. Um So, anyway, he
Speaker 1: does bring up an interesting point and one that um,
Speaker 1: I've kind of thought of two and think because to refresh,
Speaker 1: I kind of have often played with this idea of religion, uh,
Speaker 1: the religion buffet where you go through, and of course
Speaker 1: you end up making a lot of choices in this.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like say, here, here we go. We're
Speaker 1: at the buffet line again. Yeah, where you go through
Speaker 1: and you're like, I like this from this religion, this
Speaker 1: from that religion, or I like these ideas from this
Speaker 1: given UM view on the world, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: adopt these and leave this UM. But yeah, on one hand,
Speaker 1: you're making a lot of decisions In this you're so
Speaker 1: you're taxing your decision making ability and uh indeed, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like we were talking about. UH. But by
Speaker 1: choosing I can avoid the hillo the Halopenias that maybe
Speaker 1: I don't want. But what if I really need Halopinians
Speaker 1: and I don't realize it? What if there's something? What
Speaker 1: if in picking and choosing from different uh faiths and philosophies,
Speaker 1: what if I'm neglecting to get the things my body
Speaker 1: actually needs. What if I'm like the kid who refuses
Speaker 1: to put vegetables on his sandwich just because he doesn't
Speaker 1: like them, when really that scurvy kid needs vegetables like
Speaker 1: nobody's business. Well, I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: it and the Great Spaghetti Monster. Maybe I need some
Speaker 1: garlic bread with my spaghetti monster. There you go with Basically,
Speaker 1: it's like a made up deity, Yes, yes, as opposed
Speaker 1: to all the other deities which are not made up.
Speaker 1: Well there, yes, yes it was recently in the news,
Speaker 1: but that's for another time. I suppose. So, hey, if
Speaker 1: you have anything that you want to share with us
Speaker 1: that you've been putting off sharing with us, um and
Speaker 1: that order that you can't quite decide on sharing with us,
Speaker 1: then get in touch with us. We are on Twitter
Speaker 1: and Facebook. You'll find us as blow the Mind on
Speaker 1: both of those, so you know, go on at us
Speaker 1: as your friend, follow us. We'll keep you updated on
Speaker 1: what we're podcasting about, what we're thinking about podcasting about,
Speaker 1: and you can help you decide that's right. And you
Speaker 1: can always send us an email at blow the Mind
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check
Speaker 1: out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join
Speaker 1: how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising
Speaker 1: and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.