Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you 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 two of our ig Nobel
Speaker 1: Prize Recipients episode. I was gonna say, if you haven't
Speaker 1: heard part one, you need to go back and listen
Speaker 1: to that first, but you don't really. I mean, you
Speaker 1: should go back and listen to it, but you can
Speaker 1: understand this episode without hearing that one. That's right. We're
Speaker 1: just covering all the winners across two episodes. Ultimately, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter which order you take them in. Uh. Though,
Speaker 1: the top of the first episode has just a brief
Speaker 1: section where we talk about what the ig Nobel Prizes are,
Speaker 1: So if you're if you're not sure on that, I
Speaker 1: would recommend checking that little bit out. But have you've
Speaker 1: been listening to the show for years, you know that
Speaker 1: we continually do this. We do this pretty much every November,
Speaker 1: sometimes in October, but generally it's a November situation where
Speaker 1: we catch back up see uh what the previous months
Speaker 1: or technically September's UH honorees were for the ignoble prizes,
Speaker 1: and we just talk about them a little bit. Sometime
Speaker 1: the past, we've done, uh, you know, two hosts talking
Speaker 1: about it. We've done three hosts talking about it. We've
Speaker 1: tried to cover them all on a single episode. We've
Speaker 1: covered them across three episodes. This week it's just Joe
Speaker 1: and I and we are doing it in two episodes.
Speaker 1: So some of these descriptions are shorter than others. That
Speaker 1: kind of depends on what kind of meat is on
Speaker 1: the bone. Speaking of if you haven't listened to our
Speaker 1: last episode, it had some good stuff about cannibalism, so
Speaker 1: I didn't check that out all right, well, speaking speaking
Speaker 1: of meat, though, let's go ahead and jump into biology. Okay,
Speaker 1: the biology prize. I gotta start with a question, Robert.
Speaker 1: You know some people are these what would you call it,
Speaker 1: the unbothered eaters, the the cool hand lukes of eating stuff.
Speaker 1: If you're everything bagel falls on the floor, you just
Speaker 1: pick it up and eat it. It's just a little
Speaker 1: more of everything, right, Robert? Are you like that? Or
Speaker 1: are you somebody who can't can't talk all erate getting
Speaker 1: a few hairs off the floor on your food? Who?
Speaker 1: Uh if I am not going to pick a hair
Speaker 1: off of it. But if I dropped something and it's
Speaker 1: just there for a second and the floor looks relatively clean,
Speaker 1: especially if it's in my own house, then yes, I'll
Speaker 1: probably eat it. I do have limits, though, I mean,
Speaker 1: there have been times, especially when I've been places with
Speaker 1: my son, who, especially when he was a little younger,
Speaker 1: there was a higher probability that what he was trying
Speaker 1: to eat might fall onto the ground. I like, I
Speaker 1: particularly remember eating these delicious fish sandwiches in Barbados to
Speaker 1: this place called Kuzzes cutters cutter being the uh the
Speaker 1: boji and I believe slang for a sandwich. But it
Speaker 1: was just like a delicious fish and cheese sandwich with
Speaker 1: some boji and hot sauce, absolutely delightful, and we were
Speaker 1: just eating it over just this uh like it was
Speaker 1: just you know, like gravel and some bottle caps, and
Speaker 1: it was just on the brink of falling apart in
Speaker 1: my son's hands, and I just I just saw it
Speaker 1: in my mind, like that fish is going to the ground.
Speaker 1: The fish Patty's gonna jump out of the sandwich and
Speaker 1: there's gonna just gonna be no reclaiming it. Luckily, it
Speaker 1: didn't happen, Well, thank the gods for that. That's a
Speaker 1: that's a deliverance. But if I were in my own
Speaker 1: house and that were to happen, I would say, no,
Speaker 1: we're not throwing that fish patty out. We're gonna pick
Speaker 1: that up. We're gonna brush it off, and you can
Speaker 1: finish it. Okay, Parts two and three coming. Part two.
Speaker 1: You're at a restaurant. You find a hair in your soup.
Speaker 1: Do you just pick it out and keep eating the
Speaker 1: soup or do you eat the hair or do you
Speaker 1: abandon the bowl completely? I think I have. I have
Speaker 1: a pretty good ability to quickly remove a hair and
Speaker 1: and almost kind of delete the memory of it occurring
Speaker 1: and keep going, especially as long as it's you know,
Speaker 1: relatively good. If if the food was already offending me,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it might be different. Yeah, you like
Speaker 1: men in black pin yourself. It's just like it's wiped clean.
Speaker 1: Didn't not seeing it? Now, didn't see it. You're just
Speaker 1: gonna keep moving. Okay, here's the last one. What if
Speaker 1: there's a fly in your glass of wine or your
Speaker 1: cocktail or whatever, do you still drink it? Or is
Speaker 1: the ruined? Has the has the fly simply landed on
Speaker 1: the glass, or is it floating dead in my drink.
Speaker 1: That's a good question. It's let's just say it's in
Speaker 1: it's in the liquid. It's in there. Well, once it's
Speaker 1: in the liquid, that is kind of gross. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can't help, especially if you're drinking something outside. You
Speaker 1: can't help, but have fly or even like a yellow
Speaker 1: jacket or something sometimes land on your drink and there's
Speaker 1: nothing to be done. If a fly is just floating
Speaker 1: in there, I might have to send it back. Sometimes
Speaker 1: those flies can be disease vectors. Yeah, you don't know
Speaker 1: what they were landing on before this. They might have
Speaker 1: been on sewage. I mean, I think that's that's a
Speaker 1: bridge too far from me. Even though it's gross enough
Speaker 1: if one lands on something you're eating or drinking, but
Speaker 1: there's something about the fleeting contact. As gross as it is.
Speaker 1: I can again, I can use the I can delete
Speaker 1: the memory and keep moving. But if I have to
Speaker 1: fish the body out of my drink, I don't know. Well,
Speaker 1: here's another thing. Have you ever noticed if a fly
Speaker 1: landed in your drink if you could smell it. No,
Speaker 1: I've never noticed that. Well, maybe this is something to
Speaker 1: check out next time, because that's what this year's Biology
Speaker 1: Prize concerns. So the the paper in question here is
Speaker 1: called The Scent of the Fly by Paul Betcher, Sebastian
Speaker 1: le Breton, Erica Wallen, Eric Headenstrom, Philippe Berrero, Echo, Verry,
Speaker 1: Marie Bankson, Vulcar Jorger, Peter witzkall, oh, that's the whole list. Sorry, congrats.
Speaker 1: I would have just at all the crap out of
Speaker 1: that one. Oh man, I probably should have. But yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so I've got a new word for you, Robert simio chemicals.
Speaker 1: Heard that one, simio chemicals. Okay, it just means chemicals
Speaker 1: used for communication, like semiotics, signs study of science sending communications.
Speaker 1: So the authors of this study point out that all
Speaker 1: living things communicate by way of chemicals, quote, unlike sounds
Speaker 1: or sites, simio chemicals interconnect species across kingdoms and enable
Speaker 1: information exchange between animals, plants, and microorganisms. And I think
Speaker 1: there's some indication that's true, like that they're chemical signals
Speaker 1: that allow your body to communicate with your microbiome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, or maybe I'm going on on on in here,
Speaker 1: but I mean it seems like Some obvious ones would
Speaker 1: be the smell of rotting flesh or rotting organic material, right,
Speaker 1: kind of sends a signal across a species. Yes, you're
Speaker 1: communicating in a way with the bacteria that are consuming
Speaker 1: that flesh. And also i'd imagine that the smell of
Speaker 1: something especially sweet, the smell of nectar, etcetera. Right, you
Speaker 1: might be communicating with a plant. Yeah, exactly. So a
Speaker 1: fascinating takeaway from this knowledge is that the same one
Speaker 1: biocompound maybe bioactive for different species in different ways. In
Speaker 1: other words, one semiochemical communicates something to both you and
Speaker 1: some other animals, say your dog or an insect, but
Speaker 1: what it communicates is radically different. And anybody who has
Speaker 1: a dog, in fact, probably is familiar with this because
Speaker 1: something that smells repulsive to you smells delicious to your dog.
Speaker 1: Uh So, one example is don't you just love the clean,
Speaker 1: fresh scent of citrus? You know, it's like it's a
Speaker 1: very calming smell that makes you feel like everything is
Speaker 1: spick and span. Yes, unless it's actual spick and span.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know actual spickin span. Spickin span
Speaker 1: is a cleaning product, right, which is yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, but it does this touches on one of
Speaker 1: the key differences for me. If it's legitimate citrus, yes,
Speaker 1: it's beautiful. I love the smell. But if it's something
Speaker 1: that it is, like a fake lemon smell, then there's
Speaker 1: something unnatural about that. Well, did you know I actually
Speaker 1: came across the paper while I was reading about this
Speaker 1: that found that, like the title of it was something like,
Speaker 1: lemon fresh scent causes flies to lay eggs. It's a
Speaker 1: lemon fresh scent. It's a chemical cue that says to you, ah,
Speaker 1: this place is clean and delightful, unless maybe it's the
Speaker 1: synthetic smelling kind that you don't like. But so this
Speaker 1: one might be why the fly would be seeking out,
Speaker 1: say my tiki drink. Yeah, it's got a lemon fresh scent.
Speaker 1: It says to the flies, lay your eggs here, this
Speaker 1: is a great place. And this is probably because the
Speaker 1: vinegar fly Drosophila melana gaster prefers to deposit its eggs
Speaker 1: in the peel of citrus fruit as long as yeast
Speaker 1: is present there. And so this particular study, the the
Speaker 1: Ignoble winning study, focuses on a compound called Z four
Speaker 1: undescinal or Z four eleven a L undicinel or dc
Speaker 1: aldehyde is an organic compound that can be found in
Speaker 1: citrus oils. So Z four eleven a L you can
Speaker 1: associate it with with a kind of citrus peel, clear,
Speaker 1: oily liquid kind of thing, And it is one of
Speaker 1: these volatile compounds that plays a role in the life
Speaker 1: of multiple organisms. In vinegar flies, Z four or eleven
Speaker 1: a L is produced by females and it seems to
Speaker 1: play a role in the attraction of male mates. But
Speaker 1: Z four eleven a L is also bioactive in other organisms.
Speaker 1: For example, Z four eleven a L is produced in
Speaker 1: the anal glands of male rabbits such as the European
Speaker 1: wild rabbit. And it's got a mini splendored scientific name
Speaker 1: or ricto legas coniculus. Yeah, that's like it. That should
Speaker 1: be a bond villain name. And so experts believe this
Speaker 1: volatile compound might play some role in territorial marking uh.
Speaker 1: And one reason for thinking that is that, like studies
Speaker 1: have found that when you have other male rabbits smell
Speaker 1: this compound, their heart rates shoot up, maybe like oh,
Speaker 1: there's another dude around here. Not having a um. A
Speaker 1: related similar scent has also been found to emanate from
Speaker 1: the colonies of a c bird called the crested auklet,
Speaker 1: which is Ethia Christa tella. And this scent has been
Speaker 1: tracked to two associated alde hydes. It's not exactly the same,
Speaker 1: it's not Z four eleven a L, but it's the
Speaker 1: chain shortened analog Z four decinal as Z four ten
Speaker 1: a L and Z two decinal and researchers think that
Speaker 1: these smells function as a parasite repellent and an advertisement
Speaker 1: of mate quality. Another another interesting link, like we've talked
Speaker 1: about before, between mating advertisements and the avoidance of parasites. Right,
Speaker 1: sometimes when you're showing off how good of a mate
Speaker 1: you are, what you want to show is I got
Speaker 1: no parasites on me. Look and see. Oh and I
Speaker 1: also just included an image of what crested auklets look
Speaker 1: like because they look really funny. Oh yeah, they're they're beautiful.
Speaker 1: They're are some beautiful birds. And if you want to
Speaker 1: check out a picture of them again, that the spelling
Speaker 1: on that auklet is a u k l et. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they've got um so they've got crests like sort of
Speaker 1: mohawks going out of I don't know what you'd call
Speaker 1: that part of the face, the bridge of the nose
Speaker 1: over the beak, uh that like shoot out forward and
Speaker 1: then they've got really funny google there are like googly
Speaker 1: eyes those eyes. But anyway, but so back to the compound.
Speaker 1: We're talking about Z four eleven a L. But the
Speaker 1: funny thing this study found is that apparently humans are
Speaker 1: also highly sensitive to the smell of this particular compound.
Speaker 1: So it comes out of rabbit anal glands, it comes
Speaker 1: out of auklets, but humans also find significant the smell
Speaker 1: of Z four eleven a L, even in tiny quantities.
Speaker 1: And thus humans are highly sensitive to the smell of
Speaker 1: the female fruit flies or not fruit flies. Actually they're
Speaker 1: often called fruit flies, but technically they are vinegar flies
Speaker 1: vinegar flies that produce it. And there was an experiment
Speaker 1: that proved this. It was a wine tasting. So you've
Speaker 1: got eight members in the study. That was two women
Speaker 1: and six men who were trained wine assessors, wine experts.
Speaker 1: You know that those people the smela types who I
Speaker 1: think they worked in the wine industry assessing wines in Germany,
Speaker 1: and each sample the aroma of multiple randomized glasses across
Speaker 1: a few tests. So across the different tests, these glasses
Speaker 1: contained either nothing in the control condition, or the scent
Speaker 1: of a female fly, which produces the compound, the scent
Speaker 1: of a male fly, which does not produce the compound.
Speaker 1: Various amounts of synthesized like lab made Z four eleven
Speaker 1: a l uh tested against a background content of nothing,
Speaker 1: water or white wine. I believe it was a dry
Speaker 1: Pinot blanc from and the results were that tasters could
Speaker 1: strongly detect the smell of a single female fly or
Speaker 1: the presence of isolated Z four eleven a l in
Speaker 1: the glass. It was even perceptible at one nanogram that's
Speaker 1: one billionth of a gram per glass. So even at
Speaker 1: the smallest concentrations, the compound was described as unpleasant and
Speaker 1: as an off flavor. At higher concentrations it was perceived
Speaker 1: as a loud off flavor. And so the author's right quote.
Speaker 1: This supports the observation that one fly spoils a glass
Speaker 1: of wine after falling into it. I did. It is
Speaker 1: of the female sex, so it wouldn't just be the
Speaker 1: conceptual gross out of having a fly fall in your wine.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't have to think through, Oh this could be
Speaker 1: a disease vector, or oh it's grossing me out for
Speaker 1: this reason or another. Just if it's a female fly,
Speaker 1: just the smell of it could be repellent enough that
Speaker 1: you would detect it and you would find the glass
Speaker 1: revolting afterwards. Interesting. So that's the funny part of the study. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you've got wine wine tasters like sniffing glasses with flies
Speaker 1: in them, right, and everybody loves up. I mean, anytime
Speaker 1: there's a scientific article about wine or wine tasting, uh,
Speaker 1: people tend to read it, even if it's relatively unamusing.
Speaker 1: But I actually would love to do another episode in
Speaker 1: the future just on wine and wine tasting, and not
Speaker 1: only the like the biological aspects, but of course the
Speaker 1: psychological aspects. We have an older episode of stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind that went into it a little bit,
Speaker 1: but I feel like didn't really give the the the
Speaker 1: importance of of of priming and the psychological weight of
Speaker 1: of wine tasting. You know, your expectations, the story that's
Speaker 1: told about it, etcetera. I would be more than happy
Speaker 1: to come back to that. Uh. So that's the funny part.
Speaker 1: The funny part is them sniffing flies. The interesting question, though,
Speaker 1: is why why are humans so sensitive to Z four
Speaker 1: eleven A l It's this compound that's very relevant to
Speaker 1: the lives of these vinegar flies. Right, So, if you're
Speaker 1: a drosophila, this this compound is super important to your
Speaker 1: mating process. But why do humans find it repellent in
Speaker 1: food consumption contexts? The answer to this question is not
Speaker 1: currently known. It's not clear that this compound is of
Speaker 1: any biological significance to humans. So the author's hypothesized, well,
Speaker 1: let's see what could be the reasons. Maybe it's reminiscent
Speaker 1: they say, of quote other food alde hides, so like
Speaker 1: our sensitivity to it could be part of a general
Speaker 1: food hunting olfactory package. But then again, why would it
Speaker 1: repel us in the context of wine? And we know
Speaker 1: that sometimes some food smells can be attractive in one
Speaker 1: context and repellent in another, like certain smells associated with cheese. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there have been some wonderful studies that have shown that
Speaker 1: if you smell the same thing, if you're told that
Speaker 1: it's a shoe, you'll be grossed out. If you're told
Speaker 1: that it's it's a cheese, then you'll run grab some crackers. Delicious, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I suspect that same smell which would seem to
Speaker 1: be delicious on a cheese, if you smelled it on, like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, a bunch of strawberries or something, you
Speaker 1: would probably think something was wrong with them. You'd be
Speaker 1: grossed out. But I don't know that that's just my
Speaker 1: I'm supposing. But then again, they also hypothesize. The authors
Speaker 1: do that the human sensitivity could exist in order to
Speaker 1: quote avert ingestion of fruit that is infested with vinegar flies, which,
Speaker 1: as we were talking about earlier, can of course be
Speaker 1: covered in microbes and can easily be a disease vector.
Speaker 1: But at this time we just don't know the answer.
Speaker 1: We don't know why this smell is so salient to humans.
Speaker 1: You would think there need to be a reason for that,
Speaker 1: but we don't know what it is. Also, the authors
Speaker 1: note that Z four eleven a L is of course
Speaker 1: found in citrus essential oils. For example, it's part of
Speaker 1: the smell of clementines, and the authors point out that
Speaker 1: it could play a double role in signaling, not just
Speaker 1: as a sign of food, but as a sign of
Speaker 1: of social significance. For example, mate location or territory marking
Speaker 1: in not just flies, but other animals as well, coming
Speaker 1: back to this theme that the same compound that's uh,
Speaker 1: that's very significant to one animal could be significant but
Speaker 1: have a totally different meaning to a different animal. And
Speaker 1: ultimately the authors proposed at the end that they just
Speaker 1: want more research to provide a deeper understanding sort of
Speaker 1: of the the ecology of smells, the way volatile compounds
Speaker 1: connect different organisms to one another, and they write quote
Speaker 1: a future challenges to extend functional behavioral, ecological, and phylogenetic
Speaker 1: studies to include vertebrates toward an understanding of the chemical
Speaker 1: vocabulary that interconnects us with other living things. This is
Speaker 1: a great um uh prize winner for the Igno Bells.
Speaker 1: I think because it touches on tours for for starters,
Speaker 1: it has that obvious, funny mental image of someone smelling
Speaker 1: the wine and saying, there's a fly in this. But
Speaker 1: then it does get into this, like the deeper roll
Speaker 1: of these chemical signals and and the mystery of exactly
Speaker 1: why they're setting us off like this. Uh, there there's
Speaker 1: a mystery to it. Yeah. I liked this one a lot. Alright,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're gonna take a quick break and
Speaker 1: when we come back we will look at another two
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen Ignoble Prize winner. Than alright, we're back, al right,
Speaker 1: So I'm I want to talk about the Reproductive Medicine Prize. Okay,
Speaker 1: So this I like how they have a special category
Speaker 1: for reproductive medicine because stuff in there. Yeah, yeah, because there,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a lot of essentially a lot of
Speaker 1: penis jokes, I think are the typical winners. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have to look back at some past winner is to
Speaker 1: to make sure that's the case, but it's certainly the
Speaker 1: case with with this particular winner. The title of the
Speaker 1: study that is honored is Nocturnal penile uh to me
Speaker 1: essence monitoring with stamps stamps like postage stamps, Yes, with
Speaker 1: postage stamps kind you get in the post office exactly.
Speaker 1: And this is was published in Neurology back in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty by authors that Barry blank In Boulou. So for
Speaker 1: this one, we're gonna have to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about nocturnal penile too me essence or mpt is. It's
Speaker 1: also known exactly what is this this is? Of course
Speaker 1: morning would is that's kind of the colloquial term, right. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is the common sling for it. This is often
Speaker 1: this is experienced by males, a waking and perhaps unexplained erection. Now,
Speaker 1: the interesting thing, of course, is that the stiffening of
Speaker 1: the member in question is not the work of devilish
Speaker 1: succubi or experimenting aliens. I'm sure have been blamed over
Speaker 1: the years. So yeah, I think that obviously we just
Speaker 1: think of it. You have say, particularly if you have
Speaker 1: a pious individual, someone who is due to their particular
Speaker 1: religious thinking, you know, ab whore the temptations of the
Speaker 1: flesh and um, you know, are staving off their their
Speaker 1: primal hunger. What what does it mean when they're waking
Speaker 1: up in the night or in the morning with a
Speaker 1: full erection like fully physic physiologically aroused. Uh, and had
Speaker 1: to be a demon. It must be a demon. And
Speaker 1: then of course in some cases there has been nocturnal emission,
Speaker 1: there has been discharge, so it seems like some sort
Speaker 1: of act has taken place, perhaps two. This is coupled
Speaker 1: with dreams, so we have all sorts of of human
Speaker 1: complexities that are layered on top of that that can
Speaker 1: lead to some confusion. But but of course it's it's
Speaker 1: none of these things. It's not the work of the devil, etcetera.
Speaker 1: In fact, you know, a healthy male experiences up to
Speaker 1: five I've seen as high as like, I've seen three
Speaker 1: to six also as a figure, but to say five
Speaker 1: or six of these a night as part of his
Speaker 1: regular R E. M. Sleep. In fact, m pt s
Speaker 1: are so normal that doctors test for them when diagnosing
Speaker 1: erectile dysfunction because you know, think of it. If these
Speaker 1: directions occur on their own during the night, then the
Speaker 1: patient's waking problem is likely a psychological rather than physiological. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. Yeah, Now you might be wondering the
Speaker 1: why do they why do they happen at all? Good question. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: since they occur during the rim cycle, there's always the
Speaker 1: potential for sexually charged dream tie in, but it's not necessary.
Speaker 1: The main IMPT theories actually have nothing to do with
Speaker 1: dreams at all. Rather that the body maybe oxygenating the
Speaker 1: penile tissue as a sort and of a sort of
Speaker 1: maintenance procedure, and the stimulant for this is thought to
Speaker 1: be the release of nitric oxide by nerve fibers in
Speaker 1: the penis. Oh, and then there's also the full bladder
Speaker 1: bladder ankle as well. The two often occur together and
Speaker 1: scientists have have taken note of this as well. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, a mail will wake up in the morning
Speaker 1: uh there is an erection and at the same time
Speaker 1: they perhaps illogically it seems, need to urinate pretty badly
Speaker 1: as well. So some theories view uh impt or morning
Speaker 1: wood is the body's anti bed wedding is the one
Speaker 1: of the body's anti bed wedding measures and perhaps a
Speaker 1: wake up call to the sleeper himself. So this particular
Speaker 1: study study with the stamps, it has to do with
Speaker 1: mpt s role in figuring out what's going on with
Speaker 1: erectile dysfunction, not with where the mail is, right, yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: the postage is not intended for mailing purposes because but
Speaker 1: again think about it, aside from self reporting, how do
Speaker 1: you figure out if a patient's if a patient has
Speaker 1: experienced and erection during the night, Because so, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess you could like have them come into a
Speaker 1: clinic overnight, right, right, Yeah, you could do some sort
Speaker 1: of observation, but you know, there are a couple of
Speaker 1: problems with that as costly you're having you're asking them
Speaker 1: to sleep somewhere else, or you're I guess you could
Speaker 1: say you're think about putting somebody in their room to
Speaker 1: watch them sleep. These are just not good solutions, and
Speaker 1: you're also disrupting their life. You're sort of disrupting the
Speaker 1: like then their natural sleep cycles potentially by doing this.
Speaker 1: So there have been a few different methods to figure
Speaker 1: out what's going on with the penis steering sleep. One
Speaker 1: MATHOD method that has been employed is ridges scan. So
Speaker 1: this is a battery powered instrument that places one loop
Speaker 1: around the base of the penis and the other at
Speaker 1: the tip, and these loops tighten every fifteen, two or
Speaker 1: thirty seconds. And the recording unit itself that is attached
Speaker 1: to these two loops that straps to the wast to
Speaker 1: the thigh, so it regularly tests to see how engorged
Speaker 1: and rigid the member is throughout the night. Sounds cumbersome.
Speaker 1: I don't want to, you know, cast maybe that's a
Speaker 1: very useful device. Yeah, I looked at a picture of it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't look that bad. It doesn't if
Speaker 1: it sounds torturous, it does not look torturous. The other
Speaker 1: method is this popular as the penal plethysmic graph. This
Speaker 1: is a pulse volume recorder wired to a penile cuff
Speaker 1: that measures blood flow. I know I've heard about things
Speaker 1: like this being used in studies that are trying to
Speaker 1: detect physiological signs of sexual arousal right, I believe this
Speaker 1: is This one, for instance, comes up in silence of
Speaker 1: the lambs. I believe it's like something that they would
Speaker 1: put on someone and show them films of horrible things
Speaker 1: and see if they're sexually aroused by them. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: these methods, these two methods we discussed are are pretty accurate,
Speaker 1: uh and and are generally considered more accurate I understand
Speaker 1: than the stamps method. But back in the researchers in
Speaker 1: question uh presented the Stamp method uh quote. A Stamp
Speaker 1: technique was developed to detect complete nocturnal erections for the
Speaker 1: evaluation of impotence. The test correctly detected complete nocturnal erections
Speaker 1: in twenty two potent men and absence of complete nocturnal
Speaker 1: erections in eleven impotent men. This is a simple, useful
Speaker 1: screening test for organic impotence. So the idea here is
Speaker 1: fairly simple. You take a ring of postage stamps, so
Speaker 1: they haven't been separated, and you know they have the
Speaker 1: perforated edges, you know, so they pop apart easily. So
Speaker 1: you take this this ring of stamps and you fix
Speaker 1: them around the penis uh in its non erect uh
Speaker 1: nin gorged state, and then the individual goes to sleep.
Speaker 1: The subject goes to sleep. In the next morning, they
Speaker 1: check for breakage if the stamps, If that ring of
Speaker 1: stamps has broken, and again it should ideally break easily
Speaker 1: because of the perforations uh, this will be a sign
Speaker 1: that an erection has occurred. And this has some key advantages. Right,
Speaker 1: it's a low cost. Just the cost of postage. Basically,
Speaker 1: the cost of postage goes way up. Right, it's gonna
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a regional determined and determined they're also
Speaker 1: you know, don't don't buy rare stamps just by the
Speaker 1: forever stamps. I guess somebody doing it with like the
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars of stamp collector stamps. Yeah, exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't use this, but yeah, it's low cost. You can
Speaker 1: and also can be self administered with ease. You don't
Speaker 1: even you don't even necessarily have to have a doctor
Speaker 1: involved there, right, so that's part of the appeal. Doesn't
Speaker 1: sound too dangerous, No, yeah, it's going to break apart
Speaker 1: the stamps is so you don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: like constriction so much. The only real risk, of course,
Speaker 1: is accidentally mailing the penis. But that's a joke. Now.
Speaker 1: Some studies have backed up the effectiveness of this particular method.
Speaker 1: Paper titled Nocturnal penal too essence Monitoring with stamps in
Speaker 1: Impotent Diabetics found that quote, the diagnostic value of this
Speaker 1: method is nearly the same as that of MPT recording
Speaker 1: with a strain gauge, and that's from diabetics research and
Speaker 1: clinical practice. However, the problem with the stamp method is
Speaker 1: that there's always the chance that shifting around in one
Speaker 1: sleep will simply tear the perforated edges. There's a strip
Speaker 1: of tear the stamps without an erection taking place at all,
Speaker 1: and that would give you a false positive, a type
Speaker 1: one error, right, and then it's yeah, But then the
Speaker 1: problem there is is if you're trying to treat some
Speaker 1: sort of uh um, you know, impotent scenario, then you
Speaker 1: start treating as if it's psychological when it's really a
Speaker 1: physiological ailment, So that's the risk. So why is this important, Well,
Speaker 1: because erectile dysfunction is legitimate medical concern, and it's funny
Speaker 1: because it involves a penis in mourning wood, and these
Speaker 1: are inherently funny tens and stamps like stamps and penis. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's really I mean, in retrospect, it's kind of surprising
Speaker 1: it took the ignal Bells this long to honor these researchers. Well, Robert,
Speaker 1: that one made me laugh and even sort of a
Speaker 1: little bit made me think. It's good to think about.
Speaker 1: You know, what are the what are the maybe not
Speaker 1: as perfectly effective, but cost effective, safe things people can
Speaker 1: do to substitute for expensive medical tests. Obviously, sometimes you're
Speaker 1: going to value accuracy over you know, cost effectiveness and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. But with with some of these things,
Speaker 1: you know, it seems like it's worth doing a cheap
Speaker 1: test before you spring for the expensive test. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: makes sense to me. I should add that I also
Speaker 1: saw a criticism of the stamp test, being that we're
Speaker 1: entering an age where there people have decreased access to
Speaker 1: traditional stamps, and so that could be a potential problem.
Speaker 1: The doctor says you need to get some stamps for
Speaker 1: your penis. And then your response is what are stamps?
Speaker 1: Couldn't the urologist to just have medical stamps? Like they
Speaker 1: could have stamps that you value at all? Or I
Speaker 1: guess it probably probably be over the counter. Would they
Speaker 1: need to keep that behind the counter yet? But then
Speaker 1: what about the embarrassment when you accidentally try and mail
Speaker 1: um something? You start mailing your Christmas cards and the
Speaker 1: medical stamps my medical penis stamps? Do they say penis
Speaker 1: stamps on them? Like? That's totally warning? Medical penis stamp,
Speaker 1: no postage value? Oh, I think we need to go
Speaker 1: to another one. Okay, let's move on. Okay, I want
Speaker 1: to do one that we can look at pretty quick.
Speaker 1: Uh quick question, Robert, do you read the user manual
Speaker 1: when you buy a thing and it comes with a manual?
Speaker 1: I guess it depends on the thing. It also depends
Speaker 1: on how excited about the thing I am, versus like
Speaker 1: how much just pure drudgery is the thing? Does being
Speaker 1: excited to make you more or less likely to read
Speaker 1: the manual? If I'm more excited, then I'll probably be
Speaker 1: more likely to read than the manual because I want
Speaker 1: to know how it works. It's like, it's the thing's
Speaker 1: functionality is uh, you know, I want to be it
Speaker 1: to be a part of me. Where if it's something
Speaker 1: like a refrigerator, like I know how refrigerator works, and
Speaker 1: I really I don't want any more details. They just
Speaker 1: wanted to work, that's all I ask. Do you read
Speaker 1: the owner's manual when you get a new car, like
Speaker 1: Arnold Schwartzeningger and Twins. Did he do that? Yeah, he's like, Uh.
Speaker 1: There's a scene where they're riding around in a car
Speaker 1: and Arnold Schwarzenegger is reading through some book and he's
Speaker 1: and Danny de Vito asked him what he's doing, and
Speaker 1: he's like, I'm learning to drive. Um, it's been a
Speaker 1: long time since I've seen that. I might not be
Speaker 1: remembering correctly, but I think that's pretty dead on. Uh No,
Speaker 1: A lot of times I don't read the manual either.
Speaker 1: I especially love it when there are manuals for things
Speaker 1: like the refrigerator that you just don't need a manual for.
Speaker 1: It's like, if you don't automatically know how to use
Speaker 1: this thing, you're in trouble, right, And I'm not authorized
Speaker 1: to fix most things, and and it is. If it
Speaker 1: is something I can fix, then yes, maybe I'll pop
Speaker 1: up in the manual if I know where the manual is.
Speaker 1: User manuals are sometimes worth looking at just to see
Speaker 1: if there's any hilarious bad writing or bad translation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that can be fun, you know. Actually, I will take
Speaker 1: one thing back. One item that I did read the
Speaker 1: entire user manual for was the insta. Oh I've got
Speaker 1: one of those. That's great free plug. They did not
Speaker 1: pay us for this. Yeah, I love it. It helps me.
Speaker 1: It's as you mostly use it as like a rice
Speaker 1: and bean cooker, but it was one of these devices.
Speaker 1: When I got it, I was like, all right, I
Speaker 1: have no idea how this works. I need to know
Speaker 1: how this works. I guess I'm gonna read the user
Speaker 1: manual and uh, and then I was good to go.
Speaker 1: I know you all don't often meet at home, but
Speaker 1: if you're ever making like a like a you know,
Speaker 1: tough pork or beef dish or something like that is
Speaker 1: just fantastic heart, human heart that you need to tenderize.
Speaker 1: Real good. It's it's great for that. It's really good
Speaker 1: for lentil dishes. It's the lentils, real nice and like
Speaker 1: they keep their their texture and and shape, but they
Speaker 1: get tender. It's great. Yeah, yeah, we've definitely used it
Speaker 1: on some lentils. Okay, okay, but we're getting distracted. Just
Speaker 1: gushion about our pots. The Literature Prize of the lfls
Speaker 1: IS was given to THEA. Blackler, Raphael Gomez, Vestna Popovic,
Speaker 1: and m Helen Thompson quote for documenting that most people
Speaker 1: who use complicated products do not read the instruction manual.
Speaker 1: And this was a paper called Life's Too Short to
Speaker 1: r t f M. I think that's read the field manual,
Speaker 1: that not another F modifier. How users relate to documentation
Speaker 1: and excess features in consumer products. So this study investigated
Speaker 1: people's relationship with two aspects of consumer products, number of
Speaker 1: features in an interface and product documentation the manual. So
Speaker 1: the authors did two sets of studies to look at
Speaker 1: the manuals and the excess features in common household products
Speaker 1: and they're right quote. The quantitative set was a series
Speaker 1: of questionnaires administered to a hundred and seventy people over
Speaker 1: seven years. The qualitative set consisted of two six month
Speaker 1: longitudinal studies based on diaries and interviews, with a total
Speaker 1: of fifteen participants, and here's what they found. First of all,
Speaker 1: most people don't read the manual, and most people do
Speaker 1: not use all the features on the products they have.
Speaker 1: Quote people claim to read the manual and use all
Speaker 1: of the features of many common domestic and personal products
Speaker 1: only twenty percent of the time. I have to add
Speaker 1: that clearly. One of the reasons that this study was
Speaker 1: was honored is that it it does something that the
Speaker 1: ignoble prizes frequently like it it it points out something
Speaker 1: that is blatantly obvious and backs it up with scientific rigor.
Speaker 1: You know, I actually like studies like that. People react
Speaker 1: on social media when there's like a study that shows
Speaker 1: to wrecked evidence of something that should seem obvious, and
Speaker 1: then people respond like, oh, why do you have to
Speaker 1: do a study on that that's obvious? No, it's I
Speaker 1: mean all the time we have beliefs about things that
Speaker 1: seem obvious, but they're in fact not true. Tons of
Speaker 1: things that you think are obvious are false. And when
Speaker 1: a study shows you that something you think is obvious
Speaker 1: is actually backed up by evidence, that's valuable information. So anyway,
Speaker 1: rant end on that. But so, but this this one
Speaker 1: might be less less life and death than some of
Speaker 1: these things that people think are obvious. But I do
Speaker 1: think it's kind of interesting about a relationship with our products. Okay,
Speaker 1: so here's another question. Most people don't read the manual
Speaker 1: and don't use all of the features on complicated products.
Speaker 1: But who actually does read the manual? Who's more and
Speaker 1: less likely in terms of like the demographics. Turns out
Speaker 1: women are less likely than men to read the manual
Speaker 1: and use all the features. Uh. Young people are less
Speaker 1: likely than middle aged and older people to read the
Speaker 1: manual and use all the features, and more educated people
Speaker 1: are less likely to read the manual. Ok So, I
Speaker 1: don't know if these If these groups actually compound on
Speaker 1: top of each other, I'm not sure whether that's the case,
Speaker 1: but if they do, you would say, statistically, the person
Speaker 1: most likely to read the manual is like a lower education,
Speaker 1: older male, and statistically the person least likely to read
Speaker 1: the manual is a higher education, younger woman. Also, people
Speaker 1: do not like excess features on a product interface. Uh So,
Speaker 1: excess features, they say, quote, are associated with negative affect,
Speaker 1: whereas core features are associated with positive affect. Again, this
Speaker 1: might be kind of obvious, but people don't really like
Speaker 1: all the bells and whistles. They like a product to
Speaker 1: be good at the main thing it's supposed to do.
Speaker 1: So I wonder how most people feel about those food
Speaker 1: specific buttons on microwaves. Like those things well whatever the
Speaker 1: other The popcorn is the only one I've ever attempted
Speaker 1: to use, and I usually and I have only used
Speaker 1: it like once, and I burned popcorn. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: just I just do my own thing. I could not
Speaker 1: tell you what the those buttons on my microwave say,
Speaker 1: Like there could be one that says human flesh, and
Speaker 1: there could be another one that says, like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: a bucket full of lollipops, and I wouldn't know. I
Speaker 1: didn't looked at them. I didn't figure out how the
Speaker 1: power percentage on my microwave worked until like the last
Speaker 1: year or two. Yeah, but then I started noticing, oh wait,
Speaker 1: this actually, this particular microwave dish requires that I use power.
Speaker 1: How do I do that? And then I have to
Speaker 1: figure it out. But I never looked at the manual.
Speaker 1: I stuck to my guns on that one. So you
Speaker 1: actually follow instructions on microwavable meals. You don't just press
Speaker 1: six six six like a lot of people do. I
Speaker 1: didn't know if people did that, and some sometimes people
Speaker 1: do that. I mean, that's as solid, solid choice, good number,
Speaker 1: steady tradition in my family. Um No, I think it
Speaker 1: usually comes out better if you follow the instructions. That's
Speaker 1: kind of like reading the manual. Also, people hate having
Speaker 1: to consult the manual to figure out how to use something.
Speaker 1: Quote reading of manuals appears to cause annoyance and negative
Speaker 1: emotional experiences unquote. On average, people just want their products
Speaker 1: to be self explanatory. They do not want to have
Speaker 1: to read all that stuff and deal with a bunch
Speaker 1: of extra features and settings. They want stuff to be
Speaker 1: easy and intuitive, and they don't want to read manuals.
Speaker 1: So I wonder what companies should learn from this, Like
Speaker 1: is there something Is there a lesson here for the
Speaker 1: creation of manuals or the or the creation of of
Speaker 1: alternative materials regarding the use of their products. That's a
Speaker 1: good question. Um. I mean, generally, I think it should
Speaker 1: be the case that if it's possible for you to
Speaker 1: make an interface a product interface self evident, like it
Speaker 1: should just be obvious how the product works and how
Speaker 1: you're supposed to use it. You should do that. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously you can't always do that. They're gonna be lots
Speaker 1: of kinds of features of products that are more complicated.
Speaker 1: They can't just be totally obvious on the interface. Uh So,
Speaker 1: in that case, I don't know what you're supposed to do.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're just going to have people being frustrated. Maybe
Speaker 1: the idea is that all products should contain sort of
Speaker 1: to whatever extint possible kind of walk through features, right
Speaker 1: like they don't. You don't have to go look at
Speaker 1: the manual. It just asks you what you want to
Speaker 1: do and helps you do it. I walk through, but
Speaker 1: who wants to do that? No, that's like, that's really
Speaker 1: annoying to I don't want to do like a robotic
Speaker 1: walk through with my new microwave. I just want to
Speaker 1: use it when I have to write, Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know what to do. But do you want to burn popcorn?
Speaker 1: We're doing it either way exactly. All right, Well, on
Speaker 1: that note, let's move on to our next award winning study.
Speaker 1: Let's let's talk peace. Okay. This is theeen Ignoble Peace
Speaker 1: Prize was awarded to Francisco Alonso, Christina Esteban, Andrea Serge
Speaker 1: Maria Luisa Balistar, him Ace San Martin, Constanza Cataloud, Beatriz
Speaker 1: Alama are Oh and Beatriz Lamar for measuring the frequency, motivation,
Speaker 1: and effects of shouting and cursing while driving an automot
Speaker 1: UH and there are a couple of references here, one
Speaker 1: of the Journal of Sociology and Anthropology from UH. Francisco
Speaker 1: Alonso attended the ceremony, but the author's right that quote.
Speaker 1: Evidence has shown that drivers who usually express aggressive behaviors
Speaker 1: more frequently tend at the same time to have higher
Speaker 1: rates of road crashes or traffic incidents. And so the
Speaker 1: situations in which aggressive behaviors arise tend to be very common,
Speaker 1: meaning that driver aggression is potentially a major traffic safety issue.
Speaker 1: And the authors administered a number of survey questions to
Speaker 1: Spanish drivers over the age of fourteen to figure out
Speaker 1: their perceptions and attitudes about aggressive driving behaviors like shouting
Speaker 1: and insulting behind the wheel. And so I found a
Speaker 1: long form version of this. That I don't know is
Speaker 1: that it seems like the long form version I found
Speaker 1: is not the study itself, but is a summary that
Speaker 1: was published after the prize was awarded. Because it's got
Speaker 1: some really funny uh statements in the conclusions, such as,
Speaker 1: let us also remember that people who use cars to
Speaker 1: make love as well, which is clearly better than eventually
Speaker 1: using them to get get us killed. Uh. And also,
Speaker 1: as it happens with these prizes, we need to support
Speaker 1: laughters because they are not compatible with certain negative emotional states,
Speaker 1: and for sure they will lead us to peace. Well,
Speaker 1: that's a nice sentiment. Just to look at the data
Speaker 1: real quickly that they come up with. They say that
Speaker 1: about twenty six point four percent of people of drivers
Speaker 1: admit that they sometimes insult other drivers or shout while
Speaker 1: driving forty one point six percent, So they never do it.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I almost never do it, but sometimes
Speaker 1: they really get to you. It's a real struggle for me,
Speaker 1: especially when I'm in the car driving the boy around.
Speaker 1: And uh, I'm really good at watching my language the
Speaker 1: rest of the time, I think, but when him in
Speaker 1: the car, it's a little harder. Luckily he mishears me.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, um, for a while he was convinced. Hopefully
Speaker 1: he's still convinced that I sometimes refer to other drivers
Speaker 1: as funky's uh, and I should really try to do
Speaker 1: that instead of what I am saying that that's a
Speaker 1: good one. Funkies, you know it's just funky driving. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh quick. Look also at the data about a reasons
Speaker 1: people self reported to initiate some shouting or insulting other drivers.
Speaker 1: Top one with twenty two point five percent was reaction
Speaker 1: to breaking a rule, So when somebody else breaks a road,
Speaker 1: that's when you will shake my finger at them. Yes.
Speaker 1: Also next at twenty one four percent, reaction to dangerous maneuvers,
Speaker 1: so when other people behave recklessly. Uh. Then below that
Speaker 1: at thirteen point six percent, the other driver puts me
Speaker 1: in danger. Also at thirteen point six percent, just stress,
Speaker 1: you know, stress. But that's that's people being self conscious
Speaker 1: right there, they're admitting, yes, stress probably just makes me
Speaker 1: do it. Other reasons are below that. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: finally one point three percent of people say they do
Speaker 1: it because quote everybody does it. Now something that's not
Speaker 1: reflecting this study. I just want to throw in. I
Speaker 1: recently watched The ice Cream Manes horror film starring Clint Howard,
Speaker 1: and Clint Howard apparently drove around yelling in his car
Speaker 1: in order to get his voice nice and raspy for
Speaker 1: the role so it's possible that that person you think
Speaker 1: is driving angry, it's just Clint Howard preparing for a
Speaker 1: leading role method acting. Yeah, all right, we need to
Speaker 1: take a quick break, but we will be right back
Speaker 1: with more ignobles. Thank alright, we're back. Well, Robert, is
Speaker 1: it time for the Economics Prize? It is, which you know,
Speaker 1: the Economics Prize. It might not sound exciting, but this
Speaker 1: is a pretty good one. It's often one of the
Speaker 1: funniest ones. Yeah, because I think it's because it plays
Speaker 1: well with humor. Because you think Economics Prize, you think, uh,
Speaker 1: something dry and stuffy and uh And in most cases
Speaker 1: they'll find something that has an instant does that as
Speaker 1: in this case, the pozzas comes in the form of
Speaker 1: voodoo dolls. Nice. Uh so the uh, the the particular
Speaker 1: paper here this honored is titled writing a wrong Retaliation
Speaker 1: on a Voodoo Doll symbolizing an abusive supervisor Restores Justice
Speaker 1: And this was by Laying at All published in the
Speaker 1: Leadership Quarterly February. Do you think this study was funded
Speaker 1: by big voodoo? No, and I'll get to that in
Speaker 1: a minute. Really, really that there's virtually no voodoo in
Speaker 1: any of this, there's a sort of a metaphorical voodoo doll.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, there. There's no Afro American religion or folklore
Speaker 1: in this particular study at all, but it does a
Speaker 1: center around a reality that a lot of us have
Speaker 1: been forced to face over the years, unfortunately, and that
Speaker 1: is abusive supervisor figures. Terrible bosses, mean bosses, They exist,
Speaker 1: they do. I've been I've been lucky. I haven't had
Speaker 1: an abusive boss at least in a long time, but
Speaker 1: I I did have one briefly at one point. I
Speaker 1: remember it being pretty horrible to work under them. What
Speaker 1: what is counting as an abusive supervisor here? Is this
Speaker 1: like like really egregious abuses or just like being a jerk? Well,
Speaker 1: it can cover a wide variety of things. Uh. It
Speaker 1: could be punching holes in walls. It could be Um,
Speaker 1: it could be just yelling at at subordinates that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Their whole host of behaviors that fall under
Speaker 1: this umbrella. Uh. And whether you're dealing with big, big
Speaker 1: ones or supposedly little ones, I mean, it all can
Speaker 1: add up. It can all make make ones a work
Speaker 1: life rather dismal. And then what are you gonna do? Right?
Speaker 1: Hopefully you're gonna there's gonna be a system in place
Speaker 1: like via HR to report such individuals. But as the
Speaker 1: authors of this twenty team paper point out, there may
Speaker 1: be attempt at temptation for reprisal in other words, to
Speaker 1: get revenge in some sense at the boss or superior
Speaker 1: that is, uh, that is being horrible, but sort of
Speaker 1: by the dynamics of the workplace, you can't really do that, right,
Speaker 1: at least not in any kind of legitimate way, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, And that's something that they point out time
Speaker 1: and time again, like they're they're not saying that reprisals
Speaker 1: are good. Reprisals are bad. Reprisals only just add more
Speaker 1: chaos to the workplace environment and cost the company money, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But here's one of the things they had to say
Speaker 1: in the study quote, when a subordinate receives abusive treatment
Speaker 1: from a supervisor, a natural response is to retaliate against
Speaker 1: the supervisor. Although retaliation is dysfunctional and should be discouraged,
Speaker 1: we examine the potential functional role retaliation plays in terms
Speaker 1: of alleviating the negative consequences of abusive supervision or subordinate
Speaker 1: justice perceptions. So, yeah, basically, the idea is, if you're
Speaker 1: pushed down by a terrible boss, there is going to
Speaker 1: be this natural incline, a shin to push back in
Speaker 1: some way. Right, So is there some way you can
Speaker 1: do that without making things worse for yourself and others? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Because I think a lot of times it is about that,
Speaker 1: Like what would feel good right now? Like nothing would
Speaker 1: feel better than to destroy the boss's bobble head? You know.
Speaker 1: But as fun as it might look on the the
Speaker 1: office or some other television show or film, uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's not really necessarily a good move in the long run. Still,
Speaker 1: aggression against such supervisors is common as high as seventy
Speaker 1: six according to a sited study in this paper, and
Speaker 1: this is seemingly on par with aggressions towards co workers
Speaker 1: as well, if not more prevalent. The authors point out
Speaker 1: that the prevalence of retaliation suggests that retaliation may play
Speaker 1: functional role in dealing with abuse, and there are various
Speaker 1: theories as to why an adaptive response a way of
Speaker 1: rebalancing the relationship, etcetera. So it could be I mean,
Speaker 1: not to put thoughts in everyone's head, I guess on
Speaker 1: this matter, but it could be as simple as okay
Speaker 1: an otherwise okay, boss like raises their voice at you.
Speaker 1: You feel a little hurt. Their bubble head takes a
Speaker 1: little dive off the side of their table. You can
Speaker 1: universe is restored, you know, because you're like, all right,
Speaker 1: you yelled at me and I didn't really like that.
Speaker 1: But the bubble head is dead now and you could
Speaker 1: see that. It's like, okay, things are equal. How are
Speaker 1: they really equal? Well, that depends on all the other
Speaker 1: aspects of the the the office dynamics. So the authors
Speaker 1: here they lay out a functional theory of retaliation, whereby
Speaker 1: engaging in retaliation reaffirms one sense of justice and supervisor
Speaker 1: abuse is the external stressor that violates one's expectations of
Speaker 1: fair treatment. So to test this out, they made use
Speaker 1: of an online voodoo doll representing an abuse of supervisor
Speaker 1: and specifically in the wording of the paper. Uh, they
Speaker 1: use what they would call a voodoo doll task or
Speaker 1: vd T paradigm to manipulate retaliation. Get love that sterile terminology. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: so again, there's nothing actually related to any kind of folklore,
Speaker 1: I or religious practice here, So it's not really a ritual.
Speaker 1: It's more just like the concept of enacting violence on
Speaker 1: some kind of effigy, right, yeah, such as you know
Speaker 1: very much the bubblehead in question. So the paper argues
Speaker 1: that retaliation might be an important way in which we
Speaker 1: deal with supervisor aggression, even though it should be discouraged
Speaker 1: and only creates more problems. Quote. In particular, we have
Speaker 1: proposed and found that subordinate retaliation can directly influence subordinate
Speaker 1: justice perceptions. These findings suggest that retaliation not only benefits
Speaker 1: individual victims, but may also benefit the organization as a whole,
Speaker 1: given that justice perception is important for employee performance and
Speaker 1: well being. So this is kind of like having the
Speaker 1: giving employees the illusion of some kind of retaliation, like
Speaker 1: that they haven't actually done anything to the boss, but
Speaker 1: if they just pretend they're retaliating, that that makes the
Speaker 1: company a little more lubricated of things. Okay, they're not saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you need to have a dunking booth every year, and
Speaker 1: that's the only way you're gonna restore balance of your company.
Speaker 1: They say they take home is that is not that
Speaker 1: companies should encourage retaliation, but they should include instead foster
Speaker 1: quote subordinate justice perception. And one example of this is
Speaker 1: having a zero tolerance policy against various abusive behaviors. They
Speaker 1: also wonder if companies should rethink what is referred to
Speaker 1: as deviant subordinate behavior. This would be like breaking the
Speaker 1: bubble head because the individuals here, the the the subordinates
Speaker 1: that are acting out. They might be attempting to resolve
Speaker 1: perceived injustices, and perhaps they really should be disciplined for
Speaker 1: what they're doing, but perhaps it also points to other
Speaker 1: issues in the workplace that have yet to be resolved.
Speaker 1: So it's like you fire the guy for breaking the bubblehead,
Speaker 1: or you make the guy who broke the bubblehead, you know,
Speaker 1: take a some sort of anger management towards toys class. Uh,
Speaker 1: but then you still have whatever the existing caustic dynamic
Speaker 1: happened to be between the boss and the employees. What
Speaker 1: do you do about that? Like that it remains unchecked.
Speaker 1: So they're saying this, this kind of behavior could just
Speaker 1: be a you know, a canary in the coal mine,
Speaker 1: I guess. So, then, was the use of the the
Speaker 1: abuse of the effigy task was so? Was that actually
Speaker 1: just to reveal some underlying attitudes or they actually suggesting
Speaker 1: something like that is useful? I think they just used
Speaker 1: it to reveal in this case, they're not saying, like,
Speaker 1: do a voodoo doll task. You know that the voodoo
Speaker 1: doll task is merely a part of the experiment and
Speaker 1: part of any kind of solution that they are presenting.
Speaker 1: So yeah, again, putting voodoo in the title of the paper,
Speaker 1: it's it's maybe selling the voodoo elements a little too strong. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think often to refer to like any process
Speaker 1: by which like the mechanics of which are unclear. I
Speaker 1: mean I think about like the phrase like voodoo economics
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. I mean, it would be funny
Speaker 1: to sub in any other name of any other religion.
Speaker 1: They're like calling it Christian economics or uh or Hindu
Speaker 1: economics or something. It wouldn't make much sense. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think maybe maybe people should try to retire those
Speaker 1: uses of the word voodoo. It's a system of beliefs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know that this would be a great excuse to
Speaker 1: come back at some point in the future and do
Speaker 1: a show on voodoo because we could discuss what voodoo is,
Speaker 1: slash was, how it has been represented in our culture,
Speaker 1: and how uh the terminology has been utilizable in this
Speaker 1: case in scientific studies, but elsewhere as well. Okay, time
Speaker 1: to turn to the Anthropology Prize, very different kind of subject.
Speaker 1: This is going to deal with the concepts of learning
Speaker 1: and imitation and uh and social mimicry. So you've heard
Speaker 1: the expression obviously, monkey see monkey do uh. The funny
Speaker 1: thing is that this is almost always applied to human
Speaker 1: children rather monkeys. You know, people never say that about
Speaker 1: a monkey. They say that about a four year old,
Speaker 1: and as such, it tends to highlight the very strong
Speaker 1: imitative tendencies of human children. You ever notice how like
Speaker 1: a child will seem to spontaneously, almost unconsciously, mimic actions
Speaker 1: that they see, Like they watch something on TV or
Speaker 1: an adult doing something, and you'll see the child doing
Speaker 1: the same thing with their hands that the adult is doing,
Speaker 1: or the person on TV is doing, or something without
Speaker 1: even seeming to realize it. Oh yeah, Like I need
Speaker 1: the countless examples from my home child's life. But I
Speaker 1: specifically remember like watching him dance while watching Frozen when
Speaker 1: he was like super little, Like he doesn't even remember this,
Speaker 1: but during the dance scenes he would move a little
Speaker 1: bit while watching That's funny, I mean I actually have
Speaker 1: very strong specific memories about this from when I was
Speaker 1: a little kid, like of suddenly becoming embarrassed because I
Speaker 1: realized I was spontaneously unconsciously imitating an action I had
Speaker 1: just seen an adult do. For example, I remember being
Speaker 1: very young and I was like watching a dude in
Speaker 1: my neighborhood using a jackhammer to tear up a concrete
Speaker 1: porch on the side of a house. And I realized
Speaker 1: I was like spontaneously pretending to use a jackhammer and
Speaker 1: making sounds with my mouth. And I was suddenly realized this,
Speaker 1: and I was like super embarrassed. But we do this
Speaker 1: for some reason. Obviously why One obvious answer is that
Speaker 1: imitation is an instinct related to what the clear thing
Speaker 1: learning right? Right, You see something, you sort of do
Speaker 1: it yourself. You you imitate, and through imitation you learned right.
Speaker 1: And so the idea here is that it's adaptive to
Speaker 1: have an imitation instinct because through this you can have
Speaker 1: transgenerational transfer of of ideas and behaviors. For example, you
Speaker 1: watch the skilled adult do something throw a rock or
Speaker 1: make a hand axe, and you imitate their movements as
Speaker 1: a way of learning how to do the thing yourself.
Speaker 1: But there appears to be another biological function of imitation,
Speaker 1: which is that it plays a social communicative role. It
Speaker 1: prolongs pro social interactions and generally promotes positive social relationships.
Speaker 1: And this latter role has been investigated in humans, but
Speaker 1: it's sort of under explored or sometimes even thought to
Speaker 1: be absent in non human primates like chimpanzees. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: clear evidence of other other primates like chimpanzees, say, imitating
Speaker 1: behaviors of each other and of humans, especially in order
Speaker 1: to clearly learn how to do something. But what would
Speaker 1: be the evidence that there's this social communicative role in
Speaker 1: humans that's not necessarily there in chimpanzees. Well, one is
Speaker 1: this interesting fact that human children, but not apes, tend
Speaker 1: to what's called over imitate. So here here's an example
Speaker 1: I want to give you. If an adult is demonstrating
Speaker 1: the physical actions required to accomplish a goal, human chill
Speaker 1: aldren will usually copy directly all of the adults actions,
Speaker 1: even if they're clearly irrelevant to achieve the goal. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: chimpanzees will tend to ignore the irrelevant actions and figure
Speaker 1: out what's the important part to get the desired goal.
Speaker 1: So an example would be an adult picks up a
Speaker 1: colored block and then uses it to flip a switch
Speaker 1: on a box, and then the box opens to reveal
Speaker 1: a toy. Human children, especially starting around two years old,
Speaker 1: will copy this exactly. They'll pick up the colored block
Speaker 1: and use it to flip the switch to get the toy,
Speaker 1: whereas the apes will just skip the block and they'll
Speaker 1: just flip the switch with their hands and get the toy.
Speaker 1: Another version I've heard is like, um, you have a
Speaker 1: food item or a toy or something inside a box,
Speaker 1: and you have an adult go through these elaborate rituals
Speaker 1: with their hands before they open the doors of the
Speaker 1: box and get the thing out. Apparently, apes and human
Speaker 1: children will tend to copy all of the actions if
Speaker 1: the boxes ache, but if the box is clear and
Speaker 1: you can see the item inside, the human children will
Speaker 1: still copy all of the actions, but the apes will
Speaker 1: just reach in and get it. So the tay with
Speaker 1: the real Tay come here would seem to be do
Speaker 1: not bring a chimpanzee to communion, right, because that's not
Speaker 1: going to follow any of the more ritual aspects of
Speaker 1: the thing. It's just gonna go for the juice and bread. Well,
Speaker 1: this is clear because this shows that even the presence
Speaker 1: of rituals seems to show that there's some role of
Speaker 1: imitation in human culture that goes beyond just like learning
Speaker 1: useful skills that achieve goals. There's some type of imitation
Speaker 1: that happens between humans that seems to be purely social,
Speaker 1: and it's hypothesized by some that humans are actually better
Speaker 1: learners than apes in part because of this slavish copying
Speaker 1: of apparently pointless actions. You can imagine how this might
Speaker 1: help in like learning to perform actions that don't immediately
Speaker 1: result in a goal or reward. Right, Mimicking behaviors with
Speaker 1: no obvious benefit also helps you learn more complex multi
Speaker 1: step skills. That's true. Plus I also can't help but
Speaker 1: think of steps in performing tasks where the the importance
Speaker 1: of some of those steps might be lost on on
Speaker 1: a novice exactly, but later I realize, oh, that's really
Speaker 1: essential if I should wear a radiation suit well while
Speaker 1: messing around with these these rods. Yes, So the question
Speaker 1: is why do human children copy more perfectly and more pointlessly,
Speaker 1: where whereas apes don't to the same extent, And one
Speaker 1: potential answer is that the human copying appears to be
Speaker 1: for more than just learning how to achieve goals. It's
Speaker 1: also playing this social communicative role where the imitation itself
Speaker 1: is useful not just for achieving mechanical goals, but for
Speaker 1: things like improving relationships between people. And this could be
Speaker 1: seen somewhat parallel to Robert something I know you've read
Speaker 1: about before, the unconscious process of mirroring in human psychology
Speaker 1: and behavior. If you if you've never observed this, just
Speaker 1: do a quick experiment. Watch two co workers separately, and
Speaker 1: then watch them once they begin a conversation with each other.
Speaker 1: There's a very good chance that when they start talking
Speaker 1: to each other, you might be able to notice them
Speaker 1: beginning to show similar posture and nonverbal behaviors like gesturing,
Speaker 1: without them seeming to notice that they're doing it. And
Speaker 1: this is an unconscious form of imitation known as mirroring.
Speaker 1: It appears to be a pro social adaptation that builds
Speaker 1: feelings of closeness and rapport between people, and research shows
Speaker 1: that when other people mirror your actions, you have increased
Speaker 1: positive feelings. You trust them more, you feel closer to them,
Speaker 1: You're more likely to believe they share your attitudes and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. But we like to. We like to
Speaker 1: mirror each other's behaviors because we like to be mirrored.
Speaker 1: It makes us feel good. Yeah, this is always something
Speaker 1: very interesting to observe when we we actually stop to
Speaker 1: observe it, because there's like it's happening at a linguistic level.
Speaker 1: It's happening in the way we speak with our hands,
Speaker 1: and now the under person may speak with their hands
Speaker 1: as well. Um, And of course we're not running through
Speaker 1: all of this before we have a conversation. We're not saying, hey, uh,
Speaker 1: if do you wanna how much do you want to
Speaker 1: use your hands during this conversation. I'm thinking about keeping
Speaker 1: it like nd body level, but I could go wider. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's generally entirely unconscious. And the funny thing is,
Speaker 1: I mean we like it when it's unconscious. But like
Speaker 1: if you pointed it out and people were doing it consciously,
Speaker 1: it would seems psychopathic, right, You would think like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I'm being manipulated. I hate this if you
Speaker 1: thought the person was consciously doing it. But nevertheless, we
Speaker 1: do have all of this clearly conscious imitation going on
Speaker 1: with with human children and with nonhuman primates, with the
Speaker 1: distinctions we've talked about before, but this study that won
Speaker 1: the Ignoble this year, the Ignoble Anthropology Price focused on
Speaker 1: testing for evidence of social communicative imitation in non human
Speaker 1: primates in chimpanzees. So it's taking issue with that previous
Speaker 1: consensus that they're is no social communicative imitation and non
Speaker 1: human primates. That for the non human primates, it's just basic,
Speaker 1: you know, mechanical learning imitation. And so the prize was
Speaker 1: given to Thomas Person, Gabrielle, Elina South south Quick, Elaine Madison,
Speaker 1: Oh sorry, and Elaine Madison for quote collecting evidence in
Speaker 1: a zoo that chimpanzees imitate humans about as often and
Speaker 1: about as well as humans imitate chimpanzees. This was published
Speaker 1: in the journal Primates in the year so earlier this year,
Speaker 1: and so basically what happened is you had these researchers
Speaker 1: from Lunda University in Sweden and they studied spontaneous interactions
Speaker 1: between chimpanzees and human visitors at the Furivic Zoo in Sweden,
Speaker 1: and what they found was interesting. They found that humans
Speaker 1: in chimpanzees spontaneously imitated each other at roughly the same
Speaker 1: rate going both ways, about ten percent of actions that
Speaker 1: each species performed were spontaneously imitated by the other, though
Speaker 1: human is overall showed what they quote called a higher
Speaker 1: imitative precision. So like the humans, imitations of the apes
Speaker 1: were more finely tuned, you might say, a little bit
Speaker 1: more accurate. But the apes imitated the humans at the
Speaker 1: same rate that the humans imitated the apes. Uh. There
Speaker 1: was also some congruity in the kinds of actions imitated
Speaker 1: by both humans and chimpanzees, who tended especially to copy
Speaker 1: things like clapping the hands, pressing lips against the window,
Speaker 1: like kissing the glass, knocking on the glass with the hand,
Speaker 1: and knocking on the head with the hand. I like
Speaker 1: that one. But one thing you might notice about these
Speaker 1: imitated actions is that they're common, which means they're familiar,
Speaker 1: which means they're not new to the animal, and they're
Speaker 1: not in service of any goal. They're not getting anything. Thus,
Speaker 1: the authors think that this is evidence of social communicative imitation,
Speaker 1: what's done for the purpose of bonding, building rapport, communicating intentions,
Speaker 1: and so forth, rather than for learning how to do
Speaker 1: new tas asks or accomplished goals. Another piece of evidence
Speaker 1: that the chimpanzees showed social communicative imitation is that interactions
Speaker 1: between humans and chimpanzees lasted longer on average when there
Speaker 1: was imitation than when there was none. So the authors
Speaker 1: conclude that there's more evidence than previously thought that apes
Speaker 1: also evolved imitation instincts for social and communication reasons, not
Speaker 1: just for learning. So maybe we could bring them to communion.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's a good Yeah, So I wonder, I mean,
Speaker 1: this obviously is intension with some previous findings, so you
Speaker 1: gotta wonder, like what what's causing the distinction there. Maybe
Speaker 1: chimpanzees are just more goal oriented. They know what they
Speaker 1: want and they tend to get it. I wonder how
Speaker 1: this play is into any of the Planet of the
Speaker 1: Apes movies, if this could be used to understand any
Speaker 1: character motivations there, well, like if Charlton Heston had only
Speaker 1: mirrored doctors as more, um, they might have gotten a
Speaker 1: long better all right, So there you have it. Ignoble Prizes.
Speaker 1: We've rolled through all the winners for this year in
Speaker 1: these two episodes, and again some of them we gave
Speaker 1: more attention than others, and pretty much any of them
Speaker 1: touch on a topic that we either have discussed in
Speaker 1: the pastor could easily discuss again in the future. So
Speaker 1: if you have particular thoughts on what episodes we should
Speaker 1: do in the future, just let us know. In the meantime.
Speaker 1: Heading over to Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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