Speaker 1: If you could get a kiss from your favorite celebrity,
Speaker 1: how long would you want to wait before getting it?
Speaker 1: Why do things seem less meaningful or joyful over time
Speaker 1: than they were at the beginning. And what does this
Speaker 1: have to do with Netflix releasing all the episodes of
Speaker 1: a new show at once so you can binge, Or
Speaker 1: why companies always feel compelled to come out with new
Speaker 1: and improved products every year, Or why French revolutionaries wanted
Speaker 1: to make a week equal to five days instead of seven.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Inner Cosmos with me David Eagleman. I'm a
Speaker 1: neuroscientist and author at Stanford and in these episodes we
Speaker 1: sail deeply into our three pound universe to understand why
Speaker 1: and how our lives look the way they do. Today's
Speaker 1: episode is about why familiar things can sometimes lose their
Speaker 1: sparkle and what we can do about that. So let's
Speaker 1: start with the fact that when your brain sees something
Speaker 1: new and then sees it again and again, it becomes
Speaker 1: more efficient at processing it and it burns less energy
Speaker 1: on it. So imagine the first time you hear a
Speaker 1: really cool new song playing at the coffee shop. You've
Speaker 1: never heard this before, and your brain is screaming with
Speaker 1: activity processing the tune and the rhythm and the lyrics.
Speaker 1: Why this is because in large part, your brain is
Speaker 1: a prediction machine, and this is a new song, and
Speaker 1: so it is unpredictable. You don't know where the lyrics
Speaker 1: are going or the tune and so on. The song
Speaker 1: is cool and interesting and it holds your attention and
Speaker 1: you can't wait to hear it again. So you jump
Speaker 1: on your cell phone and figure out the name, and
Speaker 1: you play the song from the beginning, and you love it.
Speaker 1: Now you listen again. Okay, it's still good. Are you
Speaker 1: going to listen fourth time? Maybe tenth time? It's not
Speaker 1: clear you're getting the same enjoyment out of it at
Speaker 1: this point. So this is what economists refer to as
Speaker 1: diminishing returns. You're not getting as much out of it
Speaker 1: as you were at first. And in neuroscience we can
Speaker 1: measure this directly in brain activity, and what we see
Speaker 1: is less and less activity in the brain each time
Speaker 1: the song plays. So the first time your brain is
Speaker 1: on fire with activity, and then the second time we
Speaker 1: measure slightly less. And as you listen to the same
Speaker 1: song again and again, you have lower and lower activity.
Speaker 1: This is called repetition suppression, which is to say that
Speaker 1: repeating something increasingly suppresses the brain's response. Why, well, it's
Speaker 1: because we devote attention to things that are surprising. Because
Speaker 1: the brain's job is to make an internal model of
Speaker 1: the world, and the way that you optimize learning that
Speaker 1: model is by ignoring the stuff that you already know
Speaker 1: and just paying attention to surprises. So in the case
Speaker 1: of the song at the coffee shop, you're not enjoying
Speaker 1: it less because the music is any different, but because
Speaker 1: you're different, your brain has become more and more efficient
Speaker 1: at recognizing and processing the song, and that frees up
Speaker 1: its cognitive resources for other tasks. Or just think about
Speaker 1: the first time you walked into your living room when
Speaker 1: you were first shopping for a place to live. The
Speaker 1: first time you entered, you were keenly attending to the
Speaker 1: layout and the colors of the pain and the lighting
Speaker 1: and the smell and the sounds. But now that you
Speaker 1: are an expert on your living room, you don't notice
Speaker 1: any of this. All your brain cares about consciously is novelty.
Speaker 1: In this case, is there anything out of place in
Speaker 1: your living room? Did the couch get shifted over? Or
Speaker 1: is there a stain on the ceiling, or is there
Speaker 1: a candy wrapper on the floor. This is how the
Speaker 1: brain constantly optimizes its function by paying attention to new
Speaker 1: things and not.
Speaker 2: Responding to the familiar.
Speaker 1: Now, this is at the heart of what drives brain plasticity,
Speaker 1: how your brain constantly is reconfiguring its circuitry. And in fact,
Speaker 1: in my book Live Wired, I proposed a new framework
Speaker 1: called infotropism, which is how the brain constantly seeks to
Speaker 1: extract the richest information from the world, which always comes
Speaker 1: from the new things, the things that it didn't already predict. So,
Speaker 1: just like plants do phototropism where they move towards the light,
Speaker 1: so brains grow their circuitry toward the highest new information.
Speaker 1: Now that's what's happening under the hood. But what I
Speaker 1: want to explore today is the consequence of this, how
Speaker 1: that influences our daily lives, Like the fact that familiar
Speaker 1: things like songs and living rooms and relationships and jobs
Speaker 1: and so on lose their color with time, and what
Speaker 1: we might do about that. So for that I called
Speaker 1: up my colleague Tolly share It. She's a neuroscientist and
Speaker 1: professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London and at MIT.
Speaker 1: And she's recently co authored a book with Cass Sunstein,
Speaker 1: the author and legal scholar at Harvard, and this book
Speaker 1: is called Look Again, The Power of Noticing What Was
Speaker 1: Always There. So here is my interview with Tlly. Kelly
Speaker 1: tell us what is habituation.
Speaker 3: So, habituation is our tendency to respond less and less
Speaker 3: to things that are repeated or that are constant. So
Speaker 3: let's take a really easy example. You enter into your room.
Speaker 3: It's full of smoke. At first, the smell of smoke,
Speaker 3: maybe it's cigarette smoke, is quite overwhelming. But after twenty minutes,
Speaker 3: studies show you can't even detect the smell. You habituated
Speaker 3: to it. And just that you habituate to smells or
Speaker 3: even to a cold you know, you jump into a pool.
Speaker 3: It's really cool at the beginning. After a few minutes
Speaker 3: you kind of get used to it. We also habituate
Speaker 3: two kind of more complex things in our life, both
Speaker 3: good and bad, and so we have less of an
Speaker 3: emotional reaction to them. Right, So maybe it's a romance
Speaker 3: that was exciting at first and you habituated to it
Speaker 3: over time. Maybe it's a new house that is really
Speaker 3: brings you joy, but while you kind of stop noticing
Speaker 3: it as much. As a consequence, those things that really
Speaker 3: should bring us more joy on a daily basis do
Speaker 3: so less because of habituation. And on the other side,
Speaker 3: you also habituate to the bad things. So there might
Speaker 3: be a lot of you know, bad things, even some
Speaker 3: terrible things around us. But if they're constant, if they're
Speaker 3: there all the time, we stop noticing them. Sexism, racism,
Speaker 3: cracks in our personal relationship, inefficiencies at the workplace, and
Speaker 3: if we stop noticing them, that means that we also
Speaker 3: less driven to change them.
Speaker 1: Now, why do you brains habituate? Is it critical for survival?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's a few reasons. I mean, first of all,
Speaker 3: it's important to say that every animal habituates. It's not
Speaker 3: just humans, right, every single animal and I would say
Speaker 3: probably every neuron in our brain shows this habituation. Right.
Speaker 3: They fire less and less when things are constant. When
Speaker 3: you see something that is, you know, in a range
Speaker 3: of species, that's just there's probably a good reason for it.
Speaker 3: There's probably an adaptive reason for this. So a simple
Speaker 3: one is it means that you can save resources. Right,
Speaker 3: So if your Neuren's keep responding to things around you,
Speaker 3: but those things don't change. You're kind of like using
Speaker 3: resources that you should probably save for the next thing
Speaker 3: that is coming your way. Right, So it's a way
Speaker 3: to save resources. That makes sense. If something doesn't kill you,
Speaker 3: probably you can stop responding to it, and you might
Speaker 3: need to, you know, respond to something else that's coming
Speaker 3: your way. But on a higher level as well, it
Speaker 3: does motivate us. So if you imagine your first entry
Speaker 3: level job, you were probably really excited about your first
Speaker 3: entry level job, but if you were as excited about
Speaker 3: your entry level job ten years later, you wouldn't be
Speaker 3: motivated to go, you know, and get that next thing,
Speaker 3: get that promotion. Right, So it's a way to keep
Speaker 3: us motivated, and that's good, which means that it kind
Speaker 3: of dries us to progress, to try new things, to evolve.
Speaker 3: And then the third reason is that it is on
Speaker 3: average also good for our mental health, mostly because we
Speaker 3: tend to habituate to the bad things in life, which
Speaker 3: means we could bounce back. You know, there are things
Speaker 3: that happen, perhaps a breakup romantic relationship, a loss of
Speaker 3: a job, or you just didn't get a project that
Speaker 3: you were wanting to get. If you just continue feeling
Speaker 3: bad about this and dwelling in it over and over
Speaker 3: and over, then you won't be able to just go,
Speaker 3: you know, progress and move ahead. So in fact, we
Speaker 3: see that individuals who habituate slower to the negative things
Speaker 3: in their life, they tend to have more symptoms of
Speaker 3: depression and in general. In fact, we see that problems
Speaker 3: in habituation, different problems of different kinds, are associated with
Speaker 3: a whole host of different mental health disorders and psychopathologies.
Speaker 2: Got it, okay, So that's habituation.
Speaker 1: We get used to things, our brains establish a model
Speaker 1: of the world, and once they have that model, then
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to use much energy to represent it.
Speaker 1: So what is this concept that you've introduced about dishabituation?
Speaker 3: Right, So, disabituation means that you suddenly notice something that
Speaker 3: you've habituated to, so you're stunnenly starting to respond to
Speaker 3: it again. And we have an example. It's a visual
Speaker 3: example which I think kind of makes a point in
Speaker 3: the book. When you open it in the inside cover,
Speaker 3: it's blobs of different colors. You have green, yellow, pink, blue,
Speaker 3: with a little fixation in the middle and if you
Speaker 3: just fixate on this fixation in the middle and don't
Speaker 3: move your eyes for about thirty second or so, what
Speaker 3: will happen is that those colors will suddenly become great.
Speaker 3: You won't be able to see the colors, and if
Speaker 3: you're really good at it, the gray eventually becomes white.
Speaker 3: That is habituation, and that happens because the same neurons
Speaker 3: are getting the same input of color, and so they
Speaker 3: stop responding. Now the moment you move your eyes, then
Speaker 3: you experience dishabituation. The moment you move your eyes, you
Speaker 3: can see color again. So now different neurons are getting
Speaker 3: different input and now you can perceive the color again.
Speaker 3: So that's disabituation, being able to feel and notice things
Speaker 3: that perhaps you had stopped noticing because they were there
Speaker 3: all the time and you habituated to them in the past.
Speaker 1: So what are some real life examples of disabituation.
Speaker 3: So let's take kind of like a simple example. We
Speaker 3: habituate to our environment. Right, I'm sitting in my office.
Speaker 3: I'm not noticing all the things around me because I'm
Speaker 3: used to them. Right, I'm sitting here many hours many days.
Speaker 3: But if I leave my office or even let's say
Speaker 3: I leave my home for a certain amount of time,
Speaker 3: perhaps it's a weekend, perhaps it's a week away on business.
Speaker 3: When I come back, I will experience, at least for
Speaker 3: a short amount of time, dishabituation. So suddenly I will
Speaker 3: start noticing things again and I will appreciate the good.
Speaker 3: So maybe there's nice views out the windows that you know,
Speaker 3: now I can see green outside my window, but it's
Speaker 3: not really bringing me as much joy because I'm habituated
Speaker 3: to it. But if I'm kind of going away and
Speaker 3: then I'm coming back, now I start noticing things again,
Speaker 3: even the small things. You know. It could also be
Speaker 3: family members you take it's you know, you take them
Speaker 3: for granted they're there, but being away for a week,
Speaker 3: you come back and you're kind of like, oh, you know,
Speaker 3: you feel the joy again. There's a wonderful quote from
Speaker 3: Jodi Foster, which actually we saw after the book was
Speaker 3: already written, so it's not in the book. And the
Speaker 3: book we have something else also interesting by Julia Robinson.
Speaker 1: But this this.
Speaker 3: Quote from Jodie Foster. She talks about how she left
Speaker 3: her home in La for I think it's six months
Speaker 3: or so. She went on site to film and then
Speaker 3: she says, what happens when she came back? So she says,
Speaker 3: I came back from somewhere that is amazing and beautiful,
Speaker 3: but you know, you long for really dumb things that
Speaker 3: you've just used to that six months ago, I'm sure
Speaker 3: I was bored by. But right now I'm like, my god,
Speaker 3: avocados are amazing. Or I'm so glad I get to
Speaker 3: get to go to the gym again. So things that
Speaker 3: six months ago were sort of what I was trying
Speaker 3: to escape from. Now everything is amazing. Right, So what
Speaker 3: she's describing is dishabituation. Right, she comes back and now
Speaker 3: she's disabituated to avocados, she's disabituated to working out in
Speaker 3: the gym, and now those things become, you know, something
Speaker 3: that brings hers joy. Of course, this is not going
Speaker 3: to last very long, probably just a few weeks. But
Speaker 3: that's that's disabituation.
Speaker 1: So what does this have to do with companies putting
Speaker 1: out new and improved products every year, or car manufacturers,
Speaker 1: you know, changing tweaking the model even though the model
Speaker 1: is perfectly great last year. What does all this have
Speaker 1: to do with that?
Speaker 3: Right? So we habituate to material things, right, So when
Speaker 3: you buy that new phone you may be excited at first,
Speaker 3: or the new car or the TV. But if they're
Speaker 3: there all the time, you use them every day, the
Speaker 3: joy goes down over time.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: And then when you know they come out with oh
Speaker 3: new and exciting, that won't makes you want to get
Speaker 3: that new things to get the kind of like joy, right,
Speaker 3: the little boost of joy from this new thing, which
Speaker 3: of course you will habituate too after a while. Again,
Speaker 3: so it does drive consumption, and in fact it probably
Speaker 3: drives over consumption.
Speaker 1: Interestingly, in the book, you talk about disabituation entrepreneurs as
Speaker 1: people who see things that have become normal to everyone
Speaker 1: else and they try to make changes. And one example
Speaker 1: that I've always loved is during the French Revolution, there
Speaker 1: were people who said, look now that we're building a
Speaker 1: new society here, let's change the week from seven days
Speaker 1: where you work five days and have a weekend to
Speaker 1: a five day week where you work for three days
Speaker 1: and then you have two days off. And I remember
Speaker 1: that striking me when I was a high school student
Speaker 1: and learned about that, because I was so used to
Speaker 1: the idea of a week being seven days, and it
Speaker 1: never struck me that you could do something different, So
Speaker 1: tell us about dishabituation entrepreneurs.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: So the idea is it's an interesting example that you're mentioning.
Speaker 3: So the examples that we have in our book is
Speaker 3: mostly about how we kind of get used to discrimination
Speaker 3: in our society or inequality. And the idea is that
Speaker 3: if discrimination or inequality or other kind of not so
Speaker 3: great things that our society are around us all the time,
Speaker 3: we stop seeing them. In order to see them again.
Speaker 3: One thing is we could have someone to kind of
Speaker 3: like say, well, this is what's happening, which is hard
Speaker 3: to do, right, how do you do that? How do
Speaker 3: you make people notice these things that are just the
Speaker 3: norms have been in society for such a long time.
Speaker 3: And maybe i'll just before I tell you how one
Speaker 3: can do that, let me give you an example of
Speaker 3: why we will actually not be able to see discrimination
Speaker 3: and in quality if it's been around all the time.
Speaker 3: So the main reason is that our brain is a
Speaker 3: statistical machine. So we have experiences in our life, and
Speaker 3: based on these experiences, our brain makes assumption about what
Speaker 3: is a norm, right, what is to be expected? And
Speaker 3: if what you encounter is what you expected, there's no
Speaker 3: surprise signal in the brain, you don't notice it. So
Speaker 3: let's take a simple example. You walk into a plane
Speaker 3: and you look at the cockpit and the pilot is
Speaker 3: a man. And your experience is that in most cases
Speaker 3: when you walk on a plane into a plane, you
Speaker 3: look at the cockpit, most times it is a man,
Speaker 3: and so your brain has made these predictions and the
Speaker 3: experience fits your prediction. So now there's no surprise signal, right,
Speaker 3: nothing to think about. So we don't notice that. Not
Speaker 3: only does a brain makes predictions based on the experiences
Speaker 3: that we've had, but it also makes assumptions about why
Speaker 3: we see these things. Right, So maybe the assumption that
Speaker 3: you would make is that males are better at handling
Speaker 3: large equipment. And now those assumptions may actually influence your
Speaker 3: actions and decisions. So maybe it will influence who do
Speaker 3: you decide to hire, who do decide to promote, And
Speaker 3: that is the problem that we're facing. What you want
Speaker 3: is a surprise signal, right, What you want is actually
Speaker 3: to go on a plane, and when you see that
Speaker 3: ninety percent of the pilots are man, you want actually
Speaker 3: to have a surprise signal to be well, that's unusual.
Speaker 3: Why is that the case? So with disapituation entrepreneurs. You
Speaker 3: want them to induce a surprise signal.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's get back to this issue about how
Speaker 1: we disabituate in our lives and what we can do
Speaker 1: about it. So you quote the economist T. Boor Satowski
Speaker 1: who says pleasure results from incomplete and intermittent satisfaction of desires.
Speaker 2: So unpack that for.
Speaker 3: Us, yes, okay. So the idea is that pleasure will
Speaker 3: reduce when we are encountering things, even if they're super great,
Speaker 3: if we're encountering again and again and again, the pleasure
Speaker 3: will be reduced, right. And what we want is we
Speaker 3: want to create breaks from those pleasurable things in order
Speaker 3: to experience a pleasure again. And let me give you
Speaker 3: first an example of just how pleasure goes down over time.
Speaker 3: So I was working with a big travel agency a
Speaker 3: few years ago, and they wanted to know what makes
Speaker 3: people happiest on vacations. So we went to resorts and
Speaker 3: we ask people questions to figure out what makes them
Speaker 3: happy and when are they the happiest. And what we
Speaker 3: found was that people were happiest forty three hours into
Speaker 3: a vacation. So forty three hours in that's when like
Speaker 3: pleasure was peeking, right, And after that the amount of
Speaker 3: pleasure went down and down and down and down over time.
Speaker 3: You know, day eight they were still happy, but they
Speaker 3: weren't happy as they were at day two, forty three
Speaker 3: hours in Why is that? Well, forty three hours give
Speaker 3: them some time to unpack, you know, and start focusing
Speaker 3: on fun. But from that time on, pleasure just reduces
Speaker 3: because of habituation. So the things around them are less noticeable,
Speaker 3: so brings less joy. And the other interesting finding here
Speaker 3: that when we ask people what was the most fun
Speaker 3: part of the vacation that brought you most joy, the
Speaker 3: word that they used more than any other word was
Speaker 3: the word first. They said, the first view of the ocean,
Speaker 3: the first cocktail I had, the first suncastle that I built.
Speaker 3: Now the second view of the ocean that was still great,
Speaker 3: and the second cocktail for the fifth cop that was
Speaker 3: still good, but not as good as a first. And
Speaker 3: that is because the first are the new experiences.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: So if you think about, okay, so how can I
Speaker 3: make a vacation more joyful? It suggests that one way
Speaker 3: to do it is perhaps to have more frequent vacations
Speaker 3: but shorter ones, and of course sometimes this is not
Speaker 3: possible if you're flying to the other side of the world,
Speaker 3: that that will be difficult. But perhaps you can have
Speaker 3: vacations that are closer to home, but just have more
Speaker 3: of them. So have more of those firsts, more of
Speaker 3: those forty three hours in. Okay, So that's that's talking
Speaker 3: about vacations. But let's think about things that are that
Speaker 3: are simple, even more you know, simple than a vacation.
Speaker 3: So there's a really surprising experiment that looked into when
Speaker 3: and why does music bring us joy? So they had
Speaker 3: people listen to a song that they liked, and before
Speaker 3: they listened to the song, they said, Hey, would you
Speaker 3: like to listen to this song from beginning to end
Speaker 3: no internal options? Or would you like to listen to
Speaker 3: this song with small interruptions every twenty seconds? I'll stop
Speaker 3: the song for ten seconds. What would you prefer, David,
Speaker 3: If you had that, it certainly.
Speaker 1: Seems like I want to listen to the continuous version, right.
Speaker 3: So ninety nine percent of the people said no breaks
Speaker 3: for me, please, right. It is the most intuitive thing. Surprisingly, however,
Speaker 3: when they actually did the test, so they had one
Speaker 3: group listened at beginning to end, and the other group,
Speaker 3: they had breaks in between. What they found that, in fact, overall,
Speaker 3: people enjoyed the song more with breaks, and they were
Speaker 3: willing to pay double to hear this song in concerts.
Speaker 3: So why is that, Well, if you're listening to the
Speaker 3: song from beginning to end right no interruption, you're really
Speaker 3: enjoying at the beginning, and then perhaps you're enjoying it
Speaker 3: less over time because of habituation. Again, you're enjoying it throughout,
Speaker 3: but less versus I break it after twenty seconds, and
Speaker 3: now when I start again, so you disabituate. So now
Speaker 3: I'm starting again, the joy pops up again, right, and
Speaker 3: then you started habituating. I break it, there's a dishabituation,
Speaker 3: so joy goes up again, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 3: And they did that with other things like a massage.
Speaker 3: They asked, hey, do you want a massage beginning to
Speaker 3: end no interruptions or would you like interruptions in your massage?
Speaker 3: Everyone said, of course, I don't want interruptions in my massage.
Speaker 3: But again, when they did the experiment, people enjoyed a
Speaker 3: massage more when there were interruptions, because you know, they
Speaker 3: habituated to the massage. There was a break they started again,
Speaker 3: Joy pops up and so on and so forth. So
Speaker 3: that suggests that we want to break things up right
Speaker 3: instead of binging on that Netflix show in one night,
Speaker 3: you know, take it a little bit at a time.
Speaker 1: So Netflix recently started a new model where they'll release
Speaker 1: an entire season all at once that people can binge.
Speaker 1: But it sounds like your advice would be different.
Speaker 3: Yes, And in fact, I've heard a lot of discussion
Speaker 3: about this. Not only do I think you will enjoy
Speaker 3: it more right if you have to one half of
Speaker 3: a week or whatever, wait a week, Not only will
Speaker 3: you enjoy the experience at the time, what you're also
Speaker 3: gaining is a joy of anticipation. There is I told
Speaker 3: you about vacations and how forty three hours in is
Speaker 3: the most joy. In fact, the most most joy tends
Speaker 3: to be before you even left your house to go
Speaker 3: on vacation. So in fact, when they looked at people
Speaker 3: for a whole week before they went on vacation, they
Speaker 3: found that people were actually happiest the day before the vacation,
Speaker 3: so the day before they even were, you know, going
Speaker 3: on the plane. And the reason was that the day
Speaker 3: before they were excited, the anticipation of what was about
Speaker 3: to come, right, because in their mind the vacation was
Speaker 3: so wonderful, And when they went a vacation, it was good,
Speaker 3: but it wasn't quite good as it was in their
Speaker 3: mind the day before. So anticipation, I mean, there's wonderful
Speaker 3: studies showing that anticipation brings us joy, and often it
Speaker 3: brings us more joy than the actual experience, and that
Speaker 3: people are actually willing to pay to get this anticipation.
Speaker 3: So another wonderful study by George Lowenstein, he had a
Speaker 3: group of people come in and he said, pick a celebrity.
Speaker 3: So pick a celebrity, David in your mind. And then
Speaker 3: he said okay, and all all the listeners he said, okay,
Speaker 3: imagine getting a kiss from the celebrity. So I hope
Speaker 3: you chose a good one. And then he said, how
Speaker 3: much are you willing to pay to get a kiss
Speaker 3: from the celebrity if the kiss was to be delivered immediately,
Speaker 3: in one hour, one day, three days, a year, ten years,
Speaker 3: and so on. And he found that people were willing
Speaker 3: to pay the most to get a kiss from a celebrity,
Speaker 3: not if the kiss was to be delivered now, but
Speaker 3: if the case was to be delivered in free days,
Speaker 3: because that gave people free days of like imagining it,
Speaker 3: where is going to happen? How is it going to happen?
Speaker 3: And that anticipation gave them gave them joy. So back
Speaker 3: to our Netflix shows, not only will you enjoy it
Speaker 3: more while you're seeing it because there's less habituation, but
Speaker 3: you will also gain the anticipation. There's also, i mean,
Speaker 3: specifically related to Netflix and shows, there's also this sense
Speaker 3: that some shows have this kind of cultural buzz around them, right,
Speaker 3: So you're you're making that longer as well, allowing people
Speaker 3: to experience things more at the same time and to
Speaker 3: discuss it, you know, you go to work talk about it.
Speaker 3: This is I think something that happens less today than
Speaker 3: it did when we were younger, when there was less
Speaker 3: of these you know streaming, there was just a few
Speaker 3: channels with a few shows where a show was kind
Speaker 3: of a big thing. You know, everyone may have talked
Speaker 3: about it, but still it still happens even today.
Speaker 1: Am I remembering correctly that way back in the day,
Speaker 1: movies used to have intermissions halfway through they would just
Speaker 1: stop and then you'd go out and.
Speaker 2: Get popcorn and whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder I wonder if that ended up being
Speaker 1: you know, gaining slightly higher ratings as a result of that.
Speaker 1: But what about watching a movie on TV that is
Speaker 1: broken up by commercials that seems really annoying? We don't
Speaker 1: enjoy that more, do we?
Speaker 3: So this is something that Daniel Gilbert told me, and
Speaker 3: I haven't actually seen the article itself, but the words
Speaker 3: of Daniel Gilbert, he says that there is a study
Speaker 3: that shows that overall people enjoy show more with commercials.
Speaker 3: I have to go and find this. He said. This
Speaker 3: is by Hal Harshfeldt, so we should be able to
Speaker 3: find it. But yeah, so that's apparently also a counterintuitive finding.
Speaker 1: So tell us about ways that we can really implement
Speaker 1: this in our lives. In the book, you mentioned when
Speaker 1: you got COVID and you got exiled to the basement
Speaker 1: of your house and you actually you know, enjoyed the
Speaker 1: new bedroom and the you know, seeing things from a
Speaker 1: different point of view. How can we inject this into
Speaker 1: our lives?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: Okay, So there's two things, and one is going back
Speaker 3: to this idea of breaks, so inducing breaks into your life.
Speaker 3: So yes, you can go away for a weekend or
Speaker 3: a week or so, but something you're not always able
Speaker 3: to do that, and so perhaps you can take a
Speaker 3: break from your life while you're still you know, in
Speaker 3: your house. And so this is indeed a story that
Speaker 3: I tell in the book where I had COVID so
Speaker 3: I had to go down to the basement so the
Speaker 3: rest of my family won't get it. And surprisingly it
Speaker 3: was it was sort of an interesting experience. It wasn't
Speaker 3: that bad. It was a bit like going camping. And
Speaker 3: then I was there for maybe three days. When I
Speaker 3: when I came back out to the ground floor to
Speaker 3: the world, everything seems like they it was resparkling, right,
Speaker 3: My life was resparkling, because now I saw it, I
Speaker 3: was disabituating, right. I went from the basement up to
Speaker 3: my regular home and things just seemed a little bit better.
Speaker 3: So that's it, you know, you might have a little
Speaker 3: vacation in your basement. But there's another way, which this
Speaker 3: one we actually heard Lori Stantis talk about, and she said,
Speaker 3: close your eyes and imagine your life without your family,
Speaker 3: without your home, without your job, right, try to like
Speaker 3: really imagine it with vividness and detail. And that really
Speaker 3: scares people, right obviously, and when you open your eyes.
Speaker 3: Then again that can cause some kind of resparkling and
Speaker 3: dishabituation just by using your imagination. And now the other
Speaker 3: way to induce more disabituation less habituation is diversifying your
Speaker 3: life life right, inducing more variety into it. And variety
Speaker 3: can take many forms. It could be maybe living in
Speaker 3: different places, but it could be more simple like trying
Speaker 3: to interact with different type of people if possible at
Speaker 3: work working on different projects. Many companies have these rotations
Speaker 3: where employees can go actually work in different divisions, right,
Speaker 3: And that can cause this a situation and induce variety.
Speaker 3: And in fact, when you ask people about what they
Speaker 3: actually want out of life, there are free things that
Speaker 3: people usually say. First of all, they say two things
Speaker 3: that they usually say and another for surprising ones. So
Speaker 3: the first thing that they usually say is happiness, right,
Speaker 3: we all want to be happy, we want to feel joy,
Speaker 3: we don't want to be sad. The second thing that
Speaker 3: people say is meaning. They want the life to have purpose.
Speaker 3: That makes sense as well. However, things that bring you
Speaker 3: happiness and things that bring you per usually do so
Speaker 3: less over time because of habituation. So even if you're
Speaker 3: working in a very meaningful job, like let's say you're
Speaker 3: a cancer cancer researcher. Over time, it may feel less
Speaker 3: purposeful and less meaningful that it did at the very beginning.
Speaker 3: But then there's this third thing which is overlooked and
Speaker 3: which really contributes to a psychological rich life, which is variety.
Speaker 3: If you're trying different things and doing different things, you
Speaker 3: are inducing this habituation, which means that those things that
Speaker 3: make you happy are going to make you more happy,
Speaker 3: and those things that have a feeling of purposeful and
Speaker 3: meaningful will do so more because of this variety. And
Speaker 3: what variety also does, it puts you in a state
Speaker 3: of learning. Because if you're changing, you're changing your environment,
Speaker 3: you're changing the people you're talking to, you're changing what
Speaker 3: you're working on. You need to learn. You need to
Speaker 3: kind of figure out the hierarchy perhaps in the new environment,
Speaker 3: how things work. And it turns out that learning induces
Speaker 3: joy even more than material goods. So there are quite
Speaker 3: a few studies on this wonderful study by Rutledge and
Speaker 3: the Blaine shows that when they had participants do a
Speaker 3: task and they gave them money for performing well, they
Speaker 3: were happy when they got money for performing well, but
Speaker 3: in fact they were happiest when they learned something new
Speaker 3: about the task. So by having variety, and variety can
Speaker 3: be like you can take a new course about something
Speaker 3: that is outside of your field, learning new skill, and
Speaker 3: that has been shown to induce joy because people like
Speaker 3: to see themselves progress. When you really feel down is
Speaker 3: when you feel that you are in a status quo.
Speaker 3: You can even be quite let's say professionally, you can
Speaker 3: be really up high, but if you're not moving upwards,
Speaker 3: that can actually induce low mood and even to some
Speaker 3: extent depression.
Speaker 1: You know, this is very interesting because I always recommend
Speaker 1: people pursuing new challenges that are between the levels of
Speaker 1: frustrating but achievable. And I'm telling this from the point
Speaker 1: of view of cognitive fitness, of you know, making new
Speaker 1: roadways in the brain and keeping fit that way. But
Speaker 1: your point adds to that beautifully, which is it also
Speaker 1: brings joy.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I just want to mention something that you said a
Speaker 1: moment ago about this idea of closing your eyes and
Speaker 1: imagining that things are gone. I received fortune cookie many
Speaker 1: years ago that said, if you want to love something,
Speaker 1: imagine it is lost, and I thought that was so
Speaker 1: beautiful and powerful because it's exactly the same thing that
Speaker 1: you said, which is, Okay, I'm going to induce variety
Speaker 1: in my life by taking all these things that I've
Speaker 1: totally habituated to, and I'm just going to imagine that
Speaker 1: they're gone, either they died or I never met these
Speaker 1: people in my life or whatever the situation is. And
Speaker 1: then yes, when you when you come back to reality,
Speaker 1: there's more, there's more appreciation there.
Speaker 2: Okay, So how do.
Speaker 1: We implement this kind of knowledge in our lives, let's say,
Speaker 1: with relationships.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, in fact, we were listening to Esther Perrell.
Speaker 3: What she recommends seems really consistent with this whole idea.
Speaker 3: So she says that when she asked people, she surveyed people,
Speaker 3: and she asked them when are you most attracted to
Speaker 3: your partner. The answers tended to be of two types.
Speaker 3: One was when I'm away from my partner and then
Speaker 3: I'm coming back, right, So this is exactly the break, right,
Speaker 3: So that's when they are very attracted to the partner.
Speaker 3: And the second one was when I see my partner
Speaker 3: in a new situation. Perhaps they're talking to strangers at
Speaker 3: a party, perhaps they're on stage, which I've never seen
Speaker 3: them like that. So this is the idea of variety, right,
Speaker 3: and novelty. And she talks a lot about how novelty
Speaker 3: and I don't know if she says that exact word,
Speaker 3: but that a little bit of distance and novelty can
Speaker 3: actually induce fire, and too much familiarity can actually reduce it.
Speaker 3: So on one hand, we want shared experiences, of course,
Speaker 3: but on the other hand, suddenly seeing your partner in
Speaker 3: a different light that you've never had before, according to
Speaker 3: her research, actually increases attraction. So in terms of how
Speaker 3: do we do that, how would we implement that in
Speaker 3: our relationships? I think two things. One is taking a
Speaker 3: break and I don't mean like breaking up for a while,
Speaker 3: I mean like, you know, a night away on your own, right,
Speaker 3: just an evening or a weekend. And the second is
Speaker 3: shaking things up by trying different things right, instead of
Speaker 3: doing the same thing over and over. We have routines
Speaker 3: that those are good too, right to have with your tradition,
Speaker 3: but trying things that are different.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And what's interesting is across the animal kingdom there's this
Speaker 1: exploitation exploration trade off, which just means animals spend about
Speaker 1: eighty percent of their time exploiting the things that they
Speaker 1: have learned that they know, and twenty percent of their
Speaker 1: time exploring new things. And they have to do this
Speaker 1: because the world changes and you can't ever be certain
Speaker 1: that the knowledge you have is going to carry you
Speaker 1: distantly into the future. So they spend some percentage of
Speaker 1: their time trying out new things. And it sounds like
Speaker 1: this is exactly what we need to make sure we
Speaker 1: implement purposefully in our lives, because it's so easy to
Speaker 1: land in a routine and keep that up with our careers,
Speaker 1: with our relationships, everything, it's important to seek that variety.
Speaker 2: What other pieces of advice would you.
Speaker 1: Have along those lines for not all relationships, but our careers,
Speaker 1: our lives.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, actually, let me just pick up what you
Speaker 3: were saying about exploration and exploitation. In fact, in the
Speaker 3: book we talk.
Speaker 4: A little bit about explorers and exploiters in the sense
Speaker 4: of relationships as well, because so you said, you know,
Speaker 4: on average, perhaps eighty percent of the time we're exploiting,
Speaker 4: meaning we're trying, we're doing the same thing over and over.
Speaker 3: In twenty percent we're exploring. But of course there's a
Speaker 3: lot of individual differences, so there are people who are explorers.
Speaker 3: They're like they want to try new things, whether it
Speaker 3: is travel to different places, trying new restaurants, right. And
Speaker 3: then there are more people who are more exploiters. They
Speaker 3: like to do the thing that they know, go to
Speaker 3: the same restaurant, have a stay staycation, you know, when
Speaker 3: you stay at home. And what this is not based on,
Speaker 3: you know, real data, but what me and my co ofer,
Speaker 3: Cass Sunstein, have noticed in our own lives and the
Speaker 3: people around us. We've noticed that within couples there tend
Speaker 3: to be an explorer and exploiter, right, And that would
Speaker 3: make sense that that would be a good, good union
Speaker 3: because the real optimal point is probably somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 3: You don't want to just explore all the time because
Speaker 3: then you won't be exploiting the good things. And you
Speaker 3: don't want to just exploit because then you're kind of
Speaker 3: what's known is you're going to be stuck in the
Speaker 3: local maxima, which means you think you're in a good
Speaker 3: place here, but there's all of these other good, you know,
Speaker 3: better places around you. And if you are in that
Speaker 3: kind of relationship, you're pushing each other exactly perhaps towards
Speaker 3: the optimal point. So in Cassa's situation, he thinks of
Speaker 3: his self as exploiter and his wife and as an explorer.
Speaker 3: In my relationship it's the opposite, meaning I'm the explorer.
Speaker 3: My husband is more of an exploiter. And sometimes it
Speaker 3: could especially I think at the beginning of a relationship,
Speaker 3: it might cause a little bit of friction. You know,
Speaker 3: you want to do all these things and the other
Speaker 3: person just wants to do the same thing. But if
Speaker 3: it's really a successful relationship, it pushes both people perhaps
Speaker 3: towards a better place.
Speaker 1: In terms of careers. What advice do you have for people?
Speaker 3: Again, there are individual differences, and there are preferences, and
Speaker 3: in fact, there's also individual differences in how fast you habituate.
Speaker 3: So there are people who habituate way faster than others,
Speaker 3: and that will lead to these preferences because I think
Speaker 3: if you're habituating faster, then perhaps you feel like you
Speaker 3: want more of an exploration. So if you are in
Speaker 3: a situation where you are not feeling like you're moving
Speaker 3: and learning and progressing, which tends to happen a lot
Speaker 3: in middle life, and we can talk about why that
Speaker 3: is in a second. So that is perhaps a time
Speaker 3: to push a little bit more into the exploration, right,
Speaker 3: try new things. It could be simple things like take
Speaker 3: a new route to work if you're always driving, try
Speaker 3: to bike. It could be simple things like that, or
Speaker 3: could be like, let's try a different projects, let's try
Speaker 3: to gain a new skill. The impact of these things
Speaker 3: are huge. Oh, back to midlife, Yeah, does it happen
Speaker 3: to mid life? So there's this really interesting phenomena which
Speaker 3: is the U shape of happiness, which is happiness tends
Speaker 3: to be relatively high in kids and teenagers, and then
Speaker 3: it goes down, down, down, down, down, reaches rock bottom
Speaker 3: in your midlife on average. Right, there's lots of variations
Speaker 3: on average, and then it actually starts going up again,
Speaker 3: and it continues going up on average until the last
Speaker 3: couple of years of life. But that midlife, that's really
Speaker 3: the downpoint for a good number of people. And again
Speaker 3: there's variations. I'm sure you have listeners who are no,
Speaker 3: midlife is my happiest time. But that's when you look
Speaker 3: at you know, thousands and thousands of thousands of individuals.
Speaker 3: And we think that there's many reasons for this, but
Speaker 3: one is that midlife is really the time where you
Speaker 3: have the most amount of sameness. For most people, you've
Speaker 3: been in the same relationship for quite a while. On average,
Speaker 3: you may have been in the same job quite a while. Average,
Speaker 3: perhaps you're at the top of your career, but you've
Speaker 3: been there for a while. And partially people you know
Speaker 3: they have kids and that act that also limits the
Speaker 3: amount of exploration that you could do. If you think
Speaker 3: about it, when you're younger, each day is new. I
Speaker 3: mean you're learning something new every single day when you're
Speaker 3: growing up. When you're young and even in your twenties,
Speaker 3: you need to figure out who am I going to
Speaker 3: be with. You're exploring all the different options, you're studying,
Speaker 3: you're learning new things, and it's midlife when it's kind
Speaker 3: of the sameness. And counterintuitively, later in life is when
Speaker 3: you start you need to learn again because that's the
Speaker 3: kids are leaving the house, perhaps you're retiring. What are
Speaker 3: you going to do with your life? And it's really scary,
Speaker 3: but it jaws people into this new situation, new environment,
Speaker 3: and they need to figure it out, so it enhances
Speaker 3: learning and often people will try new things. So if
Speaker 3: you're stuck in midlife, then you need to start thinking
Speaker 3: about you know, how can I induce variety? What can
Speaker 3: I change? And change is difficult because it requires effort.
Speaker 3: The easiest thing you can do is stick with the
Speaker 3: status quo. That's easy, you know how to do it.
Speaker 3: It is certain, right If you make a change that's uncertain,
Speaker 3: you don't know if it's going to be good or bad.
Speaker 3: You're going to put in the effort and you don't
Speaker 3: know what you're going to get. If I do the
Speaker 3: same thing over and over, I know what I'm going
Speaker 3: to get, so at least I'm not anxious and uncertain
Speaker 3: about it. I might be unhappy about it, but it
Speaker 3: requires less effort, so it changes a little bit. Is hard,
Speaker 3: but there are studies showing that all ills being equal,
Speaker 3: change does induce well being and happiness. A great study
Speaker 3: by Stephen Levite. He asked people. They went online and
Speaker 3: he asked them, is there something that you want to change?
Speaker 3: And it could be something small like the color of
Speaker 3: my hair, or it could be something bigger, like entering,
Speaker 3: exiting a relationship, starting a new job, taking, you know,
Speaker 3: learning a new skill. And they wrote down the change,
Speaker 3: and then he asked them to flip a virtual coin
Speaker 3: and he said if the coin lands at head, go
Speaker 3: ahead and make the change. If it lands on tails,
Speaker 3: stick with the status quill. And he got back to
Speaker 3: them two weeks later and six months later. The first
Speaker 3: thing he found is that those people who got heads,
Speaker 3: which means make a change, they were twenty five percent
Speaker 3: more likely to make a change. So something simple as
Speaker 3: a coin flipped induced people to go ahead and make
Speaker 3: the change. And the second most important thing he found
Speaker 3: that on average, over these thousands and thousands of individuals,
Speaker 3: those that made the change were in fact happier in
Speaker 3: their life. And so I think there's two reasons why
Speaker 3: that is. One is, if you're thinking about a change,
Speaker 3: there's probably a reason to it, meaning you're probably considering
Speaker 3: it because something is not satisfactory or not optimal, and
Speaker 3: so a change is probably needed. It doesn't mean what
Speaker 3: kind of change, but a change is probably needed. And
Speaker 3: the second reason is you're making a change inducing variety
Speaker 3: means this habituation means more learning, aorll things that tend
Speaker 3: to increase people's well being tell.
Speaker 1: Us about creativity and dis habituation.
Speaker 3: As I mentioned, there's individual differences in how fast people habituate,
Speaker 3: and it turns out that people who habituate slower on
Speaker 3: average tend to be more creative. So there's a study
Speaker 3: that was conducted where it was shown that people who
Speaker 3: are creative, and specifically these are people who either had
Speaker 3: wrote a book or have a patent under their name,
Speaker 3: or had an exhibition of art, they tended to habituate slower.
Speaker 3: And the way that they measured it they actually just
Speaker 3: had like a sound. So when you hear a sound
Speaker 3: over and over and over, you get your body response
Speaker 3: to it less, and you can measure that by looking
Speaker 3: at for examples kings conducts response and so that is
Speaker 3: a finding. The question is why why does slow habituation
Speaker 3: is why is that related to creativity? And perhaps one
Speaker 3: reason is that if you habituate slower to the things
Speaker 3: around you, they you're perhaps processing them for a longer
Speaker 3: amount of time. So these random pieces of information visuals, sounds,
Speaker 3: they stay in your mind for longer, and so these
Speaker 3: different pieces of information that usually don't come together are
Speaker 3: more likely to kind of collide, right to collide in
Speaker 3: your brain, to create connections because they are in your
Speaker 3: head in a sort of like soup, in a sort
Speaker 3: of mix. And we know that often the most creative
Speaker 3: ideas come from unconventional connections. So you can take a
Speaker 3: piece of information that's so super like mundane in one domain,
Speaker 3: and another piece of information super mundane in another domain.
Speaker 3: You put them together and suddenly you have this creative solution.
Speaker 3: You see that a lot in technology, where people take
Speaker 3: rules from biology and they use them in the you know,
Speaker 3: to create some kind of technology. So these these combinations,
Speaker 3: and that's probably one of the reasons. And it could,
Speaker 3: I mean, it could be quite confusing to have all
Speaker 3: these pieces of information in your mind, right. It can
Speaker 3: be something that can cause a difficulty to focus and concentrate,
Speaker 3: but it also enhances creativity. And so how can we
Speaker 3: actually use that knowledge to be more creative ourselves. Well,
Speaker 3: there's a study showing that one way to do that
Speaker 3: is to induce this habituation by going and changing your environment.
Speaker 3: So turns out that if you are sitting in your
Speaker 3: office and you are just you know, thinking about a problem,
Speaker 3: but then you go out and you take a little
Speaker 3: walk and then you come back, or vice versa. If
Speaker 3: you're thinking about a problem while you're walking and then
Speaker 3: you're coming back to the office, any kind of change
Speaker 3: or even you're in the office and you're going to
Speaker 3: sit in a cafe or you're going to your kitchen.
Speaker 3: Turns out that any change in your environment enhances creative
Speaker 3: ideas significantly, so although it only does that for about
Speaker 3: six minutes. So if you're changing your environment, then that
Speaker 3: will create disabituation and that will enhance creativity for about
Speaker 3: six minutes. After that, you're kind of like habituation again
Speaker 3: to your environment. So that is one way to enhance
Speaker 3: creativity by just changing the environment and therefore making your
Speaker 3: brain more likely to be attentive to all this bits
Speaker 3: of information that are around you.
Speaker 1: So that was my interview with Tolly Sherratt about her
Speaker 1: new book co author with Cast Sunstein, called Look Again,
Speaker 1: which is all about how we habituate to things and
Speaker 1: how we can try to dishabituate. And I just want
Speaker 1: to add a couple of thoughts. So the first one is,
Speaker 1: perhaps because I'm in Silicon Valley, I see lots of
Speaker 1: startup companies doing their things, and I compare these to
Speaker 1: the big established companies, and the big companies have a
Speaker 1: difficult time innovating because they're too stuck in their methods
Speaker 1: and hypotheses and ways of doing things and So what
Speaker 1: the clever big companies do is they give birth to
Speaker 1: spin offs. And these spin offs are young and nimble,
Speaker 1: and this, of course is analogous to what humans do.
Speaker 1: Humans drop into the world full of vim and vigor
Speaker 1: and nimbleness, just like a young startup. But after a
Speaker 1: while they accrue these giant rule books, these ways of
Speaker 1: doing things. Humans get stuck in their methods and hypotheses
Speaker 1: and ways of doing things, and so what they do
Speaker 1: is they spawn babies to go out and take on
Speaker 1: the next generation. Babies have these clean minds that are
Speaker 1: not already stuck in habit The magic of children is
Speaker 1: that they are not as totally habituated as we are,
Speaker 1: so they can see things in a fresh light. Everything
Speaker 1: is new to them, and so they notice things.
Speaker 2: That we have become blind to.
Speaker 1: And in this way, our daily endeavor to disabituate is
Speaker 1: to become like.
Speaker 2: A child again.
Speaker 1: And the second thing I want to mention is that
Speaker 1: I think good science is often about disabituation. Not always,
Speaker 1: but many of the biggest moves in science happen from saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: I grew up with this textbook, and the textbook has
Speaker 1: all the answers, and yet I can't escape the feeling
Speaker 1: that there may be a different way to look at
Speaker 1: this whole thing. In other words, we've all gotten used
Speaker 1: to a particular story, but there may be a more
Speaker 1: powerful one available. So good scientists are always looking to
Speaker 1: shake off assumptions. In my postdoctoral fellowship, I got to
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time with Francis Krik, who was
Speaker 1: the co discoverer of the structure of DNA, and what
Speaker 1: I learned from him is that he just assumed that
Speaker 1: about a quarter of the scientific literature he was reading
Speaker 1: was wrong, either because of mistakes or fraud or misinterpretation
Speaker 1: or whatever. He just assumed that when the community of
Speaker 1: scientists believe in something, it might be true, but it
Speaker 1: might not. That was a very powerful lens through which
Speaker 1: to view the world, because it was essentially a constant
Speaker 1: lens of dishabituation, of allowing everything to be questioned, of
Speaker 1: encouraging everything to be questioned.
Speaker 2: That is what's needed to do good.
Speaker 1: Science, and presumably that's what's needed to live a maximally
Speaker 1: enjoyable life, because one of the most important things the
Speaker 1: brain does is to seek novelty, finding new angles on things.
Speaker 1: This is what builds new roadways in your brain. So
Speaker 1: that sounds easy, but we always have to fight habitua,
Speaker 1: growing used to things. Habituation constantly makes us forget the
Speaker 1: colors of the world that we're in. But it just
Speaker 1: takes attention to reverse this. It's one of the simplest
Speaker 1: things you can do to better enjoy your daily life,
Speaker 1: and it's one of the most important things for brain health.
Speaker 1: And one of the things we learned today is that
Speaker 1: you can seek novelty, not by flying across the globe
Speaker 1: and jumping out of planes and fighting bulls, but simply
Speaker 1: by paying fresh attention to the things around you, simply
Speaker 1: by looking again.
Speaker 2: Go to Eagleman dot com.
Speaker 1: Slash podcast for more information and to find further reading.
Speaker 1: Send me an email at podcast at egleman dot com
Speaker 1: with questions or discussion, and check out and subscribe to
Speaker 1: Inner Cosmos on YouTube for videos of each episode and
Speaker 1: to leave comments until next time. I'm David Eagleman, and
Speaker 1: this is Inner Cosmos.