Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb. My name is Julie Tuglas. Julie.
Speaker 1: Do you have any magical objects with you today? Any
Speaker 1: good luck charms, any personal items of importance? Nope, I
Speaker 1: was thinking about this. I'm not really into the sort
Speaker 1: of magical thinking lucky items I have to say. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: hold up your hands. Do you have any rings on? Oh?
Speaker 1: You don't have any rings on? Nothing? Nothing? Huh okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean maybe I have my lucky underwear on. Maybe
Speaker 1: I don't you, Um, I mean not underwear? No, well,
Speaker 1: I mean nothing. Let's see what do I have on?
Speaker 1: I mean right now? I just I have my wedding ring,
Speaker 1: and I do. There's so there's a certain amount of
Speaker 1: magical thinking involved in that. Um, do I have any
Speaker 1: And No, I don't have any amulets on me right now.
Speaker 1: But I in the past, I've I've certainly fallen in
Speaker 1: the habit of using them. I think I've talked about
Speaker 1: this before. I previously had a Ganesha remover of obstacles.
Speaker 1: Remover of obstacles. The the Hindu god that is that
Speaker 1: has the you know, the elephant appearance. Uh, And I
Speaker 1: had featured on The Simpsons in a hilarious episode. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: also also made fun of there. But I would carry
Speaker 1: it around because you know, remover of obstacles and you
Speaker 1: know all this various ties into ties into creativity and all.
Speaker 1: And so I would carry that in my pocket. And
Speaker 1: then eventually I lost it, like it crawled out in
Speaker 1: the washing machine or something and left me. And and
Speaker 1: so I've always felt I felt kind of bad. I'm like,
Speaker 1: where did Ganesha go? Did Ganesha abandon me? And then
Speaker 1: and then I found Ganesha put him back in and
Speaker 1: then and then he disappeared again and hasn't come back.
Speaker 1: And and then also in the past, all occasionally like
Speaker 1: pick up a rock, Like if I'm at the beach
Speaker 1: and I'm having a particularly good day, I'll pick up
Speaker 1: that rock and take it with me, and That'll end
Speaker 1: up in my pocket for maybe a year or so. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, because that kind of comes to symbolize like
Speaker 1: a nice memory, and so I can take it out
Speaker 1: and I can sort of think back to that time.
Speaker 1: So what I'm hearing is that you have various kinds
Speaker 1: of movies. Yeah, security blankets. Oh, yes, yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: they are to a certain extent security blanket. I mean
Speaker 1: they're not you know, apples to apples, but there is
Speaker 1: this sort of warm and fuzzy thing that you're trying
Speaker 1: to evoke with with an object, right, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's uh, I mean it's weird for me because like
Speaker 1: when I'm if I'm holding a ganitia, I don't actually
Speaker 1: think that I'm using this as a totem to to
Speaker 1: get in touch with some sort of a god, you know,
Speaker 1: like it's not like a literal interpretation of the amulet,
Speaker 1: but there is a certain amount of positive thinking that
Speaker 1: that comes with having it. And I've also wondered a
Speaker 1: lot of times when I'm passing by my own desk
Speaker 1: or coworkers desks, or seeing somebody's desk on TV where
Speaker 1: they have action figures, uh, typically like a dude's desk,
Speaker 1: you know, we have various action figures, and I wondered
Speaker 1: to what extent our modern action figures kind of akin
Speaker 1: to the amulets of old, you know, like today we
Speaker 1: don't have a pathion of gods to really call upon
Speaker 1: for the most part, but instead we have all these
Speaker 1: various pop culture icons and cartoon characters that represent various
Speaker 1: things at least on like a subconscious level, and we
Speaker 1: keep them around to draw strength from them. You haven't
Speaker 1: found the Pantheon room. They just Wantheon room. No, do
Speaker 1: we have one? Oh my goodness, but to the room
Speaker 1: with the black toilet and the black sink. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the superhero bathroom. Okay, well, see I've been missing that.
Speaker 1: But if you if you passed by my desk, you
Speaker 1: passed by like Jonathan Strickland's desk, you passed by is
Speaker 1: these office you'll see little little figures, you know. So
Speaker 1: I wondered what I mean. Obviously they're on our death
Speaker 1: they're in our workspace, they're in our work environment, informing,
Speaker 1: you know, our our relationship with our with our work,
Speaker 1: with with what we're trying to do with and and
Speaker 1: representing a little bit of who we are. So to
Speaker 1: what extent are those was becoming deities? I don't know. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so that's what we're going to try to get to
Speaker 1: the bottom of today. We're gonna look at objects, our
Speaker 1: relationship to objects, and we're going to try to figure
Speaker 1: out how much of this has to do with our
Speaker 1: own uh ability to acquire things, and whether or not
Speaker 1: this acquisitiveness is natural to us, and then we're gonna
Speaker 1: look a little bit at a compulse supporting too. When
Speaker 1: it comes to materialism, it is really a distinctive human
Speaker 1: trait for the most part, especially when you look at
Speaker 1: its more outrageous examples. The one that I was really
Speaker 1: partial to was the one I brought up by Steve
Speaker 1: Taylor in his article The Madness of Materialism, which just
Speaker 1: a great, short, little article, but he he mentions gold,
Speaker 1: especially the like European colonists love of gold and in
Speaker 1: their flashes with with the native peoples in the Americas. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's one example that he brings up where in Indian
Speaker 1: chief in Cuba learned that the Spanish sailors were about
Speaker 1: to tack as end, so he actually praised to the
Speaker 1: spirit of the gold to for for a like they've become.
Speaker 1: They're trying to figure out why are these one of
Speaker 1: these these people so into gold, this this shiny rock
Speaker 1: from the ground. They must have some sort of They
Speaker 1: must believe it's a god. They must believe that it
Speaker 1: is that has supernatural powers, because otherwise, why would you
Speaker 1: go to such ridiculous ends. Why would you wage all
Speaker 1: of this bloodshed just to get it right? Because otherwise
Speaker 1: it's like, well, you guys are just talking like ferrets
Speaker 1: going after something shiny. So surely this piece of gold
Speaker 1: has something to it. And he prayed to it right
Speaker 1: and it didn't work. Didn't work because, as as he
Speaker 1: points out in this article, as Steve Taylor points out,
Speaker 1: a certain amount of hoarding of resources makes evolutionary sense.
Speaker 1: You know we've talked before and in the wild there
Speaker 1: are certain things that are scarce. I mean food itself
Speaker 1: is going to be scarce, uh, to varying degrees. And
Speaker 1: so to whatever degree we can plan ahead that we
Speaker 1: can stockpilot, the better off will be. If that means
Speaker 1: bearing nuts in the yard, if that means uh, you know,
Speaker 1: finding something that is that is more rare in nature,
Speaker 1: like sugar and being able to store that away like
Speaker 1: like all that makes sense firewood. I mean, there are
Speaker 1: things that are they're part of our survival that that
Speaker 1: that makes sense when we're hoarding it. Well, it makes
Speaker 1: sense I think to a culture that is settled. But
Speaker 1: if you look at back at early man um in
Speaker 1: particularly the fact that early Man was a nomadic species. Um,
Speaker 1: then you know that hoarding or stockpiling just really wasn't convenient,
Speaker 1: That's right. I mean yeah, if you're always on the
Speaker 1: mood move if you even if you have kind of
Speaker 1: like cyclical uh patterns to your to your movement, and
Speaker 1: you know, going from you know, north to south depending
Speaker 1: on what the weather is doing, Yeah, you're not gonna
Speaker 1: be able to carry all of this with you. You
Speaker 1: can maybe stockpile some of it, but you're not going
Speaker 1: to carry it all on your back. Yeah. So there's
Speaker 1: just a big question mark, like is this really genetic?
Speaker 1: Is this something that's natural to humans, this impulse to
Speaker 1: buy and possess things, or is it something that really
Speaker 1: is um more symptomatic of modern man, particularly from the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century on right, when things became much easier to produce,
Speaker 1: to produce cheaply, and then to acquire cheaply. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: I mean when it comes to stockpiling things that are important,
Speaker 1: I mean, when once we get out of this uh,
Speaker 1: this transitory nature of culture and we get into into
Speaker 1: actually settling in areas and growing food, I mean, being
Speaker 1: able to stockpile food. I mean that's part and partial
Speaker 1: to a lot of our cultural growth as as a
Speaker 1: as a species, our ability to put food away, have
Speaker 1: more food than we need, and then specialize our roles
Speaker 1: within a community. But what about just buying lots of
Speaker 1: plastic things, right and putting them in a storage unit
Speaker 1: and then that storaging in it being auctioned off in
Speaker 1: a show called storage Wars or something like that. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because yeah, then it's it seems like we're definitely getting
Speaker 1: into pathological area. We're getting into an area where it
Speaker 1: is just it is a sickness. It is some natural
Speaker 1: instinct that has been perverted. Because even even though the
Speaker 1: you know, the native peoples of the Americas couldn't understand
Speaker 1: the luss for gold, if you put gold within the
Speaker 1: context of of of wealth and then wealth equals power, power,
Speaker 1: wealth equals comfort, wealth equals food, then I can see
Speaker 1: the cognitive steps you know, necessary to think I gotta
Speaker 1: have all the gold, right because I have to possess
Speaker 1: the symbol of it, which is probably a large part
Speaker 1: of why we do have this such such a high
Speaker 1: degree of acquisitiveness, right, like wanting to get acquire everything. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know, the question is is that genetic Well
Speaker 1: there was a study by Justine Giddon's, Julie Shermer and
Speaker 1: Philip Vernon from the University of Western Ontario, and they
Speaker 1: wanted to know how much of it was an environmental
Speaker 1: how much of it which genetics. Of course, they turned
Speaker 1: to the twins. Uh. They recruited two hundred and forty
Speaker 1: pairs of twins, identical and fraternal, and they looked at
Speaker 1: the benchmark of individual differences um, personality, values, happiness, and
Speaker 1: we know about forty pc of those traits are heritable, right,
Speaker 1: So to the surprise of these researchers, they found that
Speaker 1: individual differences in materialism were almost entirely attributed to environmental
Speaker 1: factors and not a genetic thing going on here. So
Speaker 1: that kind of makes sense, right, And that actually makes
Speaker 1: sense to me in the context of hoarding, because yes,
Speaker 1: hoarding does have some pathological brain disorder elements to it,
Speaker 1: but a lot of the triggers for hoarding our environmental. So, um,
Speaker 1: you know, if you had a loved one who recently
Speaker 1: passed away or something that was life changing, that kind
Speaker 1: of sort of flipped the switch and hoarding behavior. And
Speaker 1: when I talk about hoarding behavior, I'm talking about an
Speaker 1: excessive collection of objects. This is like one of those
Speaker 1: things where it's like I must keep every newspaper that
Speaker 1: has ever come out. And it's not just keep them,
Speaker 1: but like if you were to be separated from those newspapers,
Speaker 1: you would suffer, you would feel pain, you would you
Speaker 1: would be confused, you would have an inability to really
Speaker 1: make clearheaded decisions about the sort of stuff in your life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you've seen one of these shows. To me, that's
Speaker 1: enough supporting shows, because it can be a bit much
Speaker 1: to take in, and it can be and there they're
Speaker 1: kind of depressing. Uh, but but I think I saw
Speaker 1: one once where it was like food items and it
Speaker 1: wasn't in a sense that like I need to save
Speaker 1: all the sweet potatoes because I love sweet potatoes and
Speaker 1: I need need to eat the sweet podata is later,
Speaker 1: but it would be like, oh, the sweet potato looked
Speaker 1: really good. This is a really cool looking sweet potata,
Speaker 1: and like this weird emotional attachment to the sweet potato,
Speaker 1: and then it must be kept even though it's rotting
Speaker 1: in the refrigerator. Yeah. Well, it turns out that people
Speaker 1: who have hoarding behavior or hoarding disorder, they actually have
Speaker 1: a part of their brain. Um, this is an interior
Speaker 1: singular cortex. This part of their brain is actually not
Speaker 1: behaving the same way as quote unquote normal people, because
Speaker 1: that is the part of the brain that's actually governing
Speaker 1: your decisions in and you restraint. Is that also, um,
Speaker 1: some some impulse control, yeah, um, but primarily it's the
Speaker 1: decision making. And so if you take people who have
Speaker 1: the hoarding disorder and you look at them in m
Speaker 1: r I scans when they are considering whether or not
Speaker 1: to part from an object that they own, you'll see
Speaker 1: that You'll see the fuzzy nature going on there, so
Speaker 1: you know that it is, Um, it is a brain disorder.
Speaker 1: It is this this part of their brain that is saying,
Speaker 1: I just don't know what to do here. And so
Speaker 1: it's not just like Okay, I need to have everything
Speaker 1: in the world, or there's some sort of gluttonous you know,
Speaker 1: void that they're trying to fill. It really is coming
Speaker 1: from the decisions that their their brain circuitry is making.
Speaker 1: And um, this is I thought this was really interesting
Speaker 1: when I found out about it. Um. Hoarding behavior actually
Speaker 1: has some connection, or a lot of connection to narcissism.
Speaker 1: So you think about narcissism and you think about vanity.
Speaker 1: You think about narcissus, you think about the function in
Speaker 1: the pool captivated by one's appearance. But it really is
Speaker 1: sort of a coping mechanism, and I believe it was
Speaker 1: Dr Rebecca Beaten. She explained this to me a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago when I interviewed her um about hoarding.
Speaker 1: She told me that kids who are feeling abandoned from
Speaker 1: their parents, or they don't have a significant relationship with
Speaker 1: a parent, or really any sort of guardian in other words,
Speaker 1: they they're not getting that emotional connection or even sort
Speaker 1: of the touch of the hug or any of that,
Speaker 1: they begin to turn inward and they began to become
Speaker 1: narcissists because they have to find self comfort from themselves,
Speaker 1: and some of that gets attributed to objects. So then
Speaker 1: they began to collect objects. Is this part of comfort,
Speaker 1: and that's where you see the behavior played out. And
Speaker 1: of course this brings to mind the Peanuts character Linus
Speaker 1: and his blanket, right, his woobie, his his comfort blanket,
Speaker 1: his uh or if you want to get into the
Speaker 1: more technicals, his comfort object, his transitional object um, which
Speaker 1: is something you see with a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of kids. I mean, it's Uh, let's see, did I
Speaker 1: have no Now, my sister definitely had a blanket, uh
Speaker 1: called blankie and uh, and it got to the point
Speaker 1: where they ended up like cutting off the edge of
Speaker 1: Blanky so that she could continue to carry Blanky around
Speaker 1: with her. And I think she may still have I
Speaker 1: think she still keeps blankly around. Well, you know, my
Speaker 1: daughter's four, and the same thing has happened to her blanket.
Speaker 1: She calls it Blankie's blankie. Wait, now, the part that
Speaker 1: came off she carries around is called Blanky's blankie. So
Speaker 1: it's the blank like the shard of blanket. It's all right,
Speaker 1: it's like a like it's kind of like a religious artifact.
Speaker 1: And she hides it in her bed and she's really
Speaker 1: freaky about it, like we can't find it. It's like
Speaker 1: blank is blanket. Well, I mean to an uninformed observer,
Speaker 1: it could seem a little freaky because it's like, because
Speaker 1: it is kind of borderline religious obsession, it may seem like.
Speaker 1: In fact, if you go back to the nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: attachment to a special object by a shot was regarded
Speaker 1: as just pathological behavior and it's just a case of
Speaker 1: childhood fetish reflecting something askew in the mother child relationship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I must be doing something wrong because your kid has
Speaker 1: this gross the scrap of a blanket that they're carrying around.
Speaker 1: And I think it's interesting that they look at it
Speaker 1: as a fetish, particularly if you kind of take a
Speaker 1: wide angle view of that period anyway, where you see
Speaker 1: a lot of this idea as of fetish fetishism coming out. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it wasn't until the fifties right when they
Speaker 1: started to say, you know what, this is actually a
Speaker 1: normal thing, it's a good thing. Yeah. Yeah, people like DW.
Speaker 1: Wincott started defining these is normal and necessary and is
Speaker 1: a transitional experience, a key step in an infantsi ability
Speaker 1: to distinguish this inner subjective world from the outside reality. So,
Speaker 1: you know, through the even through the seventies and eighties,
Speaker 1: there was still this sort of people are still clinging
Speaker 1: to this old notion that it's there's something wrong that
Speaker 1: the kid has some you know, some anxiety problems or something,
Speaker 1: and that's why they're holding onto it. But but really,
Speaker 1: the the the academic understanding of it was was pretty
Speaker 1: much in place, Yeah, because they began to understand that
Speaker 1: this could really help allay some of the fears, um,
Speaker 1: some of the anxieties that children have. Of course they
Speaker 1: haven't because remember they have an entirely new view of life,
Speaker 1: so they have to categorize every loud sound, every image
Speaker 1: and try to make sense of it. Is it a threat?
Speaker 1: Is it not a threat? And so this transitional object
Speaker 1: really does help because it is sort of like the
Speaker 1: stand in for, you know, parental unit or something else.
Speaker 1: There's a study by G. Japara, R. H. Passman, and C. Eisenberg,
Speaker 1: and they found that during a routine third year pediatric examination,
Speaker 1: the security object enhanced rapport with the examining nurse and
Speaker 1: then children attached to a blanket who were allowed access
Speaker 1: to it were rated as less distressed and they experienced
Speaker 1: less physiological stress um and that is evidenced by the
Speaker 1: heart rate and this is stallic blood pressure. So this
Speaker 1: is in contrast to kids who are undergoing medical evaluation,
Speaker 1: evaluation without their movies. Really, yeah, and certainly these woobies, um,
Speaker 1: as you said that they can end up becoming like
Speaker 1: an important parenting tool. I understand as well. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're you use it wisely, right, I
Speaker 1: mean it's i guess it's powerful stuff to play with,
Speaker 1: But I was reading about how you know a parent
Speaker 1: can can use it to their advantage, and a kid
Speaker 1: needs the wovie too to remain comfortable in a position
Speaker 1: when the month is away. I think it's really important
Speaker 1: to um, like around age one and so on and
Speaker 1: so forth, when when they start to feel the separation
Speaker 1: anxiety as you say, like leaving the house or even
Speaker 1: just sleeping at night, I think having something to grab
Speaker 1: onto is really important. One of the interesting things about
Speaker 1: studying transitional objects is that is that there's ultimately kind
Speaker 1: of a lack of uniformity in the definition of it
Speaker 1: and also the cultural significance of it. Like some of
Speaker 1: the cultural stats are pretty interesting, like um, the United States,
Speaker 1: sixty percent of children have at least a mild degree
Speaker 1: of attachment to some sort of soft inanimate object. And
Speaker 1: I think, looking back, I did have. I had a
Speaker 1: stuffed rhinoceros named Rinchiu had an attachment to um. But
Speaker 1: but I don't know. Then you're getting into like stuffed animals.
Speaker 1: You're getting into a whole different area because those have personality.
Speaker 1: I don't know, does Blankie or does Blankie's Blankie have
Speaker 1: a personality. Do you think, well, sometimes Blanky's Blankie gets
Speaker 1: some new trouble or does things like takes all the
Speaker 1: toilet paper off the toilet roll or something like that.
Speaker 1: But um, generally I think that's just general scoundrelness right now. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so anyway, six children in the US have some sort
Speaker 1: of mild degree, thirty two percent exhibit strong attachment. But
Speaker 1: then if you look at incidences of attachment in the
Speaker 1: Netherlands and New Zealand and Sweden, that's that's comparable to
Speaker 1: the United States. Korean children have substantially fewer attachments to blankets,
Speaker 1: down to eighteen percent, uh that compared to American children,
Speaker 1: but in Korean born children living in the United States
Speaker 1: to play an intermediate percentage of thirty four percent. Five
Speaker 1: percent of rural Italian children have transitional objects compared to
Speaker 1: thirty one percent of urban Italians, and it goes as
Speaker 1: far as the sixty two percent of foreign children living
Speaker 1: in Rome. So I don't know, you just see the stats.
Speaker 1: I guess kind of skewing towards urban areas. Yeah, as
Speaker 1: we say, that's interesting to see that it can be
Speaker 1: you know, within one country you could have such a
Speaker 1: so many different variables there and oh but in London,
Speaker 1: just sixteen percent of children have a special security object
Speaker 1: in there the that's London. So there goes the the
Speaker 1: urban argument. See, it's just it's it's hard to find
Speaker 1: the exactly what's going on. There's just so many cultural
Speaker 1: factor to look at the get well, and you have
Speaker 1: to wonder too if if part of that is just
Speaker 1: to say, like, that's not as accepted and therefore maybe
Speaker 1: in that culture it's not as encouraged, or it's not
Speaker 1: maybe as prominent, people don't see it as much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or maybe there's less of a culture of these are
Speaker 1: my objects and these are your objects, and it's more
Speaker 1: these are our objects. You know, some of us had
Speaker 1: to do with memory to write, like they would go
Speaker 1: back and say, oh, did I have an object that
Speaker 1: I was connected to? And so they're collecting some of
Speaker 1: this data from faulty memory where people are saying yes
Speaker 1: or no and they couldn't exactly remember. I also want
Speaker 1: to point out to that, uh, you know, transitional object
Speaker 1: is very different from a pacifier, And of course a
Speaker 1: pacifier is something that's used to self soothe and babies,
Speaker 1: but I kind of think of it as gum for babies.
Speaker 1: You know, it's an activity to to try to help
Speaker 1: them with their eventual um eating skills. Uh, they're swallowing skills,
Speaker 1: and it kind of helps keep them occupied if they're
Speaker 1: hungry and you're trying to prepare a bottle or something
Speaker 1: like that. But it is very different in terms of comfort. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, we're gonna take a quick break and when
Speaker 1: we come back, we will get into the world of
Speaker 1: magical thinking, lucky charms and something called the I ke
Speaker 1: ef fector Okay, so we're back, Yeah, and we're going
Speaker 1: to get into the realm of magical thinking. This is
Speaker 1: territory that we've we've moved through many times before, but
Speaker 1: it it continues to be important because it really does
Speaker 1: deal with how we think about the world and versus
Speaker 1: how the world really is. I mean we Magical thinking,
Speaker 1: of course, is uh the belief that an object, action,
Speaker 1: or circumstance not logically related to a course of events
Speaker 1: can influence its outcome. So in magical thinking, you get
Speaker 1: into all these ideas of of everything from a haunted house,
Speaker 1: the idea that oh, something bad happened here, so now
Speaker 1: something is bad with the house, you know, like the
Speaker 1: idea that that that that an event can affect the
Speaker 1: physical object or even near mementos. I mean I've mentioned
Speaker 1: my father's watch before, you know, like obviously that's that's
Speaker 1: something that has significance to me. And there's a certain
Speaker 1: amount of magical thinking involved there. Um, you know, even
Speaker 1: if it's at a subconscious level, even if I'm not thinking,
Speaker 1: oh this this has the spirit of my dad, and
Speaker 1: I think, oh, that's that is that was his watch,
Speaker 1: and there is some sense of him about it. So
Speaker 1: magical thinking kind of uh, you know, is intertwined in
Speaker 1: all our lives, uh, to varying degrees, and you know,
Speaker 1: be it conscious or subconscious. One of the more more
Speaker 1: conscious ways, of course, is with the idea of a
Speaker 1: lucky charm. Yeah, and uh, there's something called apophenia, and
Speaker 1: that is seeing patterns where there are none. And that
Speaker 1: is a little bit of the suit based two magical thinking, right,
Speaker 1: because again, if you let's say you're wearing something and
Speaker 1: something great happens, you think, oh, those are those lucky socks,
Speaker 1: and let's wear them every time that I have to
Speaker 1: do this certain challenge and began to to make this
Speaker 1: causal connection. But then there's always that difference between Oh,
Speaker 1: I've got a big interview, I'm gonna wear those lucky
Speaker 1: socks of mine. There's that, and then there's these are
Speaker 1: my lucky socks. I must wear them every day and
Speaker 1: they must never be washed, or they must be washed
Speaker 1: exactly eight times to contain their their magic, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean there's a line between just sort of helpful
Speaker 1: magical thinking and UH and and and helpful lucky charm
Speaker 1: and belief to uh. And then there's then there's a
Speaker 1: whole realm of pathology. But it's a little O C
Speaker 1: D in a way, right, so called adventitious reinforcing, and
Speaker 1: then is making that connection and then keep you know,
Speaker 1: doing whatever that ritual is over and over again so
Speaker 1: that you can hopefully, you know, evoke those spirits of
Speaker 1: magic to help you in your quest. So has anyone
Speaker 1: studied lucky charms? Of course, not the cereal the cereal
Speaker 1: that's a whole different kettle of fish. But but yes,
Speaker 1: as far as studying the effects that lucky charms lucky
Speaker 1: objects have on us. Uh, there's a really cool study
Speaker 1: from the University of Cologne in two thousand ten, and uh.
Speaker 1: They started off with just golf. They they invited these
Speaker 1: these test subjects to come and uh and see how
Speaker 1: many of tin putts they can make from the same location.
Speaker 1: And when the experiment has handed them a golf ball,
Speaker 1: they would they would sometimes just give them the ball
Speaker 1: and say, hey, everyone's used this ball so far. You know,
Speaker 1: no big deal. Here's a golf ball. Why don't you
Speaker 1: hit it and see what I'll go in that hole
Speaker 1: over there. And then sometimes they said, hey, this ball,
Speaker 1: this must be a lucky ball, this one, this one's
Speaker 1: really worked well for people. And then they they analyzed it.
Speaker 1: They let everyone play a little golf see what happened,
Speaker 1: and the mere suggestion that the ball was lucky significantly
Speaker 1: influenced performance, causing participants to make almost two more puts
Speaker 1: on average. See this is where like when David Eagleman says, like,
Speaker 1: we don't have any free will, I began to really
Speaker 1: sort of say, you know, he might be onto something,
Speaker 1: because the mere suggestion that it's lucky would actually have
Speaker 1: some sort of um bearing on your performance. That's crazy,
Speaker 1: you know. So of course they weren't going to stop
Speaker 1: just there, because generally, if you have a scientific experiment,
Speaker 1: if you have a study going on. And it begins
Speaker 1: and ends with people just playing golf one afternoon. You know,
Speaker 1: that's probably not enough. You need to push it a
Speaker 1: little a little further. Yeah, So what they did is
Speaker 1: they had test subjects come in and they had them
Speaker 1: them bring lucky artifacts with them, you know, be at
Speaker 1: their their old blankie or they're you know, like me,
Speaker 1: you know, I forgot about this. I always bring this
Speaker 1: uh tri Steratops squeeze toy into the office with me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I don't think of it as a lucky charterer.
Speaker 1: I think of it more as like something to occupy
Speaker 1: my hand when I'm feeling kind of without it. I
Speaker 1: don't podcast without it. So there's a certain amount of
Speaker 1: magical thinking involved, their certain amount of good luck charm
Speaker 1: going on with that tristeratops. So anyway, they invited people
Speaker 1: to bring in their tri Sterotops toys. They're they're lucky
Speaker 1: you know, four leaf clovers, what have you and uh,
Speaker 1: and then they started the us. They assigned them to
Speaker 1: either a condition where they would be performing a task
Speaker 1: in the presence of their charm or in absence of
Speaker 1: their charm and uh. And then the participants rated their
Speaker 1: perceived level of self efficiency and then completed a memory
Speaker 1: task that was essentially a variant of the you know,
Speaker 1: the classic card game concentration. So psychologist Lisaan and Thomish,
Speaker 1: she found that those people who had their lucky charms,
Speaker 1: they were doing a couple of things here to improve
Speaker 1: their performance because really it does prove improve yours. That
Speaker 1: was they found once again, if they had their lucky
Speaker 1: charms on hand, they did better. Yes, they were setting
Speaker 1: lawtier goals from for themselves, and then they were exhibiting
Speaker 1: increased persistence right they were. They did not give up
Speaker 1: as easily because they felt bolstered by these lucky charms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty crazy. I mean, it's the idea that
Speaker 1: the so here's the try sarratops squishy in my hand
Speaker 1: and bringing in I'm thinking, well, I've got to try
Speaker 1: sarratops with me. I'm gonna you know, I'm not just
Speaker 1: gonna go for norm. I'm going to shoot for higher
Speaker 1: because I've got this, I've got the power up in
Speaker 1: my hand, and then I'm gonna stick to it more
Speaker 1: because because because my I'm focusing with my attention, I
Speaker 1: have the the symbol of my my commitment with me
Speaker 1: as well. Well here's where the fun house mirror shutters.
Speaker 1: If you are aware of this effect, then supposedly this
Speaker 1: no longer works anymore. If you become conscious that you
Speaker 1: are attributing magical qualities to an object, then it's supposedly
Speaker 1: is not going to be effective, you know. And I
Speaker 1: don't really I don't really buy that part of the study. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it depends. I think that this depends on
Speaker 1: the individual, because for my own part, I find myself
Speaker 1: able to drift in and out of believing in things
Speaker 1: depending on what my day to day outlook is and
Speaker 1: depending on, you know, how I want to view the world,
Speaker 1: Like I find myself able to to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: you know, engage in the belief that an object might
Speaker 1: have some sort of you know, luck, or believe in
Speaker 1: some varying levels of spirituality depending on on how I'm
Speaker 1: viewing the day. So I can imagine somebody, you know,
Speaker 1: logically knowing that something is just a piece of metal,
Speaker 1: but then still buying into it enough to get that
Speaker 1: effect out of it. Well, I think that's because you
Speaker 1: have a creative, fiction twisted mind that's been trained that way.
Speaker 1: So you can, I think, dive into magical thinking very easily. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: and then still be hanging out with reality. But I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm not unique in that, and that that that so,
Speaker 1: so I think the study is fascinating. That I do,
Speaker 1: I do kind of disagree on that part. Um about
Speaker 1: the idea that just merely by listening to this podcast,
Speaker 1: we have deactivated all of your lucky arms out there,
Speaker 1: I mean some of you, if you're the right kind
Speaker 1: of person, that we just totally zapt all of your
Speaker 1: your magic do dads? Sorry about that, Um, All right,
Speaker 1: so let's change the subject and close this podcast out
Speaker 1: on Ikea, because I kea. What is this but the
Speaker 1: the iconic symbol of all objects known to man that
Speaker 1: can be acquired by man? Right right? And of course
Speaker 1: the thing we always come back to with Ikea anytime
Speaker 1: we're talking about Ikea, anytime we're we're thinking about Ikea,
Speaker 1: and I'm not talking about in the podcast, but just
Speaker 1: in general all of us is the assembly of these items.
Speaker 1: They come with the really well does well designed graphically instructions,
Speaker 1: and you bring them home and you try to make
Speaker 1: sense out of them, and then you take one or two,
Speaker 1: three or four goes. That assembling it correctly. Generally, with
Speaker 1: some there's a little bit it's like going through a
Speaker 1: maze because you end up getting a dead corner and
Speaker 1: then you realize, oh, I already used those screws in
Speaker 1: the wrong spot. Let's see if they can actually be
Speaker 1: removed without destroying the product? Is that little is it?
Speaker 1: The l Is that a Elan wrench? Yeah? Okay, that
Speaker 1: thing is ridiculous to me because you have you have
Speaker 1: all these pieces in front of you, and then you
Speaker 1: have this tiny little Alan wrench that's supposed to do
Speaker 1: the job. Well, you can get a screw driver with
Speaker 1: the Alan. Well, power tools always come out. That's the
Speaker 1: joke of it, right, And I feel like the h
Speaker 1: the little man that is that is the symbol of
Speaker 1: the person that's supposed to be you is overly comical too,
Speaker 1: And it's sort of like this commentary on the whole process.
Speaker 1: I think he's supposed to be kind of disarming as
Speaker 1: well when you reach the frustration point. See I see
Speaker 1: his passage as being mocking. He's laughing at you. You're
Speaker 1: just sitting in the living room floor, just surrounded by
Speaker 1: half as symboled furniture. Yeah, yeah, beating away. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: I have, I have. There have been times when I've
Speaker 1: been assembling Ikea furniture and I love i Kea furniture,
Speaker 1: but there have been times when I've been assembling it
Speaker 1: where I've just about lost my mind. Well see, I
Speaker 1: think that is what plays into this whole idea of
Speaker 1: this I keya effect right right, And this is the
Speaker 1: idea ultimately, it's the idea that if we build something ourselves,
Speaker 1: even if it's crap, we care more about it. And
Speaker 1: you we've all encountered this with people. You know, it's
Speaker 1: anybody that knows somebody who engages in a bit of
Speaker 1: of art, a bit of creative endeavor would be it,
Speaker 1: be it a be it somebody who's really good at it,
Speaker 1: or you know, someone who's new to to the practice.
Speaker 1: There's a tendency to to love your own work, even
Speaker 1: when it's not good. Well, I mean you see this
Speaker 1: in fiction writing a lot, right when you're going through
Speaker 1: the editing process. Is that what was the term, kill
Speaker 1: your children? You don't want to do it, darlings, kill
Speaker 1: you darlings. You don't want to to This is your
Speaker 1: creation and it doesn't fit in and it doesn't really
Speaker 1: even matter to the plotline anymore. But it's very hard
Speaker 1: to get rid of those things. Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's why you need an outsider to come in and
Speaker 1: look at your stuff. That's the beauty of the editor. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, that's why you know I have awesome ladder
Speaker 1: Milk around to edit my work for the website, because
Speaker 1: otherwise stuff would remain in there that really needs to
Speaker 1: be cut. He needs you need a hard cruel louder
Speaker 1: Milk is not cruel to come in and and and
Speaker 1: take out all the unimportant organs, just rip them right
Speaker 1: out of the body. Yeah, you do need someone putting
Speaker 1: in comments next your work saying, hey, what's up with this? Yeah?
Speaker 1: But see, this is really interesting about the IKEA effect.
Speaker 1: Is that, um, you know in the NPR story about
Speaker 1: this called Why You Left, that I keep it a
Speaker 1: keya table even if it's crooked. Um, they're saying that
Speaker 1: people don't have this editor coming in. And you see
Speaker 1: this in company, see people getting really tied to this
Speaker 1: idea of what a product is or what it is
Speaker 1: that they're making it. Sometimes it's two years in the mak. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're putting just loads of time and energy into it
Speaker 1: and you're just you're just you're in the jungle with it.
Speaker 1: You're in the jungle, and then someone from the outside
Speaker 1: comes in and goes, it's crooked. Yeah, you know, um,
Speaker 1: and that you need that, you need you need that
Speaker 1: sort of fresh perspective. So that's helpful. I mean, we're
Speaker 1: we've kind of transitioned away from objects more into um
Speaker 1: philosophy here. But hey, I mean, isn't that what objects
Speaker 1: are doing in the first place. They're just metaphors for
Speaker 1: us really. Yeah, So that the study was big on
Speaker 1: stressing that that building your own stuff boost you're feeling
Speaker 1: of pride and confidence signals to others that you are competent,
Speaker 1: which I think is as good as well and reminds
Speaker 1: me of that recent Portlandia sketch. Did you see this
Speaker 1: with the duty build his own furniture? No? I didn't
Speaker 1: see that one. He's he's like the all the women
Speaker 1: want to date him and marry him and they can
Speaker 1: make make him their own because they learn, oh, he
Speaker 1: makes his own furniture, you know, because like it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's just the perfect thing, right, But then they find
Speaker 1: out that he makes really crappy furniture. But he just
Speaker 1: doesn't realize it, so so it kind of fits in
Speaker 1: with what we're talking about. But the third thing that
Speaker 1: they found in the study that was interesting was that, uh,
Speaker 1: this is a direct quote from the study, threatening consumers
Speaker 1: sense of self increases their propensity to make things themselves.
Speaker 1: So the idea to the idea here that that the
Speaker 1: author talks about in this this article is that theoretically,
Speaker 1: if you were to provide a visitor to Ikea with
Speaker 1: a really difficult math problem to you know, to really
Speaker 1: bust them down a few chops and make them make
Speaker 1: them feel kind of stupid, then let him into Ikea,
Speaker 1: they're going to be even more into the idea of
Speaker 1: buying something and building it themselves so they can make
Speaker 1: good again. So because their ego has been taken down
Speaker 1: a couple of notches, and then if they can just
Speaker 1: assemble something, they can regain that. Yeah, yeah, idea. I
Speaker 1: think so, because it's it's kind of like anything, you know,
Speaker 1: whenever you're logged in a in a process that is
Speaker 1: just seemingly never ending that you don't really feel like
Speaker 1: there's a sense of completion, or you have one of
Speaker 1: those days where you work on eighteen different things and
Speaker 1: finish none of them. Like, what you really want to
Speaker 1: do is is nail something you want to say? I
Speaker 1: went home and I made a girl cheese from start
Speaker 1: to finish and then I ate it case close close
Speaker 1: that loop. Oh that would get you a lot of ladies.
Speaker 1: Hey he makes cheese. He makes cheese. Yeah, well not
Speaker 1: from start to finish, not making your own bread and cheese.
Speaker 1: That that would be impressive as well. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. This is what writ the author was saying,
Speaker 1: is that maybe I could start to game their customers
Speaker 1: to their advantage and give them these math problems, or
Speaker 1: just put up big placards that say, like, you know
Speaker 1: you're awful and lousy, to put some furniture together and
Speaker 1: you feel better. I mean some people love it. I
Speaker 1: know people that are just in love with the idea
Speaker 1: of putting together furniture. Well, Ikea Hacker is a great
Speaker 1: website to see what people do to to sort of
Speaker 1: change the the or to make it more unique, or
Speaker 1: you know, try to game the furniture too. Haven't have
Speaker 1: another purpose. I've been saying for a while that Ikea
Speaker 1: needs to do like a game show where and the
Speaker 1: teams of of Ikea hackers have to like compete against
Speaker 1: each other, and maybe they're having to do a symbol
Speaker 1: furniture in weird places like you know, in a hot
Speaker 1: air balloon or on the subway. But my boy, I
Speaker 1: think you got something there. Yeah it did that sound
Speaker 1: like nineteen Yeah a little bit, A little bit right,
Speaker 1: So there you go. Objects um, a little insight into
Speaker 1: why we've surround ourselveselves with so much stuff while it's
Speaker 1: so important. And I was really I was really interested
Speaker 1: in you know, we're talking about that that space, that
Speaker 1: that that your mind occupies, that that moment when you're
Speaker 1: holding something in your hand and trying to decide whether
Speaker 1: you can part with it and throw it away or
Speaker 1: if it has value that it needs to be held
Speaker 1: and and and maintained like that, That to me is
Speaker 1: a very interesting frame of mind um to occupy. And
Speaker 1: we've all been there, and uh and and and we
Speaker 1: all kind of skew different ways. I think when when
Speaker 1: faced with that situation, some of us will just throw
Speaker 1: stuff away at the drop of the hat. My my
Speaker 1: wife is one and and she's been a good influence
Speaker 1: on me and making me more susceptible to getting rid
Speaker 1: of things instead of keeping them around needlessly, so you
Speaker 1: just have boxes of notes and stuff. Yeah, you know, Um,
Speaker 1: if I'm in a store, which I don't really shop
Speaker 1: that much, but if I'm in the store and I
Speaker 1: see something I fancy, I actually will carry it around
Speaker 1: for about fifteen minutes to see whether or not I
Speaker 1: actually wanted in. Nine out of ten times I put
Speaker 1: it back. That's a that's a good way of doing it.
Speaker 1: I found myself doing that sometimes when there's like a weight,
Speaker 1: you know, you're having to wait in line to to
Speaker 1: check out, and you have the objects in your hand
Speaker 1: and you really start to think about what you're doing
Speaker 1: and decide, I don't know that I really need that,
Speaker 1: And of course there realizes the danger of of online
Speaker 1: shopping immediate. So, hey, what we would love to hear
Speaker 1: from everybody about this, about your thoughts on your relationships
Speaker 1: with objects, because we we all have the um and
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear some stories. I love to hear
Speaker 1: some some new insight on blank's that you were fond
Speaker 1: of as a child, other stranger things that you attached
Speaker 1: to as a as a child, things that you're still
Speaker 1: attached to in as adult, The various deities that may
Speaker 1: occupy your work desk, be they actual Hindu gods or
Speaker 1: action figures. I have both online, so I no no judgment. Uh,
Speaker 1: let us know what you think. We'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from you at our Facebook account at our Tumbler account.
Speaker 1: On both of those we are stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: We also have a Twitter account where our handle is
Speaker 1: blow the Mind and you can always drop us a
Speaker 1: line at blow the Mind at Discovery dot com For
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, Is it
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com