Speaker 1: Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Crampus Night, isn't it. That's right?
Speaker 1: Today is or tonight rather is Crampus Knocked, the night
Speaker 1: during which the Beast of Christmas comes down from the
Speaker 1: mountains and terrorizes alpine towns around the world. Right, it's
Speaker 1: so given that this episode falls on Crampus Knock, we
Speaker 1: realized we had a solemn duty, a solemn holiday duty,
Speaker 1: to explore Crampus in depth. Man, I think Crampus just
Speaker 1: took a walk through our kitchen because I just went
Speaker 1: through there and there was such a reek. There was
Speaker 1: like a waft of aged shrimp all throughout the microwave area.
Speaker 1: Does Crampus smell? You know? I would imagine you would
Speaker 1: smell somewhat of sulfur and rot. Yeah, I mean one
Speaker 1: would think or or certainly the hides would have a
Speaker 1: daintness to them, right. Um. But but the smell was
Speaker 1: often overlooked because generally it's more it's it's generally thought
Speaker 1: of as more visual spectacle. Uh, certainly for those of
Speaker 1: us far away from the Alpine regions that that either
Speaker 1: have to make do with some facsimile of Crampus rights
Speaker 1: in our own cities or simply have to make do
Speaker 1: with with footage and images and illustrations of what these
Speaker 1: rights consist of. Now, Crampus was really having a moment
Speaker 1: like a couple of years ago. I think like the
Speaker 1: suddenly interest in this creature surged, uh, And I feel
Speaker 1: like it's it's calmed down enough now that we that
Speaker 1: we can properly tackle it. Yeah, but I think the
Speaker 1: good news is that I think it has calmed down
Speaker 1: to like a steady infection of of Western civilization beyond
Speaker 1: the Alpine regions. You know, certainly here in the United States,
Speaker 1: like Crampus Uh has you know, sir urged infected the
Speaker 1: holiday host And now I think we can say Crampus
Speaker 1: is part of our our holiday traditions here in the
Speaker 1: United States. Now, another thing is you said you were
Speaker 1: going to be leaning into the holidays this year, and
Speaker 1: man you have been. But what we we do promise
Speaker 1: it's not going to be all Christmas stuff the rest
Speaker 1: of the year. It was just that you saw that
Speaker 1: it was coming out on Crampus knocked and we we
Speaker 1: couldn't do but go to the horns exactly. So let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about Crampus, because some of
Speaker 1: you may not actually be familiar with crampas or you
Speaker 1: might not have you know, as you know, a robust
Speaker 1: and understandings as other folks out there. So the short version,
Speaker 1: of course, is that Crampus is an Alpine holiday monster
Speaker 1: used as negative reinforcement, a threat of punishment for bad
Speaker 1: behavior against children. He is the bad cop to St.
Speaker 1: Nicholas's good cop. He is uh the stick, whereas St.
Speaker 1: Nicholas is the carrot, though much more directly so than St.
Speaker 1: Nicholas being the carrot, because the child doesn't actually want
Speaker 1: to see St. Nicholas in their house that would perhaps
Speaker 1: be traumatic. You want the treats and the goodies and
Speaker 1: the presence that St. Nicholas brings, So the St. Nicholas
Speaker 1: is like an indirect giver of the carrot. Crampus is
Speaker 1: himself quite the stick, right and and but he is
Speaker 1: something you wish to avoid. And that's the general idea.
Speaker 1: The Crampus is what happens to the bad children. You,
Speaker 1: young one, are not one of the bad children, are you.
Speaker 1: Uh wait, so what exactly does Crampus do to the
Speaker 1: bad children? Well? Uh so so it it very I mean,
Speaker 1: the basic idea is that Crampus is going to come
Speaker 1: and crampallow go and describe Crampus for everyone, though again
Speaker 1: this is a situation where the exact incarnation of Crampas
Speaker 1: is going to drift a little bit, and we're going
Speaker 1: to discuss the wise of that in a bit a
Speaker 1: little bit. Baffa metti, Yeah, a goat like beast man,
Speaker 1: kind of a satyr, kind of a pan figure, kind
Speaker 1: of a demon, like a furry, shaggy alpine demon from
Speaker 1: the cold mountain wilderness comes down. Uh you know, he's
Speaker 1: covered in bell's uh as a basket on it on
Speaker 1: his back as switches may bring coal as well. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's shown to have like a big lolling uh you know,
Speaker 1: giraffe like tongue. And basically he's going to come in
Speaker 1: scare the bad children with the bad children with his switches,
Speaker 1: and if you're particularly bad, throw you into his basket
Speaker 1: and take you with him back to the wilderness to
Speaker 1: either eat you out there maybe or maybe take you
Speaker 1: to hell. Is is that sometimes part of it. Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think again, the exactly exact details are going to vary.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I wonder if it's like, because clearly Crampus has coal,
Speaker 1: perhaps he needs the children to work in the coal mine.
Speaker 1: But that's just me. That's my my possible twist on it.
Speaker 1: Now you're probably wondering, you know, where does this idea
Speaker 1: come from. We know that it it definitely seems to
Speaker 1: originate in the Alpine regions of Europe, but it's unsure
Speaker 1: if it's truly a pre Christian pagan tradition. Um. Some
Speaker 1: people say that it is, though it undoubtedly invokes pre
Speaker 1: Christian pay and ideas and images, um, you know, regardless
Speaker 1: of where it's actually or when it's actually emerging. But
Speaker 1: at heart, he's a He's just a general bogey, right,
Speaker 1: the embodiment of negative reinforcement of cultural norms in children.
Speaker 1: And perhaps going back to our discussion of Jenny Green teeth, uh,
Speaker 1: the bogey that is used to warn children away from
Speaker 1: from still waters that are dangerous. Perhaps Crampus is an
Speaker 1: embodiment of, you know, the general message that bad things
Speaker 1: will happen to you if you do not take seriously
Speaker 1: the rules and advice that your parents and your elders
Speaker 1: present you with. So while yes, misbehaving will not actually
Speaker 1: result in foul beastmen venturing down from the mountains and
Speaker 1: dragging you away to some horrific fate, but misbehaving could
Speaker 1: result in bodily harm, and certainly the potential for violent
Speaker 1: mistreatment by others is you know, is possible in certain circumstances.
Speaker 1: Either way, Crampus is an embodiment of fear in a
Speaker 1: holiday that is often reduced to just a notion of
Speaker 1: pure joy right, especially in the United States traditionally, But
Speaker 1: his spirit is is certainly of the winter from which
Speaker 1: our holiday traditions emerge. Uh, you know, he is the
Speaker 1: the darkness of the holidays that is ultimately essential to
Speaker 1: to winter um rights and winter belief systems that you
Speaker 1: find in cultures around the world. Now, one thing that
Speaker 1: I think is an interesting difference is that, like whether
Speaker 1: or not there's really a St. Nicholas to bring you presents,
Speaker 1: children will often end up with presents on Christmas Morning
Speaker 1: with the implication that they have come from St. Nicholas,
Speaker 1: but nobody ever actually gets carried off by Crampus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you'll he's one of the big things here
Speaker 1: is you have Crampus parades, traditional Crampus parades in alpine areas,
Speaker 1: in which people dressed in the crampas costumes will parade
Speaker 1: through the streets and um and scare children. Though certainly
Speaker 1: nowadays they are not They're generally not permitted to touch
Speaker 1: the children or to actually strike the children with sticks,
Speaker 1: much less drag them away. Uh. But in previous decades, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I imagine they perhaps had a little more leeway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess so. But either way, Yes, the idea is
Speaker 1: that Crampus is a a performance. It is a is
Speaker 1: a folk festival performance in which people dress up as
Speaker 1: the monster and then the monsters parade through the streets.
Speaker 1: And in this, you know, it touches on so many
Speaker 1: other different folk traditions. There's something about Crampus that seems
Speaker 1: to embody just like it just checks off so many
Speaker 1: boxes for folk traditions, uh that you find throughout Europe
Speaker 1: but also in around the world, you know, like the
Speaker 1: making of bread totems that resemble Crampus, Crampus wearing the bells,
Speaker 1: bells being objects that are typically used in folk decisions,
Speaker 1: worn off evil spirits. Uh, Crampus as being a kind
Speaker 1: of horned god as another thing that is often brought up,
Speaker 1: you know, and of course there are many versions of
Speaker 1: horned gods and horned beings and various religions and myth cycles,
Speaker 1: uh you know, tied you know, particularly with the horned
Speaker 1: god to the unpredictable nature of the hunt. Uh. So
Speaker 1: he he really you know, stands uh, you know, on
Speaker 1: this kind of nexus of so many different ideas, Like
Speaker 1: it's easy to just go nuts chasing cramps through the
Speaker 1: you know, through the centuries of of of human folk history. Well,
Speaker 1: he's also just a classic hybrid monster. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that at heart he is kind of part part man,
Speaker 1: part goat. I guess you'd say, part sheep, maybe part
Speaker 1: you know, part beast, and in that like he ties
Speaker 1: into some of our our oldest you know, magical ideas.
Speaker 1: A hybridity is key to monstrosity. And what is thought
Speaker 1: to be the first monster in the human imagination is
Speaker 1: none other than the uh what the the low and
Speaker 1: mench figuring from about thirty five to forty thousand years ago. Well,
Speaker 1: the first that we have physical epiens. Because yeah, as
Speaker 1: we talk about in our episode about the first monster.
Speaker 1: You can't know what the first monster was, but this
Speaker 1: seems to be like the earliest one where there's a
Speaker 1: physical record of the monster. Yeah, and we did a
Speaker 1: whole episode on that talking about like, you know, you
Speaker 1: know certainly how this example was found and what experts
Speaker 1: have thought about it, and how it ties into just
Speaker 1: how how our minds work, like bringing two uh different
Speaker 1: ideas together into a new idea, and what this new
Speaker 1: idea encompasses totally. So what happens on Crampus Knocked, well, uh,
Speaker 1: Crampus Knocked is the eve of the Feast of St. Nicholas.
Speaker 1: It occurs every December five, and so Crampus descends from
Speaker 1: the mountain, terrorizes with the children, drags the worst of
Speaker 1: them away in that foul wicker basket covered in bells.
Speaker 1: Sometimes he he hands out coal or root and bundles
Speaker 1: of sticks, which is interesting. The bundles of sticks are
Speaker 1: sometimes also met musical instruments, of course, because they can
Speaker 1: be used to it with a percussion instrument. Um. But
Speaker 1: you know, this is the overall just a parade in
Speaker 1: which there's this threat of greater beatings or abduction if
Speaker 1: you do not behave yourselves and um. And this is
Speaker 1: another thing, like the Crampus parade through the streets also
Speaker 1: has this kind of unruly atmosphere to it that ties
Speaker 1: in with a lot of parade traditions that involve masks
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, be steel guys is that people
Speaker 1: take on and this you know, so again it runs
Speaker 1: parallel to so many different things in human culture. Well,
Speaker 1: it's one of the great ironies in the belief in
Speaker 1: demons and devils that have haaunted us throughout the centuries,
Speaker 1: which is that they are often used precisely to enforce
Speaker 1: order like orderly behavior among children, and yet they are
Speaker 1: themselves figures of chaos. It's like this unruly, unpredictable, wild
Speaker 1: kind of thing will be there to punish you if
Speaker 1: you break the rules. Why is that? I don't know
Speaker 1: that that's interesting to me. Yeah, we'll certainly get into
Speaker 1: the psychology of this more in the later portion of
Speaker 1: the episode. Asked for the name Crampus comes from cramping,
Speaker 1: which means claw in German, so which has a you know,
Speaker 1: a nice nasty connotation to it, like this is the
Speaker 1: claw the claw man. Um, let's see, goodness, where do
Speaker 1: you even even go from there? So we talked about
Speaker 1: crampas come, Crampas comes to town, Crampus parades through the streets,
Speaker 1: or the Crampus, the cramp i, you know, multiple cramp
Speaker 1: Crampus is some of these, especially these these modern Crampus parades.
Speaker 1: You're talking like four hundred crampuses parading through the streets.
Speaker 1: They're quite a festival. Sometimes there's fire, uh, you know.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the costumes are a little more modern, but other
Speaker 1: times they put a strong emphasis on maintaining traditional originality.
Speaker 1: Wooden masks, actual um, you know, goat and sheep skins,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. So they are the basic ideas that, okay,
Speaker 1: Crampus either incorporates pagan ideas or emerges from pagan ideas,
Speaker 1: or even is ultimately rooted in pre Christian pagan traditions.
Speaker 1: But then St. Nicholas does come along rounds. This is
Speaker 1: the solemn Catholic precursor to the sort of jolly modern
Speaker 1: Santa Claus that most of us grew up with, and St.
Speaker 1: Nick gained popularity among German speaking people during the eleventh century. Now,
Speaker 1: the story of St. Nicholas is itself full of fascinating diversions,
Speaker 1: Like there's a great story where St. Nicholas. I believe
Speaker 1: he comes across a place where an evil innkeeper or
Speaker 1: somebody like that has murdered some young boys, and then
Speaker 1: then St. Nicholas murdered them, chopped them up and pickled them,
Speaker 1: and then St. Nicholas resurrects the chopped up, pickled boys. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I guess the innkeepers somehow punished, Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: and St. Nicholas. Is this the rather different figure from
Speaker 1: from modern Santa Claus? To him that he is, I mean,
Speaker 1: he's essentially like a former bishop of of what is
Speaker 1: now Turkey. I think so. Yeah, he's and he's this
Speaker 1: dour individual. So he's not really jolly. I guess he's
Speaker 1: jolly in comparison to the beast man Crampus, but he's
Speaker 1: not quite Santa Claus, that's for sure. He's more like
Speaker 1: a Christmas saw Uman kind of. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: think he's yeah, yeah, I guess he has kind of
Speaker 1: It's kind of. Yeah. Anyway, in the centuries to follow,
Speaker 1: Crampus becomes an essential part of these traditions. You have
Speaker 1: Crampus and you have St. Nick. Uh. Certainly you have
Speaker 1: Crampus knocked ahead of the coming of St. Nicholas and uh,
Speaker 1: and this just becomes, you know, just a popular part
Speaker 1: of the holiday, and at times it actually gets a
Speaker 1: little too popular for some people. So Crampus has always
Speaker 1: been just as Crampus as this this darkness to the light, uh,
Speaker 1: compared to the light of St. Nicholas. You know, Crampus
Speaker 1: even today is I think sometimes seen as kind of
Speaker 1: an enemy of craft Christmas. Well, you know, the same
Speaker 1: way they say, like it's hard to make an anti
Speaker 1: war movie because war is inherently thrilling. It might be
Speaker 1: hard to make an anti Satan like demon character because
Speaker 1: demon characters are inherently kind of fun to act out,
Speaker 1: and so like, there's always the risk that people might
Speaker 1: be having a little too much fun acting out their
Speaker 1: Crampus roles, unless the Church might need to bring the
Speaker 1: hammer down, that's right. So you know, the Catholic Church
Speaker 1: attempted to ban these festivals in the seventeen and eighteenth centuries,
Speaker 1: but they weren't able to do so. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: before Nazi Germany's Night invasion of Austria, Catholic Austro fascist
Speaker 1: briefly held power and is reported in a ninety five
Speaker 1: New York Times article titled Crampas disliked in Fascist Austria. Uh.
Speaker 1: They pointed out that that at the time, the people
Speaker 1: in power saw Crampus as a demonic, unruly and potentially
Speaker 1: communist usurper of Christian traditions. Yeah. So basically the Crampus,
Speaker 1: according to this article, Crampus postcards and candies you know,
Speaker 1: had always been popular. But but they had they had
Speaker 1: become so popular that Crampus had virtually taken over from
Speaker 1: Sander like he was he was becoming the gift giver
Speaker 1: as well. Um So, at any rate, there was an
Speaker 1: attempt to uh uh, you know, to to to oust Crampus,
Speaker 1: to to you know, to say it was a communist
Speaker 1: because ultimately in some depictions he was reading wearing red
Speaker 1: I guess. But they ordered anyone in a Crampas costume
Speaker 1: to be arrested on site. Festive Crampas dances were outlawed,
Speaker 1: and they even required all Santa clauses as well to
Speaker 1: be licensed by the state and monitored. Fascist ruin everything
Speaker 1: now um uh. In modern times, of course, there have
Speaker 1: also been concerns about the potential trauma of subjecting children
Speaker 1: to the idea of Crampus, or certainly the reality of
Speaker 1: frightening um grown people in crampas costumes breaking through the street.
Speaker 1: According to a two thousand six reports from Reuter's, concerned
Speaker 1: parents and one child psychologists spoke out against the demons
Speaker 1: violent influence, as well as so called childhood crampus trauma,
Speaker 1: of which there are only a few cases, but at
Speaker 1: any rate enough for some individuals to to want to
Speaker 1: sound the alarm. Uh And you know what what made
Speaker 1: the situation particularly interesting was that while Santa ended up
Speaker 1: being banned for visiting kindergartens in Vienna at the time,
Speaker 1: Crampus apparently still had access to the children, and so
Speaker 1: there was a certain amount of outrage over that. Well.
Speaker 1: You know, so I'm of two minds about this. Of course,
Speaker 1: I love Crampus. I love the demons and the monsters
Speaker 1: and all that that. That's sort of my personal jam.
Speaker 1: But I also am very naturally disposed against terrorizing children
Speaker 1: with supernatural threats. Uh So, I mean, I would I
Speaker 1: would propose making Crampus more of a Halloween style thing.
Speaker 1: What what vampires and goblins are to Halloween, Crampus could
Speaker 1: be to the Christmas season, you know, not something that
Speaker 1: you are taught is literally an existent threat that will
Speaker 1: hurt you, but just kind of like a fun trapping
Speaker 1: of the season. Ah, you know, and this week kind
Speaker 1: of referring back to our episode on cuteness and monsters. Right, Ultimately,
Speaker 1: if you want to declaw the monster, if you want
Speaker 1: to deflux declaw the Crampus, what you need to do
Speaker 1: is make him funny and or cute, especially cute. The
Speaker 1: cuter Crampus becomes the you know, the less terrifying he is.
Speaker 1: But then how will we get the children to behave um?
Speaker 1: And now I mentioned earlier about how you know, the
Speaker 1: tradition of of of Crampus has spread over the world
Speaker 1: and uh, and as such you'll see some crampas parades
Speaker 1: where there's more of a Hollywood and horror of film
Speaker 1: culture reflected. Uh. Certainly, if you just start looking at
Speaker 1: Crampus images online, some of them are going to look
Speaker 1: more like demon costumes that you might buy at a
Speaker 1: Halloween superstore. And then you're gonna see things that are
Speaker 1: that are far more traditional looking. Um. And I was
Speaker 1: looking at one particular article. This is a New York
Speaker 1: Times article titled he sees you when You're sleeping and
Speaker 1: gives you nightmare my Melissa Eddie, this is about the
Speaker 1: celebration of Crampus and Munich. And in this article I
Speaker 1: point out that that in in this particular Munich Crampus parade,
Speaker 1: they only allow really traditional crampuses. So this means wooden masks, horns,
Speaker 1: goat and sheep pelts, bells and switches. Um and uh.
Speaker 1: She writes that local crampus clubs there will spend between
Speaker 1: eighteen hundred and euros upwards of three thousand dollars each
Speaker 1: year on masks and costumes made from local materials. How
Speaker 1: do you join a crampus club? Is that very exclusive? Um?
Speaker 1: I get the impression it's kind of like joining a
Speaker 1: crew with a k uh down in New Orleans, you know,
Speaker 1: for various parades. You know, it's kind of like you
Speaker 1: have clubs that get together and put put together. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know these these particular costumes and performance. It's not
Speaker 1: like a horned beast. Country club is not where crampus
Speaker 1: is gathered to use the pool and place. I don't
Speaker 1: think so, but she points out the master or in
Speaker 1: this case car from lime, Swiss pine or alderwood, and
Speaker 1: the skin are going to be sheep or goats. Quote.
Speaker 1: Although no one turns away a cramps wearing wild board,
Speaker 1: which is nice, and so four crampas is strong. They
Speaker 1: take to the streets, but there are rules no drinking
Speaker 1: and again no actual hitting the children. But crampus traditions
Speaker 1: are going to vary as well, al right, and our
Speaker 1: pointed out on Atlas Obscure back in that it's it's
Speaker 1: not what crampas looks like, so much is what he
Speaker 1: does or threatens to do that matters. For instance, entire
Speaker 1: all the cramps tradition there is that crampus is essentially
Speaker 1: wearing this big suit of straw. So the crampuses look
Speaker 1: kind of like a hay bale with the you know,
Speaker 1: beast legs, arms and head and um, and and that's
Speaker 1: just gonna be the way that cramps is depicted in
Speaker 1: that particular area. And then you can you know, travel over.
Speaker 1: For instance, there's a part of Bavaria where they don't
Speaker 1: even have crampus. Instead it's a bouten Munden, which is
Speaker 1: like a crampus figure. So um. The author here that
Speaker 1: as Alice obscure Piece says, quote, like the tooth fairy,
Speaker 1: he had a definite function but no definite form, which
Speaker 1: I think it's a nice way of putting it. Now,
Speaker 1: another thing that right and our points out is that
Speaker 1: crampas traditions were ultimately, you know, traditionally a thing of
Speaker 1: the country. They spread slowly and then eventually made their
Speaker 1: way to the cities where illustrators there might have never
Speaker 1: heard of such traditions before, so in depicting them, they
Speaker 1: too might have had to rely on other demonic motifs,
Speaker 1: such as devil motifs that were already you know, prevalent
Speaker 1: in religious iconography, as well as pan and sader motifs
Speaker 1: from art culture. So this would and then I would
Speaker 1: imagine that this would end up influencing through the traditions
Speaker 1: to some extent as well. So again it ultimately the
Speaker 1: exact appearance of the creature is going to vary, but
Speaker 1: it's the the intent that is that is almost pure
Speaker 1: and its chaotic menace. I wonder what exactly it was
Speaker 1: it caused the sudden international surge in crampus interest a
Speaker 1: few years ago. Well, there's there's one possible answer to that.
Speaker 1: I was treating an article in the Chicago Tribune from
Speaker 1: from this year by Rick Cogan, and he points out
Speaker 1: that the US explosion of Crampus might in part be
Speaker 1: due to the two thousand four publication of The Devil
Speaker 1: in Design the Crampus Postcards by Mont Beauchamp, an award
Speaker 1: winning Chicago art director and graphic designer. So the idea
Speaker 1: here is like this book came out, these images started
Speaker 1: circulating around. UM. The images zo ended up being licensed
Speaker 1: in some cases, or at least they were licensing request.
Speaker 1: And this kind of sets off the online fascination with
Speaker 1: Crampus and these Crampus images. You know, suddenly here's this
Speaker 1: this new dark spin on the holidays. It starts appearing
Speaker 1: in television shows. Uh what Venture Brothers I think was
Speaker 1: one of the first things, first shows in which I
Speaker 1: saw a depiction of Crampus, but I understand he's shown
Speaker 1: up on like Supernatural was another one UM and eventually
Speaker 1: had his own horror movie. I think that was in
Speaker 1: the last couple of years. That was that. So my
Speaker 1: dad's a big fan of it. This is like that.
Speaker 1: That was probably the peat Crampus year, I think. So yeah,
Speaker 1: would be like or something. Yeah, And of course, you know,
Speaker 1: crap Crampus parades can now be found throughout the United States,
Speaker 1: and there's one every year right here in Atlanta. That's
Speaker 1: also it's sort of a more of a pub crawl
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, unless it's changed, uh, then like
Speaker 1: a pure parade, like an actual license parade. But then
Speaker 1: unsurprisingly you'll find parade crews in New Orleans that that
Speaker 1: put on a Crampus parade every year through the streets
Speaker 1: and then they finish up at a German restaurant there
Speaker 1: in uh, in New Orleans. Okay, you Hollywood development people,
Speaker 1: I've got an idea. I'm gonna pitch it to you
Speaker 1: right now. Okay, it's a Miracle on thirty four Street,
Speaker 1: but with Crampus instead of Santa Claus. So a little
Speaker 1: girl be friends a goatman who thinks he who says
Speaker 1: he's the real Crampus, and you don't know the whole
Speaker 1: movie is either real Crampus or is he just a
Speaker 1: regular goat man who thinks he's Crampas. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think, I mean, that's that's the thing. Americle on
Speaker 1: thirty or four Street is a story about Santa and
Speaker 1: a story about about letters and language, right uh. And
Speaker 1: Crampus is basically unlanguaged, like there are no words with
Speaker 1: Crampus there are no there are no prayers, there are
Speaker 1: no letters to cramp just the unspoken implication get in
Speaker 1: the basket. Yeah, he is just just just pure menace.
Speaker 1: He's like Jason Jason befoorhees. Yeah, it doesn't need to speak,
Speaker 1: you just his intentions are clear. Well, it goes back
Speaker 1: to the lion man. It goes back to the basic
Speaker 1: hybridity of monsters. Monsters don't have to say anything because
Speaker 1: monsters are the message, right, their form speaks for them exactly.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Crampas doesn't have to say a thing. Crampus
Speaker 1: is the message. All right. Well, for the rest of
Speaker 1: the episode, we're going to be exploring the biology and
Speaker 1: the psychology of of Crampus knocked. But before where we
Speaker 1: do that, we probably need to take a break, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: so we will be right back with more. Okay, So
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Speaker 1: slash mind blown. Thank alright, we're back. So I admit
Speaker 1: that was kind of an extended ramble in the first
Speaker 1: part of the episode, but hopefully we were able to
Speaker 1: get across some of the basic points of the Crampas traditions.
Speaker 1: But it can be kind of difficult because again it's
Speaker 1: it varies from place to place, from time to time.
Speaker 1: Crampus is pure in his intent, in his just physical message,
Speaker 1: but everything else is kind of up for grabs. You know.
Speaker 1: I think it's time to play one of our favorite
Speaker 1: games on the show, which is, let's take this monster
Speaker 1: in a biologically literal way. Yes, uh, which is actually
Speaker 1: kind of difficult to again to do with Crampus because
Speaker 1: the actual interpretation of him changes so much. But uh.
Speaker 1: I will start by mentioning like two literary worlds that
Speaker 1: come to mind that provide fun parallels to the Crampus idea.
Speaker 1: So one is a book by Michael Crichton, the book
Speaker 1: Eaters of the Dead. Have you read this? I actually haven't.
Speaker 1: I went through a strong Michael Crichton phase when I
Speaker 1: was younger, but never got to this one. I was
Speaker 1: in all the techno thrillers, not this one. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: one is the odd non techno thriller, but it's really good.
Speaker 1: It's essentially a spin on Bayo Wolf. Instead of Grendel,
Speaker 1: the singular monster, you have of the people known as
Speaker 1: the Windell, who are possible Neandertal descendants superiodically descend from
Speaker 1: the mountain to raid vikings settlements. Uh so um, you know,
Speaker 1: the clear inspiration for this again being Grendel who comes
Speaker 1: down from the wilds and Bayowulf to assault the mead Hall.
Speaker 1: Another literary parallel, it comes to mind the White Walkers
Speaker 1: and George R. Martin's Song Lice and Fire Books, particularly uh,
Speaker 1: the situation with Craster of Craster's Keep, who sacrifices his
Speaker 1: male children to the White Walkers in order to sort
Speaker 1: of protect himself, to maintain like this weird alliance with
Speaker 1: the forces of of wilderness and gold and death. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these uh, these demonic entities to live out in the
Speaker 1: in the freezing woods, and they they and they represent
Speaker 1: a threat to human children. Right, So, playing with these
Speaker 1: extrapolations of monsters from the winter wild, we might arrive
Speaker 1: at a view of Crampus as a as as a
Speaker 1: people who come down from the mountains to raid the
Speaker 1: civilizations of man, but who might be bought off through
Speaker 1: an offering of our worst human children, which they presumably
Speaker 1: eat or yeah, or maybe put to work in the
Speaker 1: coal mines. Um. As far as I can tell, this
Speaker 1: would be you know, a pretty unique arrangement. Uh, in
Speaker 1: part because outside of our myths and fictions, there are
Speaker 1: no beast men. There are no inhuman others to deal
Speaker 1: with in this manner. Uh. Though tantalizing lee enough, we
Speaker 1: are dealing with Europe here, a place where humans end
Speaker 1: any and Neanderthals seem to have coexisted for a number
Speaker 1: of years. Um, And I was looking around. I was wondering, like,
Speaker 1: surely somebody has has written about the possibility of cramps
Speaker 1: having something to do with the anderw Toals, but but
Speaker 1: nobody else has made that, uh gone out on that
Speaker 1: that that limb, that's just me on that limb. But
Speaker 1: at any rate, as we discussed in our recent cannibalism episode,
Speaker 1: there there is clear evidence that both Neandertals and prehistoric
Speaker 1: humans engaged in cannibalism, but there's nothing solid to suggest
Speaker 1: that they really ate each other, though child sacrifice itself
Speaker 1: can be found throughout cultures of the ancient Near East,
Speaker 1: pre Columbian America's, pre modern Europe, parts of Africa, etcetera. So, so,
Speaker 1: you know, this is just me spitballing here, But but
Speaker 1: I don't don't think there's anything unbelievable about the idea
Speaker 1: of humans offering up their worst children to a species
Speaker 1: of mountain creatures, um as the you know, cold demands
Speaker 1: of winter set in. In fact, you know, when you
Speaker 1: think about one of the predecessors to Christmas was Roman Saturnalia,
Speaker 1: which involved a great deal of public ruckus and sacrifices,
Speaker 1: though apparently not of the human variety, or so we're told. Yes, Now,
Speaker 1: as far as thinking about crampus creatures biologically, I mean
Speaker 1: we we simply, you know, we could imagine them as
Speaker 1: a cold weather adapted to Hamad species, uh, you know
Speaker 1: what with all the fur and and again, it is
Speaker 1: interesting to think about the fact that Neanderthals may have
Speaker 1: been essentially that species adapted too cold the cold weather
Speaker 1: the ice ages, though interpretations vary on that as well.
Speaker 1: For instance, there's even one theory that states that Neanderdal's
Speaker 1: might actually have been killed out by a cold dry
Speaker 1: spell spanning centuries during the period of their decline. But
Speaker 1: also when we can think about the fur and the
Speaker 1: horns of the crampas, we can interpret that as clothing
Speaker 1: and ritual garb, just like human beings might wear and
Speaker 1: certainly do wear when they dress up as cramp as
Speaker 1: in the streets. But we could also imagine some horned
Speaker 1: humanoid as well. We have countless examples of such creatures
Speaker 1: and beings and global myths, and even cases of humans
Speaker 1: in the past with horn like growths, but nothing on
Speaker 1: the level of a horned biped mammalian species. Now, as
Speaker 1: for that tongue, I'm always intrigued by, especially some of
Speaker 1: these cramp as illustrations in which the tongue is actually
Speaker 1: wrapping around is screaming child. The closest analog you can
Speaker 1: really find in nature is probably the eighteen to twenty
Speaker 1: inch centimeter prehensile giraft. That's a good tongue. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you certainly you've got to see a giraffe at the zoo,
Speaker 1: you've or certainly in the wild, if you've been so lucky,
Speaker 1: then hopefully you've you've you've seen the way that tongue
Speaker 1: can wrap itself around vegetation and then you know, pull
Speaker 1: it free. It's like a snake coming out of the mouth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that would be a possibility for our imagined Cramps creature.
Speaker 1: But then that would again come to down to what's
Speaker 1: the function of this tongue. Does that mean that Crampus
Speaker 1: actually depends, you know, primarily on vegetation, and why would
Speaker 1: he have the tongue and hands as well? Like that
Speaker 1: seems like the physical form would be over investing in
Speaker 1: vegetation manipulation unless he has to eat all those leaves
Speaker 1: while scooping up screaming children, in which case I don't know.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's interesting. Or another way you could look
Speaker 1: at it is, what if Crampus is not in fact
Speaker 1: by people? Crampus could be a four like a critter,
Speaker 1: right Yeah, perhaps perhaps is mostly going out on four legs,
Speaker 1: but rat rises up on two legs when when wanting
Speaker 1: to display a threat, right to make himself look bigger,
Speaker 1: right right? Um? However, the I do have to say
Speaker 1: that the idea of Cramps being a vegetarian, of course,
Speaker 1: that that would play in well with what we know
Speaker 1: of other like bovine creatures, and certainly uh, giraffe and
Speaker 1: the and the related creatures like these are these are
Speaker 1: herbivores so primarily so, so you know, those would be
Speaker 1: the main parallels to some sort of a goat man
Speaker 1: I imagine. But then again, if you go back in
Speaker 1: the fossil record, you'll you'll find things like Andrew Sarkis,
Speaker 1: which some paleontologers interprets a clothing hoofed carnivore. So you know,
Speaker 1: I think there's hope there that you could have. You
Speaker 1: could there, you could theoretically have some sort of a
Speaker 1: hoofed goat creature that feasts sun flesh. Nice, But there's
Speaker 1: already that stereotype that goats will lead anything, right, you
Speaker 1: feed him a tin can and and the leader. I
Speaker 1: don't know to what extent that's true. I'm sure you
Speaker 1: shouldn't do Yeah, I certainly you should not. But but
Speaker 1: you know, if you're like a petting zoo, certainly goats
Speaker 1: are curious and they will they'll nibble on a lot
Speaker 1: of different things. Um, it could be kind of a
Speaker 1: squirrel situation here, the thing that uh that primarily eats vegetation.
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, who knows what they'll dip into
Speaker 1: given the opportunity. So to come back to the question,
Speaker 1: could crampus exist, Yeah, I think theoretically, like there's nothing
Speaker 1: you know, completely unrealistic about the idea. So um, you know,
Speaker 1: you're sort of getting into like the plausibility of sasquatch
Speaker 1: things like a large, hairy, bipedal creatures, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: may dwell outside the bounds of human civilization. Now here's
Speaker 1: an interesting question though, which is more real crampus who
Speaker 1: no one is claiming to have seen in the wilds
Speaker 1: or sasquatch in which people do make that claim and
Speaker 1: and do devote their lives to the idea that it
Speaker 1: really exists. Like one is extremely real in the in
Speaker 1: the imagination, in human traditions, and the other is has
Speaker 1: this cryptozoological standing for the most part, with with some
Speaker 1: creep into you know, the cultural area as well well. Obviously,
Speaker 1: I mean I'm pretty skeptical of of both. But I mean,
Speaker 1: if you had to rule one is more plausible than
Speaker 1: the other, obviously it would be it would be the squatch, right,
Speaker 1: because the squatch is oriented toward plausibility. And not to
Speaker 1: read too much into people's intentions, but you almost get
Speaker 1: the sense that some of the reports are kind of
Speaker 1: crafted in order to make it seem like a more
Speaker 1: biologically plausible thing, right, Uh, and not just like a
Speaker 1: fantasy monster. And then I saw in the woods, and
Speaker 1: then ultimately, ultimately cramp is a celebration of a fantasy
Speaker 1: monster that is a part of holiday traditions. You know,
Speaker 1: the fantasy monsters are better. They carry baskets and sasquatch
Speaker 1: does not. That's right. Yeah, So all this talk of
Speaker 1: Crampus has got me wondering. So you've got to St.
Speaker 1: Nicholas on one hand, the big bag full of toys
Speaker 1: for all the good boys and girls, and then you
Speaker 1: got Crampus, who has got the whip or the switch
Speaker 1: the basket to carry the bad children off somewhere wretched.
Speaker 1: I was wondering which idea is actually more effective at
Speaker 1: motivating good behavior? Uh? And I want to be clear,
Speaker 1: We're certainly not encouraging you to terrorize your children with
Speaker 1: threats of monsters and other supernatural punishments. But I am
Speaker 1: curious just in the abstract, which is more motivating to
Speaker 1: two people in general and to children the promise of
Speaker 1: rewards like toys or the threat of punishment is that
Speaker 1: toys or horns? Yeah, this is This is one of
Speaker 1: those big questions that I think every parent struggles with, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to figure out, you know, to what
Speaker 1: extent should we keep it positive positive reinforcement? Uh, and
Speaker 1: to what extent do you actually dip into the negative?
Speaker 1: And you know, ultimately you generally don't want to dip
Speaker 1: into the negative reinforcement. You don't we certainly don't want
Speaker 1: to invent imaginary horrors to scare children. But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, it comes back to the reality of the
Speaker 1: Jenny Green teeth that there are real pressing threats to
Speaker 1: a child's life in their immediate vicinity, and you want
Speaker 1: to get the message across. Uh. You know, you don't
Speaker 1: want to think about, uh, your child getting hit by
Speaker 1: a car, for instance, by wandering into the street, but
Speaker 1: you want to you want to drive home the message
Speaker 1: that this could happen and so you should certainly not
Speaker 1: do this thing. Well, right, I mean, it's totally different question.
Speaker 1: I think once you get into the area of like
Speaker 1: clear life threatening types of things. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: the things people deal with on a more often day
Speaker 1: to day basis, or just like how do you regulate behavior.
Speaker 1: How do you get the child to to not, you know,
Speaker 1: behave in a like obnoxious selfish way, uh, toward other children,
Speaker 1: toward teachers and parents and all that. So I'm asking
Speaker 1: the question in a general way here. We'll try to
Speaker 1: give a general answer if I can, But obviously this
Speaker 1: is going to depend on a lot of individual circumstances,
Speaker 1: both of the people being motivated, the situation they're in,
Speaker 1: the types of rewards and punishments on offer. And given
Speaker 1: that reality, you probably won't be surprised to find that
Speaker 1: the evidence here is somewhat mixed and confusing about whether
Speaker 1: rewards or punishments are more effective. It depends a lot,
Speaker 1: but I'll try to flesh it out a little bit.
Speaker 1: So one thing that's important to remember is the difference
Speaker 1: between positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, and punishment, which are three
Speaker 1: distinct categories in psychology. Though the terms negative reinforcement and
Speaker 1: punishment are sometimes used interchangeably, they do have subtle differences.
Speaker 1: So positive reinforcement is when an action is encouraged with
Speaker 1: a reward. So imagine you're designing a car that encourages
Speaker 1: people to wear their seat belts. For positive reinforcement, every
Speaker 1: time you put on your seat belt, maybe the car
Speaker 1: gives you a candy, or it displays a little thing
Speaker 1: that says good job. For negative reinforcement, you have to
Speaker 1: imagine that the car does what many cars actually already do.
Speaker 1: It makes an annoying sound or keeps beeping until hill
Speaker 1: you put your seat belt on. So for negative reinforcement,
Speaker 1: what this actually means is there's an existing negative stimulus,
Speaker 1: which is the sound of the negative reinforcer, and you
Speaker 1: can only make the negative reinforcer go away by doing
Speaker 1: the desired action of putting on the seat belt. Punishment
Speaker 1: is similar but slightly different. Instead of presenting a bad
Speaker 1: effect and then removing it when you do something good,
Speaker 1: it threatens you with subsequent bad effects if you do
Speaker 1: something bad. So punishment would be more like your car
Speaker 1: automatically writing you a ticket every time you drive somewhere
Speaker 1: without your seat belt. Uh, And so negative reinforcement is
Speaker 1: something that's already painful or unwanted, and you have to
Speaker 1: do something right to make it stop. Punishment is something
Speaker 1: bad that will happen to you if you do something wrong.
Speaker 1: And then even within that, I think technically there's both
Speaker 1: like positive punishment and negative punishment. Positive punishment would be
Speaker 1: doing something you don't like, like the car shocking you
Speaker 1: after you drive somewhere with without a seat belt. Negative
Speaker 1: punishment would involve like taking away a benefit as a punishment,
Speaker 1: so like if the car automatically disabled its air conditioning
Speaker 1: after you drove without your seat belt. So which one
Speaker 1: of these is cramp us? Uh? Crampus kind of shows
Speaker 1: the way that some of the categories do have some overlap,
Speaker 1: they kind of bleed together. I suppose it is in
Speaker 1: one sense a threat of positive punishment, like this monster
Speaker 1: will be coming to possibly whip you, But it's also
Speaker 1: a bit of negative reinforcement, maybe because like maybe helping
Speaker 1: mom and dad do the chores could do something to
Speaker 1: alleviate the negative reinforcer, which is the nagging fear of
Speaker 1: crampus that haunts your mind. Yeah, I think that's that's fair. Again,
Speaker 1: there there's a an amorphous aspect to crampus, so it
Speaker 1: would be it would be too much to expect him
Speaker 1: to fit firmly in any kind of category. Well, but
Speaker 1: it's not just crampus. Also, it's like tons of things,
Speaker 1: like it's difficult to know exactly like where they fit
Speaker 1: on the skip because you can frame them in different ways,
Speaker 1: Like you can frame doing the exact same thing as
Speaker 1: like an inhibition or a positive behavior, like are you
Speaker 1: remembering to turn the lights off when you leave the
Speaker 1: room a positive behavior? Or are you not leaving the
Speaker 1: lights on when you leave the room. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: sort of like hard to tell which is which in
Speaker 1: some cases. Um, but so so to look at some studies,
Speaker 1: there was one study from the nineteen seventies that came
Speaker 1: across by Arthur F. Constantini and Kenneth the Hoving called
Speaker 1: the Effectiveness of reward and punishment contingencies on Response inhibition,
Speaker 1: and this was in the Journal of Child Psychology nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three, and so this looked at the relative strength
Speaker 1: of rewards and punishments in in motivating behavior. It involved
Speaker 1: training two groups of forty kindergarteners and forty second graders
Speaker 1: in something called response inhibition training. This is training that
Speaker 1: teaches children to suppress actions that are inappropriate for the context.
Speaker 1: Their quote from the paper is, this is uh the
Speaker 1: tendency to inhibit irrelevant acts and to select appropriate ones.
Speaker 1: So basically it's self control, like in a laboratory context.
Speaker 1: This kind of training might take the form of anything
Speaker 1: from the marshmallow test, like getting kids to resist eating
Speaker 1: a treat on the promise that a better treat is
Speaker 1: coming later, to something called the Stroop test, which involves
Speaker 1: showing people the name of a color printed in a
Speaker 1: different color, and then they have to say the color
Speaker 1: that the word is printed in. So, for example, you'd
Speaker 1: see the word red printed in green, and you would
Speaker 1: have to say green instead of red. And this is
Speaker 1: taken as a suppressing activity, but because it requires the
Speaker 1: suppression of the dominant response behavior, which is to simply
Speaker 1: read the word you're seeing. But there are all kinds
Speaker 1: of analogies for response inhibition training in the behavioral education
Speaker 1: of children. If you're trying to train a child not
Speaker 1: to grab things out of other people's hands or not
Speaker 1: to wine when they want something, that's a form of
Speaker 1: response inhibition training. Anyway. The short version is that this
Speaker 1: study found that for this particular type of training, children
Speaker 1: at both age groups learned the response inhibition on the
Speaker 1: given task more efficiently when they were threatened with punishment
Speaker 1: than when they were promised rewards. Though I should know,
Speaker 1: because it's probably relevant what the punishments and rewards consisted
Speaker 1: of Basically, children were shown an assortment of toys and
Speaker 1: told that their performance on these training tasks would determine
Speaker 1: a payout of marbles, which they could then use to
Speaker 1: purchase the toys that they had been shown. So, in
Speaker 1: the reward condition, good performance on the task was were
Speaker 1: rewarded with the accumulation of marbles. You do good and
Speaker 1: you get more marbles. In the punishment condition, you had
Speaker 1: some marbles, and bad performance on the task was punished
Speaker 1: with the removal of marble's awarded at the beginning. So basically,
Speaker 1: the rewards and the punishments here both had to do
Speaker 1: with toy buying power. And granted, toy buying power is
Speaker 1: an immensely powerful force, and in the child's mind, oh,
Speaker 1: I remember it. I remember that power. Uh. And and
Speaker 1: so the author's right quote. The motivational effect of losing
Speaker 1: marbles is apparently greater than receiving them, even when the
Speaker 1: actual number retained by or given to the subjects is
Speaker 1: the same under both conditions. Uh. Now note here that
Speaker 1: the punishment, even though it is incredibly motivating to have
Speaker 1: toy buying power, the punishment here is not an intrinsically
Speaker 1: painful effect, but rather the withdrawal of previously awarded positive reinforcers.
Speaker 1: And this probably has very important differences from a demon
Speaker 1: with a whip. Yeah, this this would have more just
Speaker 1: in common with sort of the crampest free idea that
Speaker 1: Santa will either bring you the toys you want, less
Speaker 1: toys or no toys based on your behavior exactly. So
Speaker 1: this is just one study from the seventies, and I
Speaker 1: was reading more recent opinions of scholars and child psychologists,
Speaker 1: and the picture continue used to get more complicated from there.
Speaker 1: So another thing I was looking at was a column
Speaker 1: in Psychology Today by a pretty well known American child
Speaker 1: psychologist named j. Belski, who had actually been the subject
Speaker 1: of some kind of controversy after he published research that
Speaker 1: seemed to show some mildly negative behavioral outcomes for children
Speaker 1: who had spent a lot of time in daycare. I
Speaker 1: don't know enough about him or his research to have
Speaker 1: an opinion on that issue, but I thought I should
Speaker 1: flag it since I saw something about it. But anyway,
Speaker 1: Bellski argues here that rewards are generally more effective than
Speaker 1: punishment at teaching good behavior, especially for young children. Uh.
Speaker 1: And specifically he gives the example of rewarding good behavior
Speaker 1: but simply ignoring bad behavior, and he writes that you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of parents are are kind of intuitively averse
Speaker 1: to this, like they would think, you know, why would
Speaker 1: ignoring bad behavior be better than meeting out punishment when
Speaker 1: a child does wrong? And Bellski calls attention to the
Speaker 1: work of a of Dutch neuroscientists who study the effects
Speaker 1: of simple rewards and punishments, and these are about as
Speaker 1: mild as you can get for rewards and punishments. Basically,
Speaker 1: it was children ages eight to nine and children ages
Speaker 1: eleven to twelve, and they were trained to do a
Speaker 1: computer task in which they had to discover and follow
Speaker 1: some rules, and the inferring and following of the rules
Speaker 1: could be reinforced either by rewards, which would consist of
Speaker 1: a check mark when they got the right answer, or
Speaker 1: punishments a big X when they got the wrong answer.
Speaker 1: And the study found that the younger children improved more
Speaker 1: when the feedback was positive, whereas the older children improved
Speaker 1: more when the feedback was negative. Young adults eighteen to
Speaker 1: twenty five also responded more to negative feedback in a
Speaker 1: similar test, and The neuroscientists who carried out this research
Speaker 1: had the children undergo brain scans while while learning through
Speaker 1: these tasks, and the brain imaging work showed differences between
Speaker 1: the brains of the younger children and the older children
Speaker 1: while doing the computer task. The areas of the Surrey
Speaker 1: real cortex associated with cognitive control, which is related to
Speaker 1: the self control and the response inhibition we were just
Speaker 1: talking about. In these areas, older children showed stronger activation
Speaker 1: in response to negative feedback and younger children showed stronger
Speaker 1: activation in response to positive feedback. So what could fully
Speaker 1: account for the difference here, like why would younger children
Speaker 1: learn faster from minor rewards and older children and young
Speaker 1: adults learn faster from minor punishments. Belski offers an explanation
Speaker 1: that's in line with the authors of the study quote,
Speaker 1: information which stipulates that you did something wrong, is more
Speaker 1: complicated than information stipulating that you did something well. So
Speaker 1: younger children may simply have an easier time processing simpler,
Speaker 1: positive rewarding information than negative feedback. As the authors noted,
Speaker 1: learning from mistakes is more complex than carrying on in
Speaker 1: the same way as before. You have to ask yourself
Speaker 1: precisely what went wrong and how it was possible. That is,
Speaker 1: it takes more analysis to figure out that what was
Speaker 1: done is mistaken than that it is correct. So if
Speaker 1: you think about it, I think that makes sense. Positive
Speaker 1: reinforcements and rewards are actually often so simple as to
Speaker 1: be nearly mechanical, Like, whatever you just did that was good,
Speaker 1: keep doing that, do more of it. Punishments let you
Speaker 1: know that you're screwing up, but they don't necessarily tell
Speaker 1: you what you should be doing. Instead, they don't necessarily
Speaker 1: model a positive behavior, so they can be confusing, frustrating,
Speaker 1: de motivating. Uh. And so it seems that for pre
Speaker 1: adolescent children, modeling and rewarding positive behavior is probably more
Speaker 1: effective than punishing bad behavior, since it's easier for them
Speaker 1: to understand and repeat. So, of course, an an important
Speaker 1: note of difference here the difference between the effects of
Speaker 1: like simple mild rewards and punishments that you get in
Speaker 1: real time during an experiment, versus the effects of the
Speaker 1: promise of rewards and the threat of like terrifying punishments
Speaker 1: extended far into the future. Like Obviously, it's one thing
Speaker 1: to test the difference between more toys and less toys
Speaker 1: right now or checks and x's right now versus the
Speaker 1: you know, the difference between awesome toys and monstrous doom
Speaker 1: many months down the road. And I I wasn't able
Speaker 1: to come across anything that was able to really model
Speaker 1: like the threats of punishment and promises of rewards exactly
Speaker 1: as they're presented to children around these kind of Christmas ideas.
Speaker 1: But I have to imagine the like time delay plays
Speaker 1: a big role there, right, You've got to get very
Speaker 1: different effects when you're talking about rewards and punishments that
Speaker 1: are long off in the future versus immediately apparent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, especially when you're talking about Christmas, because we
Speaker 1: all have I think has experience. When you're when you're
Speaker 1: an adult, December just flies by like any month. But
Speaker 1: when you're when you're a child, Um, you know, the
Speaker 1: holiday time passes an entirely different way. Yeah, you know this,
Speaker 1: the span of time between between December one and December
Speaker 1: it seems immense um and uh and and certain and
Speaker 1: yet at the same time, like are you gonna invoke
Speaker 1: Santa Claus in April or in July? You know, like
Speaker 1: that's it's so far away that it seems like it
Speaker 1: would lose its impact. You know. Yeah, well that's a
Speaker 1: good question. What at what time of year does Santa
Speaker 1: Claus start to matter? Yeah? Or or for instance, the
Speaker 1: elf on the shelf. You know, another sort of aspect
Speaker 1: of this, uh, you know, penopticon, notion of of Santa
Speaker 1: watching you at all times, or possibly watching you at
Speaker 1: all times. You don't know, you don't know what's going
Speaker 1: on in the eye of the panopticon. The panopticon, for
Speaker 1: anyone who's not familiar with that term like this refers
Speaker 1: back to a basic design for a prison in which
Speaker 1: you have a large settilance cylindrical space with the cells
Speaker 1: of the prison lining the inside walls. And at these
Speaker 1: center of this vast cylinder there's a single guard tower
Speaker 1: and there's really only like you know, one or two
Speaker 1: guards in there, but you can't see where they're looking.
Speaker 1: They could be looking into your cell. All cells are
Speaker 1: visible to the panopticons central tower. Um, you just don't
Speaker 1: know who they're looking at right now, and may well
Speaker 1: be you. I mean I I certainly I bristle at
Speaker 1: the idea of of enforcing the panopticons, especially supernaturally on children.
Speaker 1: But then at the same time I think, well, that's
Speaker 1: not unusual historically, right, I mean it just it seems
Speaker 1: to be the norm that children are generally taught about
Speaker 1: Santa Claus or ELpH on the Shell for about, you know,
Speaker 1: just supernatural deities or anything like that that's always watching
Speaker 1: what they do. Uh. So not not to suggest that
Speaker 1: because it's been normal historically, it's okay, but yeah, that's
Speaker 1: got to be like I mean, I was like that
Speaker 1: when I was a kid. I remember thinking that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're seeing everything. Yeah, and if you believe at all,
Speaker 1: there's a crowd room full of folks watching everything you do,
Speaker 1: every every vile deed you've perpetrated as a child. Uh,
Speaker 1: Santa Claus is their crampus and elf Um, God Jesus,
Speaker 1: you're the spirits of your elders. They're all they're just
Speaker 1: waiting for you to slip up. Yeah. Anyway, coming back
Speaker 1: to the research I was just talking about, So we
Speaker 1: were talking about the possible reasons why rewards could be
Speaker 1: more salient for young children, and it's because in some
Speaker 1: cases it's a reward is an easier type of reinforcement
Speaker 1: to process mentally and understand that punishments can be confusing.
Speaker 1: It's harder to establish exactly the link between what you
Speaker 1: did wrong, the punishment, and what you should be doing instead.
Speaker 1: But the other question would be the other side of
Speaker 1: the coin, what's going on in adults that appears to,
Speaker 1: at least in many cases, make punishments more powerful than
Speaker 1: rewards for them. Uh, this doesn't really explain it, but
Speaker 1: it does seem in keeping with a widely observed principle
Speaker 1: in cognitive psychology known as law aversion, which is this
Speaker 1: bias where simply put, on average people are much more
Speaker 1: strongly motivated to avoid losses than they are to acquire
Speaker 1: equivalent gains. So what this means is that you've got
Speaker 1: a bunch of experiments showing people would work harder, would
Speaker 1: do more to avoid losing ten dollars they already have,
Speaker 1: than they would to acquire ten dollars they don't have yet.
Speaker 1: So monetarily the loss in the road, it's exactly equivalent.
Speaker 1: But it's just the question of like it feels so
Speaker 1: much worse to lose something you have than to not
Speaker 1: get something you could get. It's kind of I've become
Speaker 1: accustomed to a certain lifestyle mentality, and it's there in
Speaker 1: all kinds of fiction, right, you know, like why is
Speaker 1: why are the tragedies always about kings and stuff about
Speaker 1: people in in great exalted places of power. It's like
Speaker 1: there's this idea that that being reduced from a from
Speaker 1: a high starting point is so much more awful and
Speaker 1: tragic than having a thing has happened to you if
Speaker 1: you were already suffering. Yeah, and I mean and certainly
Speaker 1: for a child. You know, when when you get into them,
Speaker 1: like the material possession of toys, like to to take
Speaker 1: the toy away is it says, it's like almost a
Speaker 1: violent act. You know, you've you've taken away, um, you know,
Speaker 1: a part of their body almost. Um. There was there
Speaker 1: was recently a time where my wife took our son
Speaker 1: to like a thrift store and there was a stuffed
Speaker 1: animal he really wanted and he m he remarked to
Speaker 1: my life, he said, he said, this, U my, my
Speaker 1: whole body wants this toy, you know, which I thought
Speaker 1: was great because that really does sum out just how
Speaker 1: um important Uh, these these physical toys are to us
Speaker 1: as children, like our whole body wants them, and we
Speaker 1: will be incomplete if we do not have it. And likewise,
Speaker 1: if it is taken away from us you were taking
Speaker 1: away a part of them. I don't know this is
Speaker 1: the case, but I would suspect it's a lot harder
Speaker 1: to deny a toy to a child once the child
Speaker 1: has already had it in their hands. Like it's there's
Speaker 1: gonna be way more grief about, Like you can't have
Speaker 1: a toy that they've already picked up in a handle
Speaker 1: versus one that's still on the shelves. And it's always
Speaker 1: the worst when you're in like a Barnes and Noble
Speaker 1: or something, you know, and then you see that your
Speaker 1: child is carrying something from with them now from another aisle,
Speaker 1: like they've already like the toy has imprinted on them.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be that much harder and how much more
Speaker 1: tragic to extract from the store without a purchase. It's
Speaker 1: the pain. I feel it, all right. We need to
Speaker 1: take a quick break, but we'll be right back. It's
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Speaker 1: So a couple more studies. I was reading about rewards
Speaker 1: and punishment and in their variable effects. So one was
Speaker 1: published in Cognition by Jan Cubanick, Lawrence Snyder, Richard Abrams,
Speaker 1: and I was reading a write up of this in
Speaker 1: the wash You School of Medicine news site. UM So
Speaker 1: this was study dealing with the relative effects of rewards
Speaker 1: versus punishments on a difficult task where subjects had to
Speaker 1: count numbers of like binaral clicks that they were hearing
Speaker 1: and headphones, or count numbers of localized flashes of light
Speaker 1: they saw, and it was a difficult test. And then
Speaker 1: they were given randomized payouts of different value tokens between
Speaker 1: five and twenty five cents, and the tokens were awarded
Speaker 1: for correct answers or taken away for incorrect answers, and
Speaker 1: so subjects who were rewarded tended to repeat their previous answer.
Speaker 1: That's not surprising because, like you know, when you get
Speaker 1: a reward, you the simplest thing to do is just
Speaker 1: do what you did before. Meanwhile, subjects who were punished
Speaker 1: strongly avoided repeating their previous answers, and the magnitude of
Speaker 1: these effects were asymmetrical. This is what they found. They
Speaker 1: found that losses had two to three times more motivating
Speaker 1: power than equivalent gains did, but also effects for the
Speaker 1: punishment factor. We're strong no matter no matter the magnitude
Speaker 1: of the punishment, even very small punishments deducting five cents,
Speaker 1: we're strongly motivating to produce changes in behavior. And so
Speaker 1: one of the authors, Jan Kubanick, said to this news
Speaker 1: site quote regarding teaching strategies, our studies suggests that negative
Speaker 1: feedback may be more effective than positive feedback at modifying behavior.
Speaker 1: Our study showed that such feedback does not have to
Speaker 1: be harsh, since it appears that we tend to react
Speaker 1: in the same manner to any amount of negative feedback.
Speaker 1: From an evolutionary perspective, people tend to avoid punishments or
Speaker 1: dangerous situations. Rewards, on the other hand, have less of
Speaker 1: a life threatening impact. Uh So, okay, so that's one
Speaker 1: thing here, But then a little bit on the other hand,
Speaker 1: I was reading article in the Harvard Business Review by
Speaker 1: a cognitive neuroscientists at University College London named Tali Shiro,
Speaker 1: and contrary to what we were just learning about punishments
Speaker 1: being more motivating than rewards and adults, Shiro begins the
Speaker 1: article by drawing attention to a two thousand eleven study
Speaker 1: carried out at New York at a New York State
Speaker 1: hospital published in the journal Clinical and Infectious Diseases by
Speaker 1: Donna Armelino at All and the basic gist is like this,
Speaker 1: So You've got healthcare workers and they are supposed to
Speaker 1: sanitize their hands whenever they enter and exit a patient's room.
Speaker 1: Healthcare workers are constantly reminded of this fact and of
Speaker 1: how important the practice is for stopping the spread of
Speaker 1: potentially deadly infectious disease. And yet, when this hospital installed
Speaker 1: cameras at hand hygiene stations to monitor the healthcare worker behaviors,
Speaker 1: they discovered a dismal compliance rate. Only about ten percent
Speaker 1: of medical staff sanitize their hands upon entering and exiting
Speaker 1: patient rooms, even though they knew the cameras were present.
Speaker 1: Then the hospital introduced a feedback mech is M to
Speaker 1: see if this would improve the hygiene. It was a
Speaker 1: simple electronic board on the wall which gave positive messages
Speaker 1: like good job to workers who fully sanitize their hands
Speaker 1: when they were supposed to, and the rates of hand
Speaker 1: sanitization rocketed up from about ten percent to about nine percent.
Speaker 1: And then these results were replicated at another hospital. So
Speaker 1: the question is why, like why would this simple trivial
Speaker 1: reward be more powerful as a motivator than the threat
Speaker 1: of potentially spreading infectious disease which could literally kill people.
Speaker 1: And Schiro has got a very interesting answer here. The
Speaker 1: the suggestion is that this is actually consistent with a
Speaker 1: large body of research in psychology and neuroscience that shows
Speaker 1: that there's a difference based on whether you're trying to
Speaker 1: get people to do something to perform an action, or
Speaker 1: trying to prevent them from performing an action, and Shiro
Speaker 1: says that the evidence indicates the threats of punishment or
Speaker 1: more effective when trying to keep people from doing bad things. Meanwhile, rewards,
Speaker 1: even minor positive reinforcements, are more effective if you're trying
Speaker 1: to get people to actively do something, if you're trying
Speaker 1: to motivate an action rather than prohibit it. So by
Speaker 1: this token, the threat of spreading infectious disease might be
Speaker 1: more effective at keeping people out of a restricted pathology lab,
Speaker 1: so you know, the threat motivates you to stay out,
Speaker 1: whereas the smiley face and the good job message are
Speaker 1: more effective at motivating people to perform a simple positive
Speaker 1: action over and over, like using the hand sanitizer and uh,
Speaker 1: this was interesting. Shiro thinks this is consistent with the
Speaker 1: evolutionary context in which motivation and inhibition arose. So like normally,
Speaker 1: if you think about for an animal to get a reward.
Speaker 1: Usually it needs to do something to go foraging for food,
Speaker 1: to put in the effort to wu a made or whatever.
Speaker 1: But in order to avoid danger, most of the time
Speaker 1: it needs to not to do something like don't go
Speaker 1: in the deep water, don't go off on your own,
Speaker 1: don't eat this plant, that kind of thing. And the
Speaker 1: author gives the example that this is why one of
Speaker 1: the most primal reactions animals have to a threatening stimulus
Speaker 1: is to freeze. When there's a threat and you don't
Speaker 1: fully understand it yet you're still processing what the threat is.
Speaker 1: The instinctual reaction is don't do anything, just freeze. And
Speaker 1: I think that's an interesting explanation for what might be
Speaker 1: going on there, But they also write that this might
Speaker 1: be part of the explanation is probably not the full story,
Speaker 1: because they're probably also social incentives for things like, you know,
Speaker 1: showing something on a board in a hospital where everybody
Speaker 1: can see it. Right. But Shiro and colleagues who also
Speaker 1: conducted research showing a similar dynamic, where the short version
Speaker 1: is volunteers were faster to press a button when they
Speaker 1: would get a dollar than they were to press a
Speaker 1: button to avoid losing a dollar. So the reward motivates
Speaker 1: the action, but they were better at refraining from pressing
Speaker 1: a button when doing so would prevent them from losing
Speaker 1: a dollar than it would result in them gaining a dollar,
Speaker 1: So the threat of punishment motivated inhibition. Uh. And another
Speaker 1: interesting finding was the right that people often interpret positive
Speaker 1: information like the promise of rewards as relevant to them personally,
Speaker 1: while interpreting negative information like the threat of punishments as
Speaker 1: not applying to them personally, as being you know, maybe
Speaker 1: just something about other people that have the crampus happens
Speaker 1: to bad kids, right exactly. But Sharrow concludes by saying,
Speaker 1: it's not very effective to try to scare people into
Speaker 1: action to make people actively do good things as opposed
Speaker 1: to refraining from bad things. Rewards, even small rewards, are
Speaker 1: usually more powerful than threats of punishment. And yet our
Speaker 1: basic Santa story is totally screwed up because the hell
Speaker 1: thing is Santa's watching, and there are all these things
Speaker 1: you better not do in order to get the reward.
Speaker 1: It's not it's not like the the the positive reward
Speaker 1: is not attached to any kind of positive action usually, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, for I think for a lot of kids
Speaker 1: and maybe it's like, you know, you do your chores,
Speaker 1: you help out around the house, you share, or you
Speaker 1: do that kind of thing, right, Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker 1: But it seems like the like the basic Christmas Carol
Speaker 1: Ebenezer Scrooge kind of messaging towards adults, that the holidays
Speaker 1: at a time when you should make, you should act,
Speaker 1: you should do things to help give to charity, and
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. Like that's more about the adults
Speaker 1: Christmas messaging as opposed to the childhood Christmas messaging, which
Speaker 1: is more like just don't be bad, which is kind
Speaker 1: of a low threshold to set, right, Um, maybe it
Speaker 1: should be more along the lines of go out and
Speaker 1: do good things. Uh, you know, ask about ask about
Speaker 1: helping out in the house more, ask your your parents
Speaker 1: about doing things in your community, that sort of thing. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think one thing that comes up here
Speaker 1: is that there's a lot of the way that rewards
Speaker 1: and punishments work, or even not even rewards and punishments,
Speaker 1: maybe things more just like motivation work for child behavior.
Speaker 1: Can it can be sensitive to how you frame the
Speaker 1: issue for the child, right, just like putting the exact
Speaker 1: same behavior in a different context. It seems like it
Speaker 1: could sometimes have a pretty strong effect on how that
Speaker 1: behavior is regulated, right, Like instead of when a child
Speaker 1: is being selfish or something and won't share their toy,
Speaker 1: like you could yell at them and say they're being
Speaker 1: bad and you know, they need to learn how to share.
Speaker 1: Or you could say, hey, you know, let's let's practice
Speaker 1: modeling sharing behavior or something, and and ultimately you're getting
Speaker 1: at the same activity but framing it in a very
Speaker 1: different way. I guess. One of the big things too,
Speaker 1: is that certainly you may employ negative or positive reinforcement
Speaker 1: in a given scenario like that, um, you know, depending
Speaker 1: on the situation, in your exact parenting style. It's but
Speaker 1: how many people really use the Christmas mythology and Christmas
Speaker 1: ritual as negative or positive feedback? I don't know how
Speaker 1: many do that. I don't know, Like I mean, in
Speaker 1: my experience as a former child and current parent, I mean,
Speaker 1: it seems like like gifts are obtained, like everything is
Speaker 1: set in motion pretty early on, and it would have
Speaker 1: to be some really bad like cramp is worthy behavior
Speaker 1: to make they actually say, okay, we're scaling back on
Speaker 1: the gifts. Now. This one's going back to the store,
Speaker 1: they've been too bad. I mean, it seems like more
Speaker 1: a situation where the holiday is set in motion and
Speaker 1: then you say, oh, by the way, just be a
Speaker 1: good child right now because we've got a lot on
Speaker 1: our plate just making it through December. Well yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's so you're you're talking about the reality there
Speaker 1: that like often even when a child is maybe like
Speaker 1: threatened with rewards or punishments concerning Christmas, a lot of
Speaker 1: times there's not necessarily a lot of real causality taking place.
Speaker 1: But they mean it could be a situation to where
Speaker 1: the ritual has lost its potency in modern time. Certainly,
Speaker 1: that would that would be in keeping with what our
Speaker 1: holidays have become totally, and you know that there there
Speaker 1: are other things too that you know might make you
Speaker 1: think twice, even about the even if you're saying, okay,
Speaker 1: well I'm not going to punishment route, I wouldn't threaten
Speaker 1: child with with with crampus or whatever, which, okay, good
Speaker 1: on you, But that might make you think twice, even
Speaker 1: with the reward framing. Because I was reading an article
Speaker 1: in The New York Times from by a therapist named
Speaker 1: Heather Turgeon who pointed out some things I've never read
Speaker 1: about before. She just mentioned some possible downsides of rewards
Speaker 1: in addition to punishments for controlling child behavior, which are
Speaker 1: For example, some studies find um that the introduction of
Speaker 1: a reward structure can sometimes decrease intrinsic motivation for for like,
Speaker 1: good behaviors, so like. And I'm not sure how consistently
Speaker 1: this holds up, but at least in a few experiments,
Speaker 1: like if a kid likes to draw all and then
Speaker 1: you start paying them to draw, they will naturally start
Speaker 1: to draw less. The same for sharing. Right, introduce a
Speaker 1: payout scheme for sharing, and sharing decreases under naturalistic conditions. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the author here writes, quote, this is what psychologists
Speaker 1: called the over justification effect. The external reward overshadows the
Speaker 1: child's internal motivation. Which I mean, that sounds like a
Speaker 1: really tragic effect. If you actually were to bring something
Speaker 1: like that about, right, I mean, you're you should your
Speaker 1: your desire to do something should not be destroyed by
Speaker 1: rewards for doing that thing, not until you enter the workforce.
Speaker 1: And exactly isn't that I mean, like, that's one of
Speaker 1: the dangers about you know. I mean, on one hand,
Speaker 1: it's great to be able to do what you love
Speaker 1: for a living, but there's a dark side to it.
Speaker 1: Do right, you know, if you do what you love
Speaker 1: for a living, it kind of has it has some
Speaker 1: power to corrupt what you love it and makes it
Speaker 1: about money. It makes it like this is what I
Speaker 1: have to do. Yeah, now I get to stress out
Speaker 1: about the thing that used to be my hobby. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I would say in the end, rewards and punishments, uh,
Speaker 1: their effects on us, I think are very complicated. I
Speaker 1: hope you have learned something for that from this, even
Speaker 1: though I can't clearly say it's just one way or
Speaker 1: the other. Rewards are better, punishments are better. But I
Speaker 1: will say, do not punish your children with threats of demons,
Speaker 1: no matter what I think, that is across the board
Speaker 1: going to be bad. So, as with any Crampus ritual,
Speaker 1: you may well have learned nothing, but hopefully it was
Speaker 1: at least a spectacle. That's uh. At least it hopefully
Speaker 1: entertained you. I hope your your tongue is lolling violently
Speaker 1: thirty inches out of your mouth. Now. Obviously, we would
Speaker 1: love to hear from folks out there, because I know
Speaker 1: we have we have listeners around the world, certainly we
Speaker 1: we have we probably have some listeners in the United
Speaker 1: States that have participated in some of the newer Crampus
Speaker 1: traditions here and then hopefully we have some listeners who
Speaker 1: have witnessed or participated in some of the more traditional
Speaker 1: rights of these alpine regions that we mentioned. And of course,
Speaker 1: in general, I think we all have something no matter what.
Speaker 1: If you celebrate anything like uh, you know, you know
Speaker 1: Christmas or holiday traditions, or even if you don't, you
Speaker 1: probably have something to say about negative and positive reinforcement
Speaker 1: as a child or a or a parent. Uh, And
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from you about that. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind, he don't know, over to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where you'll find them. Uh,
Speaker 1: let's see what else. Um. Yeah, there's a merch store
Speaker 1: up there if you want to check out our merch
Speaker 1: you know, they're all sorts of year end sales going
Speaker 1: on at the moment. Good place to get Christmas gifts. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then in terms of other shows, uh, there's the
Speaker 1: second oil age for horror and science fiction. All those
Speaker 1: episodes are out and you can binge them and then invention.
Speaker 1: Our other podcasts, the podcast about human techno History, we've
Speaker 1: been doing some episodes on toys, classic toys and where
Speaker 1: they came from, who invented them, because certainly even something
Speaker 1: like a slinky UH that had to be created, that
Speaker 1: had to emerge from the human mind and and UH
Speaker 1: and be brought to life through technology, and the story
Speaker 1: of how that comes together is fascinating. So I hope
Speaker 1: you check that show out as well, and whichever show
Speaker 1: you're listening to, just make sure that you have subscribed
Speaker 1: and that you were rating and reviewing it, because that
Speaker 1: is a great way to help these shows out in
Speaker 1: and ensure that they have more life absolutely huge things.
Speaker 1: As always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, just to say hello, you
Speaker 1: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
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