Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey guys, welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. This is Julie Douglas talking at you today.
Speaker 1: Today's episode Objects of Love is an Encore presentation that
Speaker 1: we're rolling out and dusting off, mainly because we just
Speaker 1: laid out about five or so Valentine themed episodes, an
Speaker 1: attempt to take love and lust down to the studs
Speaker 1: for examination. So as a sort of palate cleanser, we
Speaker 1: thought we'd offer up this episode on the stuff we
Speaker 1: love and the reasons why we cling to it. So,
Speaker 1: but don't worry, we are not going to take away
Speaker 1: your woobi a K. You're blankie, So enough preamble. We
Speaker 1: hope that you enjoy today's episode. Julie, do you have
Speaker 1: any magical objects with you today? Any good luck charms,
Speaker 1: any personal items of importance? I was thinking about this.
Speaker 1: I'm not really into the sort of magical thinking lucky items.
Speaker 1: I have to say. Yeah, yeah, called up your hands.
Speaker 1: Do you have any rings on? Oh? You don't have
Speaker 1: any rings on? Nothing? Nothing? Huh okay, Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: maybe I have my lucky underwear on. Maybe I don't
Speaker 1: you I mean not underwear. No, well, I mean nothing.
Speaker 1: Let's see what do I have? I mean right now,
Speaker 1: I just I have my wedding ring, and I do
Speaker 1: there's so there's a certain amount of magical thinking involved
Speaker 1: in that. Do I have any No, I don't have
Speaker 1: any aiments on me right now, but I in the past,
Speaker 1: I've I've certainly fallen in the habit of using them.
Speaker 1: I think I've talked about this before. I previously had
Speaker 1: a Ganitia remover of obstacles, remover of obstacles, the Hindu
Speaker 1: god that the is that has a the you know,
Speaker 1: the elephant appearance, and I have featured on The Simpsons
Speaker 1: in a hilarious episode. Yes, yes, also also made fun
Speaker 1: of there. But I carried around because you know, remover
Speaker 1: of obstacles and you know this various ties into ties
Speaker 1: into creativity and all. And so I would carry that
Speaker 1: in my pocket. And then eventually I lost it, like
Speaker 1: it crawled out in the washing machine or something and
Speaker 1: left me. And and so I've always felt I felt
Speaker 1: kind of bad. I'm like, where did Ganesha go? Did
Speaker 1: Ganesha abandon me? And then and then I found Ganesha
Speaker 1: put him back in and then and then he disappeared
Speaker 1: again and hasn't come back, and and also in the
Speaker 1: past all occasionally like pick up a rock, Like if
Speaker 1: I'm at the beach and I'm having a particularly good day,
Speaker 1: I'll pick up that rock and take it with me,
Speaker 1: and That'll end up in my pocket for maybe a
Speaker 1: year or so, um, you know, because that kind of
Speaker 1: comes to symbolize like a nice memory, and so I
Speaker 1: can take it out and I can sort of I
Speaker 1: think back to that time. So what I'm hearing is
Speaker 1: that you have various kinds of boobies. Yeah, security blankets.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, yeah, I guess they are to a certain
Speaker 1: extent security blanket. I mean they're not you know, apples
Speaker 1: to apples, but there is the sort of warm and
Speaker 1: fuzzy thing that you're trying to evoke with with an object,
Speaker 1: right Yah. Yeah, I mean it's uh, I mean it's
Speaker 1: weird for me because like when I'm if I'm holding
Speaker 1: a ganitia, I don't actually think that I'm using this
Speaker 1: as a totem to get in touch with some sort
Speaker 1: of a god, you know, like it's not like a
Speaker 1: literal interpretation of the amulet. But there is a certain
Speaker 1: amount of positive thinking that that comes with having it.
Speaker 1: And I've also wondered a lot of times when I'm
Speaker 1: passing by my own desk or coworkers desks, or seeing
Speaker 1: somebody's desk on on TV where they have action figures,
Speaker 1: typically like a dude's desk, you know, have various action figures,
Speaker 1: and I wondered, what extent are modern action figures? Kind
Speaker 1: of akin to the amulets of old, you know, like
Speaker 1: today we don't have a papion of God's to really
Speaker 1: call upon for the most part, but instead we have
Speaker 1: all these various pop culture icons and cartoon characters that
Speaker 1: represent various things, at least on a subconscious level, and
Speaker 1: we keep them around to draw strength from them. You
Speaker 1: haven't found the Pantheon room, that just w Pantheon room. No,
Speaker 1: do we have one? Oh my goodness, but to the
Speaker 1: room 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's Strickland's desk, you passed by is
Speaker 1: the 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, there 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 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 compulsupporting too. When you
Speaker 1: comes some materialism, it is really a distinctive human trait
Speaker 1: for the most part, especially when you look at its
Speaker 1: more outrageous examples. The one that I was really partial
Speaker 1: to was the one I brought up by Steve Taylor
Speaker 1: and his article The Madness of Materialism, which just a great, short,
Speaker 1: little article, but he he mentions gold, especially the like
Speaker 1: European colonists love of gold and UH and their clashes
Speaker 1: with with the native people's in the America's UH There's
Speaker 1: one example that he brings up where an Indian chief
Speaker 1: in Cuba learned that the Spanish sailors were about to
Speaker 1: tack his land, so he actually praised to the spirit
Speaker 1: of the gold to for for a like they've become.
Speaker 1: They're trying to figure out why of 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: this bloodshed just to get it right? Because otherwise it's like, well,
Speaker 1: you guys are just talking like ferret. It's going after
Speaker 1: something shiny. So surely this piece of gold has something
Speaker 1: to it, and he prayed to it right and it
Speaker 1: didn't work. Didn't work because, as as he points out
Speaker 1: in this article, Steve Tailor points up, a certain amount
Speaker 1: of hoarding of resources makes evolutionary sense. You know, we've
Speaker 1: talked before and in the while, there are certain things
Speaker 1: that are scarce. I mean, food itself is going to
Speaker 1: be scarce to varying degrees, and so to whatever degree
Speaker 1: we can plan ahead that we can stockpile it, the
Speaker 1: better off will be if that means bearing nuts in
Speaker 1: the yard, if that means uh, you know, finding something
Speaker 1: that is that is more rare in nature, like sugar
Speaker 1: and being able to store that away like like all
Speaker 1: that makes sense firewood. I mean, there are things that
Speaker 1: are they're part of our survival that that that makes
Speaker 1: sense when we're hoarding it. Well, it makes sense I
Speaker 1: think to a culture that is settled. But if you
Speaker 1: look at back at early man um in particularly the
Speaker 1: fact that early Man was a nomadic species um then
Speaker 1: you know that a 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 your movement and you know,
Speaker 1: going from north to south depending on what the weather
Speaker 1: is doing, Yeah, you're not gonna be able to carry
Speaker 1: all of this with you. You can maybe stockpile some
Speaker 1: of it, but you're not going to carry it all
Speaker 1: on your back. Yeah. So there's this big question mark
Speaker 1: like is this really genetic? Is this something that's natural
Speaker 1: to humans, this impulse to buy and possess things, or
Speaker 1: is it something that really is more symptomatic of modern man,
Speaker 1: particularly from the nineteenth century on, right, when things became
Speaker 1: much easier to produce, to produce cheaply, and then to
Speaker 1: acquire cheaply. Yeah, And I mean when it comes to
Speaker 1: stockpiling things that are important. I mean, when once we
Speaker 1: get out of this, uh, this transitory nature of culture
Speaker 1: and we get into into actually settling in areas and
Speaker 1: growing food. I mean, being able to stockpile food. I
Speaker 1: mean that's part and partial to a lot of our
Speaker 1: cultural growth as as a as a species, our ability
Speaker 1: to put food away, have more food than we need,
Speaker 1: and then specialize our roles within a community. But what
Speaker 1: about just buying lots of plastic things, right and putting
Speaker 1: them in a storage unit and then that storage and
Speaker 1: it being auctioned off in a show called Storage Wars
Speaker 1: or something like that, right, Yeah, Because yeah, then it
Speaker 1: seems like we're definitely getting into pathological area. We're getting
Speaker 1: into an area where it is just it is a sickness.
Speaker 1: It is some natural instinct that has been perverted. Because
Speaker 1: even even though the you know, the native peoples of
Speaker 1: the Americas couldn't understand the less for gold. If you
Speaker 1: put gold within the context of of wealth, and then
Speaker 1: wealth equals power, wealth equals comfort, wealth equals food. Then
Speaker 1: I can see the cognitive steps you know, necessary to
Speaker 1: think I gotta have all the gold, right because I
Speaker 1: have to possess the symbol of it, which is probably
Speaker 1: a large part of why we do have this such
Speaker 1: such a high degree of acquisitiveness, right, like wanting to
Speaker 1: get acquire everything. Um. But you know, the question is
Speaker 1: is it genetic? Well was a study by Justine Giddon's,
Speaker 1: Julie Shermer and Philip Vernon from the University of Western Ontario,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to know how much of it was environmental,
Speaker 1: how much of it which genetics. Of course, they turned
Speaker 1: to the twins. They recruited two hundred and forty pairs
Speaker 1: of twins identical and fraternal, and they looked at the
Speaker 1: benchmark of individual differences um, personality, values, happiness, and we
Speaker 1: know about forty percent 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'd have an inability to really make
Speaker 1: 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 recording shows, because it can be a bit much
Speaker 1: to take in that it can be. I mean, they're
Speaker 1: they're kind of depressing, uh, But but I think I
Speaker 1: saw one once where it was like food items and
Speaker 1: it wasn't in a sense that like I need to
Speaker 1: save all the sweet potatoes because I love sweet potatoes
Speaker 1: and I need need to eat these 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 and re um some some impulse control yeah, um,
Speaker 1: but primarily it's the decision making. And so if you
Speaker 1: take people who have the hoarding disorder and you look
Speaker 1: at them in m r I scans when they are
Speaker 1: considering whether or not to part from an object that
Speaker 1: they own, you'll see that You'll see the fuzzy nature
Speaker 1: going on there, So you know that it is, um,
Speaker 1: it is a brain disorder. It is this this part
Speaker 1: of their brain that is saying, I just don't know
Speaker 1: what to do here, and so it's not just like Okay,
Speaker 1: I need to have everything in the world, or some
Speaker 1: sort of gluttonous you know, void that they're trying to fill.
Speaker 1: It really is coming from the decisions that their their
Speaker 1: brain circuitry is making. And Um, this is I thought
Speaker 1: this was really interesting when I found out about it. Um,
Speaker 1: hoarding behavior actually has some connection, or a lot of
Speaker 1: connection to narcissism. So you think about narcissism, and you
Speaker 1: think about vanity, you think about narcissus, do you think
Speaker 1: about the reflection in the pool captivated by one's appearance.
Speaker 1: But it really is sort of a coping mechanism, and
Speaker 1: I believe it was Dr Rebecca Beaten. She explained this
Speaker 1: to me a couple of years ago when I interviewed
Speaker 1: her um about hoarding. She told me that kids who
Speaker 1: are feeling abandoned from their parents, or they don't have
Speaker 1: a significant relationship with a parent or really any sort
Speaker 1: of guardian in other words, they they're not getting that
Speaker 1: emotional connection or even sort of the touch of the
Speaker 1: hug or any of that, they begin to turn inward
Speaker 1: and they began to become narcissists because they have to
Speaker 1: find self comfort from themselves and some of that gets
Speaker 1: attributed to objects, so then they began to collect objects.
Speaker 1: Is this part of comfort? And that's where you see
Speaker 1: the behavior played out. And of course this brings to
Speaker 1: mind and the Peanuts character Linus and it's blanket, right,
Speaker 1: his wooby, his his comfort blanket, his uh or if
Speaker 1: you want to get into the more technical, his comfort object,
Speaker 1: his transitional object, which is something you see with a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of kids. I mean it's uh,
Speaker 1: let's see, did I have now my now, my sister
Speaker 1: definitely had a blanket called blank e and uh. And
Speaker 1: it got to the point where they ended up like
Speaker 1: cutting off the edge of Blanky so that she could
Speaker 1: continue to carry blankly around with her. And I think
Speaker 1: she may still have I think she still keeps blankly around. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, my daughter's four, and the same thing has
Speaker 1: happened to her blanket. She calls it Blanky's blanky. Wait, now,
Speaker 1: the part that came off she carries around is called
Speaker 1: blank's blanky. So it's the blank like the shard of blanket.
Speaker 1: It's all right, it's like a like it's kind of
Speaker 1: like a religious artifact kind of. And she hides it
Speaker 1: in her bed and she's really freaky about it, like
Speaker 1: we can't find it. It's like blank is blanket? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean to an uninformed observer, it could in a
Speaker 1: little freaky because it's like, because it is kind of
Speaker 1: borderline religious obsession, it may seem like. In fact, if
Speaker 1: you go back to the nineteen forties, attachment to a
Speaker 1: special object by a child was regarded as just pathological
Speaker 1: behavior and it's just a case of childhood fetish reflecting
Speaker 1: something askew in the mother child relationship. Yeah, it must
Speaker 1: be doing something wrong because your kid has this gross
Speaker 1: scrap of a blanket that they're carrying around. And I
Speaker 1: think it's interesting that they look at it as a fetish,
Speaker 1: particularly if you kind of take a wide angle view
Speaker 1: of that period anyway, where you see a lot of
Speaker 1: this idea as of fetish or 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 as normal and necessary and as
Speaker 1: a transitional experience. A key step in an infantsi ability
Speaker 1: to distinguish this inner subjective world from the outside reality.
Speaker 1: So 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 it 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, a parental unit or something else.
Speaker 1: There's a study by G. J. Bara, R. H. Passman,
Speaker 1: and C. Eisenberg, and they found that during a routine
Speaker 1: third year pediatric examination, the security object enhanced rapport with
Speaker 1: the examining nurse, and then children attached to a blanket
Speaker 1: who were allowed access to it were rated as less
Speaker 1: distressed and they experienced less physiological stress um and that
Speaker 1: is evidenced by the heart rate and the systolic blood press. Sure,
Speaker 1: so this is in contrast to kids who are undergoing
Speaker 1: medical evaluate evaluation without their woobies. Really yeah, and certainly
Speaker 1: these woobies, um, as you said that they can end
Speaker 1: up becoming like an important parenting tool, I understand as well.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're, if you're, you use it wisely, right,
Speaker 1: I 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 movie too to remain comfortable in a position
Speaker 1: when the mother 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 anxiety,
Speaker 1: as you say, like leaving the house or even just
Speaker 1: sleeping at night, I think having something to grab onto
Speaker 1: is really important. One of the interesting things about studying
Speaker 1: transitional objects is that is that there's ultimately a 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
Speaker 1: the States sixty of children have at least a mild
Speaker 1: degree of attachment to some sort of soft and animal object.
Speaker 1: And I think, looking back, I did have I had
Speaker 1: a stuffed rhinoceros named RINCHI that I would had an
Speaker 1: attachment to um. But but I don't know. Then you're
Speaker 1: getting into like stuffed animals. You're getting into a whole
Speaker 1: different area because those have personality. I don't know. Does
Speaker 1: Blankie or does Blankie's Blankie have a personality? Do you think, well,
Speaker 1: sometimes Blanky's Blankie gets in trouble or does things like
Speaker 1: takes all the toilet paper off the toilet roll or
Speaker 1: something like that. But um, generally, I think that's just
Speaker 1: general scoundrelness right now. Well, okay, so anyway, six children
Speaker 1: in the US have some sort of mild degree exhibit
Speaker 1: strong attachment. But then if you look at incidences of
Speaker 1: attachment in the Netherlands and New Zealand and Sweden, that's
Speaker 1: that's comparable to the United States. Korean children have substantially
Speaker 1: fewer attachments to blankets down to eight uh that compared
Speaker 1: to American children, but in Korean born children living in
Speaker 1: the United States to play an intermediate percentage of thirty
Speaker 1: four five percent of rural Italian children have transitional objects
Speaker 1: compared tot of urban Italians, and it goes as far
Speaker 1: as the sixty two of foreign children living in Rome.
Speaker 1: So don't you just see the stats I guess kind
Speaker 1: of skewing towards urban areas. Yeahs say, that's interesting to
Speaker 1: see that it can be. You know, within one country
Speaker 1: you could have such a so many different variables there
Speaker 1: and oh but in London, just six of children have
Speaker 1: a special security object in there. That's London, So there
Speaker 1: goes the urban argument. So it's just it's it's hard
Speaker 1: to find the exactly what's going on. There's just so
Speaker 1: many cultural factors to look at the I guess well,
Speaker 1: and you have to wonder too if if part of
Speaker 1: that is just to say, like, that's not as accepted
Speaker 1: and therefore maybe in that culture it's not as encouraged,
Speaker 1: or it's not maybe as prominent, people don't see it
Speaker 1: as much, yeah, or maybe there's less of a culture
Speaker 1: of these are my objects and these are your objects,
Speaker 1: and it's more these are our objects. You know. Some
Speaker 1: of this had to do with memory to write, like
Speaker 1: they would go back and say, oh, did I have
Speaker 1: an object that I was connected to, and so they're
Speaker 1: collecting some of this data from faulty memory where people
Speaker 1: are saying yes or no and they couldn't exactly remember.
Speaker 1: I also want to point out too that you know,
Speaker 1: transitional object is very different from a pacifier, And of
Speaker 1: course a pacifier is something that's used to self soothe
Speaker 1: and babies, but I kind of think of it as
Speaker 1: gum for babies. You know, it's an activity to to
Speaker 1: try to help them with their eventual um eating skills, uh,
Speaker 1: they're swallowing skills, and it kind of helps keep them
Speaker 1: occupied if they're hungry and you're trying to prepare a
Speaker 1: bottle or something like that. But it is very different
Speaker 1: in terms of comfort. All Right, we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: quick break, Okay, so we're back, yeah, and we're going
Speaker 1: to get into the realm of magical thinking. This is
Speaker 1: charactery that we've we've moved through many times before that it
Speaker 1: it continues to be important because it really does deal
Speaker 1: with how we think about the world and versus how
Speaker 1: the world really is. I mean we Magical thinking, of course,
Speaker 1: is the belief that an object, action, or circumstance not
Speaker 1: logically related to a course of events can influence its outcome.
Speaker 1: So in magical thinking, you get into all these ideas
Speaker 1: of of everything from a haunted house, the idea that, oh,
Speaker 1: something bad happened here, so now something is bad with
Speaker 1: the house, you know, like the idea that that that
Speaker 1: that an event can affect the physical object, or even
Speaker 1: like mere mementos. I mean I've mentioned my father's watch before,
Speaker 1: you know, like obviously that's that's something that has significance
Speaker 1: to me. And there's a certain amount of magical thinking
Speaker 1: involved there. Um, you know, even if it's at a
Speaker 1: subconscious level, even if I'm not thinking, oh this this
Speaker 1: has the spirit of my dad, and I think, oh
Speaker 1: that's that is that was his watch, and there is
Speaker 1: some sense of him about it. So magical thinking kind
Speaker 1: of uh, you know, is intertwined in all our lives, uh,
Speaker 1: to varying degrees, and you know, be a conscious or subconscious.
Speaker 1: One of the more more conscious ways, of course, is
Speaker 1: with the idea of a lucky charm. Yeah. And uh,
Speaker 1: there's something called apophenia, and that is seeing patterns where
Speaker 1: there are none, and that is a little bit of
Speaker 1: the suit based two magical thinking, right, because again, if
Speaker 1: you let's say you're wearing something and something great happens,
Speaker 1: you think, oh, those are those lucky socks. I must
Speaker 1: wear them every time that I have to do this
Speaker 1: certain challenge, and began to to make this causal connection.
Speaker 1: But then there's always that difference between oh, I've got
Speaker 1: a big interview, I'm gonna wear those lucky socks of mine.
Speaker 1: There's that, and then there's these are my lucky socks.
Speaker 1: I must wear them every day, and they must never
Speaker 1: be washed, or they must be washed exactly eight times
Speaker 1: to contain their their magic, you know. I mean there's
Speaker 1: a line between the sort of helpful magical thinking and
Speaker 1: UH and and and helpful lucky charm and belief to UH.
Speaker 1: And then there's then there's a whole realm of pathology
Speaker 1: I guess a little O. C. D in a way, right,
Speaker 1: so called adventitious reinforcing. And then it is making that
Speaker 1: connection and then keep you know, doing whatever that ritual
Speaker 1: is over and over again so that you can hopefully,
Speaker 1: you know, evoke those spirits of magic to help you
Speaker 1: in your quest. So has anyone studied lucky charms? Of course?
Speaker 1: Well not the cereal. The cereal that's a whole different
Speaker 1: kettle of fish. But but yes, as far as studying
Speaker 1: the effects that lucky charms lucky objects have on us, uh,
Speaker 1: there's a really cool study from the University of Cologne
Speaker 1: in two thousand ten, and uh. They started off with
Speaker 1: just golf. They they invited these test subjects to come
Speaker 1: and uh and see how many of tin puts they
Speaker 1: can make from the same location. And when the experiment
Speaker 1: has handed them a golf ball, they would they would
Speaker 1: sometimes just give them a ball and say, hey, everyone's
Speaker 1: used this ball so far. You know, no big deal.
Speaker 1: Here's a golf ball. Why don't you hit it and
Speaker 1: see what I'll go in that hole over there. And
Speaker 1: then sometimes they said, hey, this ball, all this must
Speaker 1: be a lucky ball. This one, this one's really worked
Speaker 1: well for people. And then they they analyzed it. They
Speaker 1: let everyone play a little golf see what happened, and
Speaker 1: the mere suggestion that the ball was lucky significantly influenced performance,
Speaker 1: causing participants to make almost two more puts on average.
Speaker 1: 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 bearing on your performance. That's crazy, you know.
Speaker 1: So of course they weren't going to stop just there,
Speaker 1: because generally, if you have a scientific experiment, if you
Speaker 1: have a study going on, and it begins and ends
Speaker 1: with people just playing golf one afternoon, you know that's
Speaker 1: probably not enough. You need to push it a little
Speaker 1: a little further. So what they did is they had
Speaker 1: test subjects come in and they had them them bring
Speaker 1: lucky artifacts with them, you know, be at their their
Speaker 1: old inky or they're you know like me. You know,
Speaker 1: I forgot about this. I always bring this uh Tristeratops
Speaker 1: squeeze toy into the office with me. It's true, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I don't think of it as a lucky charm.
Speaker 1: I think of it more it's like something to occupy
Speaker 1: my hand when I'm feeling kind of podcast without it.
Speaker 1: I don't podcast without it. So there's a certain amount
Speaker 1: of magical thinking involved, their certain amount of good luck
Speaker 1: charm going on with that Tristeratops. So anyway, they invited
Speaker 1: people to bring in their tri steretops 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 tests. 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 Lisa and Tomish
Speaker 1: she found that those people who had they're lucky charms,
Speaker 1: they were doing a couple of things here to improve
Speaker 1: their performance, because really it does improve your pose. And
Speaker 1: they found once again, if they had their lucky charms
Speaker 1: on hand, they did better. Yes, they were setting loftier
Speaker 1: goals from for themselves, and then they were exhibiting increased
Speaker 1: persistence right they were they did not give up as
Speaker 1: 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: saratops with me. I'm gonna you know, I'm not just
Speaker 1: gonna go for normal. I'm gonna shoot for higher because
Speaker 1: I've got this, I've got the power up in my hand. Well,
Speaker 1: and then I'm gonna stay to it more because because
Speaker 1: because my I'm focusing with my attention, I have the
Speaker 1: the symbol of my my commitment with me as well. Well,
Speaker 1: here's where the fun house mirror shutters. If you are
Speaker 1: aware of this effect, then supposedly this no longer works anymore.
Speaker 1: If you become conscious that you are attributing magical qualities
Speaker 1: to an object, then it's supposedly is not going to
Speaker 1: be effective, you know. And I don't really I don't
Speaker 1: really buy that part of the study. Well, I think
Speaker 1: it depends. I think that this depends on the individual,
Speaker 1: because for my own part, I find myself able to
Speaker 1: drift in and out of believing in things depending on
Speaker 1: what my day to day outlook is and depending on,
Speaker 1: you know, how I want to view the world, Like
Speaker 1: I find myself able to, to a certain extent, you know,
Speaker 1: engage in the belief that an object might have some
Speaker 1: sort of you know, luck, or believe in some varying
Speaker 1: levels of spirituality depending on on how I'm viewing the day.
Speaker 1: So I can imagine somebody, you know, logically knowing that
Speaker 1: something is just a piece of metal, but then still
Speaker 1: buying into it enough to get that effect out of it. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that's because you have a creative, fiction twisted
Speaker 1: mind that's been trained that way, so you can, I think,
Speaker 1: dive into magical thinking very easily, yeah, and then still
Speaker 1: be hanging out with reality. But I don't. I'm not
Speaker 1: unique in that, and that that that people so, so
Speaker 1: I think the study is fascinating. That I do. I
Speaker 1: do kind of disagree on that part um about the
Speaker 1: idea that just merely by listening to this podcast we
Speaker 1: have deactivated all of your lucky charms out there, I
Speaker 1: mean some of you, if you're the right kind of person,
Speaker 1: that we just totally zapt all of your your magic
Speaker 1: do dads? Sorry about that? Yeah, all right, So let's
Speaker 1: change the subject and close this podcast out on Ikea,
Speaker 1: because I kea. What is this but the the iconic
Speaker 1: symbol of all objects known to man that can be
Speaker 1: acquired by man, right right, And of course the thing
Speaker 1: we always come back to with Ikea anytime we're talking
Speaker 1: about I Kea, anytime we're we're thinking about Ikea, and
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about in the podcast, but just in general,
Speaker 1: all of us is the the assembly of these items.
Speaker 1: They come with the really well do 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 penally. With
Speaker 1: some there's a little bit it's like going through a
Speaker 1: maze because you end up betting 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 this, You
Speaker 1: have all these pieces in front of you, and then
Speaker 1: you have this tiny little Alan wrench that's supposed to
Speaker 1: do the job. Well, you can get a screw driver
Speaker 1: with the Alan. Well, power tools always come out. That's
Speaker 1: the joke of it, right, And I feel like the
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 well,
Speaker 1: when you reach the frustration point with it. 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 a symboled furniture. Yeah, yeah, beating away. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I have, I have. There have been times when
Speaker 1: I've been a sibling like kea furniture, and I love
Speaker 1: I keya furniture, but there have been times when I've
Speaker 1: been assembling it where I've just about lost my mind. Well, see,
Speaker 1: I think that is what plays into this whole idea
Speaker 1: of this I key effect, right, right, And this is
Speaker 1: the idea ultimately, it's the idea that if we build
Speaker 1: something ourselves, even if it's crap, we care more about it.
Speaker 1: And you we've all encountered this with people. You know,
Speaker 1: it's anybody that knows somebody who engages in a bit
Speaker 1: of of art, a bit of creative endeavor would be
Speaker 1: it be it 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 it was the term
Speaker 1: kill your children. You don't want to do it, 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 milk.
Speaker 1: She 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 you work, saying hey, what's up with this? Yeah?
Speaker 1: But see this is this really interesting of the Ikea
Speaker 1: effect is that 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 is sometimes it's two years in the make. 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, mean, isn't that what objects are
Speaker 1: doing in the first place. They're just metaphors for us. Really. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the study was big on stressing that that building
Speaker 1: your own stuff boost your feeling of pride and competence
Speaker 1: signals to others that you were competent, which I think
Speaker 1: is is good as well and reminds me of that
Speaker 1: decent the Portlandia sketch. Did you see this with the
Speaker 1: the duty to builds 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 learned, 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 that 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 direct quote from the study, threatening consumers sense
Speaker 1: of self increases the propensity to make things themselves. So
Speaker 1: the idea to the idea here that the author talks
Speaker 1: about in this this article is that theoretically, if you
Speaker 1: were to provide a visitor to Ikea with a really
Speaker 1: difficult math problem to you know, to really bust them
Speaker 1: down a few chops and make them make them feel
Speaker 1: kind of stupid, then let them into Ikea, they're going
Speaker 1: to be even more into the idea of buying something
Speaker 1: and building it themselves so they can make good again.
Speaker 1: So because they their ego has been taken down a
Speaker 1: couple of notches, and then if they can just assemble something,
Speaker 1: they can regain that ye idea. I think so because
Speaker 1: it's I mean, 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. Well 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: so that would be impressive as well. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. This is what the author was saying,
Speaker 1: is that maybe Ikea 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, you
Speaker 1: feel better. Yeah, 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 seeing 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 to havn'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 the teams
Speaker 1: of of IKEA hackers have to like compete against each other,
Speaker 1: and maybe they're having to do a symbol furniture in
Speaker 1: weird places, like you know, in a hot air balloon
Speaker 1: around the subway. But my boy, I think you something there.
Speaker 1: Yeah did that sound like nineteen Yeah? A little bit,
Speaker 1: a little bit right, So there you go. Objects um,
Speaker 1: a little insight into why we've surround ourselveselves with so
Speaker 1: much stuff while it's so important. And I was really
Speaker 1: I was really interested in you know, we're talking about
Speaker 1: that that space, that that that your mind occupies, That
Speaker 1: that moment when you're holding something in your hand and
Speaker 1: trying to decide whether you can part with it and
Speaker 1: throw it away or if it has value that and
Speaker 1: needs to be held and maintained like that, That to
Speaker 1: me is a very interesting frame of mind um to occupy.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've all been there, and uh and and
Speaker 1: and we all kind of skew different ways. I think
Speaker 1: when when faced with that situation, some of us will
Speaker 1: just throw stuff away at the drop of the hat.
Speaker 1: My my wife is one and and she's been a
Speaker 1: good influence on me and making me more susceptible to
Speaker 1: getting rid of things instead of keeping them around needlessly.
Speaker 1: So you just have boxes of notes and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, if I'm in a store, which don't
Speaker 1: really shop that much, but if I'm in their store
Speaker 1: and I see something I fancy, I actually will carry
Speaker 1: it around for about fifteen minutes to see whether or
Speaker 1: not I actually wanted. In nine out of ten times
Speaker 1: I put it back. Thank you for joining us today
Speaker 1: in this episode. We hope this uh stoke some thought
Speaker 1: about your own material possession from what they mean to you.
Speaker 1: And if you're interested in learning more about some of
Speaker 1: the themes covered today, like say magical thinking, you can
Speaker 1: check out stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. It's
Speaker 1: our online hub for past and present podcast episodes, videos,
Speaker 1: and blog posts all related to what we explore here
Speaker 1: in this podcast. And if you have thoughts on the
Speaker 1: objects in your life that bring you them with pleasure
Speaker 1: or even discomfort, we'd like to hear about them. You
Speaker 1: can send your words our way by emailing us at
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind at? How supports dot com
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics. Does
Speaker 1: it has? Stuff works dot Com? Could you leave you
Speaker 1: to me?