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Readers’ replies to “Zen, choice and procrastination” were insightful and stimulated further writing and learning on my part. Here are some important distinctions about changing our intentions or failing to act on them. I like the title of Clay Shirky’s book Here comes everybody .  He’s writing about the social effects of Web 2.0 where everyone can be a contributor to, not just a consumer of, Internet content. The blog replies here at Psychology Today are a small example of this – here comes everybody (well, not everybody, but thousands of people have read these blog entries, it’s quite the growing community!). I learn from everyone as I write this blog. It’s much like my teaching. It’s a journey with my students. This blog is a journey in learning with you. Of course I can’t reply to every blog-posting comment (even though I would like to). I also get emails from my own Web site www.procrastination.ca . Again, it’s simply not possible to keep up with replies, but I enjoy hearing your perspective on the issues I discuss – sharing is part of learning. This week, in reply to my posting East meets West: Zen, choice and Procrastination , there were two replies that stimulated my writing. I’m going to provide excerpts of each of these replies below and then add some comments of my own. What these readers replied to was the story of the unfulfilled intention to run. As you may recall from this blog entry , having set the alarm for 5 a.m. to go for a run, when the alarm goes off, you don’t feel like running now, so you go back to sleep instead. The readers’ replies focus on two things: 1) the notion of choice, and 2) the difference between intention-update and intention-failure. Here are excerpts from both readers. You can read their full replies here . Reader 1 (MS): ONLY A ROBOT WOULDN’T SEE OPTIONS OR CHOICE I think you’re right in that there need not be choice involved, BUT ONE HAD TO BE A ROBOT NOT TO SEE IMMEDIATELY THE OPTION JUMPING RIGHT AT YOU to stay in bed and exercise another day. So I would certainly have to make the choice. In this case it’s not so hard to actually make it because RUNNING GIVES ALSO IMMEDIATE GRATIFICATION. I always feel better afterwards although I’m not yet fit enough to reach a runner’s high. (emphasis of all uppercase added) Reader 2 (Carl): INTENTION-UPDATE OR INTENTION-FAILURE . . . there’s a difference! It sounds to me as though the “it’s about choice” people are seeing intention revision where you see intention failure. Obviously both phenomena are real and will need to be allowed for in any attempt at describing agency: changing your mind is clearly rational in some cases, and not all cases of going against earlier intentions can honestly be described as rational revision. Both weakness of will and intention-updating exist, the question is how to tell the difference between them . . . the run-don’t run case can’t be a rational case of intention-update because nothing is updated except the intention itself: no new information is gained overnight, we should’ve known for example that we’d likely not want to go for the run , etc etc. Nothing happened that was in anyway novel, we just wantonly decided to go against the earlier intention on the basis of shifting occurant desires. But if we take *that* as being a rational basis for decision-making, then we shouldn’t have been forming intentions in the first place. Rational updating requires new information or a new awareness of earlier error. That’s not present in the case you describe so as described we’re being irrationally inconsistent, plain and simple. Even so there’s a puzzle: the decision/intention-shift/gap being irrational doesn’t itself determine which of the decisions/intentions was the right/best/most rational one to have. I can say I was being irrational to go against the intention, or I can say I was irrational to form *that* intention in the first place (when I should’ve known how little it reflects what I will want when it’s time to carry it out). Either description seems possible: because we often form intentions out of externally derived guilt, wishful thinking or idealism borrowed from others which (if we thought about it) we don’t actually share. We’d need to know more about which intention coheres best with our long-term plans and goals… and therefore have a way to figure out what those are. END OF READER RESPONSES Wow. This is great. This is a discussion! We simply have to address these issues of whether it takes away from our humanity (becoming more like a robot) to exclude choice, and we need to make this crucial distinction between an intention-update (or change) that is rational and an intention-failure that is irrational (and  I have labeled procrastination). Perhaps the most rationale thing we can do is realize that the intention was irrational in the first place. If that’s the case, we have to examine goal setting, and I’ll do that too. I won’t do any of it in this entry, however. It’s long enough (and I write too much for a blog I’m told ☺). So, check in tomorrow where I’ll take on the difference between intention-update and intention-failure.

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Readers drive new learning: Important thoughts about intentions and choice

 In Rebecca’s own words: I never thought I’d be one of   those obsessive, maniacal, “OME”-ers (“OME”   stands for “Oh My Edward!”), especially since I mocked my sister endlessly when she first started reading the TWILIGHT series. I’d automatically lessened my opinion of people when I found out that they were followers (yes, followers).  But one night, sick of constant mockery, my sister handed me the initial volume. “Read a hundred pages,” she ordered, “and if you don’t like it, you can stop.”  Unfortunately for my pride and self-esteem, I made it far past the first hundred pages. In fact, I finished more than half of the 500-page book that night—and I didn’t start reading until 11:30. But because I found myself so quickly sucked in, I couldn’t stop thinking about why —why these books? Why this fascination for “Edward”? What is it that is so exceptionally obsessing about these books? When Gina asked me to explain my obsession, she asked for ten points. I thought a little bit, and then wrote the number ten at the top of the page. As I started to write, I realized how difficult it was to explain exactly why these books are so beloved. So here are my five best tries at explaining pop culture’s most recent obsession:   5. It is anything but realistic. Reading Twilight , I think of it as an alternate reality that I am a part of in some way or another; and Meyer includes enough specifics and details to make our image of that reality three-dimensional and vivid. For one, half its characters are vampires, but more than that, it ignores most high school or relationship clichés and is something completely different. It abandons, well, common sense, which would (I hope) require the main character to be alarmed, not flattered, if she found out a boy was spying on her every night. Because of the books’ other-worldly nature and the simplistic style of writing, it becomes easy to read them as you might read a trashy magazine—without thinking, without questioning, without making any connection to real life. And this is lucky, since the book really falls apart if you probe it any further. Sure, you can discover some pretty annoying messages without looking too hard—ahem, abstinence—but I found it quite easy not to think about messages at all. The books seem entirely detached from reality and are written, well, like drugstore novels, and thus seem separate from the world of political messages and life lessons.   4. Suspense. Since it is after all a vampire story, we for once don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. I admit that I have atrocious taste in movies, but in most movies I see, I can predict exactly what’s going to happen. And while I clearly enjoy that, since I go back to see new versions of the same movie every weekend, I also like not knowing exactly what’s going to happen—will he kill her? (Doubtful, since there are four books.) Will he leave her? (Again, doubtful, though he flirts with it in the second book.) Will she become a vampire? Yes, I have heard people call it boring, but, personally, I have never read faster—I literally ripped pages as I turned them. 3. One reason why I was so invested in the characters is because I, like every other reader, identified with Bella. I think she has a personality, certainly more defined in the book than in Kristen Stewart’s sullen representation of it in the movie—but I do know how easy it is to project yourself onto her. I read Bella as a more upbeat character, an essentially happy and outgoing girl, while my more quiet friend read her as slightly more brooding and intense. In any case, in uniting myself with Bella in my mind, I became that much more invested in the story—and in what is my next point…   2. Edward. It would be impossible to discuss the obsession with Twilight without addressing the pivotal character of Edward. The obvious explanation for the obsession as that all these girls are in love with this boy–myself included. Why? Besides the danger aspect (bloodsucking, death, eternal condemnation, and so forth), the best reason I can come up with after many months of thinking about this is that he exists solely for the needs and desires of Bella (i.e. the reader). He is rarely preoccupied with his own problems, which you’d think, as he’s a vampire, would be plentiful, and devotes himself entirely to her—exhibit A, he stays with her every night. Oh, and he loves her unconditionally.   1. Finally, it is very easy to see the Twilight -obsessed girls as a kind of cult. And, indeed, that’s a bit what it felt like when I first started reading. I was welcomed in with a “Isn’t he great ?” by my friends who were fellow obsessives—though not , I am proud to say, by any weird, preteen, Edward-devoted websites. Though the hearty welcome didn’t really make me feel any cooler for having read the book, it was kind of a thrill to be joined in this alternate reality by your friends—to discover that what you thought was a private universe that took place in your room was actually shared by people you know (and millions of others, predominantly twelve-year-old girls—though I prefer not to think about that). Ultimately, Twilight becomes more than a book—it is an experience.   (Next post: Five Reasons A Middle Aged Woman Loathes TWILIGHT)

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Five Reasons A Smart Young Woman Adores TWILIGHT (Part 2 of 3)

I said that I would write more about our work in Israel and Gaza, but the work-and trying to find funding so that we can continue it-is taking up so much time (joyous, exciting time, to be sure) that I haven’t been able to write. Still, I thought I would send along this very brief summary that I forwarded to our US Mind-Body Medicine faculty. Hi everyone, Just a couple of words from Gaza City: overwhelming, amazing, touching. That’s three words. We (Jim, Amy, Afrim, Yusuf, Dan and Lee-Ann) had a great visit with our Israeli faculty. They are doing many interesting and exciting projects including groups that combine mind-body skills and Jewish spirituality, joint Israeli Jewish and Arab groups, and many groups for traumatized children and adults in Sderot. In fact, we made a visit to Sderot and had a chance to talk with teachers who are using mind-body skills in wonderfully creative ways with children in the SCIENCE AND RELIGION SCHOOL. The kids have experienced shelling on and off for eight years and are having all kinds of problems with concentration, bed-wetting and anger. Naftali who heads up our Israeli program, is on the track of a major initiative in the South which will build on the work that he and his team have already done. We are working together on developing cooperative relationships and future funding. Thanks to Danny Grossman, a friend to whom Aaron and Debbie Kaplan introduced us some years ago, (with able assists from Naftali and Smadar who handle the administrative work in Israel), we were all able to get into Gaza. It took a couple of extra days for Afrim and Yusuf, but Naftali and Tami and Ayelet from our Israeli faculty kept their spirits high while they waited. Once in Gaza, we began with visits with grieving families. There are whole sections of Gaza that have been completely destroyed and many thousands of people who are without homes. “I am very small,” one ten year old girl told us, “but the tent the 20 of us are staying in is even smaller.” We went on for a day of meetings with our Gaza faculty. The next day, we had more site visits including one to Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, whose three daughters were killed. He’s an amazing man, an OBGYN who works in Israel as well as Gaza and through some miracle of wisdom and compassion, has managed to transform his suffering into a visionary project for the education of girls in Gaza-”not just so they will think, but so they will think freely”-and a mission to promote greater Israeli-Palestinian understanding. We’re now about to start the 4th day of our PTP. Our Gaza faculty, which Jamil heads up, is doing virtually all the lectures and leading all the groups and our international team is consulting/supervising. The Gaza group is doing an absolutely wonderful job. They are so open-hearted and skillful-I’d say over the last 18 months, they’ve each lead anywhere between 6 and 20 groups and it shows. Participants (there are over 140 of them) are speaking of issues that they have never before discussed and beginning to solve problems that have troubled them for years-not to mention finding practical ways to ease their high levels of anxiety and deal with nightmares, flashbacks, etc. All of them-faculty and participants-are so eager to learn and to share what they are learning. They are an inspiration to all of us. There is much more to tell and I will when I have more time. For now, I send all of you my love as well as my gratitude for being with us on this and many other adventures. Jim    

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Progress in Postwar Gaza

Let me first introduce myself and this blog, which is titled Total Brain Workout. I am a professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto, and one of my main areas of cultural research is puzzles. I have also been teaching an undergraduate course on puzzles (their history and cultural meaning) at the University for many years. It is one of the most satisfying courses I have ever taught because, by the end of it, the students not only develop puzzle-solving skills (which they may have thought they didn’t have at the start), but also come out of it with a better perspective about the role of puzzles in human life. This blog is modeled on puzzles that I put together for my recent book, The Total Brain Workout: 450 Puzzles to Sharpen Your Mind, Improve Your Memory & Keep Your Brain Fit, published by Harlequin Books. It will contain one or two puzzles, and (if relevant) the history behind them, to tease your brain and thus keep it fit. As I indicate in the preface to that book, it would seem that such apparently “trivial amusements” foster brain growth, by stimulating logical and creative thinking regions of the brain. Research has come forward to suggest (although not prove beyond a shadow of a doubt) that puzzles sharpen the mind, improve memory, and keep the brain fit throughout life, and especially later life. As a boomer myself, and a puzzle addict since my childhood, I welcome this news. If puzzles are to the brain what physical exercise is to the body, then let’s do puzzles-not just for fun, but more importantly for brain fitness. And even if the research is not exactly what it is claimed to be, so what! Doing puzzles cannot hurt. Puzzles are as old as human history. They are found in all cultures throughout time. One of the first documented puzzle-and still one of the most famous-is the Riddle of the Sphinx. According to myth and legend, when Oedipus approached the city of Thebes he encountered a gigantic sphinx guarding entrance to the city. The menacing beast confronted Oedipus, posing the following riddle to him, and warning him that if he failed to answer it correctly he would die instantly at the Sphinx’s hands: What has four feet in the morning, two at noon, and three at night? The fearless Oedipus answered (paraphrasing his statement somewhat): “Humans, who crawl on all fours as babies, then walk on two legs as grown-ups, and finally need a cane in old age to get around.” Upon hearing the answer, the astonished sphinx killed itself, and Oedipus entered Thebes as a hero for having gotten rid of the terrible monster that had kept the city in captivity for so long. Ironically, by solving the riddle the devastating prophecy, which Oedipus tried to elude-that he would kill his father (which he did unwittingly on the way to Thebes) and marry his mother, the widowed queen of Thebes-came true. Why are we so intrigued by stories such as this one which revolve around puzzles? The answer might lie in the origin of the English word puzzle itself, which comes from the Middle English word poselen “to bewilder, confuse.” And indeed, puzzles generate bewilderment and confusion, because they cannot be solved by applying any formula or method mindlessly. They always require a dose of creative, unconventional thinking, which psychologists call “insight thinking.” This is essentially an intuitive grasp of a pattern or twist concealed by the puzzle. Given their appeal, some puzzles have given origin to commonly-held ideas, such as the one that life is comparable to the three main parts of a day (the Riddle of the Sphinx). Others are the source of everyday expressions. Here is a brainteaser that gave origin to the expression “thinking outside the box.” Many readers undoubtedly know it: Without letting your pencil leave the paper, can you draw four straight lines through the following nine dots? Those who may not have come across this puzzle before might tend to approach it by joining up the dots as if they were located on the perimeter (boundary) of an imaginary square or flattened box. But this reading of the puzzle does not yield a solution, no matter how many times one tries to draw four straight lines without lifting the pencil. A dot is always left over. It is at this point where creative thinking comes into play: “What would happen if I extend one or more of the four lines beyond the box?” That hunch turns out, in fact, to be the relevant insight. One possible solution is as follows: Can you find the others? It should now be obvious why this puzzle gave rise to the expression “thinking outside the box,” which entered the English language around the middle part of the twentieth century when people in business and education started referring to it as a prototypical example of what creative or “lateral” thinking is all about. It continues to be cited by psychologists as an example of how the mind tends to impose unnecessary limitations upon methods of attacking problems. Who invented the puzzle? I have looked into several sources and have been able to trace it as far back as 1914, in the first edition of puzzlist Sam Loyd’s (1841-1911) Cyclopedia of Puzzles. But the principle it embodies is probably older, as Martin Gardner indicates in his 1960 edition of Loyd’s work (titled The Mathematical Puzzles of Sam Loyd). The Nine-Dot puzzle is a 3 × 3 version of what can be called generally a Dot-Joining puzzle. Can you solve the Sixteen-Dot (4 × 4) and Twenty-Five Dot (5 × 5) versions? Again, you just connect the dots without lifting your pencil. How many lines are required in each of these two cases? Do you detect a correlation between number of dots and number of connecting lines? Sixteen-Dot Version Twenty-Five-Dot Version As a final word on Dot-Joining puzzles, I should mention that, as with any puzzle genre, once the general principle involved in solving them is deciphered, the genre starts losing its appeal. However, like any good joke, Dot-Joining puzzles can be played on others over and over to great effect. I await your answers, solutions, discussions, anecdotes, etc. for this particular puzzle, including any general formula for solving any general version (n × n) of the puzzle (if there is one). I also welcome suggestions for future puzzles on this blog. This is going to be fun!  (Scroll down for the answers)                           Answers Each of the following constitutes only one possible solution. Sixteen-Dot Version Six lines are needed for this version of the puzzle. As mentioned other solutions are possible. All involve six lines. Twenty-Five-Dot Version Eight lines are needed for this version of the puzzle. Other solutions are possible. Can we generalize? By making the Nine-Dot puzzle as complex as we desire (increasing the number of dots to 16, 25, 36, 49, etc.), a pattern seems to emerge through inspection. This pattern can be charted as follows: Dots    Lines Required 3 × 3    (3 + 1) = 4 4 × 4    (4 + 2) = 6 5 × 5    (5 + 3) = 8 6 × 6    (6 + 4) = 10 …    … n × n    n + (n – 2) = 2n – 2 I should point out that I have not tested this pattern beyond a 6 × 6 version of the puzzle. As with all inductively-derived formulas, there is no way to be sure that the formula works all the time. It thus can be called, simply, a working formula.  

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The Original "Thinking Outside the Box" Puzzle!

Since my two previous postings on this case several months ago, the skeletonized remains of little Caylee Anthony were discovered by a county meter reader a mere hundred yards or so from her home. Now we know that Caylee is in fact deceased, and that, according to authorities, was the victim of premeditated murder. Police have been zeroing in on the Anthony home as the possible site of Caylee’s killing, linking to that location many of the forensic clues found at the grisly scene where dismembered bones and a tiny human skull with duct tape still covering the place where the mouth and lips once were. Meanwhile, Casey remains incarcerated. Her brother, Lee, was deposed recently by lawyers representing supposed “nanny,” Zenaida “Zanny” Gonzalez, who denies having ever even met Casey let alone being the regular babysitter for Caylee Anthony. Grandparents Cindy and George are refusing to participate in the Gonzalez defamation law suit depositions, citing as their reason psychological fragility. The judge in that case has given them twenty days to produce psychiatric documentation to support this claim. Since George Anthony, Casey’s father, reportedly became despondent and actively suicidal following the discovery and identification of his granddaughter’s remains, being sequestered for almost two weeks in a psychiatric hospital, such documentation may indeed be forthcoming for him, if not for his wife. One curious and possibly telling comment made by Casey’s brother Lee during his deposition for the civil suit last week was his recollection that Caylee’s alleged abductor, “Zanny,” had, according to Casey, commandeered her personal password at myspace.com, changing it to “timer55,” and directed her via the internet and text messaging to go to certain locations, threatening the lives of family members if she refused. He recalls Casey telling him that she believes Caylee was taken by Gonzalez “to teach her a lesson.” What lesson might that be? And why? Lee Anthony reiterated under oath: “I believe everything my sister tells me.” Lee himself seems to believe that “timer55″ holds some sinister, secret numeric meaning. What might this say, if anything, about brother Lee’s state of mind? And possibly Casey’s? I do not know whether Ms. Anthony is guilty as charged and have had no direct involvement in this matter. Nor can I speak definitively to her state of mind past or present or that of her family without having interviewed them directly. However, as I mentioned previously , this case brings to mind a clinical syndrome called Shared Psychotic Disorder or folie a deux , trois , or perhaps quatre . This unusual phenomenon typically involves a primary person or “inducer” becoming delusional and others close to her or him to differing degrees adopting that distortion of reality. Of the four immediate family members, George, a former homicide detective, may be the least in denial about what happened, which could explain his suicidal reaction: some studies suggest that depressed individuals perceive reality more clearly than non-depressed people. But it would appear that both Lee and his mother, Cindy, if not consciously covering up, may still be under the spell–despite having been separated for months from Casey. If Casey could be depicted to a jury as having been clinically paranoid at the time she allegedly killed her daughter Caylee– as opposed to being perceived as merely selfish, immature and manipulatively lying to escape responsibility and punishment for this evil deed– might this be the basis for a forthcoming insanity defense ? Meanwhile, prosecutors have for now apparently decided not to reinstate the death penalty in this case, influenced in part by a legal brief by a former member of the defense team which hypothesizes that Casey could have been depressed and manic around the time of the alleged crime. In my first posting , I raised this same question, which, without extensively evaluating such a defendant, is impossible to answer. Could Casey possibly suffer from bipolar disorder ? If it were convincingly shown that the alleged crime occurred during a severe manic or depressive episode–either of which can sometimes include delusions–this could conceivably support an insanity defense. In the unlikely event there were to be an insanity defense in the Casey Anthony case, her attorneys would need to prove that Casey could not differentiate between right or wrong at the time of the alleged crime, or did not appreciate the nature and quality of her evil deed. The insanity defense is quite difficult: Less than 1% of jury trials attempt to prove legal insanity. Of those, only about one-in-four succeed. The finding of Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity (NGRI) is generally a hard-sell to juries. The defendant may be demonstrably mentally ill, or, here in California, clearly in a state of diminished mental capacity at the time of the crime, yet still not technically legally insane. Legal insanity is a high bar. The mere presence of serious mental disorder or psychosis does not necessarily meet the stringent standard for legal insanity. Nor does the diagnosis of a personality disorder alone or having been under the influence of or addicted to some licit or illicit substance when committing the crime. Florida’s insanity defense law, like California’s, allows defendants to acknowledge that they committed the act for which they have been charged, but argue that they should not be found guilty because they have a mental illness or defect. The defendant’s mental state must have been so severe as to prevent her from knowing what she was doing or the consequences of her crime when committing the crime. Alternatively, the defendant may have understood what she was doing and the consequences of her actions, but can still invoke the insanity defense if she did not understand that her actions were wrong. As in California and most other states, the Florida insanity defense is based on the M’Naghten rule , named after a mid-nineteenth century British case in which a severely delusional man, Daniel. M’Naghten, attempted to assassinate the Prime Minister, mistakenly killing instead the Prime Minister’s secretary. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity, but due to public outcry, the so-called M’Naghten standard was established, requiring that for such a defense, the defendant, due to a “defect of reason,” must be proven to have not known the nature and quality of his or her actions or that those actions were wrong. Controversial as it is, the insanity defense goes to the very heart of the notion of personal responsibility : Are we always fully responsible for our actions? Are there certain disorders, diseases, syndromes, dangerous states of mind, or mitigating circumstances that can negate or reduce personal responsibility? If so, what are they? And where do we as a society draw that line? These are precisely the sort of complex existential, philosophical, psychological and legal questions Casey Anthony’s defense team would have to persuasively address were they to decide to invoke the rare and risky insanity defense.    

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Did Casey Kill Caylee?: Could There Be an Insanity Defense Coming?

An interesting article is up at the New Atlantis by Ari Schulman, arguing that we will never be able to replicate the mind on a digital computer. Here I want briefly to argue there are other reasons for this. Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

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Why we’ll never be downloaded [Evolving Thoughts]

If you decided to spend $100 on your happiness, would you buy something experiential like a meal out or something material like an item of clothing? Research covered here recently suggested that for long-term happiness experiences tend to beat possessions . But Leonardo Nicolao and colleagues at the University of Texas argue in the Journal of Consumer Research that this research doesn’t tell us the whole picture ( Nicolao et al., 2009 ). Nicolao and colleagues point out that the previous research by Van Boven and Gilovich (2003) only compared experiential and material purchases that went well, not those that went wrong. What if the clothes turn out to be money down the drain or the meal out is a complete bust from beginning to end: what does that do to our happiness? When purchases go wrong The researchers used three experiments to examine this question. In the first two of these participants were randomly assigned to groups in which they recalled material and experiential purchases that had either turned out well, or that had turned out badly. They were then asked how happy (or otherwise) these purchases had made them. The results suggested that, just like Van Boven and Gilovich’s research, experiential purchases (e.g. a meal out) beat material purchases (e.g. clothes) if each turned out well. But, for some people whose scores were low on a measure of materialism, when the purchases turned out badly, it was the material goods that left them slightly happier. In contrast the highly materialistic were left less happy when their material purchases went wrong. In a third experiment participants actually made a small experiential versus a small material purchase and then their happiness over time was measured. It was found that when participants made a material purchase that turned out badly it was easier for them to forget about it than an experiential purchase that went wrong. Across three experiments, then, Nicolao and colleagues found evidence that when our experiential purchases go wrong we are likely to end up slightly less happy than if we had chosen a material purchase. But, as in previous research, when our purchases go well we are likely to end up significantly happier if we choose an experiential rather than a material purchase. Experiences still beat possessions This study provides further support for the idea that experiential purchases like restaurant trips or theatre tickets are likely to beat material purchases like clothes or electronics for our long-term happiness. Nicolao and colleagues show that this is at least partly because it takes us longer to adapt to experiential purchases than material purchases. Experiences also beat possessions because they seem to: Improve with time as we forget about all the boring moments and just recall the highlights. Take on symbolic meanings, whereas those shoes are still just shoes. Be very resistant to unfavourable comparisons: a wonderful moment in a restaurant is personally yours and difficult to compare, but all too soon your shoes are likely to look dated in comparison with the new fashions. On the other hand this study does suggest that if our purchases go badly, there’s probably little to choose between experiences and possessions, with the less materialistic left slightly happier with their material purchases. This may be because unhappy experiences live longer in the mind than purchases that turn out badly. Of course this study only compared material purchases with experiential purchases because, after all, this is the Journal of Consumer Research . But what about comparing material purchases with totally free experiences like a walk in the park, an afternoon spent lolling by the river or chatting with friends? In these cash-strapped times it’s worth remembering that free experiences may well make us happier than possessions, it’s just that with less money we can’t hand the responsibility for our entertainment to others (restaurants, theatres, films etc.) but have to be more creative ourselves. [Image credit: catfunt & luchilu ]

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How to Choose Between Experiential and Material Purchases

Today’s ABC Radio National All in the Mind has a fascinating discussion on how we attribute intentions to other people which covers some surprising and counter-intuitive examples of how our understanding of other people’s desires are biased by the situation. There’s a great example depicted in this YouTube video which I highly recommend, but essentially the example is this: A vice president of a large company goes to the CEO and says “We have a new business plan. It will make huge amounts of money for the company, but it will also harm the environment”. The CEO says “I know the plan will harm the environment, but I don’t care about that, I’m just interested in making as much money as we possibly can. So let’s put the plan into action”. The company starts the plan, and the environment is harmed. The question is, did the CEO harm the environment intentionally? As it turns out, most people say yes to this question. Now have a think about this similar scenario. A vice president of a large company goes to the CEO and says “We have a new business plan. It will make huge amounts of money for the company, but it will also help the environment”. The CEO says “I know the plan will help the environment, but I don’t care about that, I’m just interested in making as much money as we possibly can. So let’s put the plan into action”. The company starts the plan, and the environment is helped. The question is the same – did the CEO intentionally help the environment in this case. Curiously, most people say no. Despite the CEO making the same decision in both cases. The programme is full of many more fascinating examples of how our judgement of intention is affected by the outcome rather than the decision the person makes. However, I wonder whether our judgements are clouded by the notion of responsibility rather than purely intention, where we place much greater social weight on responsibility for damaging actions, than beneficial ones. This area is largely being explored by the new area of ‘ experimental philosophy ‘ that aims to empirically test our assumptions about traditionally philosophical issues. Link to AITM on ‘The philosophy of good intentions’.

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Experimental philosophy of others’ intentions

This week’s Casual Fridays study was inspired by this comment on the Random Number thread: When a freshman at Penn State too many years ago to count, the intro psychology prof did an amazing demonstration. I wonder if anyone knows the answer to this which I have long forgotten. He said he had written the numbers 1 through 5 in random order on a piece of paper. He then asked the very large class to read his mind and write down his number order. When the class compiled the answers, more than 50% of the class had his order, and so proved that telepathy was possible!!! The class was ecstatic, until he then told us that humans more often than not arrange those numbers in that particular sequence that he had. Does anyone know what that sequence order is? I have puzzled over this for years since. I thought we might do Bobbysoxer a favor by uncovering the number sequence, if indeed it exists. I was skeptical: half the class? A sequence of five items, in random order? Since there are 120 possible unique sequences of the numbers 1 through 5, a random distribution of responses would mean fewer than one percent of answers would be in any given order. Chances that HALF the responses would be the same seem remote. That’s not to say that responses will be truly randomly distributed. But I doubted that any single combination of digits would even approach 50 percent. Our survey asked respondents to randomly arrange the digits 1 through 5 — and also 1 through 4, and 1 through 3. Perhaps with a smaller range of choices we’d get something approaching Bobbysoxer’s memory of the event. First let’s take a look at the distribution of responses for the digits 1 through 5. How “random” were our answers? Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…

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Casual Fridays: How random are we?

The mainstream media are just queuing up to fail in their reporting of the propranolol story from a couple of days ago. To reiterate: Propranolol is commonly used to treat high blood pressure and prevent migraines in children. But Merel Kindt and colleagues from the University of Amsterdam have found that it can do much more. By giving it to people before they recalled a scary memory about a spider, they could erase the fearful response it triggered. The critical thing about the study is that the entire memory hadn’t been erased in a typical sci-fi way. Kindt had trained the volunteers to be fearful of spidery images by pairing them with electric shocks. Even after they’d been given propranolol, they still expected to receive a shock when they saw a picture of a spider – they just weren’t afraid of the prospect. The drug hadn’t so much erased their memories, as dulled their emotional sting. It’s more like removing all the formatting from a Word document than deleting the entire file. The drug is not a ” memory-wiping pill ” (Guardian). It cannot “erase bad/painful memories” ( Sun / Fox News / Metro / Daily Mail ) and it won’t give you a ” spotless mind ” (Scotsman). Perhaps it’s unsurprising given that massive wire agencies said similar things. The Press Association led with claims that the drug can ” erase fearful memories “. Reuters at least said more cautiously that it was a ” step towards erasing bad memories “. To quote the person who actually did the research (and thanks Merel for chiming in on the earlier post):  “There was no memory erasure, just elimination of the fearful response.” The problem with all of this, of course, is that people have straw-manned the research and are falling over themselves to publish trite editorials that (a) are irrelevant to the actual study and (b) serve to stoke public outrage over an ethical dilemma of their own concoction. There are exceptions. The Boston Globe got it right and has a brilliant bit at the end that lays out in four simple sentences the bottom line, cautions, what’s next, and where the research was published. It has however accompanied the article with an incongruous photo of a koala, presumably some sort of mix-up with the Australian bushfire story. The mental health charity MIND released a long and well-considered statement , which showed that they had actually read the paper and understood the science. The charity’s CEO, Paul Farmer, said: “This is fascinating research that could transform the treatment for phobias and post traumatic stress disorder. Around 10 million people in the UK have a phobia and about 3.5% of the population will be affected by post traumatic stress disorder at some point yet our understanding of how to treat these conditions is still limited. While we welcome any advancement in this field we should also exercise caution before heralding this as a miracle cure. “Eradicating emotional responses is clearly an area we would need to be very careful about. It could affect people’s ability to respond to dangerous situations in the future and could even take away people’s positive memories. We would not want to see an ‘accelerated Alzheimer’s’ approach. “We still have limited research on how to treat complex mental health problems, with the focus often on pharmacological solutions. Drugs are a somewhat sledgehammer approach and can have unintended consequences. We know from other psychiatric drugs, for example antipsychotics and antidepressants, that individuals react in hugely varied ways to treatments and are often vulnerable to unpleasant side effects. “We would need to see much more research into the risks and benefits into this treatment before it becomes a reality.” All of that was culled by the BBC into the following: But British experts questioned the ethics of tampering with the mind. Paul Farmer, chief executive of mental health charity Mind, said he was concerned about the “fundamentally pharmacological” approach to people with problems such as phobias and anxiety. He said the procedure might also alter good memories and warned against an “accelerated Alzheimer’s” approach. Do you think it carries the same meaning or sense? Read the comments on this post…

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More on propranolol – the drug that doesn’t erase memories [Not Exactly Rocket Science]