People habituate to things that make their lives and lives of people around them much less good than they should be and that means that things turn gray
Then should be blue and red and green and orange and the celebration in the sky
So first-bueller had this great line in the movie Ferris dealers day off
He said life moves pretty fast if you don't stop and look around once in a while you could miss it
Turns out there is this weird quirk in human nature over time we stop seeing and appreciating
Even the stuff that was awesome when it first happened or entered our lives and yes
That includes not only events and things
But also people those people that we say that we love and are the most important to us and make our lives better
We end up having so many things to celebrate so many relationships to celebrate
that we find ourselves going through the motions failing to appreciate the magic that surrounds us
Turns out there's a name for this phenomenon. It's called habituation and there are things that we can do about it things that can make our lives so much better
Not by having to change anything or any circumstance or a new relationship or
Rotate our stuff, but rather simply by
breaking the mixed blessing spell slash curse of habituation
My guest today cast Sunstein explores this phenomenon in his fascinating new book
Look again the power of noticing what was always there co-authored with neuroscience professor Tala Sharah in our tendency to become
De-sensitized to unchanging parts of our lives turns that we lose our ability to notice the beauty and meaning that's been there all along
And as Cass explains this habituation it helps us function without constant distraction. There's good to it
But it can also drain the color from our world in this eye opening discussion
We uncover both the power and the peril of habituation and cast shares how we can cultivate what he calls
Dishabituation to see our lives afresh whether that's re-nighting relationship
Improving our social media habits or snapping out of dangerous complacency through vivid stories and insights from
Psychology some really fascinating research
Cass shares why we slide into this not noticing state of the world around us and how relatively simple shits can really reopen our eyes
It's a call to action to appreciate what we already have
An imagined bold new possibilities and to wake us up in our own lives after all
Some of life's most precious gifts may be right in front of our noses if only we'd look again
And one last thing before we dive into today's conversation
I want to share a fun new project that I have created for you. It's a way to feel more alive and less alone
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I'm back and with a new weekly newsletter and community called awake at the wheel
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So go check out the latest stories and insights and see what this week's writing and conversation prompt is now
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I think a really good starting point for us would be
What are we actually talking about when we're talking about habituation?
habituation is diminishing sensitivity to stimuli. It's a little complicated the basic ideas if you go
Swimming in the ocean and it's really cold in the first
Seconds you're thinking burr. It's terrible. Can I get out now?
But after a little while you might not even notice that it's cold and you'll tell your
Friends come on in the waters fine
Or if you enter a room and let's say it's kind of stinky because someone's smoking your old factory neurons will be firing
And the first 30 seconds you'll think stop the smoking
But after 30 minutes for most people they actually won't even smell the smoke at a halt some people are sensitive
Of course, but diminishing sensitivity to bad smells is typical
There's in many rooms right now in the United States a little background noise
Maybe it's an air conditioner. Maybe it's a heater. Maybe it's some machinery
But people are noticing it because it's constant or changing very slowly
And habituation just means that we are very sensitive to change and
Not very sensitive to things that stay constant
The way describe it it sounds like this is a phenomenon that exists in all human being
It's not unique to a certain group of people and others. Is that right?
It's basically right to have a couple of qualifications the first is I have two
Lever to retrievers they're in vicinity and they habituate also
So do cows and horses and cats and rats and
Unicellular organisms so a habituation is built into
Living creatures. There are
interpersonal variations and people with mental health challenges in particular
Something we found that startle less of it. It's a unifying characteristic of people who have
Challenges schizophrenics and not to abituate so good
And people who struggle with depression and anxiety
Challenges they
tend to subituate more slowly and sometimes
Not a whole lot is there a theory or a hypothesis about why that might be the case
Yeah, completely so let's start from people who do habituate which is to say most people and most creatures including horses and dogs and
Cats and rats and unicellular organisms
The reason for it is we have limited mental space limited cognitive space
We have to focus on a subset of things and if things are pretty steady as she goes to free up space for registering things that are new
Is in the interest of the individual and the species
So if you see something that's let's say large and you've never seen it before and has teeth to thank my gosh
That's
Something out of 10 to is properly in your interest or if you see someone who's really attractive passing by and maybe the potential
Partner to think oh that's interesting
That's also in the interest of the individual and certainly in the species
So a Darwin I think would predict habituation and it does fit with standard evolutionary accounts
Now for people who have mental health challenges resilience is
Frequently a problem. So if you suffer from anxiety or depression for different reasons you will
Having hit something. Let's say the stumbling you will maybe ruminate about it or keep focusing on the likelihood of its repetition
And that's you know, there are different sources of mental health challenges
But to define a number of them by reference to two
Challenges in abituating to a status quo is fair
That might not be the number one characteristic, but that is a characteristic
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that you brought up rumination because that was sort of what was
Spinning through my head at the time this notion of latching onto a thought
And just spinning it and spinning it and spinning it and even often telling yourself
This isn't healthy. I want to let this go. I want to stop this spin cycle
But feeling unable to do that and I was curious what the relationship is between
Rumination habituation because it seems like that you know
The rumination stops you from being able to drop into that place where your brain just says oh no
It's there, but we don't have to make it you know devote so much energy to it
You're completely right. So let's take two people. Let's call one John and the other Paul
In reference to the Beatles and maybe we'll map on tell you's my imagination of what the two
It respectively were and are like so let's say Paul has a setback that is the new
Beatles record shockingly doesn't do very well
Paul thinks well it didn't do very well, and it's a bolt a jolt to the system on let's say the Monday where he realizes
The song didn't do very well, but Paul being Paul on Tuesday is just fine. Thank you have another song
and on Wednesday is
cheerful and writing and enjoying his latest romantic
partner. Let's suppose John by contrast it gets the same jolt
On Monday the song isn't doing very well, and John feels no more jolt than Paul
But it doesn't get better on Tuesday or Wednesday
John keeps thinking why didn't that song do well
She said that's actually a John song. That's really good. I think it didn't do that well
But it is really good and John keeps thinking why didn't that song do better that's terrible and rumenates about that
So the data is consistent with the proposition that people struggle with depression do ruminate which as you say is completely
Not a failure to show diminished sensitivity to a stimulus in this case career setback
And it is just so that people as you say who reluctantly and against their better judgment keep ruminating
Are not habituating to the setback whereas people who don't suffer from mental health challenges are more likely to think
That was a couple days ago, and I thought it was going to bug me for a week, but
Everything's fine. It's interesting also you um oftentimes when people are in that that sort of spin cycle
One of the things that they may say is the equivalent of this is just exhausting
And it sounds like that also sort of ties in with maybe the
Hypothesis behind why we habituate which is almost like a certain your brain and bodies need to preserve energy to
Not actually have this constant reaction to everything that's coming your way and somehow
Be able to dial down the stuff that is not emergent so that you can function. Does that sound right?
100% thank you for mentioning that if you were constantly thinking about things that are
Know in your life and stable you do be sleeping a lot
So take a random person who has let's say a good marriage a good job a good dog
A boss who's kind of mean
Work that's a little dull and a neighborhood that's good
Let's say that's how it's been for the past three years if the person keeps thinking about all of those things
The good and the less good the person's just going to be overwhelmed with thoughts about things that should be like background facts
And just as you know one's
Neighborhood might be a background fact except in the first period
If you were thinking about your neighborhood all the time either you'd be
You'd have neighborhood obsession disorder
Or you just be really tired because you'd be thinking about your neighborhood over the whole time
So it's completely right. It's very important for species to be
Alert to a surprise signal and to be relatively
Inattentive and kind of on automatic pilot with respect to things that aren't changing
Now one thing we want to emphasize is that the absence of a surprise signal for constant
Wondrfulness or for constant terribleness is a real problem
But you're saying what is clearly true
Which is that our species has evolved to be
Inattentive to things that are constant and there are good reasons for that species that didn't have that
Might die young
Might be less creative
Might be sweeping a whole lot. Yeah, so there are you know and you look at anything that has sort of endured in the species
And you have to say there's got to be some benefit to it and what you're saying makes sense you know
There's probably a variety of
Survival and just performance oriented benefits to or brains being able to habituate to a lot of these things that don't really
Quote require our attention
But a big part of your hypothesis is also that there's a downside to this as well. Yes
So on evolutionary expletations
I'm a ambivalent enthusiast and the ambivalent stems from my
Knowledge of what a hero I was diversity
Psychologist once said say if you listen to evolutionary psychologist long enough you'll stop believing in Darwin
And I think that's because any account of
existing let's say psychological tendencies is
Plosible and it's opposite would also be plausible
So if we didn't show habituation there'd be a plausible psychological account of why we don't that it makes us
Inattentive to things, but I think you're quite right that the fact that we are homo-habituan or something
I just made that terrible phrase up that does have an evolutionary account
Okay, to your question about the downside
Well, let's suppose you have a partner in life and it's good to have that particular partner in life because you love that partner
chances are the
Amazement you had at the early stages of that partnership is
Is less colorful and bright than it was at the beginning? That's our species and there are therapists who deal with that
And that's an downside because you have someone who's you know willing to stand you and is maybe amazing
And you just regarded as good rather than a fantastic fact
Or you might have let's say a family or a job or a neighborhood
That if you thought you'd end up there 10 years ago or 15 years ago
You might have thought could I possibly be that lucky?
And now you have those things and you think well that's life what am I going to do today?
And that means that things turn gray
Then should be blue and red and green and orange and the celebration in the sky
Julia Roberts the actor is one of the heroes of our book
Thank you, Ms. Roberts and the reason she's a hero of our book
She had an interview in which she was asked what's a great day for you?
What's a perfect day? And she said well a perfect day as I wake up
I make breakfast for my kids and start to get them ready for school and then I bring them and then
I come back and then I start to think about lunch with my husband and she goes on in this way
And then she stops herself if she's aware of the routine she's describing and she says it's boring
But what you have to know she says is that because of my job I go away a fair bit for weeks
And then I come back and it's surrounded by pixie dust it sparkles
And that's her ability to disobey by virtue of her
Mobility, let's say given her job such that you see things a new and a fresh that other people might see just as you know gray
And that's fantastic and that's a downside of the situation that we don't see the pixie dust and have the sparkline
But it's like to terrible things let's say you know it work. There's something really not good
Let's suppose someone's on kind or there's terrible inefficiency or the routines are so
If not destroying at least soul-slapping people have bitch-way to that and that's good in the sense that
Bang your hand go ahead against the wall starts to hurt
But it has a downside which is that people have bitch-way to things that make
Their lives and the lives of people around them
Much less good than they should be and we know that when terrible things happen in societies
It's often because people have abituated to them and their slow deterioration
Isn't something that an individual life or in a social practice, let's say
Produces that big warning flag that is the surprise signal
the mix a lot of sense to me
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The question I serve
in my mind is
How habituation relates to the concept of I think you probably already sell it in popularize this the hedonic treadmill or hedonic adaptation
This notion that if you win the lottery a year later
You're probably going to be back to a baseline level of happiness. Where is if something horrible befalls you
The vast majority of people a year later are going to be probably back to like a similar baseline level of happiness
Are we using different language for the same phenomenon on there or is there something qualitatively different?
Well, I'd say they're very similar, but it's not exactly the same. So habituation is a very broad
Thing that all living creatures do
One of its implications is that if something great happens. Let's say you you win the lottery or you would hear a ton of money
Initially, there's going to be a surprise signal and the surprise signal is
Celebration in the sky. It's something fantastic and then the next day they'll be
reduced sensitivity to that particular stimulus and the next day reduce still and that is habituation
So one of the mechanisms behind what
Selecman and others describe as the hedonic treadmill is habituation. It's a mechanism that helps explain why it happens
And if you have a bad setback, let's say your
Langstops working
It might be that the first day and week are
horrific and you're not sure how you're going to make it with the leg that doesn't work
But a year later if it stays not working then
You will habituate to that and show diminished sensitivity to the stimulus
Now that's not the only reason why the hedonic treadmill so-called might be real
There are other reasons but habituation is a may mechanism one of the principal mechanisms
I want to say that I'm hopeful that Selecman would agree is one of my heroes
Want to be careful with the idea of hedonic treadmill
As it's not true that people have a well-being set point that's impervious even over the long run to change
So if people get help for let's say a mental health challenge
They're that's just better and it's going to stay better if people get more money
That's better. It's better with respect to both experience well-being and with respect to life satisfaction
It's probably not as much better as people would anticipate
But on average people with a good chunk of money do better than people with a pretty good chunk of money
And people with a pretty good chunk of money do a lot better than people who are poor
So mental health is good money is good
Reallocating your attention to things like
Socializing rather than things like commuting that's good also people don't like commuting that much people do like socializing
So there is meant to psychological set point which is impervious to circumstances
Yeah, I mean, that's so interesting um as you were just describing the commuting element of it
I think so many people are now experiencing this over the last four years
You know for the first time maybe in decades
They're living a life where you know not only have they had time return to them
But the process of commuting you know is now not a
necessarily daily part if at all and a lot of people are saying
I didn't actually realize what this was doing to me now that it's not there anymore
I was reflecting as you were speaking back to
He was John Heights first book the Happiness Hypothesis where he identified a small number of things that people
Really genuinely never truly habituate to and long commutes was one of them
Okay, so
I
My era of John of the hate and that book and his other work
I have a hypothesis which I think is consistent with the data
That is person's people's negative experience of commuting
After a year of not commuting is greater than their
Ex-negative experience of commuting after 15 years of commuting
So then I remember my own experience of being exiled from my office as COVID hit
Was of distress and despair and angst
Thinking how am I gonna to work and function out of the office
Because I was so habituated to the office and after a number of years of working only in the office
The idea of working at home just seemed to me and
Using myself as a placeholder for numerous others
seemed to me not imaginable
But many of us managed to habituate to working at home that turned in the first few days it was
Confusing and disorienting, but then it was fine and even good
So people went to being habituated to work in the office to being habituated to work at home
And the idea after a period of working at home with going back to the office
People disobituated and that
Seemed very unwelcome and the commute I think is part of that where for many people who had gotten used to a commute
where they were
Less sensitive to let's say the inconvenience and the
Whatever they became more sensitive to those things. It's a little like the reverse of the
Truly Roberts claim about pixie dust the opposite of pixie dust was on
commuting so the hypothesis is when there comes a time make we're getting there where people are in the office much more
the
Commute angst will be diminished because people get used to the commuting again
And they'll think why was I so agitated? I think height is right about most things
So he's probably right about this one that people are never going to love the commute
And they might never love it as much as they
Tolerated and let's say before COVID. Yeah, I want to circle back to something you brought up also
Which is this notion that we habituate two relationships
You know is it something starts out and you you feel the excitement and the glow and the anxiety and you know
There's an electricity in it and then
Maybe that becomes a long-term relationship maybe it becomes a committed life partnership and then over a period of years
The dynamic shifts and changes. I guess part of my question is part of that
I think you're describing as a certain amount of habituation because this is a regular consistent thing in your life
This is not the loud noise or the something that might be aberrant stimulus. This is just it's kind of
And always their thing
But I can see that both you like the quote good and bad to that in the context of relationships as well
I was at a wedding a few years ago
Where as the perral the
therapist and theorist of marriage was there and
It's a little ominous. She's a lovely place
And brilliant as well
Wedding and I knew a little bit about her work
She's willing to talk about her work as she did at the dinner and I learned a lot from her and I've read a lot of her work since
And it's just what you say she emphasizes the romantic equivalent of this if there's a cloud of colors on let's say an image
There's a fixation point in the middle and you look at the fix fixation point after about 30 seconds the colors will turn gray
And if you're really good at it the colors will turn white and then once you move your head a little bit
You'll see the colors again and you'll be startled to see that what was gray or white now is everything
And that's what s-aparelle works on and it actually says fire needs air
So that if a couple are together like all the time
It might be extremely compatible and full of love and a thousand and one good things
But the fire is likely to to be diminished. It's not gonna be burning so much and that's her claim and she has
Data and support of it and it's completely about habituation
Now you raise the normative question whether it's a good thing or a bad thing and I agree completely that it's both
so if you're in
um relationship which is full of fire and uncertainty and
anxiety and
Keeping it suitable for children here, but it's not all everything in it including
You know, it's not last then that's exhausting and it might well be worse than something that has less in the way of
uh fire but more in the way of stability and
Neutral lead assured construction. Let's call it
What as the perile is focused on and I think she's right
So our book is focused on that too
Fallen her lead is how to ignite
Let's say disabituation in circumstances where there's also stability and
There ways to do that. That's a lot of what she works on
But what I like to think about what she works on to be about I
Diting
Disabituation with respect to numerous things on life right now. I'm looking out on a street
I have a rental house here and I'm looking at a street. It's a really nice street
You know, it's not like a world historically nice street
But there's trees and it's green and the houses are nice and
And it's just pleasant in the sun. How often do I think of that in a day?
Zero times. I'm thinking about it now because we are talking about it and to feel
thrills or
pixie dust
Blessed because you get to live on a street where it's sunny and there are trees
That's kind of in the individual's interest
Hmm
How much of this effect if you have a sense is
Based on just a natural process that happens versus our intentionality or tentiveness and what I'm thinking about is
You know, I live in Boulder, Colorado. I hike often, you know
Many times a week. Oftentimes. I hike the exact same trail
I know exactly how long it's gonna take me. I know when it turns up here
I know where the rock is there. I know where the root is
You know, I know where I'm gonna maybe break for a couple of minutes
And I remember talking to my daughter one day and she's like doesn't it get bored?
It's literally the exact same thing every day and it was an interesting question because
I thought to myself for some reason no actually I'm never bored hiking the exact same trail often multiple times a week for you know
Like years on end now and I started to hear like why is that because in theory it's like, you know
The band who has the hit song and like now for the entirety of band's history every time they play a show
All people want to hear is that one song and they're just so tired of it
Um, and what occurred to me, I'm curious what your take is on this is that I try and be really present
I often don't hike with earbuds or listening to something. I really want to be there and
I'll notice that the exact same trail on any given day is very different
So I'm wondering how much sort of attentiveness plays into the experience of habituation. That's completely right two thoughts one is
Some people are exploiters and other people are exploiters. Now the word exploit isn't meant as a pejorative in this context
An exploiter likes the same path an exploiter likes stacations and
Exploiter likes to hear the same song frequently and exploiter likes to go to the restaurant that's known to be good
Take an exploiter to be defined as that because they exploit their existing stock of knowledge and experience
An explorer by contrast likes new things likes new trails as a metaphor
Would not like to go to the same restaurant would like let's try something new
Sometimes exploiters marry explorers, which means vice versa
And if you're wondering whether that is an autobiographical statement absolutely
Not an exploiter my wife is an explorer and there may be some psychological logic in that
My thought had been that explorers tend to obituate more easily and more quickly than exploiters
So that they get they see gray whereas exploiters
See colors in the familiar restaurant and it's not that they particularly prize reliability and comfort
It's that they see new things
But is you're raising a great point which is that an apparent
Which I hadn't seen I don't know any data on but I bet it's true
Which is an explorer or an apparent exploiter might be actually an explorer who's extremely attentive
So it might be that if you're doing the same thing
You're actually learning something every time and it's new and different
And so you're not getting bored because of the nature of your intention
So as you describe your hiking it's fantastic you're not
Abituated to it because you're seeing new things or maybe if you're seeing familiar things you're seeing them as if first time kind of
I'm thinking of
My beloved dogs who when I take them on the same walk
They're not bored and for me it's a little
Routine but for them they're smelling and seeing all sorts of things who's been here. What's happened here?
It's like a world of novelty with a ton of surprise signals and I think some
Practices religious or involving meditation are designed to inculcate what you describe which is a surprise signal
In people when they're doing things that are
Ordinary
Did surely it is the case that people can train themselves to register surprises more
We're focused in our book on
Disappituation
But when you as taking breaks change but you're suggesting you can have
Disappituation within that's great
We have some built-in disabituation mechanisms out here also on the form of bears
Which I have met a few times on the trail. So like you're always a little bit more attentive
I think because of that and we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors
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I want to switch gears a little bit also and talk about some of the sort of like the use cases or the different
applications that you dive into on the book and one of them is the notion of habituation and social media
You have this lens on social media, which kind of describes it as this
persistent low-grade irritant
So take me into your thoughts on social media and habituation and disabituation and how it affects us
Okay, so let's take the
Simpler there are two points about social media the simpler is that if you hear something that's
false
Twice you tend to believe it's called the illusory truth effect
So I don't know if you heard that Tom Brady the great quarterback has decided to go into politics
I'm not sure you heard that Brady decided to go into politics because he's been in the public domain a lot
He feels he has some
Understanding of people and he feels he can connect with them and that's why Brady says he's going into politics
Okay, just live three times
Thank you for indulging that lie. I hope you knew I was illustrating a point and then forgive me, but I and maybe you and listeners
Are going to be thinking in part of your mind is Brady running for political as you hear that
She was something I did. I hope it's not too terrible and social media
No one wants this I don't think but
Spreads falsehoods by virtue of that and the reason it happens is when you first hear Tom Brady is running for president or something
Startling about let's say politics or science
Global warming isn't real. Let's say there's a surprise signal in the brain
And that is accompanied by critical scrutiny
But when you hear it again, it's easier to process and the brain thinks if something's easier to process
It's more likely to be true easier truthier and that's a real problem with
The spread spread of misinformation on social media
Okay, there's that then their social media itself
what we know from
Data is that for many people at least
Social media is a little like a dentist put something in your mouth
And after a while you're
habituated to it
It doesn't hurt that much thank goodness
But it's still an irritant and it's in your mouth and you don't think about it at all
But there's a little bit of a background
Ouch
And then once you take it out the out goes away
And you think wow it's better now and
Evidence we have about social media consumption is consistent with that where there's a kind of
Ouch and people may not notice it because they're on
Facebook or meta or YouTube a lot
But the out hurts even if people aren't crying out
I think that resonates so strongly with me and I've done this sort of like the typical social media fast
You know where I say for a week or even for a month
I'm not gonna be on this platform. I'm not gonna do this thing
And what's interesting is you realize also
Well, hey, you have a lot more time back in your life and a lot more just cognitive and emotional bandwidth that you're not investing in that
But there is this this initial window and I've talked to a couple of of colleagues about this
And maybe this is unique to sort of the mechanisms that demand attention in social media and the algorithms where
Before you get to the relief phase of it where that persistent nagging thing is now not longer persistent and all
So suddenly realized the toll it was taking but there was this short window of
Almost um addictive withdrawal because it's almost like your brain has been wired to expect
That persistent low grade irritation and when it goes away
For a hot minute. It's like it misses it. Does that make sense?
Completely. There's a bituation to the pain. So it hurts less
There's also a related phenomenon which is addiction now the formal characteristic of addiction is that while the pleasure from consuming the good
stays constant or goes down the pain of non-consumption
And increases over time. So the problem with an addict in the experience of an addict is the non-consumption of the good is
Really painful. There's an intense craving
There's some passage from a long time ago about a heroin addict that if I had to walk in front of gunfire
To get heroin I would walk in front of the gunfire to get heroin and that's more intense
I hope that anyone feels with respect to social media
But it's exactly what you say
So addiction is
Intensification of the pain of not getting the thing
Which is different and in some ways opposite from a bituation
But one thing that connects it with the bituation is that the pleasure of the hip
From let's say a like or a fun story or something is a lot lower once you're
Reading social media a lot
There's some but it doesn't have the high
Yeah, I mean social media is interesting also because
It's sort of a lot of good in a lot of different ways at the same time
That it potentially takes a lot from us. So
One sort somebody who was talking about addiction actually and they said it's one thing to tell somebody to stop
ingesting or consuming a substance that they don't actually need to survive all but when you have somebody where that substance is food for example
There's no abstinence there. There's no complete removal of it and I remember seeing some research on teens being asked like you like
Basically like couldn't would you want to survive without your device and it's almost like for some people
It is such an integral part of
Of not just the way that they spend their energy but also their sense of connection and belonging as much as we often say that social media disconnects
It also plays a different role in terms of fostering certain connections that the notion of existing without it seems so brutal
That just can't even conceive of it and to habituate of
I'm thinking of like sort of like the habituation and dis habituation dance that we might do with social media that might be
Sustainable and sort of a holistic for the greatest number of people
Okay, let's talk about concepts and then data so habituation is diminishing
sensitivity to stimuli
So it's that cold first and then you get used to it not so right right or really smelly first and then not so smelly or the air is very dirty
and Beijing and then after week you don't notice it so much. So the relationship with that to habituation is that
The could and bad things associated with it get less intense over time and that has a connection with addiction
But isn't the same as addiction. Okay, so the word habituation in a way has an unfortunate characteristic
Which is the root is habit?
But in a way our book is
Against the grain of those who are celebrating habits and
Focusing on their
Amazing value for people and urging that habituation has a downside because people stop noticing what's fantastic
Or what's terrible now. Let's talk about data a little bit for social media. There was a study
relatively recently in which people use Facebook. We're asked how much would you have to be paid to be off Facebook?
And a number of them said roughly a hundred dollars and half of that very large number
Um was told we have a deal and the other half was told we don't have a deal
We're not going to give you the hundred dollars and then both large groups were told to monitor
Their answers to various questions throughout the course of a month like how happy are you?
How satisfied are you with your life?
How depressed are you? How are anxious are you and along every dimension the people who took the hundred dollars were better off
So they were happier. They were more satisfied. They were less the rest. They were less anxious
Everything was better when they were off
Then they were asked and now how much would you have to be paid to be off another month and the average answer was 87 dollars
They should have said we'll pay you
Mm-hmm. Right. Keep us off said 87 dollars. Now what's going on there? We don't know from the data
There are two possibilities one is that people were addicted and they were suffering
Probably reduced withdrawal symptoms a month in than a weekend
But enough that they wanted to be back on
Another is that they
Wanted that sense of connection and information flow
Even though it wasn't making them happier it was making them more connected and they were willing to sacrifice something in terms of
How much they cover their days are if they can be connected and that's consistent with the fact
There was one dimension along which the people who withdrew from Facebook were less well off than the people who stayed on
That is they had less political knowledge
That's interesting
It might be that the people who stayed on were learning a lot about politics when they're making the depressed and anxious and
unhappy
But they got the knowledge and maybe the people who were off thought
No, I'm gonna be a little sadder but at least I'll know more what's going on
And so that's one possibility
Then there's another recent bit of data which I find even more interesting
Where people are asked how much do you have to be paid to be off tiktok or Instagram for the next month young people
And they came up with a real dollars
$80
$70 a hundred dollars you're gonna pay me be off
Then they're asked how much would you have to be paid to be off Instagram if everyone in your community is also off Instagram
And so too for tiktok
So now the question is different. It's not just you're gonna be off
But you're gonna be off and everybody's gonna be off and then a lot of people answered
Oh, in that case, I will pay you. Oh, well
That makes sense also and so the young people said
I will demand a lot to be off Instagram if everyone else is on
But if you have a way of getting everyone off, I'd love that. I'll pay you
So that's suggestive that people are staying on many people are staying on Instagram and tiktok
Not because they're addicted
Not because they get knowledge
But because they don't want to be left out of something which everyone they know about is involved in
Yeah, that makes so much sense that there's a huge, you know, social context to it
And that if you say like that whole thing can't happen on this
Device or app anymore like that's fascinating. I've never seen that data point and it makes you want to run experiments
You know like what if I me and the five people that I tend to
associate with or you're DM with you communicate with most on one of these platforms
All agreed to do this for a month
And then also the curiosity is like how would be
Dishabituate in ways that created new opportunities and different opportunities the novelty in the variety that you're talking about
How do we connect and you know novel in different ways
I get again you're gonna be careful with the term disobituate because as we use it
It could be used this way. It's not the same as having breaking right right this
Situation is diminished this sensitivity to a stimulus right right right and we'll be right back after word from our sponsors
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One of the topics that you dive into as well is the notion of um
Our ability to habituate to lying and how that tends to escalate in ways that we probably wouldn't want to admit
Okay, so let's let's see if it works for me
I am so good at tennis. I could probably play varsity tennis right now
I just lied and I felt it
I'm a good club tennis player but I could not play varsity tennis right now or ever not close and as I lied
I felt something in my head that was very unpleasant. I felt out and the out was my amygdala
I believe which is a part of the brain that registers emotional arousal and
They here now go from a little tale which was just observed to
Gata which is my co-author tally shard on the book
Got a bunch of people into her lab in which they were told that they were gonna play a game with a stranger
And wish they could get money if they cooperated the number of them were
Told if they lied the word lie wasn't used. It was clear. They could get more money
And if people lied it would be a very good economic day and people did in fact lie
Now as they lied their initial lies produced a lot of activation in the amygdala
Which is sending a prego bright red light saying stop
As they lied the amygdala quieted down over the course of the day and started to signal a no
Okay, I guess this is what we do here. We lie and that's suggestive that people emotionally habituate to their own line
And that's because the initial surprise signal which I got when I told you I was a much better tennis player than I actually am
Uh, that I'm still ashamed of that by the way which shows you
Very vocal
um, the the lying for produces for initial liars a
surprise signal and an internal red light but as people do what they show emotional habituation
To their own line. This was observed for completely normal, you know honest people
And so people who start to lie
Not infrequently end up lying a lot
Not necessarily because they're psychopaths but because they're human and they've habituated to something which keeps happening or which
Changes only slowly so the upshot is that bad behavior of multiple kinds you can take your pick
Cheating on your taxes cheating on your spouse
Driving over the speed limit texting well driving
Shoplifting that the initial surprise signal that people who have do those things typically feel
Weakens over time which means the underlying action will strengthen over time because people's internal
All textlamation point turns into a okay
Dot dot dot
So it doesn't hit you as much it just becomes your new normal almost to a certain extent
How do you dis habituate that behavior?
Okay, so we think that with respect to certain forms of misconduct
The right thing to do is nip it in the bud
So we don't want that first lie from
Our friends we don't want it from our colleagues
We don't want it from our students. We don't want it from our teachers
So to have a strong taboo against even minor interactions of a norm is a little harsh
But it makes a certain psychological sense
I worked in the White House under President Obama and someone in a position of great authority said if you leaked your fired
And I remember that to this day. I remember
Partly because it was scary and also partly because it was so severe
I don't think anyone who heard that ever maybe 30 or 40 of us in the room heard that
Would forget it and the reason is it
Suggested even if you might do a little minor leak that's kind of innocuous maybe giving someone a heads up
You're gonna get fired, but I honor that if you leak your fired
I like it because it inculcates it makes the amygdala never soften
Even to this day I think any leaking is extremely horrifying
And it's because the norm was cul-cated and cul-cated with extreme power my dad said when I was maybe 11 or 12
He said you know this was a long time ago
We talked about hitting a woman and he described it as something he'd never done. He would never do it was
I don't remember the words he used by remember the music that it was
Unthinkably horrible now. I'd like to think I never would have been
Within a million miles of doing that anyway, but it's not as if he thought you know you get in a fight and you slap someone
That's okay. That's just the opposite
And taboo's often they make a lot of psychological sense because they keep the
The internal sensor alive for a while
Yeah
I have a curiosity around how much of you know if
You start with that one tiny lie and then build on it and build on it just becomes kind of normalized
You have a two way to it doesn't provoke the same internal response from you as it did in the beginning
You don't get that amygdala hit on the same level. It just kind of slowly kind of fades
I wonder how much also if there's an an external driver
Of this and that you know the year was probably 40 years ago Robert Chaldeen studying influence
Identified the sink he called the consistency principle where if we take a public action or make a public statement
That there's something in us on an identity level that wants to be seen as being consistent
With that initial action or statement and he would literally like talk about how to leverage that in fact for political purposes to
Inspire people to take bigger and stronger and more public actions that were consistent with the tiny little early one
So I wonder also how much of the sort of like the the building on lie once it's a public
Part of your identity or conversation is also this more social context of wanting to be seen as the type of person who's consistent with what they've said and done before
That's undoubtedly very important so interesting
It's compliments the situation. I mean it ties in also with what you mentioned earlier and what you write about in the book
Which is this notion of
Misinformation from the outside in just the way that we habituate if we're doing it ourselves
We also habituate when it's coming from the outside as you described you know when somebody
Share something whether on social or some other or you know at a meetup or a conversation
That repetition breeds belief
So you know there's an inside out thing and an outside and thing here
Right completely so there's the illusory truth of fact where you hear something several times and you start to believe it
There's also something called the truth bias where you go to a town
It's new and you ask how do I get to the gas station and they tell you turn right
Go a mile up turn left three quarters of a mile. It's on the left and you can't miss it
In addition to the fact that I will miss it. I don't well with navigating small towns
I will believe when most of us would believe the
President who tells us how to get to the gas station
We don't typically think there be mischievous or cruel or having a joke at our expense and
We tend to typically tend to think if you ask someone what's the weather at today? They'll tell you the truth
And that can lead to trouble on
Social media also where the truth bias can make us crachel us about things that are really not true
And if you put together the lizard truth the fact and the truth bias
As Tom Hanks said
When he was an astronaut before it was an actor he was I think actually on a fall of 13 maybe it was an actor
And he said he's soon we have a problem
He's soon we have a problem and the question of what to do with it is very challenging, but it's
Really important to answer that one
When
You talk about habituation
One of the context that you reference as well as this notion of a risk
Often a personal risk, you know, maybe we move to a new town and
We don't know it as well and we're you know sort of really careful about how we navigate it
We don't know what's around the next turn or whatever it may be
And the more we start to navigate the more we take the same path over and over again
You know, whatever alertness we had to potential peril it gets dialed down
And this is interesting sort of circumstance of habituation because it really is related to potential personal harm
Completely
Construction workers the first week on a new job
Might well be extremely alert to the fact that their hazards round
But if nothing bad happens after five weeks on the job
They might be really good at avoiding danger, but also habituated to the fact that nothing bad happens
And their surprise signal might be gone
Which means danger is greater
So there was a nation in Europe that switched from driving on one side of the street to the other
And everyone expected it would be really bad crash crash crash crash crash
But in fact what happens there was a significant reduction in accidents
And the reason is if you switch from one side of the street to the other
People are going to be really careful. They're going to be really alert to the
risks of driving and that can and in this case did
diminished risk taking often
Accomplished athletes are actually more at risk than newcomers
And to
dangers associated with their sport and the reason is if they're lucky they're habituated to a situation
In which risks are real but have been materialized, which means they don't take precautions
Hmm if we start to zoom the lens out here
It seems like in almost every context that we've talked about
There's always some form of benefit to habituating and then at some point it also starts to bring on some sort of
Potential downside. It's like we're doing a dance always of wanting to like preserve whatever benefit there may be
So we can function
While at the same time if it's a relationship we want to bring the sparkle back into it if it's a
A circumstance where there's danger we want to ameliate the danger if there's you know, we want to bring more energy into it
So and it seems like a lot of the prescription regardless of the context or the use case
Revolves around variety and novelty and and finding ways to bring that back into the experience in some way shape or form. Is is that right?
Yeah, so the book is a poem to distribution and Julia Roberts is a hero because she
No, she's just generally a hero, but she's a hero here because she's alert to and engaged in
Disobituation Martin Luther King is a hero not only because he's Martin Luther King
But because he was a disobituation entrepreneur a category of people who
Are disobituated to a practice that's not good
Who is also
Determined to fuel disobituation on the part of others
so what
We aim to do with the book is to
Promote
Disobituation that habituators of the world unite you have nothing to lose but your chains
Hmm feels a good place for us to come full circle in this conversation as well
So in this container of good life project if I offer up the phrase to live a good life what comes up?
see
with
new eyes
things that you have seen
as
Dark and gray
Hmm, thank you
Hey before you leave if you love this episode safe at you'll also love the conversation
We had with Daniel Coniman about how our brains do some pretty quirky and weird things to influence our behavior
You'll find a link to this episode in the show notes
This episode of good life project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me Jonathan Fields
Editing help by Alejandro Ramirez Christopher Carter crafted our theme music and special thanks to Shelley Del for her research on this episode
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