This is HiddenBrain, I'm ShankarVedanta.
In March2020, a few weeks after COVID-19 lockdowns began in theUS, we asked listeners to send us voice memos about their experiences of thepandemic.
We recently went back and listened to thosemessages, each one a tiny time capsule of life in a world on alockdown.
Listeners told us about the stress of trying to find toilet paper andmasks.
They talked about the challenge of trying to work overZoom.
And more thananything, they grappled with thesudden, shocking ways in which their lives had become smaller and moreisolated.
I don't know if I could live with myself if I was stuck here and something were tohappen, to mygrandma.
And this is especially apparent when I found out that I could not visit my father and his independent livingfacility.
My older sister gave birth to herson.
We weren't able to be with her at thehospital, nor have we been able to seehim.
In those early days of thepandemic, so many of us found ourselves dreaming about what it would be like when we could once again hug friends and family outside our immediatehousehold.
We fantasized about the moment when we could enjoy going out to a restaurant or a musicvenue.
We told ourselves that we would not take those moments for granted once we had themback.
Andindeed, the first time I got to see relatives overseas and enjoyed dinner out withfriends, it was trulyamazing.
The second time was pretty great aswell.
But after awhile, that magical feeling inevitably started tofade, no matter how hard I tried to hold ontoit.
We see this in many dimensions of ourlives.
So many love stories ended the point at which great romantic quests areconsummated.
Stories that follow lovers past the weddingday, into the years and decades of theirmarriages.
Those tend not to be romanticcomedies.
It's easy to be cynical and say that nothinglasts, that everything fadesaway.
But this belies what actually happens in our minds as we experience triumphs andsetbacks.
This week on HiddenBrain, the psychology ofhabituation.
How we get used to both the good and the bad in ourlives, and the surprising implications it has forhappiness.
The first time you saw one of your favorite desserts on amenu.
Maybe it's the restaurant's signature chocolatecake.
Your mouth waters as you read the description and you order aslice, gleefully anticipating how good it willtaste.
The first bite does notdisappoint.
It's out of thisworld. As you continue to dig inhowever, something funnyhappens.
The cake no longer blows yourmind.
You lift your fork to your mouth a few moretimes, trying to recapture the magic of that firstbite.
But it's nouse. What had been unbelievably delicious minutes earlier is now merelypleasant.
What explainsthis? Moreimportantly, what can we do to make the second half of that slice of cake taste as good as thefirst?
These are questions that animate cognitive neuroscientist Tally Sharrett at University CollegeLondon.
TallySharrett, welcome back to HiddenBrain.
Thankyou. It's a pleasure to beback.
Tally, you did some research in a resort in the DominicanRepublic.
Can you describe the setting for me and what questions you asked the people who were vacationingthere?
Yeah, so I was working with a big tourismcompany.
And what they wanted to know is what makes people happy onvacation?
And when are they the happiest onvacation?
We did surveys and we actually went out to the resorts and we talked topeople.
And when the data camein, we found two really interestingthings.
The first was that the holiday makers were the happiest 43 hoursin.
Why isthat?Well, 43 hours allowed them time to get settled andunpack.
So they could really concentrate onfun.
But afterthat, happiness starts goingdown,right?
Less and lessjoy.Now, to beclear, they were alwayshappy.
But on dayeight, they weren't as happy as they were in dayseven.
Dayseven, not as happy as day six and so on and soforth.
And the second thing that we found is that when we asked them what was the best part of theholiday?
There was one word that they used more than any otherword.
And that word wasfirst.
The first view of theocean, the firstcocktail, the first suncastle, the first dip in thepool.
First, we're exciting inyou.
The second dip in the pool was alsogood, but it wasn't as good as thefirst.
And this isreally, Ithink, a great example ofhabituation,right?
When you see theocean, it'swonderful.
And the second time you seeit, it's stillwonderful.
But it's not quite as wonderful as the firsttime.
Things that are around us all thetime, that are constant or they'refrequent, we just respond less emotionally and evenperceptually, we respond to themless.
So psychologists have found the same phenomenonhappening, not just among people eating dessert or going onvacation, but in relation to the most significant events oflife, like gettingmarried, what is the research show about happiness levels amongnewlyweds?
Happiness actually goes up when people get married onaverage.
But then it starts going down and down and down and it reaches baselinelevel, that is the level that before they gotmarried, at about in about twoyears.
And also attraction to their partner goes down over theyears.
Imean, this is why so many Hollywood movies and with the wedding or even the firstkiss.
Yes,yes,absolutely. But as we habituatemeaning, we respond less to things like to the view of theocean.
We also respond less to our newlove,right?
What is around us constantly just doesn't really gather our attention asmuch,right?
And we kind of we don't attend to it and so we don't really focus it on it as much and it doesn't really spark that kind of joy and excitement than it did at thebeginning.
So as I was reviewing thiswork, I could think of all kinds of things in my own life where I feel I have habituated tothings.
The same must be true foryou,Tali.
Can you tell me about some things that you have habituatedto?
Yeah,absolutely. Probably to almost everything I wouldsay.
Even even mywork,right?
Imean, if you think about when you first got your first job entry levelposition, it is really exciting andnew,right?
But after awhile, you kind of get used toit.
And even if the job is your dream job and it's really meaningfulwork, over theyears, it doesn't seem thatinteresting.
It doesn't seem thatexciting.
Tali experienced this acutely after buying the house she livesin.
We moved into this house in the middle of thepandemic.
So we have two kids and we were living in the city in a place that was a little bit toosmall, Ithink, for a family offour.
But it was fine before the pandemic because we weren't in the home at alltimes.
But ofcourse, the pandemic started and so all of us are at home at alltimes.
My kids are studying at home and so we moved to a much more spacious place outside of thecity.
And when I firstmoved, it felt just the perfect place to be and it really brought me a lot ofjoy.
Everyone had a room for themselves and also had a garden and there was trees andgreenery.
So you look out of the big windows and you see all thisgreen, which makes you feelhappy.
And it stilldoes, but ofcourse, I got used to it and so the reaction is less and less andless.
So we've talked about this phenomenon on Hidden Brainbefore.
Psychologists sometimes call this the hedonictreadmill.
For listeners who are unfamiliar with theterm, can you explain what thatis?
And also the links to this larger phenomenon you've been talking about calledhabituation.
Yeah, so the hedonic treadmill is this idea that people have a baseline ofhappiness.
And some people could be a little bit happier thanothers.
We can go do something that makes ushappy, getmarried, get a nicejob.
But eventually we willslowly, slowly go back to thisbaseline.
Also bad things happen tous.
It could be really badthings, lose a lovedone, lose yourjob.
And we would of course feel much worse when this thingshappen.
But theneventually,slowly,slowly,slowly, we go back to ourbaseline.
So that's basically the hedonictreadmill.
But I think the phenomena that we're talking about habituation is it'srelated,right?
But it's not quite thesame.
It ismuch, muchbroader.
Habituation means that we just respond to anything that is aroundus, anything visual orsmell.
So forexample, you go into a room and you reallysmell, let's sayroses,right?
Within about 20minutes, you won't be able to perceive the smell of roses because your olfactory neurons will just not respondanymore.
Or you hear the noise of theacine, thebackground.
And it could be quite irritating atfirst, but veryquickly, you just don't notice itanymore,right?
So all these are perceptualexamples, but our emotional reactions tothings.
It could be a dogbarking.
It's like the neighbor got a new dog and it's reallyscary.
And we have a fearreaction, but the second time less so and the third time lessso.
So there's perceptualhabituation, there's emotionalhabituation.
And it has a lot of implications beyond the hedonic treadmill to our personallife, but also to asociety.
So why does thishappen,Tally?
Why is it that the brain habituates to things at a fundamentallevel?
It seems like it's a property of thebrain.
Why does thishappen?Right.
So there is an evolutionaryadvantage,right?
The brain has limitedresources.
And so once we've processedsomething, then it's really time for the brain to keep the resources for the next thing that is coming ourway.
So imagine there's a dog and the dog is in the rose garden and youknow, the smell of roses really fillsnostrils.
It is helpful that after a while the olfactory neurons will just stopresponding.
So now we have all the resources needed for the dog to be able to smell a coyote that is coming itsway.
So we need to be prepared for these threats that are coming ourway.
So we need theresources, but also for the goodthings.
Maybe there's a cookie somewhere in the distance that the dog should go andget.
So that has an evolutionaryadvantage, but it also keeps usmotivated.
So if you think back to your entry level job and you were super happy aboutit, imagine you stayed super happyforever.
You will not be motivated to get to the nextpromotion,right?
To get to the nextjob. You'll just stay where youare.
So we need a situation in order to evolve as aperson, but also as asociety.
And maybe the third important factor is well-being and mentalhealth.
So what has been shown is that people with mental healthproblems, forexample, depression tend to habituateslower.
People with depression when negative thingshappen, they don't bounce back asfast.
There's a great study that was conducted by Professor Aaron Heller from the University ofMiami, where he asked students who just got a score on a really important test how they werefeeling.
And then 45 minuteslater, he asked them how withfeeling.
And 45 minuteslater, how they werefeeling.
And did that for the rest of the day and the nextday.
And what he found is that those without a history of depression and those with the history ofdepression, they all felt really bad at the beginning of theday.
If they got a badgrade. But the difference was that those that did not have a history ofdepression,they, after a fewhours, they were back atbaseline,right?
They were doing theirthings, goingout, but those with a history of depression or currentdepression, they tend toruminate.
They weren't able to go back to just their level of well-being that they werebefore,right?
They were kind of stuck and habituatedmuch, muchslower.
You say that in order to survive andreproduce, we need to prioritize what is new anddifferent.
So the sudden smell of smoke or a rustle in the bushes that could signal a lion or apredator, an attractive potential made to pass usby, you say to make the new and the unexpected standout, your brain filters out the old andexpected.
So in someways, this is really a fundamental property of the brain that's really being designed through millions of years ofevolution.
Yes, and habituation is something that we could see in allanimals, whether it is a rodent or a dog or afish.
And infact, we can see something verysimilar, what wecall, neural adaptation in evenbacteria.
So this is something that goesway,way, way back and is reallyfundamental.
Imean, every neuron in our brainhabituates.
Our brains painstakingly construct models of what the world islike.
When reality conforms to thatmodel, we don't react or even notice it verymuch.
When we comeback, how to step off the hedonic treadmill and feel the goodness of good thingsagain.
Also, we'll explore the flip side of the hedonictreadmill, the way we habituate to things that arescary, shady andsad.
You're listening to HiddenBrain.
I'm ShankarVedanta. This is HiddenBrain.
I'm ShankarVedanta. Tali Sharat is a cognitive neuroscientist at University CollegeLondon.
With CassSunstein, she's the author of LookAgain, the power of noticing what was alwaysthere.
Tali, you've told us how the process of habituation can diminish the pleasure and satisfaction that an event or an experience might once have givenus.
You say that there's a solution to this that you call dishabituation.
What do you mean by theterm?
Dis habituation means starting to respond again to something that we stopped responding because it was around us all thetime.
We start noticingit, feelingit, perceptually reacting toit.
If it's somethinggood, the joy comesback.
If it's somethingbad, we feel the negative feelingsagain.
You once got a clue on how dis habituation mightwork.
From a story told by the moviestar, JuliaRoberts.
Tell me thatstory. She was describing her dailylife.
How she wakes up in the morning and she makes breakfast for thekids.
She drops them off atschool.
She comes backhome. She maybe has lunch with herhusband.
She does some chores and then she picks them up from theschool, makesdinner.
She says if I was here for the last 18 years doing that all day everyday, it probably wouldn't still have pixie dust onit.
But I go away and I miss it so much and I come back and it kind ofresparcles.
That quote isgreat, but the word resparcles is something that we reallyliked.
How do you just take the ordinary life and make itresparcle?
What Julia is sayingis, every time she goes away and then she comesback, then she dishabituates.
Because habituation is something that happens when things are alwaysthere, somethingconstant, somethingfrequent.
But if you are not in thatsituation, if you goaway, then when you comeback, then you feel itagain.
And if it'sgood, then it willresparcle.
So in someways, the going away is an essential component of the coming back withjoy.
Yeah,indeed. And infact, after we wrote the book and I actually heard this podcast with Dodie Foster and she talks about how she was away on set filming for six months and then she got backhome.
And this is what shesaid.
Shesaid, I came back from somewhere that is amazing andbeautiful, but you know you long for really dumb things that you're just usedto.
That six monthsago, I'm sure I was bored byit, but right now I'mlike, mygod, avocados areamazing.
Or I'm so glad I get to go to the gymagain.
Things that six months ago were sort of what I was trying to escapefrom.
Now everything isamazing.
Imean, I can tell you that when I go away for a long time and I comeback, I just have thisjoy.
Youknow, my bed is likeamazing.
And then youknow, the view from the window isamazing.
Now you might not be a Hollywood star who goes away from months on end to shoot movies in glamorouslocations.
That'sokay. You can get the ordinary things in your life to resparkle just by getting up and going for a walk or even wandering into the nextroom.
So Imean, there's all levels ofhabituation,right?
If I'm now sitting in oneroom, I'm going to move to thekitchen, what Isee, what I smell is going to all going to bedifferent.
It means I'm going to have different information coming into mybrain, but also my my brain will be all set up forchange.
So it's been shown that if you change yourenvironment, even these smallchanges, you sit in the office and then you get up and you just go for a walk or you work in a coffeeshop.
Any one of those changes enhances yourcreativity.
Now,granted, the studies show that the effect lasts for about sixminutes.
Every time you change it lasts only for about six minutes onaverage, which issmall, buthowever, many times that's all the amount that you need to find that the solution that you were thinking of or that new idea that is going tochange, youknow, what you'redoing.
Imean, I definitely have examples of thathappening.
If I think I can really remember every time that I had an idea that would change the course of my research and would be very important for what I do for many years tocome.
And in every singleincident, I was not in front of my computerworking,right?
So one example is I was in myoffice.
I was trying to solve thisproblem.
We had this data and we couldn't make sense ofit.
Why is ithappening? Couldn't solveit.
And Isaid,okay, I'm going to go thegym.
Left theoffice, started walking towards thegym.
I didn't even get to thegym.
And the solution just came tome.
Another example is Iwas,again, in my officeworking, but then I decided to have a littlebreak.
And I opened up the New York Times Sciencesection.
And I read about a study in monkeys about how monkeys really enjoy gettinginformation.
Even if then information they can't use for any reasonaltogether.
They're really likeit.
And the dopamineneurons, dopamine is important for our rewardsystem.
They are activated when the monkey getsinformation.
And the monkeys like it somuch, they're even willing to give up some of their water in order to get moreinformation.
And so I thought that was reallyinteresting.
And that will eventually trigger research that I did on humans on the value ofinformation.
We know that some pleasures lose their sparkle veryquickly.
We've all been excited about some new purchase only to see it gather dust in a corner before toolong.
But you say there are some experiences that retain the capacity to generate happiness overtime.
Explain thedifference.
And what do you think is goingon?
So materialgoods, you can buy something and you can use it foryears.
Maybe it's a piece ofclothing, maybe it's aTV, or probably the joy that you get will just go down overtime.
Now here's the interestingthing.
When it comes toexperiences, maybe you went on vacation toThailand, maybe you went to aconcert.
You saw Amy Winehouse before shedied.
And the reason that they tend to habituate slower is because they stay in yourmind.
So they come up in your mind when you recollectthem, rather than kind of processing them in front ofus.
And so this was actually shown in a study that the rate of habituation from material goods is faster than the rate of habituation for ourexperiences.
So we're also slower to habituate to the pleasures of giving compared to the pleasures ofreceiving.
Can you talk about thisidea,Tally?
Yeah, so there was a study that was conducted where in one condition they gave people five dollars and theysaid, take the five dollars and buy whatever you want foryourself.
Youknow, you could buycoffee, you could buy apen.
Day numbertwo, fivedollars.
Buy whatever youlike. Day numberthree, fivedollars.
And they did that for a fewdays.
Every time they asked thepeople,well, how much did you enjoy whatever you got with those fivedollars?
In anothercondition, they gave people again fivedollars, but this time theysaid, buy something for someoneelse.
So this time you're buying coffee for your colleague or you're buying a pen for yourchild,right?
And every day they give them five dollars and they would buy something for someone else and they askthem, how much did you enjoythis?
Howmuch, youknow, how good did it make youfeel?
Now what's interesting in this study is they looked at the rates ofhabituation,right?
In bothcases, the five dollars will give you less joy over thedays, but the rate of habituation was much faster when you got things for yourself and when you got it for someoneelse.
And I think perhaps the reason is that the joy that you get from giving is not just purehappiness.
It is meaning aswell. There'ssome, there's a meaningful act in giving to someoneelse.
And while the feeling of meaning can alsohabituate, it probably habituates slower than just pure joyof, youknow, drinking the coffee or using your sparklypen.
You say that another way we can twart habituation is by seeking out opportunities tolearn.
Talk about thisidea. How is curiosity andlearning?
How can they be engines or defenses againsthabituation?
So when you ask people what is a goodlife?
What do you see as a goodlife?
Usually people willsay, I want to feeljoy,right?
I don't want to feelsad.
And they usuallysay, what I want meaning in mylife.
And then there's a third thing that tends to be an element of a goodlife, which people don't usually think about somuch, which isvariety.
It turns out that variety is something that enhances people's psychologicalexperiences,right?
It gives you like a rich psychological experience and why is thathelpful?
And there's a few answers tothis.
One is that variety means that we will habituate less to things because it's changing all thetime,right?
We're doing onething, we're doing the otherthing,right?
So variety actually counters the effects ofhabituation.
But the other reason is if you have variety in yourlife, you work on differentprojects, you talk to different types ofpeople, you are in differentplaces, it always involveslearning.
And the thing about learning is learning means that there is achange.
You cannot habituate to change bydefinition.
Gaining knowledge is processed in the brain likefood, likewater, likesex.
There's the response that we have when we are learning somethingnew, which youknow, why do people enjoy podcasts somuch,right?
Because you're always learning you gaining knowledge and your brain responds tothat, like it does tochocolate, but you don't getfat.
So let's go back to the example of eating dessert or going on avacation.
Many of us assume that when it comes to pleasant or joyfulexperiences, it's best to enjoy these experiences withoutinterruption.
But from what you're saying in the last fewminutes, I'm not sure that'strue, isit,Tully?
Yeah,no, it'snot. Because let's go back to the vacationexample.
Themost, like happiest time was 43 hoursin.
And the word that they use most to describe the best parts of the vacation wasfirst,first,first,first.
So then really what that means is that you want to create morefirsts.
You want to create more 43 hoursin,right?
So instead of going for a long two week vacationsomewhere, you might choose to go onshorter, maybe like a long weekend or maybe just aweekend.
So take a few short vacations rather than the long one to get more of these exciting novelthings.
And there's empirical evidence to supportthis.
So there is a great study where people wereasked, think about a song that you reallylike.
And what do youthink? Would you enjoy it more if you listened to the song from beginning to end with nointerruptions?
Or if you hadinterruptions, so you listened to the song 20 seconds and a littleinterruptions, 20 seconds littleinterruptions.
99% of peoplesaid, I want to hear the song from beginning toend.
I do not want anyinterruptions,right?
Let me mean it seemsobvious.
But when they then did the test and they tested how much people enjoyed the song with or withoutinterruptions, what they find is that people enjoyed the song more if it wasinterrupted.
And they were willing to pay twice as much to hear the song inconcert, which is supercounterintuitive.
And they did thesame, they did the same study withmassages.
Do you want to have the massage from beginning toend?
Nointerruptions. Or do you want to have it withbreaks?
People want to beginning toend, nointerruptions.
But infact, enjoy it more if there arebreaks.
And there is an economist named TyperSkitowski, who has a quote which really puts this in a greatsentence, which hesays, pleasure results from incomplete and intermittent satisfaction ofdesires.
So break up the good experiences into bits to enjoy itmore.
In otherwords, when you order the chocolate cake at therestaurant, youknow, eat half a slice because that's the slice that's actually going to give you a lot ofpleasure.
Take the rest home and eat it at home an hour later and you'll enjoy the second half of the slice as much as the first compared to eating it all together in onego.
Or even better give the second half to yourpartner.
So on the flipside, we often do try to break up unpleasant experiences so we don't have to deal with all of it atonce.
So, youknow, wesay, I need to clean mybathroom, but maybe I'll do part of it on a Saturday and part of it on aSunday.
Is that a good idea or a terribleidea?
For the badstuff, you wantto, wesay, swallow the badhole.
So forexample, if you think about something that you don't like todo, maybe forme, it's like household chores or gradingpapers.
If I do maybe like 15 minutes in abreak, 20 minutes in abreak, what happens is that I'm breaking my habituation to thebad.
So if you're doing likecleaning, forexample, there's maybe like a bad smell of the cleaningproducts, but you habituate to it so you don't smell itanymore,right?
And that'sgood,right?
But if I then breakit, I have a little break and I have a cup of coffee and then I go back and I start the choreagain, well then I'm going to feel againbad,right?
I'm going to like perceive the smell and all ofthat.
Andagain, there's empirical data when they actually did the test with people listening to really annoying sounds and theyfound,yes, if you just get it overwith, you don't rate it asbad, but if you kind of chop it intobits, then you rate the experience as muchworse.
It's so interesting that our intuitions in both cases are exactly the opposite of what actually we should bedoing.
So we have a reluctance to break up pleasantexperiences.
We want to take them all in at once and we do want to break up unpleasant experiences and not take them in atonce.
And the advice actually in both situations is to do exactly theopposite.
Yeah, and youknow, there's sayings about like savoring or aboutlike,oh, get it over and donewith, but then inreality, it's reallyhard,right?
It's hard tosavor.We, youknow, if there's somethinggood, we don't want tostop.
And it's really hard when we're doing somethingunpleasant, not to takebreaks.
So I think the wisdom is there in theculture, but not necessarily something that we dopractically.
Even if the wisdom is difficult tofollow, it may seem straightforward.
Power through unpleasant tasks so you don't have to experience the unpleasantness of new by coming back to them multipletimes.
With your pleasantexperiences, do theopposite, break them up so that you can maximize the delight they giveyou.
Seemssimple,right? There's a catchthough.
Not all unpleasant experiences are createdequal.
And in somecases, there's a very real cost that comes from numbing ourselves to theirunpleasantness.
When we comeback, how our minds habituate to things likedanger, dishonesty anddiscrimination.
You're listening to HiddenBrain, I'm ShankarVedanta.
This is HiddenBrain, I'm ShankarVedanta.
Across every domain of ourlives, our minds have a tendency to get accustomed tothings.
Infact, the brain seems evolutionarily designed to focus on the new and unexpected on novel threats andopportunities.
In our dailylives, this means we take wonderful things forgranted.
We cease to appreciate amazing people in our lives or the good fortune of beinghealthy.
We become habituated to these gifts and stop noticingthem.
With CassSunstein, Tally Sharrett is the co-author of thebook, LookAgain, the power of noticing what was alwaysthere.
Tally so far we've talked mostly by the ways we habituate to positivethings, but of course the mind also habituates to negativethings.
In1999, a huge public works project in Massachusetts was wrappingup.
It had taken a decade tocomplete.
All that remained was to open an underwatertunnel.
I want to play you a public television news clip about what happened thatday.
The tunnel burrowed into the Bayes bedrock was devoid of light andoxygen, requiring the divers to carry a specialized breathingsystem.
On Julymorning, the five divers setout, disaster struck when the breathing systemmalfunctioned.
Three of the divers made it outalive, but twodied.
33-year-old William Juice and 39-year-old Tim Nordine died of hisfixation.
Tally tell me the story of this project and what it tells us abouthabituation.
There was a decade-long Boston Harborcleanup.
If you visit Bostontoday, there's clear bluewaters, there's sailing bolts allaround, but back in theday, apparently it was quitedirty.
It wasn't asnice. They had hundreds of workersworking.
It cost $4 billion to clean up theharbor.
It was high risk the wholetime, but at the veryend, they sent five divers into atube, hundreds of feet below the oceanfloor, to remove heavy safetyplugs.
The tunnel had no oxygen orlights.
The hour's part of it was only five feet indiameter.
The divers were to travel all the way to the far end of the 10-mile-longtunnel, and then inside a series ofpipes, there were only about 30 incheswide, so they became smaller andsmaller.
Despite the project was prettycomplex, the drivers trained for it for only twoweeks, and they relied on experimental breathingapparatus.
It doesn't seem that a lot of cautionary measures weretaking.
Unfortunately, the breathing systemfailed, and only free of the five divers got back tosafety.
Even those that got back to safety had only 30 seconds tospare.
It actually is not unusual thatdisasters, forexample, these constructionprojects, they tend to happen very late in the project towards the veryend.
Because what seems to happen is that earlyon, people are verycautious, they're veryrisk-averse, they take all themeasures.
But then aftertime, they habituate to therisk.
They don't have the emotionalreaction, theanxiety, and thefear.
That's when most of the accidents on construction sites tend tohappen.
You've conducted research that examines the process of risk habituation using virtualreality.
Tell me the setup of thesestudies,Tally.
We wanted to put people in a really threateningposition, something that really will cause themfear.
Ofcourse, we can't put our participants in a place where they're really under physicalrisk.
We use the next bestthing, which is virtualreality.
We use this game in virtual reality where what you see is yourself going up and elevatorup, askyscraper, and then the elevator opensup, and then you can walk on aplank.
That is basicallyfar,far, farup,up,up,up, and you're looking down and it's reallyscary.
Now, it absolutely tricks your brain to believe that I'm thousands feet up walking on aplank.
If I justtip, I'm going to fall and I'm going todie.
It is amazing how that feels soreal.
And so what we had is we had the participants go up and they maybe took like one littlestep.
We asked them how are youfeeling?
And we also measured skin conductance response to because when you wereanxious, you sweat and skin conductance response goesup.
And what we found is at thebeginning, there were very anxious and they only took a fewsteps, but over time people were just jumping off the plank with no anxiety responsewhatsoever.
And what was interesting is that those individuals that habituatedfaster, so it only took them a few times to like not feel any fear anxiety atall.
We had this questionnaire asking them about risk taking and in reallife, whether it's sports or driving or unsafesex.
And those people who we could measure that their emotional habituation was reallyfast,right?
Those are the people who really took risks inlife.
So we've looked at the role of habituation when it comes torisk, but that's not the only domain in which we can see habituation when it comes to negativethings.
You've also looked at habituation when it comes todishonesty.
Can you tell me how you've designed thosestudies?
What is the setup of thosestudies?
We were interested in whether people habituate to their ownlying.
Most people think thatlying, it'simmoral,right?
But if your emotional response will go down overtime, the more youlie, then you'd probably lie more and more andmore.
And this is exactly what wetested.
So we had people come into the lab and we asked them to play agame.
And in thisgame, they realized that if they lied to the otherperson, they could gain more money at the expense of the otherperson.
And we also recorded their brainactivity.
And when we found that at thebeginning, they liked just a littlebit, maybe a fewcents.
Next time they had anopportunity, maybe a fewdollars, and the amount by which they lied became bigger andbigger,right?
It's like the slipperyslope.
And at the sametime, we looked at activity in theiramygdala.
So the amygdala is a small part of thebrain.
And it is important for emotionalarousal.
And what we found is at thebeginning, when peoplelied, there was a strong emotionalresponse,right?
They felt bad aboutlying.
The next time theylied, less of an emotionalresponse.
The first time theylied,less.
And as the amygdala activity wentdown, indicating less emotionalarousal, people lied more and more andmore.
That study looks at how we habituate to our ownline, but you also habituate to the lies of otherpeople.
If you are in anenvironment, let's say a work environment where people arelying, but they start with smalllies.
Youknow, maybe they lie a little bit about theirexpenses.
Youknow, maybe they lie a little bit to the client about what the product cando.
And then they lie more and more and more that they start really takingin, youknow, thousands of dollars that theyshouldn't.
You are more likely to just accept and maybe not even notice if the lies aregradual.
And we see this in reality when people who have been quitedishonest, BernieMado, forexample, they actually tell you about how they started out with small lies and became bigger andbigger.
There's a wonderful quote byhim.
Hesays, it start out with you taking a littlebit, maybe a fewhundred, a fewthousand.
You get comfortable withthat.
And before you knowit, it snowballs into somethingbig.
And what I like about this quote is that hesays, you get comfortable withthat.
What this tells me is that he probably felt bad about it when hebegan, but overtime,habituation, he becamecomfortable.
Then he can lie more andmore.
So along the samelines,Tally, I'm guessing we can also habituate to other problematicthings, things like misinformation or pollution orcorruption.
Youknow, if these are things that are all around us all thetime, after some time it becomes hard to muster a sense ofoutrage.
Yeah,absolutely. Withmisinformation,actually, there's surveys showing that they askpeople, do you think it's okay to kind of fudge a story in order to getmore, moreclicks?
And the percentage of people who said it was okay was much smaller about 15 years ago than it istoday.
So I think with all this kind of like fake news and misinformationonline, socialmedia, we started becoming just used tothis.
We're not as outraged when we learn that someone is changing the story a little bit or maybe just making it upcompletely.
It seems that we accept it and we don't have much of an emotional response and probably we don't notice it asmuch.
So, youknow, we've looked at sort of many examples of habituation here when it comes to riskto, youknow,misinformation, todishonesty.
But at a grandlevel, I'm also wondering whether it works at the level ofsocieties.
When you look at the rise of authoritarianstates, forexample, youknow, sometimes they take away the rights ofminorities, but they don't do everything on dayone.
On dayone, it's just a littlebit, on day10, it's a littlemore.
And then by day500, youknow, they've taken away alot, but by thatpoint, people have become desensitized through the same process ofhabituation.
Right.Now, I think when we look back at the history ofhumanity, there are all these dark stories of oppression and bloody wars andgenocide, and we often look back and wesaid,how, how could thatbe?
Right? Why wasn't that stoppedearlier?
And I think part of the answer is that these extreme political movements and deadlyconflicts, they start small and then they creasegradually.
And because they increase verygradually, they end up eliciting a weaker emotionalreaction.
And because there's less emotionalreaction, there's lessresistance,right?
And more acceptance than there would otherwisebe.
And we talk about this in our book and we take Nazi Germany as anexample.
And there's a lot of testimoniesof, forexample, German citizens that explain whathappened.
And when you kind of read thosetestimonies, they often talk about how things really escalatedslowly,right?
People say that each act and each occasion was worse than thelast, but only by a littlebit,right?
So westarted, started by Jews or not allowed to bedoctors, and not allowed to bejournalists, and books areburned, andthen, youknow, there are hundreds and hundreds ofsteps.
And the last one is massmurder, isgenocide,right?
If the last act was a firstact, thatwould, Ibelieve, would have resulted in much more of a reaction from thepeople.
But it'snot. And there's this quote from a German citizen that he says that people could not see it developing from day today, like a farmer in the field that doesn't see the corngrowing,right?
It growsslowly,slowly, and then one day it's over yourbed.
There are many other scenarios in which our tendency to habituate to bad things can bring terribleconsequences.
Oneexample, climatechange.
Many of the warning signs of climate change are subtle and easy tomiss.
But even when they are stark anddramatic, think of melting ice caps or raging wildfires or dramaticflooding, our minds habituate to thesephenomena.
They becomeexpected,normalized.
Yeah, so the problem here isthat, first ofall, perceptually wehabituate,right?
Whenthings, let's saypollution, if there's pollution in the airconstantly, we kind of get used to it and we don't really notice it's in theair.
There's a really interesting survey that shows that in theUK, only10% of people rate their air quality aspoor, despite the fact that pollution reaches legal limits in88% of UKregions.
And then there's also just kind of more of accepting of thisidea,right?
Overtime, we accept the idea that there's climate change and that there are going to be hurricanes or things like that until we have less of a reaction toit.
And infact, that's also been shown nicely onTwitter.
So there's a study where they looked atpeople, what they said about extreme climate events onTwitter.
What they found is that extreme climate events likehurricanes, forexample, as they became more and morefrequent, people stopped tweeting aboutit.
And onaverage, it took between two to eight years for people to stop tweeting about climate events like extremetemperature.
And if you don't see it and you don't talk aboutit, then you don'tact.
So what is the solution forthis,Tally?
I understand how habituation can work with climatechange, but is there a way to fightit?
Well, I think the solution here is not to rely on ourperception, to rely oninstruments,right?
The instruments can tell us quite well what is happening with thetemperature, with climateevents.
And we need to rely on thedata, not on our feelings or how we perceive the world tobe.
It's just notreliable.
Because ofcourse, I think what you're pointing out isthat, youknow, our perceptions might habituate to climatechange, but our instruments willnot.
And they will continue to tell us thestory.
And if we can't trust our ownintuitions, what we can trust is the data coming in from ourinstruments.
Right. And but youknow, it's really hard for people to dothat.
It's really hard for us tosay, I'm going to ignore myperception, I'm going to rely on theinstrument.
This is a well-knownproblem.
Often pilots areflying, and they can go intovertigo.
And they feel like they're flying uptowards, youknow, up in theair, when infact, they're flying down towards theground.
And the instruments showthem, you're flying down towards theground, but they feel like they're flyingup.
And it's really hard to justsay,okay, I'm going to go withinstrument,right?
I'm going to fly my plane into what I believe is into theground.
Because instrument is tellingme,no, this is a way you should doit.
And that can lead toaccident, and it has led toaccidents.
Imean, so much of the story is about how our brains have this propensity to forget and ignore and eventually not noticesomething, and how in some ways this can be functional in some elements of ourlives.
But in othersituations, it really is helpful to be able to slowdown, to be able to seeagain.
There's not sort of a one-size-fits-all rule when it comes to habituation and dis habituation isthere.
Yeah. Imean, on onehand, we all want to kind of have that joy again of the things that have been around us for a longtime.
And we can remember in the past how much joy they had triggered inus, but now we havebitch-witted.
So, youknow, we want to do these things that can maybe cause us to feel more of the happiness and thejoy, but also to be able to see things aroundus, like cracks in ourrelationships, inefficient use ofwork, but also the biggerthings, racism andsexism, so we can act to changethem.
Tally Sharrett is a cognitive neuroscientist at University CollegeLondon.
Along with CassSunstein, she's the author of LookAgain, the power of noticing what was alwaysthere.
Tally, thank you for joining me today on HiddenBrain.
Thank you so much for havingit.
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