(Not so) Weird Science

Of Cookies, free Will and George Clooney´s Sweat(er)

The fourth day of MAPP immersion week was again crammed with extraordinary lectures by extraordinary lecturers. The morning belonged to Roy Baumeister, one of the most highly acclaimed social psychologist in the world. He has conducted studies on a multitude of phenomena over the years, but may be known best for his research on willpower and self-control, carrying out experiments something along the line of this: He will put people in a room and have them sit at a table. On the table, there´s a plate full of tasty chocolate cookies; and another one with something to eat that is not attractive at all. People are told to wait for a couple of minutes. In addition, half of them are told not to touch the cookies – while it is totally o.k. to eat the other stuff.

Afterwards, the participants are lead into another room where they get a specific task, e.g. solving unsolvable anagrams. It is then measured how long the they will try to solve the anagrams before giving up. It turns out that people who were not allowed to touch the cookies on average quit a lot earlier. Baumeister calls this phenomenon ego depletion. He argues that willpower is a limited resource that is bound to fatigue similar to a muscle. This may be relevant especially to all those people trying to run multiple “personal change efforts” at a time. It seems more advisable to take if easy, one step at a time.*

Baumeister also gave a lecture on why humans as rational human beings have basically no other choice but to believe in free will; and another very provocative and mind-boggling one the evolutionary difference between men and women – and the consequences of those differences on our current society. I´m not going to elaborate on these topics here.

George Clooney

By Nicolas Genin (CC-BY-SA-2.0) via Wikimedia Commons

In the afternoon, Paul Bloom from Yale University took the stage. Among Paul´s manifold interest is the notion of human pleasure and basically, why we like things – and which attributes of an object increase or decrease our perceived utility. E.g., he will ask you what you would pay for a sweater that has been worn by George Clooney.

Turns out that the average American is willing to pay about 130-140$ for a sweater that has been worn by Gorgeous George and still contains his gorgeous sweat (meaning: it hasn´t been washed afterwards). When the thought experiment is extended to the notion that the sweater has been washed, the perceived price level drops considerably. Bloom argues that act of washing alters (in this case: spoils) the sweater´s perceived essence. Here, essence means the sum of the many intangible features of an object: the way it was produced, it´s history before getting to us etc. This also explains how a standard urinal suddenly can become a piece of very expensive art.

Probably doesn’t work with your sweat though – just in case…

* It seems especially unwise to undertake a change effort while dieting at the same time. Baumeister and colleagues also show that willpower may depend on a sufficient level of blood sugar – where low levels lead to ego depletion.

Why you shouldn´t hire A-holes – a scientific perspective

So this it. I´m in Philly, Pennsylvania, the City of Brotherly Love, and today was the first day of the MAPP program 2013/14. Obviously, I had planned to blog about this – but I´m still overwhelmed by all these new impressions, locations, and most of all, outstanding people. It actually is kind of weird (at least for me…) to all of sudden talk to or being taught by luminaries that you´ve previously known only from TED Talks and the like.

So instead, I´m going to share something with you that I read about yesterday on the plane in the German issue of the Harvard Business Review. They interviewed Robert Cialdini, the world´s foremost expert on persuasive communication. And he had something interesting to say on the issue portrayed in the headline of this article. In this case, someone qualifies for being an A-hole e.g. by lying and cheating on customers and/or colleagues.

There are some very obvious reasons why you don´t want to hire people that display these kinds of behavior. E.g., it may hurt your companies reputation, which then results in the decline of (repeat) business – which is harmful to the bottom line. That´s a no-brainer. But then, there are also some consequences that might not be that apparent:

A stitch in time saves nine

The problem with hiring an A-hole is that – in the long run – it might lead to having a company full of A-holes (which may not only cheat on customers and colleagues, but on the company as a whole, too). Here´s the deal: hiring an A-hole will lead to higher levels of stress and discomfort among the non-A-hole employees in your company. This is a consequence of the perceived mismatch between their own values and those values the company is obviously displaying by hiring the A-hole and letting him/her get away with whatever he or she is doing. It leads to higher levels of illness and absenteeism.

And: it will also lead to higher levels of turnover, meaning the non-A-holes will slowly but surely leave your company. This, as a consequence of person-organization-fit, will lead to the hiring of more A-holes as a replacement for the honest people that have left the company. You see where this is heading….

You can read more about this topic in one of Cialdini´s articles.

Monkey (Porn) Business keeps up with the Kardashians

The content of this post may not be a central tenet of Positive Psychology, but I find the following fact immensely interesting – so I will share it with you anyway. And by the way, I read about it the book How Pleasure Works by Paul Bloom – who will also teach in the MAPP program.

Have you ever wondered why people (…and it is not sexist to say: mostly women…) like to read or watch those preposterous celebrity gossip magazines? The answer: for the same reason that people (…and it is not sexist to say: mostly men…) like to watch those preposterous porn flics: It is (or at least can be) fun. And why it is fun? Because we may be evolutionary hard-wired to like it.

Rhesus Macaques

By Thomas Schoch (GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0) via Wikimedia Commons.

In a study which goes by the beautiful name of Monkeys pay per view: adaptive valuation of social images by rhesus macaques, researchers found that our animal relatives are willing to trade tasty food for the opportunity to look at pictures displaying tasty backsides of their fellows. Nothing new here – it´s monkey porn. But: they were also willing to pay for pictures showing the faces of high-ranking members of their pack. Which is kind of the same thing as humans looking at pictures of Kate Middleton or Kim Kardashian, depending on personal preferences.

So, dear fellow Man: if She ever complains about your porn consumption, this study might be your trump card: You´ll stop if she shreds her Cosmopolitans… 🙂