Kind: captions
Language: en
we're replicating a psychological
experiment about perceptions of
discomfort this is a bucket of cold
water yep you're going to put your hand
in and you're going to keep it in there
for a duration that we won't tell you as
it's in the water you can rate your
discomfort on this scale if basically
you're at the point where like I am an
Agony let me take my hand out of here
you can dial it up to that oh my God yep
can't feel my f stinging tic painful num
num more pain pain maybe pain that can't
hold it and obviously you've got two
hands we'll be doing this three times
I'm replicating an experiment originally
conducted by Daniel Conan and Barbara
Frederickson in
1993 just as in the original study I've
told participants we're investigating
the difference in pain perception
between dominant and non-dominant hands
I'm assuming you're right-handed yeah
I'm right-handed okay but that is not
the true purpose of the experiment left
hand in you go ahead oh it's cold and
we've started yeah all the way to the
wrist that's good what's the physical
sensation like cold freezing yeah
there's like a point where it almost
feels like a muscle cramp both numbing
and tingling it is it is get getting
colder and colder yes half of the
participants were randomly assigned to
use their left hand first the other half
used their right hand first they
indicated in real time how much
discomfort they were experiencing it's
getting like progressively worse it it
feels cold I wouldn't want to stay there
for very much very long good are you
from Russia or something yes so you're
used to the I used to call to at the end
of the trial I told them to pull their
hand out and give an overall rating for
The Experience about a seven yeah yeah I
mean I wouldn't want to swim in that no
three 7 six then they took a 15-minute
break before returning to submerge their
other
hand yeah I I can't hold it uh yeah but
that's real cold huh yeah I could
probably go another minute I reckon what
about an hour no it's like stinging this
time it it started to feel like I can't
feel my hand now something like that is
that a good is that a good thing or a
bad thing it's a bad thing of
course how did that feel felt a lot
worse than my right hand what
participants didn't know is that the two
trials were different they started out
the same one hand submerged in 14° C
water for 60 seconds and one of the
trials ended there but the other trial
lasted an additional 30 seconds during
that time the water temperature
increased slightly to 15°
C have I put it in here for longer Comm
last time feels like it's been a while
uh this increase in temperature reduced
discomfort it seems to make the water
slightly
warmer slightly less uncomfortable but
it was still uncomfortable this is not
the sort of thing you'd want to do for
hours no I would like genuinely be dead
right
now again we randomized whether the long
trial was first or second and whether it
was with the left hand or the right hand
the ultimate question was if I were to
ask you to repeat one of those two
experiences which would you
choose probably the left hand yes I yes
you you do that first one again yeah I
think so I would say the second one with
the right hand the first the right hand
I'll go with the first the first one
yeah in our small scale replication
seven out of 12 people said they would
rather repeat the longer trial in the
Conan and fredericksen study this
preference was even stronger with almost
70% of their participants preferring the
longer trial that is the same trial that
they in real time indicated was painful
for a longer time both trials contained
the same 60 seconds at 14° C the longer
trial just added an additional 30
seconds with the water warming by just
one degree this was still uncomfortable
and it was 50% longer and yet it's the
trial most people
preferred one of the participants in the
original study after reporting that he
would prefer to repeat the longer trial
muttered the choice I made doesn't seem
to make much sense so the first trial
was 30 seconds longer yeah okay you
endured discomfort for longer yeah but
at the end the discomfort reduced a
little bit and the extra bit is not fun
it's not like the extra bit was like oh
this is great I want to do this if I
asked you which trial you'd want to do
again probably the first one you'd tell
me the first one yeah and that's the one
that's actually a longer experience of
discomfort y as hard as it is to
understand under certain circumstances
apparently people prefer more pain to
less but why is this
well to investigate Frederickson and
Conan ran a follow-up study where they
showed short and long versions of
pleasant and unpleasant videos to
undergraduate students examples of
pleasant videos included a puppy playing
with a flower and waves breaking on a
beach while the unpleasant videos
included the aftermath of Hiroshima and
a medical film of an
amputation after the video students were
asked to rate their experience what they
found found was the length of the video
had very little effect on the
retrospective evaluation positive or
negative Conan and colleagues suggest
this is due at least in part to the two
different ways we experience the world
in the moment as the experiencing self
or retrospectively thinking back on
events as the remembering self if you're
going through something unpleasant and
someone offers you the chance to stop
you the experiencing self will likely
take them up on the offer but for the
remembering self the duration of an
experience seems to have much less
importance this is known as duration
neglect a 2008 study found that the
length of a vacation did not have any
impact on how positively the vacation
was remembered so if the duration of an
experience doesn't affect your memory of
it what does
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the answer appears to be key moments
particularly ones that elicit the
strongest emotional response as the
novelist Milan kundura wrote memory
doesn't make films it makes
photographs and those photographs
usually capture the most intense Salient
moments of the experience the most
joyful funny painful scary moments in
life are the ones that are remembered
and therefore they come to represent the
experience as a
whole this is a version of the
representativeness heuristic a term
coined by Daniel Conan Amos derski in
the
1970s they were studying how people
think about
probabilities consider a family with six
children is it more likely that they
were born in the order boy boy boy girl
girl girl or girl boy boy girl boy girl
for the majority of participants the
first order was viewed as significantly
less like likely but in reality both
orders are equally likely but boy boy
boy girl girl girl feels less likely
because it seems less random I mean
people have a mental model of Randomness
and boy boy boy girl girl girl does not
fit this model we rely on
representativeness all the time as a
mental shortcut but sometimes it can
lead us astray one famous example
developed by Conan and tersi is known as
the Linda problem Linda is 31 years old
single outspoken and very bright she
majored in philosophy as a student she
was deeply concerned with issues of
discrimination and social justice and
she also participated in anti-nuclear
demonstrations so which is more probable
Linda is a bank teller or Linda is a
bank teller and is active in the
feminist
movement the majority of people who are
asked this question give the second
answer which makes sense because the
description of Linda matches our mental
model of a feminist but mathematically
it must be more likely that she's a bank
teller because feminist bank teller is
just a subset of bank teller all
feminist bank tellers are by definition
bank
tellers stevenh J Gould said I know that
the conjoint statement is least probable
yet a little homunculus in my head
continues to jump up and down shouting
at me but she can't just be a bank
teller read the description
the thing about the representativeness
heuristic like many heuristics is that
we fall for it even if we are aware that
we're falling for it I mean technically
eggplants cucumbers and avocados are all
berries but because they aren't small
and sweet like strawberries or
blueberries we don't think of them as
berries an eggplant does not match my
preconceived idea of a berry so even
though I know it's technically a berry
I'm going to keep calling it a vegetable
I mean the Salient feature of an
eggplant is that I cook it like I would
a
vegetable also annoyingly enough a
strawberry is not technically a berry
botany is
confusing so the representativeness
heuristic is why we think that Linda is
more likely to be a feminist bank teller
rather than just a bank teller and why I
can't bring myself to call an eggplant a
berry and representativeness is how the
peak moments in our past come to
represent entire
experiences but it's not the only thing
that colors our perception of the past
our brains better recall and therefore
assign a greater importance to more
recent events this is known as recency
bias so if you were to list all the
meals you had in the last week it would
be easier to recall the most recent ones
that's why how an experience ends plays
an outsized role in how it's remembered
I mean how many people are rewatching
Game of Thrones right now for example
compared to say breaking bat I mean the
last season of Game of Thrones was so
awful I don't think I'll ever watch any
of it ever again the end tainted my view
of the whole
thing and it seems like that also
applies when judging the quality of a
life in a 2001 study researchers told a
fictional story about Jen a never
married woman without children she's
extremely happy she has a job she enjoys
many close friends goes on vacations and
has many fulfilling Hobbies then she is
hit by a car at the age of 30 and dies
painlessly and
instantly taking her life as a whole how
desirable do you think Jen's life
was for the other half of participants
researchers told the same story about
Jen but added another 5 years to her
life years that were pleasant but maybe
not quite as good as the first 30 then
they asked the same question taking her
life as a whole
how desirable do you think Jen's life
was and what they found was that people
judged Jen's longer life to be less
desirable that living for those extra
five good but not great years actually
reduced the overall perceived quality of
her life the ending matters they
repeated this same story with a Jen that
lives to age 60 compared to age 65 and
the results were the same adding mildly
Pleasant years to a very positive life
does not enhance it but actually
decreases the perception of the quality
of this
life so when it comes to holding your
hand in a bucket of cold water your
overall experience of the event boils
down to two things the peak and the end
oh yeah like I find that painful I can't
believe people have been like standing
in front of us acting so tough both
trials involved holding a hand in 14°
water for the same duration so
presumably they created the same peak of
discomfort but the longer trial had a
nicer ending discomfort is backing off I
mean still uncomfortable but like not
quite as
uncomfortable by adding a slightly less
uncomfortable 30 seconds conoman and
Frederickson were able to trick
participants into remembering the
experience more fondly this is clearly a
bad choice for the experiencing self but
a good choice for the remembering self
this might seem like an insignificant
party trick but it actually has huge
implications for our lives for example
if we remember a medical procedure like
a visit to the dentist or a checkup more
favorably we're more likely to do it
again and that improves long-term Health
outcomes at the end of their 1993 paper
conoman and Frederickson ask Will a
physician be allowed to add an interval
of diminishing pain to the end of a
medical procedure if the sole benefit of
the added pain is to cause the the
patients to retain a more favorable
memory of it in 2003 conoman did exactly
that along with colleagues he conducted
a trial with 682 patients who underwent
a
colonoscopy half of them went through a
normal routine procedure the other half
had an extra 3 minutes at the end of the
procedure where the tip of the
colonoscope was left in but not moved so
it was uncomfortable but less painful
than the rest of the procedure the
patients who experienced the extra 3
minutes of discomfort at the end rated
the whole experience as about 10% less
unpleasant they were also more likely to
come back to do a follow-up screening
procedure the peak end rule also appears
in design for customer experiences the
cheap hot dogs at the exit of Ikea are
an example the positive experience of a
cheap tasty hot dog or ice cream cone
leads to a better memory of the whole
shopping experience it's like a doctor
giving a lollipop to a child after a
checkup knowing that this is how the
brain creates memories allows us to
create better memories for ourselves if
you want to run more don't do painful
Hill Sprints at the end of your workout
instead maybe do a pleasant cooldown
walk while you talk to a friend or
listen to your favorite music want to
create better memories of your vacations
making it longer won't matter as much as
creating exciting and novel days make
sure there's a high peak experience and
also end it with something pleasant are
you quitting your job and want people to
remember you fondly well make sure you
are extra nice to your colleagues during
your last few weeks in short to create
better memories you should optimize for
the peak and the end so the best way to
close out a YouTube video is I guess
with a wholesome message and why not
footage of a cute dog playing with
flowers our mindset plays a huge role in
our perception of the environment and
while this makes some experiences seem
more enjoyable it can also cause us to
see things as worse than they really are
but luckily you can train your mind like
a muscle to make meaningful improvements
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