THINKER'S ALMANAC - November 26

How does the maternal instinct of a female turkey help us understand the unconscious behavior of humans?

Subject: Heuristics - Mother Turkeys

Event: George Washington signs Thanksgiving Proclamation, 1789

The technical definition of heuristic is a simple procedure that helps find adequate, though often imperfect, answers to difficult questions.  The word comes from the same root as eureka. Daniel Kahneman TFS 98

On this day in 1789, Thanksgiving was celebrated for the first time under the new U.S. Constitution based on a proclamation signed by President George Washington.  However, it took over 150 years for Thanksgiving to be recognized as an official Federal holiday.  On December 26, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a Congressional resolution establishing the fourth Thursday in November as the Federal Thanksgiving Day holiday (1).

Image by Tracey O'Brien from Pixabay

Turkey day is an appropriate day to explore some interesting insights about turkeys that might help us better understand human behavior.

In his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert B. Cialdini begins not with psychology but with ethology, the study of animals in their natural habitats.  Specifically, Cialdini talks about the behavior of mother turkeys.  It appears that there is one key factor that triggers a female turkey’s maternal instincts.  It’s not the smell, feeling, or appearance of the turkey chick; it’s the sound of the chick -- the “cheep-cheep” sound of the baby turkey.  This factor is so strong that even if experimenters present the mother turkey with a stuffed animal that is a predator -- such as a polecat -- the mother turkey will accept it and care for it as long as the stuffed polecat has a recorder inside that is playing the cheep-cheep sound.

All this turkey talk is really Cialdini’s way of giving us insight, not so much about turkey behavior, but about human behavior.  Just as the cheep-cheep sound triggers an automatic, fixed pattern of behavior in the mother turkey, humans also have a range of triggers that result in automatic compliance responses.  As an expert in the field of influence and persuasion, Cialdini is fascinated by these triggers and how they can be employed by marketers and salespeople to nudge customers toward spending more money or toward being more compliant (2).

Another name for a trigger is a “heuristic,” a mental shortcut that humans employ to make thinking faster and easier.  Heuristics are hardwired into us, allowing us to think without really consciously thinking.  Instead, like the mother turkey’s response to the cheep-cheep sound, heuristics are instinctive responses, where we sacrifice nuanced, reasoned responses, for quick, automatic responses.  

In their book Useful Delusions, Shankar Vedantam and Bill Mesler provide an excellent example of how humans subconsciously use heuristics to make judgments.  In a study, subjects were asked to taste wine and judge its quality.  Multiple wine bottles were arranged before the subjects, each bottle included a price; the prices ranged from five dollars to ninety dollars per bottle.  What the subjects did not know, however, was that the wine in the ninety-dollar bottle was the same as the wine in the ten-dollar bottle.

As you might have already guessed, the subjects judged the wine in the ninety-dollar bottle as far superior to the wine in the ten-dollar bottle, despite the fact that both wines were exactly the same.  The explanation for this is what we might call the “cost heuristic,”  most people live by a general rule of thumb that says that things that cost more are of superior quality to things that cost less (3).  Just as the cheep-cheep triggered the turkey’s maternal instinct, cost can trigger our quality/value instinct.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is a heuristic, and how can it be explained through the material behavior of a female turkey and the way people evaluate wine?

Challenge - Rules of Thumb:  Do some research on other heuristics.  Identify a specific one that you find interesting.  Identify its name and how it works to trigger unconscious thinking.

Sources:

1-History.com.  “Thanksgiving 2021 - Traditions.” 16 Apr. 2021.

2-Cialdini, Robert B. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, New and Expanded.  New York:  Harper Business, 2021: 2-3.

3- Vedantam, Shankar and Bill Mesler. Useful Delusions. New York:  W.W. Norton & Company, 2021: 51.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - November 25

How did Tom Sawyer persuade his friends to not only do his chores for him but to also pay him for the privilege?

Subject: Work and Play - “The Ant and the Grasshopper” and Tom Sawyer’s Fence

Event:  Pixar releases A Bug’s Life, 1998

Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways and be wise. -Proverbs 6:6

On this day in 1998, the computer-animated film A Bug’s Life was released.  The film was produced by Pixar Animation Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios.  The film, which was directed by John Lasseter and co-directed by Andrew Stanton, featured the music of Randy Newman and the voices of Dave Foley, Kevin Spacey, and Julia Louis-Dryfus (1).

The plot of the film is based on a retelling of one of Aesop’s fables, The Ant and the Grasshopper:

One bright day in late autumn a family of Ants were bustling about in the warm sunshine, drying out the grain they had stored up during the summer, when a starving Grasshopper, his fiddle under his arm, came up and humbly begged for a bite to eat.

“What!” cried the Ants in surprise, “haven’t you stored anything away for the winter? What in the world were you doing all last summer?”

“I didn’t have time to store up any food,” whined the Grasshopper; “I was so busy making music that before I knew it the summer was gone.”

The Ants shrugged their shoulders in disgust.

“Making music, were you?” they cried. “Very well; now dance!” And they turned their backs on the Grasshopper and went on with their work.

There’s a time for work and a time for play. (2)

No one knows for certain if Aesop actually lived, but some ancient historians report that he was a slave who lived either in the 5th or 6th-century B.C.  Whether he actually lived or not, today we have over 300 fables, each with a plot that centers on animals and a moral that applies to the human reader (3).

Walt Disney made a cartoon-short of “The Ant and the Grasshopper” in the 1930s, but when Pixar got ahold of the story in the 1990s, they turned the short fable into a full-fledged film, featuring a full colony of ants and a rowdy gang of grasshoppers.

Image by Atner Yegorov from Pixabay

Another classic work of literature with the theme of work and play is Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.  In a classic episode from the novel’s second chapter Tom is given a thankless task to complete by his Aunt Polly on a sunny Saturday.  Instead of going off swimming with his friends, Tom must whitewash a fence. 

Rather than just grumble and complete his arduous task, Tom applies his imagination to his situation and comes up with a plan to reframe the “work” ahead of him and to transform it into “play.”  

If he can convince his friends that the task of painting the fence is play rather than work, he might just pull it off.  By climbing into the skin of his peers, he visualizes the psychology of the situation from their point of view.  If he is going to move them to action, he needs to truly sell the idea.

To truly sell the idea requires sincerity, so Tom begins by changing his own attitude.  As soon as Tom hatches his idea, the narrator proclaims, “He took up his brush and went tranquilly to work.” The task is still “work,” but by doing it “tranquilly,” Tom is beginning to make it play.

Thus, as his friends begin to arrive, they are persuaded by the fun that Tom is having.  And since there is only one brush, they pay for the privilege of painting.  There’s no greater illustration of how moving an audience emotionally is a great precursor to moving them logically.  Without the proper framing of the situation, paying to whitewash a fence on a sunny, summer day would be insanity to a young boy.  Tom’s strategic reframing made it not just a reasonable act, but also a highly desirable act.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  How does the theme of work and play apply to both ‘The Ant and the Grasshopper’ and Chapter 2 of ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’?

Challenge - Work and Play:  Do a search for quotations that deal with the relationship between work and play.  Select one quotation you like, write it out, and explain why you find it insightful.

Sources:

1-Pixar. A Bug’s Life. 2000

2-Aesop Fables. The Harvard Classics 1909-14. Bartleby.com.  Public Domain. 3-University of Massachusetts Amherst. Aesop’s Fables. 

THINKER'S ALMANAC - November 24

How can the Italian word for tomato make you more focused and productive?

Subject:  Life Hacks - The Pomodoro Technique

Event:  “Letter of Recommendation:  Kitchen Timer” is published, 2015.

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, whether you like it or not. - Thomas Huxley

On this day in 2015, The New York Times Magazine published an essay by Ben Dolnick entitled, “Letter of Recommendation:  Kitchen Timer.”  In the essay, Dolnick chronicles a strategy he developed to be more productive while working at home.  The key to his strategy was a simple kitchen timer.  Setting the time for periods of just under one hour at a time, he resolved to sit and remained hyper-focused solely on his work until the timer went off.  

Image by Hans-Joachim Müller-le Plat from Pixabay

Dolnick strategy worked, and in the following excerpt, he explains his new focused mindset:

To my surprise and delight, this hunk of Chinese-made plastic proved a capable tyrant. To be exactly 43 minutes from my next break — a break that would itself be of a discrete length — was, it turned out, vastly more bearable than having to decide over and over whether a particular impulse was worth following, whether a creative impasse was the kind that you ought to surrender to or the kind that you ought to overcome. To my mind’s perpetual, child-in-the-back-seat questioning (Can we get up yet? Can we get up yet?), I had finally discovered a stern answer: ‘‘Has the timer run down? Then, no, we can’t.’’

As he ends his essay, Dolnick celebrates his new strategy, marvelling at how it allowed him to no longer waste time and how it made him so much more focused and productive.  He also recognizes the paradox inherent in his new strategy:

Without my timer, I am apparently inclined to fritter [my time] away with all the prudence of an over caffeinated squirrel. With it, I am thoroughly constrained — and I am free. (1)

Some know Dolnick’s technique by another name, the Pomodoro Technique.  Developed by Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s, the strategy gets its name from the Italian word for “tomato,” which happens to be a common shape used for kitchen timers.  Cirillo suggests setting the timer for periods of 20 to 30 minutes of focused work; he calls these focused working periods pomodoros.

Of course any timer will do, but the key to the success of this life hack is to clearly define your focused task prior to setting your timer.  Knowing specifically what your task is will then increase the likelihood that you will remain focused rather than allowing outside distractions to derail your efforts.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What results did Ben Dolnick get using the Pomodoro Technique versus not using the technique?

 

Challenge - Life Hacks: Do a bit of research on other life hacks that might make you a more effective learner or that might help you be more productive. Find one that you think is interesting and potentially useful; then, write an explanation of how it works and how it makes you more effective?

Sources:

1-Dolnick, Ben. “Letter of Recommendation:  Kitchen Timer.”  The New York Times 24 Nov. 2015.

THINKER'S ALMANAC: November 23

How can an Ivy League football game played in 1951 help us to see the world more clearly?

Subject: Motivated Perception and Reasoning - Ivy League Football

Event:  Dartmouth and Princeton Football Game, 1951

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are. -Anaïs Nin

On this day in 1951, two Ivy League teams, Princeton and Dartmouth, played a football game in Princeton, New Jersey.  The game was roughly played; Princeton’s star tailback left the game in the second quarter with a broken nose, and at the end of the third quarter, a Dartmouth player broke his leg.  Princeton prevailed.

If not for two psychologists, one from Princeton -- Hadley Cantril, and another from Dartmouth -- Albert Hastorf, the game might have been just another forgotten football game.  What made it memorable, however, was a follow-up study published by the two psychologists. 

 Image by Keith Johnston from Pixabay

About one week after the game, Hastorf and Cantril asked students from both schools to give their assessment of the game.  Their responses depended on their school:  Princeton students overwhelmingly blamed Dartmouth for the rough play while Dartmouth students blamed Princeton.

Hastorf and Cantril then had all students watch a film of the game and keep track of infractions by players on both teams as if they were a referee.  The results showed both groups of students were unable to see the game dispassionately or objectively; the Princeton students still blamed Dartmouth and the Dartmouth students still blamed Princeton.  Although both groups of students watched the same film, both groups seemed to be watching an entirely different game.  

Hastof and Cantril published their case study entitled “They Saw a Game” in 1954.  It established the concept of motivated perception; in short, we don’t always see reality; instead, we see what we want to see.  This concept is similar to motivated reasoning, where instead of coming to conclusions based on evidence, we interpret the evidence in a way that it fits our preconceived beliefs.  In other words, we don’t always believe the truth; instead, we believe what we want to believe (1).

In her 2021 book The Scout Mindset, Julia Galef warns against the dangers of self deception and of motivated reasoning. Like the college students in 1951, we sometimes employ emotionally-biased reasoning to produce the verdict we want to be true in favor of the actual truth. We cherry-pick evidence that supports our side, and we rationalize to make a case sound better than it actually is.  Galef calls motivated reasoning the soldier mindset and argues that it is an unconscious cognitive bias that needs to be exposed and rooted out.  Galef also prescribes a more sound, reasonable approach called the scout mindset.  Instead of seeing what we want to see or being defensive, we need to seek first to understand.  We should be skeptical of our own conclusions and value the pursuit of truth over our fears of being right or wrong.  The pursuit of the scout mindset means testing your own claims and understanding that changing your mind is not a sign of weakness (2).

One powerful way to understand motivated reasoning is to see it through the eyes of a sports fan.  Imagine you are watching a basketball game, a game where your favorite team is competing for a championship against a longtime rival.  Imagine your reaction when your team is charged with a foul that results in points being taken off the scoreboard.  What would be your honest reaction?  Would your emotions motivate you to find immediate fault with the referee's call and begin to construct rationalizations for why the call was wrong?  Or would you calmly accept the call and defer to the referee’s indifferent judgment?  Most honest fans -- short for “fanatics” -- will admit that their emotional 

investment in their team prejudices them and blinds them to objective judgment.  In addition, they are rarely even consciously aware of their own bias. To further understand the impact of motivated reasoning, compare the reaction you have when your team is called for a foul versus when your team’s opponent is called for a foul?  In the latter case, do you spend any time or emotional energy scrutinizing the fairness or justice of such a decision?

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason: How did the Dartmouth fans see the game differently from the Princeton fans, and how does this help explain motivated perception?

Challenge -  Scouts and Soldiers:  Write a public service announcement that explains the thinking behind the scout mindset versus the soldier mindset.  Try to persuade your audience that the scout mindset is preferable and a possible solution to the political polarization that is plaguing our country.

Sources:

1-Resnick, Brian. “How desire can warp our view of the world.” Vox.com 8 Aug. 2019.

2-Galef, Julia.  The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t.  New York:  Portfolio/Penguin, 2021.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - November 22

Twenty-five thousand Germans were killed when the allies bombed Dresden, Germany in 1945. An American writer was a POW in Dresden when the bombing started, and yet he survived. How did he do it?

Subject:  Narrative - Vonnegut’s Shapes of Stories

Event:  Author Kurt Vonnegut captured while fighting the Battle of the Bulge, 1944

If you can't write clearly, you probably don't think nearly as well as you think you do. -Kurt Vonnegut

On this day in 1944, author Kurt Vonnegut was captured along with 50 other American soldiers while fighting in the Battle of the Bulge.  After his capture, he was taken to a prison camp in Dresden, Germany, where he worked by day in a malt syrup factory and slept at night in a subterranean slaughterhouse. In February 1945, when Dresden was fire-bombed by the Allies, Vonnegut survived by taking refuge in one of the slaughterhouse's meat lockers.  Vonnegut later fictionalized his experiences in the novel Slaughterhouse Five (1969) (1).

Image by J Laso from Pixabay

In 2005, Vonnegut published an essay presenting a new way to trace the shape of a story.  Most people are familiar with Gustav Freytag’s model -- sometimes known as Freytag’s Pyramid.  The 19th century German playwright, broke the dramatic structure of plot into seven parts:  exposition, inciting action, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, and denouement.  Vonnegut’s paradigm provides a different way to graphically trace the movement of a plot from beginning to end.

In the essay entitled “Here is a Lesson in Creative Writing,” Vonnegut begins by drawing a vertical line on a blackboard.  He calls this line the “G-I” axis.  At the top of the axis G represents good fortune; the bottom, I, represents ill fortune.  Every story begins with a protagonist whose life can be placed somewhere on this axis based on his or her relationship to fortune.  For example, if we were tracing the story of Cinderella, we would mark her relationship to fortune at the beginning of the story as much closer to ill fortune than to good fortune.

Vonnegut’s horizontal axis is drawn beginning at the middle of the “G-I” axis; Vonnegut calls this the “B-E” axis for beginning and “entropy” (end).  This axis allows us to trace the chronology of the story as the fate of the protagonist changes in relationship to good and bad fortune (2).

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  Both Freytag’s Pyramid and Vonnegut’s story graph can be used to analyze stories; how do the two models differ?

Challenge - Story Time Graphs: Find the video of Kurt Vonnegut’s lecture on the “Shapes of Stories.”  Then, identify a story that you know well, and create a graph to illustrate it.

Sources:

1-Kurt Vonnegut. https://www.biography.com/writer/kurt-vonnegut

2. Vonnegut, Kurt.  A Man Without a Country. New York:  Seven Stories Press, 2005.