THINKER'S ALMANAC - February 4

Besides the actual medicine in a pain reliever, what other factors impact a pill’s effectiveness?

Subject:  Placebo Effect - Anesthesiology in World War II

Event:  Henry Beecher’s birthday, 1904

 

While serving as an anesthesiologist in Europe during World War II, Henry Beecher -- born on this day in 1904 -- made an observation that changed the way we see both medicine and human cognition.  Beecher observed that soldiers who were scheduled to return home felt less pain than soldiers who were not returning home.  Also, when he ran out of the painkiller morphine, Beecher replaced it with a saline solution but told the wounded soldiers that it was morphine.  About half of the soldiers who received the saline reported that their pain was relieved.  

                                                                Image by Ewa Urban from Pixabay 

 

Beecher’s observation led to what today we call the placebo effect, which tells us that we cannot discount the important role that the mind plays in any medical issue experienced by the body.  In other words, any expectation of medical treatment plays a part in the healing process.

 

Even today we don’t know exactly how placebos work, but neuroscientists believe that the mere expectation of treatment releases natural chemicals that mimic the actual effects of drugs on the body.  Drug companies use placebos when testing the effectiveness of their drugs.  They give one control group the drug and another a sugar pill placebo.  Doing this, they can compare results to see what positive effects result from the drug beyond just the placebo effect (1).

 

The British marketing guru Rory Sutherland discusses the power of the placebo effect in economics in his book Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business and Life.  When marketing a pain reliever, for example, Sutherland says it’s all about “the packaging and the promise.”  A brand name pain reliever is more effective; similarly, the more narrowly defined the condition, the more effective.  For example, a drug that is labeled as targeting  “back pain” will be more effective than a more general pain reliever.  Studies show that even the color, shape, or taste of medicine can impact its effectiveness; for example, the most effective color for a painkiller is red (2).

 

The basic moral of the placebo effect story is the power of the human mind and the power of great expectations to promote a positive mindset.

 

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is the placebo effect, and what does it tell us about the power of the human mind?

Challenge - Pushing Your Placebo Buttons:  A 2004 story in The New York Times reported on signs mounted at New York City intersections that read, “To Cross Street, Push Button, Wait for Walk Signal.”  The question is, does the button actually work to speed up the changing of the “Don’t Walk” sign to “Walk”?  The NY Times article reports that 2,500 of the city’s 3,250 walk buttons “function essentially as mechanical placebos . . . .” Do some research on placebo buttons in your town.  Are the buttons at your hometown’s intersections placebos?  You might also check out the “Close Door” buttons in elevators.  Do they really work, or are they there just to give riders a false sense of empowerment? (3).

 

 

Sources:

1-Perry, Susan.  “The Power of the Placebo.” BrainFacts.org  31 May 2012.

2-Sutherland, Rory.  Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business and Life. New York: HarperCollins, 2019.

3-Luo, Michael.  “For Exercise in New York Futility, Push Button.”  The New York Times 27 Feb. 2004.

Reading Check:

-Beecher’s idea for using placebos began when he noticed what?

-What factor is the most important when it comes to the power of the placebo effect?

 

THINKER'S ALMANAC - February 3

What can a chameleon teach us about thinking?

Subject:  Chameleon Effect - Negotiation Study

Event:  Culture Club’s song “Karma Chameleon” hits number 1, 1984

On February 3, 1984, the song “Karma Chameleon” by the British band Culture Club hit number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.  Long before the song became popular, the chameleon had been a metaphor for a person who changes his or her appearance or behavior according to the situation, and as psychological research has shown, this chameleon effect can be a powerful persuader.

                                                                Image by Robert Balog from Pixabay 

In a 1999 study conducted by Tanya Chartrand and John Bargh, they sat with college students to discuss a set of photographs.  For half of the 72 students, the experimenters mimicked the posture and behavior of the students, mirroring their movements and mannerisms.  If, for example, a student folded her arms, the experimenter would fold his arms.  The results of the study showed that the students who had been mirrored rated their experimenter as more likable.  In addition, as contrasted with the students who were not mirrored, the mirrored students reported that their interaction with the experiment was smoother.

In another study, experimenters instructed MBA students to mirror the behavior of their partners in one-on-one negotiation sessions.  Those students who were instructed to mirror the other person reached a deal 67% of the time, while those who did not mirror, reached a deal only 12% of the time.

The explanation behind the success of the chameleon effect is explained by our natural bias toward people who are similar to us.  In short, we are more likely to like a person who is like us.  Whether or not we are consciously aware of it, this liking bias makes it easier to trust and to build rapport with someone who looks, acts, or shares the same beliefs or preferences as us.  Think, for example, how many of your friendships have been formed based on the similarities you share with another person.  It doesn’t make much sense that we should be attracted more to a person who has the same birthday as us; nevertheless, can you honestly say that you wouldn’t be attracted to this person? (1).

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is the chameleon effect, and what insight does it provide about human nature?

Challenge - Philosophy Meets Zoology:  Philosophers have long looked to the animal kingdom for literal or figurative comparisons that help us understand the human condition.  For example, in Book II of The Republic, Plato asks us to consider the dog:

Who then can be a guardian? The image of the dog suggests an answer. For dogs are gentle to friends and fierce to strangers. Your dog is a philosopher who judges by the rule of knowing or not knowing; and philosophy, whether in man or beast, is the parent of gentleness. The human watch dogs must be philosophers or lovers of learning which will make them gentle. 

What specific animal do you think has lessons for humans?  What part of the animal’s nature or behavior can we observe and learn from?

ALSO ON THIS DAY:

February 3, 1976:  On this day Bill Gates published an “Open Letter to Hobbyists” in the Homebrew Computer Club Newsletter.  At the time, Gates’ software company, Microsoft, was just one year old.  The issue that sparked Gates’ letter was one of the earliest cases of software piracy.  Gates complained in the letter that uses of his Altair BASIC software, which in an era before floppy disks was distributed on paper, were making unauthorized copies.  He implored the computer hobbyists using the Altair 8800, the first commercially successful personal computer, to think about the consequences of their actions -- that professional developers could not continue to stay in business if people did not pay for the software.

Sources:

1-Goldstein, Noah J., Steve J. Martin, and Robert B. Cialdini.  Yes:  50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive. New York:  Free Press, 2008.

Reading Check:

-When MBA students used mirroring in a negotiation experiment, how often did they negotiate successfully?

-What animal is used as the metaphor for the psychological concept called “mirroring”?

THINKER'S ALMANAC - February 2

In the ultimatum game, what is the “ultimatum,” and what does it tell us about thinking?

Subject:  Ultimatum Game

Event:  Birthday of Werner Guth, 1944

Try this thought experiment.  Imagine I offer you one-hundred dollars.  The money is yours to keep, except for one catch:  You must give some of the money to another person -- a stranger who is sitting across the room.  In order for you

to keep any of the money, you must put a portion of it in an envelope, which will then be given to the stranger.  If the stranger accepts the one-time offer, you get to keep what’s left of the $100 and the stranger gets her portion.  However, if the money is rejected by the stranger, neither of you gets anything.  So, here’s the question:  how much money would you put in the envelope?

If you approach this thought experiment purely logically, you might consider offering as little as $1 to the stranger; after all, one dollar is better than zero dollars.  The problem, however, is that you’re interacting with a human being, not a computer.  We like to believe that we humans are purely reasoning creatures; however, the truth is that our thinking is heavily influenced by emotion, especially when it comes to social reasoning and issues involving justice and fairness.

German economist Werner Guth, who was born on this day in 1944, made this thought experiment an actual experiment in the 1980s.  He called it the ultimatum game, due to the take-it-or-leave-it nature of the game's key transaction.  With the help of two colleagues, Rolf Schmittger and Bernd Schwarze, Guth began gathering data to determine how actual people would interact with actual money.  The results revealed that offers of less than 30 percent of the total are rejected and that most participants offer up to half of the money to their partner.  The ultimatum game shows that when it comes to human interaction, perceptions of fairness play a big role in how we make decisions.  We have the ability to reason with logic, but emotion and empathy are big parts of the recipe that makes up human cognition (1).

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is the ultimatum game, and what does it have to teach us about human thinking and human interactions?

Challenge - Games People Play:  Do some research on one of the other games listed below.  What does the game have to teach us about human behavior and thinking?  Pirate Game, Public Goods Game, Dictator Game, Impunity Game, Gift Exchange Game, Prisoner’s Dilemma

ALSO ON THIS DAY:  

Today is Groundhog Day.  Watch what many would argue is the most philosophical movie ever made - Groundhog Day, starring Bill Murray.  Watch for how weatherman Phil Connors does an “If By Whiskey” about winter (See THINKER’S ALMANAC - October 2). As he is talking to the TV camera, just before the Groundhog Day ceremony is about to commence, he says the following lines.  Version 1 is early in the film when he feels stuck by his fate; Version 2 is late in the film when he had seen the light:

Version 1: “This is pitiful. A thousand people freezing their butts off waiting to worship a rat. What a hype.  Groundhog Day used to mean something in this town. They used to pull the hog out, and they used to eat it.  You’re hypocrites, all of you!”

Version 2: “When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn’t imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter.”

Sources:

1-McRaney, D. You Are Not So Smart. New York: Gotham Books/Penguin Group, 2011.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - February 1

How do colorless green ideas sleep?

Subject:  Syntax and Semantics - Chomsky’s “Colorless Green Ideas”

Event:  Noam Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures published, 1957

Syntax and vocabulary are overwhelming constraints -- the rules that run us.  Language is using us to talk -- we think we’re using the language, but language is doing the thinking, we’re its slavish agents.  --Harry Mathews 

Today is the birthday of linguist and social critic Noam Chomsky, who was born in Philadelphia in 1928.  Chomsky spent more than 50 years as a professor at MIT and has authored over 100 books. Chomsky has been called “the father of modern linguistics” and is one of the founders of the field of cognitive science.  Despite all of his accomplishments, Chomsky is perhaps best known for a single sentence:

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

                                                            Image by Екатерина Гусева from Pixabay 

Published in his 1957 book Semantic Structures, Chomsky’s famous sentence illustrates the difference between two essential elements of language:  syntax and semantics.  Syntax relates to the grammar of a language or the order in which words are combined to construct sentences. Semantics, in contrast, relates to the meaning of individual words. Chomsky’s sentence illustrates the difference between syntax and semantics, showing that a grammatically or syntactically correct sentence can be constructed that is semantically nonsensical.

Of course we can construct zany sentences all day for entertainment purposes, but to truly communicate our thoughts to an audience, we must craft sentences that synthesize both syntax and semantics to make sense.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is the difference between syntax and semantics, and how does Chomsky’s famous sentence illustrate the difference?

Challenge - Strange Semantic-less Syntax Sings Soporifically:  What are some adjectives, nouns, verbs, and adverbs that all begin with the same letter of the alphabet? Try your hand at constructing a syntactically correct, yet semantically nonsensical sentence.  For an added layer of interest, use alliteration by selecting words that begin with the same letter.

Begin by brainstorming as many adjectives, nouns, verbs, and adverbs as you can.  Then, select randomly from your list, filling in words in the following order:

Adjective + adjective + noun + verb + adverb

For example:

Angry, ambivalent aardvarks argue awkwardly.

or

Zany, zymolytic zookeepers zoom zealously.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:

-February 1, 1709:  On this day Alexander Selkirk, the real-life castaway who inspired Daniel Defoe’s book Robinson Crusoe (1917), was rescued.    Selkirk spend four years alone on a desert island off the coast of South America, surviving on the goats that he hunted on the island.  Defoe’s fictional account of Selkirk’s experiences when on to become one of the most widely read books in history and is recognized today as the first work of realistic fiction.

-February 1, 1852:  On this day, Henry David Thoreau recorded a rant in his journal, enumerating the idiocy of the California Gold Rush:

The recent rush to California and the attitude of the world, even of its philosophers and prophets, in relation to it appears to me to reflect the greatest disgrace on mankind.  That so many are ready to get their living by the lottery of gold-digging without contributing any value to society, and that the great majority who stay at home justify them in this both by precept and example! . . . . The hot that roots his own living, and so makes manure, would be ashamed of such company.

-February 1, 1974:  Peter Benchley’s novel Jaws was published.  The idea for the book, Benchley’s first novel, began ten years earlier when he read a news story about a 4,550-pound Great White shark caught off the beaches of Long Island, New York.  The brief news story sparked Benchley’s imagination:  “And I thought right then, ‘What if one of these things came round and wouldn’t go away?'”

-National Freedom Day - Every February 1st:  Inspired by President Lincoln’s signing of the 13th Amendment on February 1, 1865, Major Richard Robert Wright, a former slave, lobbied in the 1940s to have this day designated “National Freedom Day.”  After Wright’s death in 1947, Congress passed a bill in 1948 to make February 1 National Freedom Day.  Later, in 1976, the name was changed to Black History Day.

Sources:  

1-”Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” Psychology Wiki.

Reading Check:

-What is the difference between syntax and semantics?

-In the sentence “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” what part of speech is the word “sleep”?

THINKER'S ALMANAC - January 31

What is one trick that marketers use to make things appear true even though they are not necessarily valid?

Subject:  Cognitive Fluency - Easy = True 

Event:  “Easy = True” article published in The Boston Globe, 2010

Thinking is hard work, which is why so few people do it.  -Henry Ford

On this day in 2010, an article was published in The Boston Globe entitled “Easy = True.”  Written by journalist Drake Bennet, the article was about an emergent hot topic in psychology called cognitive fluency.  Cognitive fluency is a concept that relates to the ease at which we are able to think about something.  It seems obvious, but cognitive fluency reminds us that we don’t like thinking too hard and that the human species has a definite preference for things that are easy to think about.  These are the things we pay more attention to and the things that we remember better.  As a result, when we are presented with information, the easier it is for us to process, the more valid we perceive it -- for example, if it is written in a clear font, if it rhymes, or if it is repeated.

                                                                Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay 

We have a clear, instinctive bias for things that are familiar to us, which makes sense when you think about the way that our brains evolved.  Familiar things presented less of a threat, while unfamiliar things required scrutiny, which could be the difference between survival and being poisoned by a plant or eaten by a predator.

One excellent illustration of cognitive fluency comes from the research of psychologist Matthew McGlone.  He presented subjects with unfamiliar aphorisms, half of which were written in rhyming form, such as “Woes unite foes.”  The other half of the aphorisms were written in non-rhyming forms, such as “Woes unite enemies.”  Not only did people find the rhyming aphorisms more pleasing to the ear, but they also rated them as more accurate than their non-rhyming equivalents.  McGlone calls his discovery “the rhyme-as-reason effect.”  Most of us would intuitively realize that a rhyming slogan was more catchy and easy to remember, but how many of us would guess that the rhyming phrases would also be perceived as more inherently true? 

Whether we are delivering or receiving persuasive messages, cognitive fluency has important implications.  As stated by psychologist Adam Alter, 

Every purchase you make, every interaction you have, every judgment you make can be put along a continuum from fluent to disfluent. If you can understand how fluency influences judgment, you can understand many, many, many different kinds of judgments better than we do at the moment. (1)

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is cognitive fluency, and how can knowing about it make you more persuasive?

Challenge - Parallel Proverbs:  The key ingredients for cooking up a more persuasive, more digestible message are repetition, clarity, and simplicity.  Rhyme and alliteration -- which involve repetition of sounds -- are two of the most common methods of repetition, but a more sophisticated method of repetition is parallelism, which involves the repetition of structure, such as Caesar's famous declaration, “I came, I saw, I conquered,” which follows the repeated pattern pronoun verb, pronoun verb, pronoun verb.  Identify a proverb or aphorism that contains both wisdom parallelism.  Explain why you think the proverb is both well written and well reasoned.

Also on this Day:

January 31, 1923:  Today is the birthday of American writer Norman Mailer.  (See Word Days Factoid/Factlet Day 1-31)

January 31, 1940:  Ida May Fuller cashed the first Social Security check for $22.54.  (Psych of Money 20)

Sources:

1-Bennett, Drake.  “Easy = True”  The Boston Globe  31 January 2010.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - January 30

How can guessing the age of Mahatma Gandhi help us to better understand how our mind works? 

Subject:  Anchoring - Death of Gandhi Study Question 

Event:  Death of Mahatma Gandhi, 1948

On the evening of January 30, 1948, Mahatma Gandhi was killed when an assassin fired three bullets into his chest at close range.  You have probably heard of Gandhi, and you might even have known that he was assassinated.  But, do you know how old he was when he died? 

                                                                Image by WikiImages from Pixabay 

  

This question was the subject of an ingenious psychological study conducted in 1997. It’s a study that helps us to better understand human thinking and the connection between our rational thinking and our intuitive thinking. It’s also a study that reveals that our thinking and our decisions are not as independent as we think they are; instead, they can be influenced by outside forces that we often are not aware of.  

One of those forces is numbers.  For example, when you are shopping for a new refrigerator, do you pay attention to the “recommended retail price”?  Similarly, when a teacher is grading a student’s essay, do you think she is influenced by the student’s previous grades on essays or by the essay she graded previously?  Psychologists call this anchoring: the mental process by which we make estimates by latching on to reference points for comparison.

In the Gandhi study, 60 German university students were asked how old the 

Indian leader was when he died.  For 30 of the students, the question was preceded by the question “Was Gandhi older or younger than 9 years old when he died.”  The other 30 were first asked, “Was Gandhi older or younger than 140 years old.”  Logically speaking, neither number -- 9 or 140 -- seemed a likely hint to his actual age, yet the results of the study showed that in both cases they influenced the students’ estimates:  the students who were asked “Was Gandhi older or younger than 9 years old,” guessed an average age of 50 years old; the other group which was asked “Was Gandhi older or younger than 140 years old,” guessed an average of 67 years old (1).

At this point, you probably want to know how old Gandhi actually was:  he was 78 years old.

The message of anchoring is that our mind works by making comparisons, whether or not we are aware of those comparisons.  To avoid this cognitive bias, be alert to how you’re comparing things, and be especially alert to how an initial piece of information, such as a number can influence your thinking.  For example, if you are negotiating a salary or buying a new car, pay attention to the first offers presented; also, realize the advantage of being the one who offers the first number.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is anchoring, and how does it influence us?

Challenge - Buyer Beware:  You can bet that companies know how to employ anchoring to manipulate consumers into paying more for products.  Do some research on how marketers use anchoring to prey on the weak minds of consumers.  Write a brief PSA that explains the trickery of anchors and helps people avoid it to save money.

ALSO ON THIS DAY: 

-January 30, 1866:  Today is the birthday of American author and humorist Frank Galett Burgess.  Although he is well known for his four-line nonsense poem “The Purple Cow,” he should also be remembered for coining the word “blurb,” the short promotional descriptions or reviews by which consumers judge books by their front or back covers.  In 1906, Burgess was promoting his latest book Are You a Bromide? at a trade association dinner.  To capture the attention of potential buyers, he created a dust jacket with the book’s title and a brief description.  To make the book more eye-catching, he added a picture of a fictitious woman he called Miss Belinda Blurb.  The name stuck as a way of describing the promotional text that publishers place on book jackets.  

-January 30, 1929:  Today is the birthday of cognitive psychologist Roger Newland Shepard, born in 1929.  He invented the famous optical illusion called the Shepherds Tables. 

Sources:  

1-IB Psychology. Key Study: Gandhi and the Anchoring Effect

Strack & Mussweiler, 1997.  https://www.themantic-education.com/ibpsych/2020/03/10/key-study-ghandi-and-the-anchoring-effect/