“Deep down, we believe this world is essentially just, which is why we look away when it’s not.”
Jonah Lehrer
Jonah Lehrer: Grit
The Ignorance of Voters
The human mind is simply terrible at politics. Although we think we make political decisions based upon the facts, the reality is much more sordid. We are affiliation machines, editing the world to confirm our partisan ideologies.
The Sawyer Effect
From Jonah Lehrer, an illustration of the power of intrinsic motivation — the desire to do a thing because you enjoy it, rather than for any extrinsic reward like a paycheck:
Scientists have recognized the importance of intrinsic motivation for decades. In the 1970s, Mark Lepper, David Greene and Richard Nisbett conducted a classic study on preschoolers who liked to draw. They divided the kids into three groups. The first group of kids was told that they’d get a reward — a nice blue ribbon with their name on it — if they continued to draw. The second group wasn’t told about the rewards but was given a blue ribbon after drawing. (This was the “unexpected reward” condition.) Finally, the third group was the “no award” condition. They weren’t even told about the blue ribbons.
After two weeks of reinforcement, the scientists observed the preschoolers during a typical period of free play. Here’s where the results get interesting: The kids in the “no award” and “unexpected award” conditions kept on drawing with the same enthusiasm as before. Their behavior was unchanged. In contrast, the preschoolers in the “award” group now showed much less interest in the activity. Instead of drawing, they played with blocks, or took a nap, or went outside. The reason was that their intrinsic motivation to draw had been contaminated by blue ribbons; the extrinsic reward had diminished the pleasure of playing with crayons and paper. (Daniel Pink, in his excellent book Drive, refers to this as the “Sawyer Effect.”)
Pink defines the Sawyer Effect as “practices that can either turn play into work or work into play,” after Tom Sawyer, who tricked his friends into painting a fence for him by convincing them it was fun.
This week I am faced with yet another rewrite of my book, to answer more concerns raised by my editors — an entirely extrinsic motivation, with all that connotes. I’d rather be playing with blocks or taking a nap.
Explaining Insomnia
Jonah Lehrer on why we can’t sleep, an affliction that has me thrashing around every night:
Because insomnia is triggered, at least in part, by anxiety about insomnia, the worst thing we can do is think about not being able to sleep; the diagnosis exacerbates the disease. And that’s why this frustrating condition will never have a perfect medical cure.
This is your brain on e-books
Jonah Lehrer on the neuroscience of how our brains process the words we read and how that process will be affected by ebooks:
… most complaints about E-Books and Kindle apps boil down to a single problem: they don’t feel as “effortless” or “automatic” as old-fashioned books. But here’s the wonderful thing about the human brain: give it a little time and practice and it can make just about anything automatic. We excel at developing new habits. Before long, digital ink will feel just as easy as actual ink.
Interesting: the technology of ebook readers will improve, but so will our brains’ ability to use them.
The Science of Home-Field Advantage
Jonah Lehrer examines why the home team tends to win more often. The answer is more complex than you might think.
Several years ago, an innovative study compared the performance of two NCAA basketball teams in the presence and absence of spectators. Because of a measles outbreak, the teams played 11 games while the schools were quarantined: the matchups took place in empty arenas. To the surprise of the researchers, both of the teams played much better without fans. They scored more points, had higher shooting percentages, and made more free throws. The cheers of adoring fans, it appears, actually hurt the home team. They just hurt the visitors even more.