FE: Noticing what was there
Date Published: 6/20/2024
Oolala The fancy French-door fridge you ogled on the showroom floor…that now blends in with your other appliances. The fire-engine-red convertible that gave you goose bumps on the test-drive has turned into your regular ride.
This same phenomenon occurs with things that once bothered you: At first you choke on the chlorine cloud at your local pool but soon you hardly notice the smell. Your boss is a yeller, but by now his barking is just background noise.
Responding less and less to stimuli that repeat is a human phenomenon that social scientists call habituation. Over time, what once amazed you becomes ordinary. What once seemed awful does, too.
In their new book, “Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There,” researchers Tali Sharot and Cass R. Sunstein explore how seeing with fresh eyes what you once found exhilarating can improve happiness, relationships, work and community. They also address how no longer ignoring or glossing over the “bad things” can serve as an important motivator — critical, they write, for “fighting foolishness, cruelty, suffering, waste, corruption, discrimination, misinformation and tyranny.”
Here Sharot and Sunstein offer practical strategies for how to harness this reality of human nature to make our lives better.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
CNN: What does the myth that a frog won’t jump out of a pot of boiling water if the temperature is increased gradually enough tell us about habituation?
Cass R. Sunstein: We should take the boiling frog tale seriously but not literally. It captures an element of human nature that has major consequences.
Tali Sharot: While recent science indicates that, in fact, the frog will jump out and therefore survive, what’s more important to us is the analogy suggesting that an agent will habituate to negative circumstances if the changes are very gradual.
How does repetition impact our understanding of truth?
S harot: When we hear something more than once, our brains spend less time and effort to process it. The first time you hear a statement, for example, “a shrimp’s heart is in its head,” you might try to picture the heart in the head or remember the last time you ate shrimp. But the next time I say it, your brain doesn’t have to process as much, so there’s less of a reaction.
RELATED
If we’re not surprised by a statement, we assume it’s probably true. This “illusory truth effect” is so strong it’s one of the easiest effects to generate in the lab. If you hear something more than once, you’re more likely to believe it. Nowadays misinformation and fake news pose such a big problem because untrue statements get repeated through retweets, shares, etc.
Thanks for reading! We welcome your comments.
Akasha Lin
Akasha Garnier for #TheWishwall
Author, Brand Expert, Filmmaker
Photo: AkashaLin, Chicago skyline sail
Inspo: Team brand conversations and CNN
Read more from:
https://www.thewishwall.org/future-entrepreneurs
This same phenomenon occurs with things that once bothered you: At first you choke on the chlorine cloud at your local pool but soon you hardly notice the smell. Your boss is a yeller, but by now his barking is just background noise.
Responding less and less to stimuli that repeat is a human phenomenon that social scientists call habituation. Over time, what once amazed you becomes ordinary. What once seemed awful does, too.
In their new book, “Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There,” researchers Tali Sharot and Cass R. Sunstein explore how seeing with fresh eyes what you once found exhilarating can improve happiness, relationships, work and community. They also address how no longer ignoring or glossing over the “bad things” can serve as an important motivator — critical, they write, for “fighting foolishness, cruelty, suffering, waste, corruption, discrimination, misinformation and tyranny.”
Here Sharot and Sunstein offer practical strategies for how to harness this reality of human nature to make our lives better.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
CNN: What does the myth that a frog won’t jump out of a pot of boiling water if the temperature is increased gradually enough tell us about habituation?
Cass R. Sunstein: We should take the boiling frog tale seriously but not literally. It captures an element of human nature that has major consequences.
Tali Sharot: While recent science indicates that, in fact, the frog will jump out and therefore survive, what’s more important to us is the analogy suggesting that an agent will habituate to negative circumstances if the changes are very gradual.
How does repetition impact our understanding of truth?
S harot: When we hear something more than once, our brains spend less time and effort to process it. The first time you hear a statement, for example, “a shrimp’s heart is in its head,” you might try to picture the heart in the head or remember the last time you ate shrimp. But the next time I say it, your brain doesn’t have to process as much, so there’s less of a reaction.
RELATED
If we’re not surprised by a statement, we assume it’s probably true. This “illusory truth effect” is so strong it’s one of the easiest effects to generate in the lab. If you hear something more than once, you’re more likely to believe it. Nowadays misinformation and fake news pose such a big problem because untrue statements get repeated through retweets, shares, etc.
Thanks for reading! We welcome your comments.
Akasha Lin
Akasha Garnier for #TheWishwall
Author, Brand Expert, Filmmaker
Photo: AkashaLin, Chicago skyline sail
Inspo: Team brand conversations and CNN
Read more from:
https://www.thewishwall.org/future-entrepreneurs
