Generally Thinking

Category: Self-Help

  • Absolute beginner’s guide to having a lucid dream

    A lucid dream is quite a different experience to a normal one. In a normal dream, the experience is like a film. You’re just watching what goes on, albeit from a first-person perspective, and you cannot control anything despite an illusory sense of agency.

    In a lucid dream, you wake up during the film. You are as conscious as you are right now, reading this. You are able to make choices, move around, and in most cases, you are able to dictate what happens in your dream environment (it is a product of your own mind, after all).

    This means you can do whatever you want in your dreams, have whatever dream you want to have. What is more, a lucid dream seems far more real than a normal one. Everything is lifelike and vivid, almost to the level you experience in real life, and sometimes more.

    This article is a brief overview of the techniques I use to trigger a lucid dream. Using these, especially the ‘sledgehammer method’ you should be able to have a lucid dream quickly, within the first week probably. I found these techniques from a combination of a lot of time spent searching the internet, and using Stephen LaBerge’s book ‘Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming‘.

    1) Write your dreams down

    journal_bed
    (Bekah Stargazing)

    Throughout all the sources I have found, this is the only universal tip. You keep a pad of paper – or preferably a journal you use solely for this purpose, and a pen by your bed. Every time you wake up, jot down the details of the last dream you had. There two main reasons for this. The first, is that this helps you to remember the dreams you have. You might have 3-4 dreams per night, but it’s likely you remember only one, at the most. By keeping track, you train yourself to remember dreams, which is very useful – there’s no point in having a lucid dream if you don’t remember it in the morning. Secondly, you can look over your diary of dreams, you can begin to notice things that repeatedly occur, maybe a particular location, event, person, character, object, scenario: whatever. You should then make a note of these recurring themes, known as ‘dreamsigns’ (more on this later).

    2) Reality Checks

    The primary way to become lucid during a dream is to consciously realise that you are dreaming. Your dreams are very often a reflection of your waking life, so you can use this to your advantage by performing ‘reality checks’, around 10-15 times per day. There are certain things that can and cannot occur during a dream, and by making a serious and deliberate check of these things regularly throughout the day, you will eventually find yourself making the same checks in a dream.

    The difference is, when you are dreaming you will necessarily fail the tests, therefore realise you are dreaming, and become lucid. Here are the tests you should do:

    a) Ask yourself “Am I awake, or am I dreaming right now?”.

    It is important to take this test seriously, and assume that you are actually dreaming and attempt to disprove that ‘fact’. Because, as LeBerge notes in Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, if you simply take it as an obvious fact that you are awake, you will simply replicate this assumption in your dreams. Be aware of your situation and perceptions. Have a look around for anything dream-like.

    b) Check some writing

    jumbled_writing
    (D Sharon Pruitt)

    Find some text. Look at it, look away, then look back. Do it again. If the text changes, you are dreaming. If it stays the same, you are awake. I had this happen in one of the dreams in which I became lucid. I was reading a magazine, then decided to do a reality check. I looked away, looked back, and repeated this. To my surprise, the text kept changing. I realised I was in a dream, and became lucid. As I did, the whole experience became more vivid and lifelike. Fascinated, I looked again at the magazine (which I could now feel in my hand, and see the separate pages of, just as if it were real) several times. The text changed into a different jumbly mess of letters each time.

    c) See if you can fly or float

    Obviously, you can’t do this in real life. So if you can fly, float, or hover, you must clearly be in a dream. Try to do these during your reality check; try to will yourself to hover, or jump in the air and see if it takes a strangely long time before you land. If it does, you’re dreaming.

    d) Check your memory

    Memory doesn’t work all that well in dreams. Think back over what you’ve done over the last hour and beyond. Can you think of any details? If the details are hazy, you are dreaming.

    When should you do your reality checks? Do them at regular points throughout the day, so that it becomes routine to do so. Do a decent amount each day – 10-15 should do it, and preferably try each of the above methods on each check. Try using set times, when waking, when brushing teeth, when on the bus/in the car to work/school, when eating lunch, etc etc.

    As well as your chosen set times, perform a reality check every time you come across a dreamsign in real life. For example, I often find myself dreaming that I’m in a kitchen or a bathroom. Invariably, they are incredibly strange versions of such rooms, but I just accept them as normal. By doing a reality check every time I’m in a kitchen while awake, I find myself doing so in dreams too.

    You can also visualise yourself seeing dreamsigns, and then doing a reality check that you fail, leading to a lucid dream. This will be useful if you have a dreamsign that you are unlikely to encounter in real life, such as an old friend you don’t see anymore, or something more abstract.

    3) Fall asleep hoping

    As you lie in bed, think about lucid dreams, and repeat your intention to have a lucid dream mentally. If your mind wanders to something else, bring it back to the affirmation that you intend to notice you are dreaming and become lucid tonight. This might help you fall asleep faster too, because your mind isn’t wandering.

    4) Sledgehammer Technique

    sledgehammer
    (Matti Mattila)

    There is definitely a technical name for this, but I can’t remember it and I like this better! This is the single most effective way to have a lucid dream. Unfortunately, it is the most intrusive to your schedule.

    First, a few facts:

    • When we sleep, our brain cycles through different patterns or ‘stages’ of activity.
    • We dream in the ‘REM’ stage of sleep.
    • As the night goes on, periods of REM sleep get longer and longer.
    • If we are cut off from getting REM sleep, we tend to enter it immediately when we do eventually sleep.

    We can take advantage of these facts. First set an alarm for 5-6 hours into our sleep period. Then, we get up, and out of bed. This is hard to do.

    While you are awake, drill the idea of lucid dreams into your head. Have a few websites bookmarked to read during this time (such as this one), print out a few articles to read, and if you have a book on lucid dreaming, read that.

    Stay up for an hour or two doing this, just reading and thinking about lucid dreams. Do a load of reality checks, especially the visualisation ones described earlier. This really is the sledgehammer approach; overload yourself with thoughts, intentions, and information about lucid dreaming – prime yourself. Then go back to bed, and apply technique 3, above.

    If you do this, you are very, very likely to have a lucid dream. I had one on my second night trying this. Of course, this is most effective when combined with all the above techniques, so the more dreams you have logged and the more dreamsigns and reality checks you have done in the past, the more likely it is to work. But it is highly effective as a stand-alone technique.

    Another tip, is to decide what you want to do during a lucid dream, so that you don’t waste time deciding. Apparently, lucid dreams occur at a normal rate of time, so time is of the essence.

    Hope these tips are useful, if you don’t get quick results please persevere, because I promise that lucid dreams exist and can be learned, I’ve done it myself so I would know! At the same time, this is a skill just like any other, and it may be some weeks or even months before you start having lucid dreams on a consistent basis. Make sure you don’t skip the step of writing your dreams down. Good luck!

    Recommended Reading:

  • Mental time travel for happiness

    A recent experiment has just discovered that time travel can make you happy. Great Scott! I’m not talking about actual time travel, of course, but mental time travel; using your brain to do something that, at the moment, only us humans can do – simulate and predict future events.

    Mental Time Travel (MTT) can be done in various ways. One dimension on which it can vary is valence. For example, it could be positively valenced, such as imagining tomorrow’s job interview going well; negatively valenced, such as imagining an argument with a friend; or neutral, such as imagining eating your breakfast.

    We do this naturally; the unconscious part of our divided mind likes to wander ahead and hypothesise about what might be waiting for us in the future. But we’re able to get in the driver’s seat of our mental delorean, and choose where we want to go.

    The idea of thinking positively about the future is nothing new; it’s a linchpin of the self-help movement, and has become massively popular since that awful book, The Secret, came out. So positive MTT could be seen as one branch of the positive thinking tree, along with other branches like positive reframing, affirmations, optimism, and so on.

    back to the future
    Great Scott!

    A team of psychologists carried out a two-week study to find out what effects positive, negative, and neutral time-travel have on happiness and anxiety. You might be thinking, isn’t this an obvious thing to study? Well, maybe. I mean, you don’t necessarily need a psychology almanac from 2015 to figure out what the results will be, and the researchers did agree that positive MTT and happiness tend to go together.

    But the provocative research question was, do the positive thoughts cause the happiness, or does happiness cause positive thoughts? Maybe the link is incidental, not causal – you become happy for whatever reason, then you start thinking positive, and maybe make an incorrect causal assumption. Either way, scientists need to test even obvious things when they are building their models; the truth is that you don’t know until you test it. Besides, how else can scientists get to brag about having a 20 page CV?

    Plus, these ‘obvious’ studies sometimes turn out unexpected results…

    The Test

    Here’s the basic instruction given to participants:

    “Please try to imagine, in the most precise way, four positive events that could reasonably happen to you tomorrow. You can imagine all kinds of positive events, from simple everyday pleasures to very important positive events.”

    Three groups of people were in the test; the negative and neutral group got the same instructions with the word ‘positive’ replaced as appropriate. What makes MTT different to general positive thinking is the additional instruction to be specific: they were told to imagine the event at a specific time, a specific place, and going into as much detail as possible; sounds, smells, emotions, and so on. So no manifesting mansions or unicorns or anything; just things that will happen tomorrow, happening well (or not).

    The researchers measured everyone’s happiness and anxiety levels before and after spending 2 weeks on this exercise.

    The Results

    Let’s start with happiness. The positive MTT group became significantly happier after two weeks of practising this simple exercise. Not exactly a heavy finding, but it does mean there’s another scientifically supported intervention that people like you can do to become happier, and it’s really simple to do, too. Support for these exercises is really picking up now; here’s another ten, for instance.

    Positive MTT making people happier is about what you’d expect. But it’s interesting that negative MTT didn’t decrease happiness. Strangely, the negative and neutral groups both had marginal increases in happiness, but nothing that was statistically significant, so we can safely discount this as a fluke finding.

    So the results suggest that positive future imaginings aren’t just a consequence of happiness, but they’re a cause of it. The authors suggest a follow up study to test the difference between positive future MTT, and more general positive thinking (i.e., without pictures).

    But what about anxiety? What do you imagine happened to that? Here it gets more interesting. The positive MTT group’s anxiety was unaffected, and so was the negative MTT group. Happiness and anxiety aren’t at opposite ends of the same scale, so it’s not necessarily a surprise that positive MTT had no effect on anxiety. But maybe it is a surprise that negative MTT had no effect either. So if you worry about how much you worry, don’t worry!

    The really strange finding is that the neutral group had a significant decrease in anxiety. This had the authors a little stumped, but they suggest it might be due to the structuring nature of neutral MTT. They examined reports of what all participants had imagined, and those in the neutral group tended to think about daily routines. Perhaps mentally preparing and structuring their time ahead in this way served to reduce their stress over upcoming events, sort of organising their mental to do list. But more studies will need to be done to figure this one out.

    The practical conclusion is that thinking about 4 of the next day’s events in a detailed and positive way made the participants in that group happier after two weeks’ practice.

    Why not give it a try? It might cheer you up a bit.

    What’s the matter?

    Are you chicken?

    Recommended Reading:


    Reference (look what they called it! Awesome!):

    Quoidbach, J., Wood, A.M., Hansenne, M. (2009). Back to the future: the effect of daily practice of mental time travel into the future on happiness and anxiety. Journal of Positive Psychology. 4(5). 349-355.

  • Do you hate the sound of your voice?

    Have you ever heard a recording of your voice, and thought “Holy crap!  Is that what I sound like?”  Everyone else’s voice sounds fine when recorded, but yours sounds strange, different.  I remember hearing once that our voices echoes in our skulls, and therefore they sound different to us than they do to others.  So when we hear our own answer phone messages, we cringe (especially if it’s one of those cheesy singing messages).

    But ever notice that other people don’t really mention your voice sounding different?  This ties in with the finding that your social skills aren’t as bad as you think they are.  A research team in Stockholm looked into this.  They had students record a short story, and then rate their performance of the reading with a Voice Evaluation Questionnaire.  The students also completed a questionnaire measuring how socially anxious they were.  After the students had left, an independent rater listened to the tape recordings, and rated them on an equivalent Voice Evaluation Questionnaire.

    The researchers were trying to discover whether social anxiety correlated with the self-evaluation of the reading, or the independent evaluation.  If the anxiety scale correlated with the self-report, but not the observer report, it would mean our negative views on our own voices are only apparent to ourselves.  If the anxiety scale correlated with the observer report, it would mean that the anxiety is coming through in our voices – it’s noticed by others.

    Happily, the results indicated the former – to us, our voices sound weird, but other people don’t notice anything. So this distorted perception of our own voices is more to do with our own anxieties, and little to do with other peoples’ judgement. Good news, then.  I’m not sure whether the reason our voices sound worse to ourselves is because they echo in our skulls or not, but it’s all in our heads either way.

    Reference:

    Lundh, L., Berg, B., Johansson H., Nilsson, L.K., Sandberg, J., & Segerstedt, A. (2002). Social Anxiety is Associated with a Negatively Distorted Perception of One’s Own Voice. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy 31(1), 25–30

  • How to make people "get with the program"

    You know those loyalty stamp cards you get in coffee shops?  Ever wondered why you get a few stamps free when you get them?  It’s because of something called the endowed progress effect –  you’re more likely to keep working towards a goal if you think you’ve already made some progress towards it.  So you’re more likely to return and fill the card up if there are nine total boxes to fill, and two get stamped for free, than if there are seven total boxes to fill and none are filled for free – even though the cost and effort is exactly the same for both.

    2265739887_00b5e53c34_m
    Bob was convinced that milk was a better cleaner than soapy water

    This idea was tested, not in coffee shops, but in a car wash.  In 2006, researchers devised two loyalty schemes that the car was would use.  Customers either got a card that needed ten stamps to earn a free car wash, but the card already had two stamps on it, or they got a card that needed eight stamps to earn a free car wash.  Exactly the same number of purchases were needed to get the prize, but half the customers were under the impression they had already made some progress towards the prize.  And it worked; the redemption rate was 34% for the card with two free stamps, versus 19% for the card without free stamps.

    Not only that, but the customers with free stamps filled up their cards more quickly, and the time between washes got shorter and shorter as they progressed – the closer they got to the prize, the more effort they put in to get it.

    How does it work?

    Once we accept a goal, for whatever reason, we become strongly motivated to see it out.  We don’t complete everything we start, of course, but we’re more likely to finish something that we’ve already put some time and effort into than something that we haven’t started yet.  We like to get a return on what we’ve invested into.  This is partly the reason it’s hard to stop gambling once on a losing streak – the lure of getting something back on our investment is far more seductive than definitely accepting a loss.

    Interestingly, this is true even if we haven’t actually made any progress, or put any effort into the pursuit of a goal – as long as we merely appear to have done so (to ourselves), we’re suddenly under the same psychological pressure to see it though.  By creating the illusion of progress, the car wash owners made it seem like the task of getting to ten stamps had already begun, and was incomplete.

    Getting with the program

    The basic principle is this: people are more likely to stick to the program if you can make it seem that they’ve already made progress towards its end goal. If this basic principle carries over to other domains, the possibilities are endless.

    For example, if you run some kind of online course, offer the first two modules for free, and put a page up with a list of all modules, with the first two already ticked off.

    If you’re in a role where you have to motivate people, then pointing out the progress that’s already been made should help.  You could create a performance-based points system, where the points can be traded for prizes at the end of the month, but each person gets a certain number for free.

    If you’re promoting a book, give the first chapter out for free as an ebook.  This will not only get your work out there, but will set up an incomplete goal in your readers’ heads; and many will feel the need to complete the goal.

    This technique doesn’t have to be used for commercial purposes, of course.  As long as it’s used for a task-based goal, it should work.  So, say for example you’re trying to raise awareness of an important issue.  Frame your information as a course, and give it an official sounding title, such as *your organisation* certificate in *your issue* awareness.  Then give out a leaflet which contains the first two ‘modules’ of your course, probably basic stuff like “Introduction to X”, and of course include module list on the final page with the first two modules ticked off already.  Then point to your website or other location they can find the rest of the course, and once you can confirm they’ve completed it, post them a certificate or provide one for print out.  The idea is, people will think they’ve already completed modules 1 & 2, and they’d better complete the rest or that would be a waste of time.

    These are just a few ideas from the top of my head, I’m sure you can think of more for whatever your purposes are.  I hope you’ve enjoyed this little series of posts on persuasion, and it’s given you a few useful ideas as well as made you aware of how your mind responds to persuasion techniques and advertising.  Please, only use these principles for the forces of good.

    Recommended Reading:


    Reference:

    Nunes, J. C. & Dreze, X. (2006). The endowed progress effect: how artificial advancement increases effort.  Journal of Consumer Research. 32, 504-512.

    Image: Bob Dobbs opens a car wash by Radio Rover

  • 6 simple ways to get more tips as a server

    Being a waiter or waitress is hard work!  You’re on your feet all day, watching other people eat, laugh and have fun, and often the pay isn’t all that great; particularly in the US.  But, you have one ace in the hole – tips.  It is pretty much the norm these days to tip, even in places where service is included.  I always tip in a restaurant.  Usually I don’t fuss or worry about how much, I just stick some money onto the tray.

    This reminds me of the huge debate in Reservoir Dogs, where one of the characters, Mr Pink, tells the group he doesn’t tip.  His point is that you don’t tip people at MacDonalds, even though it might be an equally hard job.  You can watch a great version of this scene, performed by none other than the muppets, here (Note: Lots of swearing in this scene, definitely NOT safe for work!)

    Anyway, I digress.  It’s a fact that a server’s wage can bring much joy or sadness, depending on the tips (not to mention the effect your tips have when filing receipts on your income tax software at tax time).  So how would you get more?  Most websites will tell you to be efficient, polite, keep a check of what needs to be done so you don’t forget, and so on.  But scientific studies of persuasion have found other ways to increase your tips! These include:

    • Give mints or chocolate at the end of the meal
    • Kiss some ass (compliment customers on their menu choice)
    • Introduce yourself by name
    • Touch customers
    • Draw a smiley face on the back of the cheque (waitresses only)
    • Write “Thank You” on the back of the cheque

    1) Give mints or chocolate at the end of the meal

    It’s common practice to give diners a mint or some chocolate at the end of a meal.  Sometimes, there’s a basket of mints that you can take from on your way out, other times, the server will give them to you at your table.  Dave Strohmetz, of Monmouth University, lead a team of researchers to see whether actually giving customers the gift would result in more tips.

    First, they went to a restaurant in New York.  Half of the time, when customers asked for the bill, the servers would simply bring the cheque over.  The other half of the time, they gave a foil-wrapped piece of chocolate to each person, before giving the cheque.  At the end of the experiment the tips were added up, and indeed, patrons receiving the chocolate did tip more; they tipped roughly 18% of the bill, on average, while patrons who didn’t get the chocolate tipped 15%.  Not a huge amount, you might be thinking, but don’t worry; Strohmetz and his team had a few more tricks up their sleeve.

    They made a few changes to their study and travelled to New Jersey, for round 2.  They wanted to find out what was causing this small but measurable effect, and in doing so, they found ways to enhance it!

    This time, they compared four different methods:

    • Control Condition – Not giving patrons a piece of candy
    • 1-Piece Condition – Giving them one piece of candy
    • 2-Piece Condition – Giving them two pieces of candy
    • 1+1 condition – Giving them one piece of candy, then as the server was leaving the table, she stopped, turned back, and offered the patrons another piece

    Here are the results:

    server tips

    As you can see, 2 chocolates are better than one!  Not only that, but giving them separately, almost as if the second gift is a spontaneous gesture, is better than both together.

    How does it work?

    Why would giving the chocolates separately have a bigger effect on tips?  Could it be because the server makes a more positive impression?  Possibly, but it does not really explain the increased tips from giving 2 pieces rather than 1.  Could it be because the gift put the patrons in a good mood?  That’s possible too, but why would giving two the pieces of chocolate separately bring better moods than both at once?  It’s the same size gift, after all.  The explanation that makes the most sense is the norm of reciprocity, which we came across briefly in Randy Garner’s study using Post-it notes.

    Very often when people are on the receiving end of generosity, they feel the need to reciprocate.  This seems to work even when the act was not requested or expected.  In this case, the server seemed to be doing the patrons an extra favour.  It’s as if she was only supposed to give one chocolate, but then thought, “Hey, these are nice people, I’ll give them another!”  This type of generosity can influence our motivation to return the favour, which the patrons did by tipping more. (1)

    2) Kiss some ass

    Ingratiation has proven to be another useful method of increasing the tips you can get as a server.  A study by John Seiter looked into this, again in a real-life restaurant.

    waitress tips
    “Ah! An excellent choice, sir!”

    The servers in the study would treat all customers exactly the same, except for one thing; after taking their order, they would either compliment the customer on their menu choice, or they wouldn’t.  What specifically did they say?  After taking the first order, the server said “You made a good choice!” and after taking the second order, they said “You did good too!”

    A concern that Seiter had was the size of the party.  If there are 14 guests, the server would have to either guess who the bill payer was, and compliment that person, or if they expected the party to ‘go dutch’, they’d have to compliment all 14 people in turn; which might be seen as just a little bit insincere!  So he restricted the experiment to parties of two – keep this in mind when you’re applying this information – it’s untested on larger groups!

    As in Strohmetz’s study, tip size was worked out as a percentage of the overall bill.  Overall, customers who received a compliment about their menu choice tipped 19% of their bill, while customers who weren’t complimented tipped only 16% of the bill!  This is a simple method, taking about 2 seconds per table, and again it results in a measurable increase in the amount of tips!  (2)

    The other studies in this field follow a similar pattern: they are done in a real-live restaurant, where the servers are told to do or not do the thing that is being studied.  So rather than describe the studies in detail from now on, I’ll just give the results.  Just know that they were all tested in real situations.

    3) Introduce yourself by name

    To test whether servers could increase tips by introducing themselves by name, researchers headed to a buffet brunch, taking their clipboards with them (presumably).  These researchers might be early paragons of multi-tasking!  I can imagine the thought process: “Hmmm.  I like research.  But I also like lunch.  How can I combine the two?”

    waiter_tips

    In this study, a buffet was a really good way to test the effect of the introduction, because customers pretty much fend for themselves after the first introduction, so there’s less chance that other factors could interfere with the results.  When the server introduced herself by name, there was a far higher tipping rate when the servers introduced themselves – 23%, compared to 15% when they didn’t! (3)

    4) Touch customers

    In a study entitled “The Midas Touch”, April Crusco and Christopher Wetzel discovered what happens when waitresses touch their customers; either on the shoulder, the palm, or not at all, when returning change.  They found that the customers who were touched left the highest tips on average, that the palm was the most profitable place, and also that the customers largely weren’t aware they’d been touched. (4)

    touch_tips

    A follow up study found that when a man and a woman are dining alone, it is more profitable to touch the female customer than the male.  The reason might be that the servers in this study were all female, and touching the man might have brought out some jealousy.  So if you’re a male server, it’s unclear whether this would work for you or not. (5)

    5) Draw on the back of the cheque

    I’ve never had this happen to me, but apparently some servers like to draw little pictures, like smiley faces, on the back of the cheques.  There are several reasons this might improve the tips; it might show that the server was pleased to have served the party, it might put the party in a better mood, or it might just be seen as a nice friendly gesture.  It does seem to work – but only for women.  Here are the results for the waitresses: (6)

    waitresses_drawing

    And here are the results for the waiters:

    waiters_drawing

    Waitresses seem to get more tips than waiters in general, and it also seems that drawing a smiley face had a slight negative effect on the waiters tips!  Perhaps it is seen as too feminine for men to do this.  if you’re a waiter, it might be best not to try this.  If you’re feeling brave, try drawing a monster truck, or a football, or even…

    6) Write “Thank You” on the Cheque

    When a server expresses their gratitude to the party, in the form of a little “Thank You” and signature on the back of the cheque, this has also proven to bring higher tips.  Although it wasn’t as effective as the smiley face, at least it should work for waitresses and waiters!

    thank_you_tips1

    As you can see, the signature isn’t strictly necessary – a friendly “thank you” message on the back of the cheque is enough to improve your tips. (7)

    All at once or one at a time?

    In all these studies, only one technique was tested at a time.  It might not be the case that doing all of them at once would have a better effect.  Then again, they might have an even stronger effect when they’re all combined.  You’ll have to do some experiments of your own to find that out.

    As I mentioned earlier, these techniques have been proven in real-life restaurant situations.  They aren’t based on laboratory studies or armchair theorising – they actually work.  I’m sure you can see that these ideas are worth trying – you should be able to increase your income by a fair amount by practising the methods here, and they are all very simple to do.  I’d be grateful if you would test some of these out for a few weeks, and leave a comment to let me know how you got on.  Thanks for reading!

    Recommended Reading:


    References:

    (1) Strohmetz D. B., Rind B., Fisher R. & Lynn M. (2002). Sweetening the till: The use of candy to increase restaurant tipping. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 32(2), 300-309.

    (2) Seiter, J. S. (2009). Ingratiation and Gratuity: The Effect of Complimenting Customers on Tipping Behavior in Restaurants. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, Sheraton New York, New York City, NY Online

    (3) Garrity, K., & Degelman, D. (1990). Effect of server introduction on restaurant tipping. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 20,168-172.

    (4) Crusco, A. H., & Wetzel, C. G. (1984). The Midas touch: The effects of interpersonal touch on restaurant tipping. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 10,512-517.

    (5) Stephen, R., & Zweigenhaft, R. L. (1986). The effect of tipping of a waitress touching male and female customers. Journal of Social Psychology, 126,141-142.

    See also:

     

    Hornik, J. (1992). Tactile stimulation and consumer response. Journal of Consumer Research, 19,449-458.

     

    Hubbard, A. S. E., Tsuji, A., Williams, C., & Seatriz, V. (2003). Effects of touch on  gratuities received in same-gender and cross-gender dyads. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 33(11), 2427-2438.

    (6) Rind, B., Bordia, P. (1996), “Effect on restaurant tipping of male and female servers drawing a happy smiling face on the backs of customers checks”, Journal of Applied Social Psychology,  26(3), 218-25.

    (7) Rind, R., & Bordia, P. (1995). Effect of server’s “thank you” and personalization on restaurant tipping. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 25,745-751.

    See also:

    Rind, B., & Strohmetz, D. (1999). Effect on restaurant tipping of a helpful mesage written on the back of customers’ checks. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 29,139-144.

    Images: BarCampParis#7 by Franck Mahon.  Waiter by Alana Elliot

  • Mindless behaviour: How to skip to the front of a queue

    If there’s one thing us Brits are good at, it’s queuing.  We love it.  One day I want to get a few people and form a fake queue, leading directly to a brick wall, and see how many people we can get to join the queue.  I predict that this would work, and we could actually get a load of random people lining up to a wall.  I think they’d assume it was a queue to an ATM, and would not think to check whether there actually is one there or not.  It’s mindless faith that since a line of people leading to a wall has been for an ATM in the past, it probably will now.  And it’s this mindless faith that you can exploit to skip the line.

    Ellen Langer, Arthur Blank and Benzion Chanowitz carried out a famous study in 1978 to see if they could get people to let them go first to use a photocopier.  You might recognise Ellen Langer‘s name, I mentioned another of her studies in the priming article, where she found a way to reduce the biological age of a group of elderly participants.  In this study, the researchers tried three different approaches to getting people to let them go first.  They also told people they had either 5 or 20 copies to make, to help them discover which method was most effective.  Here are the methods they tried:

    1. Request Only “Excuse me, I have 5 (20) pages.  May I use the xerox machine?”
    2. Placebo Information “Excuse me, I have 5 (20) pages.  May I use the xerox machine, because I have to make copies?”
    3. Real Information “Excuse me, I have 5 (20) pages.  May I use the xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?”

    So a third of the time they just asked to skip the line, a third of the time they gave an irrelevant reason (of course they had to make copies.  What else do you use a xerox machine for?), and a third of the time they actually gave a good reason. And they tried all three methods while asking to make five copies, and again when asking to make 20 copies.

    Here are the results:

    because

    When you’re only asking a small favour, it doesn’t seem to matter whether you give a good reason or an arbitrary one – compliance is the same either way!  When you’re asking a big favour though, you do need to give a valid reason – if you give an arbitrary one, people don’t just mindlessly go along with it anymore.

    What’s going on?

    Over the years, many people have asked us for favours.  So many, in fact, that we’re very familiar with the general structure of a request; people ask for a favour, and then give a reason.  Countless repetition of this structure has made a rule in our minds, it goes something like this:

    Favour X + Reason Y = Comply

    But it’s not quite this simple – there are extra rules.  For example, when X is small, we can ignore Y – we’ve done so many small favours for good reasons that haven’t inconvenienced us too much in the past, that we probably won’t be inconvenienced now.  So why spend time and energy firing up our thinking processes? Why bother with the confrontation?  Overall it serves us better just to comply.

    In other words, when the stakes are low, the mind will take the mental shortcut.

    “Sometimes people don’t pay attention to the information they are receiving; only the the structure of it”

    When X is large, however – when someone wants a big favour – this changes the game a little.  Perhaps now, doing the favour will be a bigger burden than not doing it.  So the brain kick-starts our deliberate thinking processes: “Consciousness, wake up! We need some help here!”  Now you need to pay attention to the incoming information, now you care what Y is, and if someone’s asking for a big favour without a good reason, you’re likely to turn them down.

    Two other studies are described in the paper, which show a similar effect happening with written communication. People respond to short questionnaires, even when they are sent to random people, with no letterhead and no justification, just a request for people to fill out the form and send it back.  People just do it – and they are more likely to do it if they have more experience with correspondence, (for example if they work in institutions where this sort of communication is common) because they have created compliance rules for written communication.

    Because

    The point to take from this study is that when making a request, remember to back up it up with a reason (“Can you do X because Y”).  If it’s a small request, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a good reason “Come to the table because it’s time for dinner” should work as well as “Come to the table because this food looks delicious”; unless it would be seen as a big request (everyone is glued to the TV, for example).

    To skip a queue, just politely ask if you can, and give a reason.  Bear in mind that this study was done with a queue of one, so it may not work with larger queues where there’s social pressure from the people behind your ‘persuadee’ not to let you in.  But at the cash point you could try “Excuse me, can I use the ATM because I’m in a rush?”, at the nightclub you could try “Excuse me, can I go in first, because I need to find my friends”, and you already know how to skip the photocopier queue.  Play around with this and see what happens.  Don’t get carried away though or you’ll get in trouble (eg., “give me all your money because I have a gun!”).

    Sometimes people don’t pay attention to the information they are receiving; only the the structure of it.  If you can fit your request inside a structure that people are used to complying with, there’s a good chance that they’ll mindlessly comply with your request too.  Remember also to be more mindful yourself, and become aware of when you are habitually going through the motions.  I’m not saying to think every little thing through in full detail, that sounds exhausting.  But at the very least, make sure the ATM queue leads to a real machine and not just a brick wall. 🙂

    Recommended Reading:


    Reference:

    Langer, E., Blank, A., & Chanowitz, B. (1978). The mindlessness of Ostensibly Thoughtful Action: The Role of “Placebic” Information in Interpersonal Interaction.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36(6), 635-642.

    Chart made with http://onlinecharttool.com/

  • Practical Priming

    I recently described the concept of priming, along with some research that has been done to demonstrate this effect.  This article follows directly from that one, so if I mention something that I ‘discussed earlier’, it’s in there. The priming studies are all very interesting, but the question now becomes, how are we going to use priming to our advantage?  Here are some suggestions.

    1) Figure out what you want to be primed for (duh)

    Priming activates certain traits and behaviours, which are usually associated with a certain stereotype. For this reason, this isn’t an exercise you can do without direction, like meditation for instance. With meditation, you just do it, then various benefits come. With priming, you need to know what benefit you want first, and then work out how to prime yourself for it.

    2) Out with the old

    The next step should be awareness of what we are currently being primed for.  In your mind, go over the locations you frequent, try to work out what what stereotypes are associated with the things you perceive.  What traits belong to these stereotypes?

    If you identify something that might prime you for a behaviour you don’t want, try remove that thing for week or so, and see what happens (please use your head when doing this; don’t throw your dog out because you think it will prime you to pee on lamp posts).

    What do you regularly read, and what is that priming you for?  What about the TV shows you watch (including the adverts). One other piece of advice is to stop reading newspapers! Apart from the sports section, that is. Given what you now know about priming, read the next newspaper you buy with a careful eye. Notice:

    • What you’re being primed for
    • Whether any of the information is really worth knowing.
    • What purpose headlines like “Terror” “Stabbing” “Crime” and “Recession” serve.

    3) In with the new

    The third step is to work out what you can add to your environment to prime the goal or behaviour you want. Many self-help authors recommend putting your goals and targets up on the wall, in written form.  For example, Steve Pavlina and his Belief Board. We saw in the last article that exposure to written words can prime behaviours associated with those words, and also that the longer the longer the exposure to a prime, the bigger the effect; so this technique should work well.  The only problem I can think of, is that we tend to get a bit blind to things after a while, so maybe move them around, change the colours, or reword them fairly regularly.

    Schwarzenegger, Zane, Draper, Gold's Gym

    The basic premise is to douse your environment with words, images, and anything else you can think of that relate to the target you’re aiming for.

    If you’re planning to bulk up, then maybe put pictures of gym equipment and Arnold Schwarzenegger around your house. If you’re a student, words and pictures related to professors and intellectuals.

    It’s probably best to put some time aside and really think about what primes would work for you, and come up with many of them. Remember the immersion study by Ellen Langer, which made the elderly men younger? This was a full immersion into life 20 years earlier. The carpet, appliances, everything. And this study had a great effect on the participants. It seems like the more primes, the better.

    4) Other activities

    In Langer’s experiment, it wasn’t just the environment that was manipulated, it was the behaviour of the participants. How they acted, how they spoke, what they spoke about; everything was done in the present tense, as though it was 1959. This might well have played a part too – we know that changing self-talk can influence behaviour and emotions, so it’s not such a large stretch of the imagination that this would work as a prime too.

    So self-talk in the present tense about the goal you want to reach (ie, how you would self-talk as if it were already reached) is worth trying, as is changing your actions to be in line with the goal, though there will be obvious limitations to how and where you can do this.

    What about the writing exercise from the professors/hooligans study? People spent 5 minutes listing the behaviours, lifestyle and appearance of professors and hooligans, which made the better and worse at general knowledge tests, respectively.  In another study. people were asked to write about themselves as they would like to be, which had the result of making them happier. (1)  This seems like another exercise worth doing, then, especially when done right before a task related to your goal (eg writing about professors before an exam, writing about an Olympic sprinter before a race.   What stereotype is most conducive to the goal you are aiming for, or the task ahead of you?

    Remember that the more time people spent on this task, the stronger the effect.

    I should also mention visualisation.  There’s potentially a cross-over between this line of research and the popular self-help technique, the “Law of Attraction” (eg., The Secret).  Could mentally visualising a certain goal serve to prime us to adopt behaviours favourable to that goal?  I’m currently working on a separate article on the evidence behind visualisation, but for now, based on what I’ve read so far, I’d say yes; it’s definitely worth a try.

    Some things to keep in mind

    The experiments measured the effect of the primes directly after the participants were primed. I can’t imagine people who had been primed with ‘elderly’ stereotypes walking slowly all day and all night after that point: so maybe the best time to apply a prime is right before a specific task.  I always find I work harder if I spend 30-60 minutes reading Atlas Shrugged, a book where the main characters love their work and do it all day long.

    A limitation here is that we can’t really generalise beyond what the research actually says.  There’s evidence you can become younger, ruder, smarter, more physically persistent, and so on, but we can’t just take these findings and generalise them to any particular goal.  The things people did as a result of their primes were all things they had done before; knowledge structures they already possessed becoming active. However, I do think it’s worth trying these techniques on just about any goal.

    A final point to make is that the effect of priming might be cumulative.  As we discovered earlier with the basketball video, priming reduces our input.  Therefore the range of things we can potentially be primed by is reduced also.  It is possible that you could get into an upward or downward spiral, by receiving a prime and then being more likely to be primed by something similar again in the future.

    So perhaps a key to positive priming is regular and consistent priming, until you reach such a critical mass as the majority of the primes you receive on a daily basis are conducive to your goals.  This is just a guess though; don’t quote me on it.

    To conclude, I hesitate to say you “will” get a certain response from the priming.  All I can say for sure is what the evidence has shown.  But I think there’s enough evidence to recommend the use of this technique, at the very least, just as a personal experiment.

    References

    (1) Lyubomirsky, S., Sousa, L., & Dickerhoof, R. (2006). The costs and benefits of writing, talking and thinking about life’s triumphs and defeats. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(4), 692-708.

    Gold’s Gym image credit: d_vdm

  • "You can do anything you set your mind to" Vs "Stick to your strengths"

    This title fight pits two classic pieces of folk wisdom against each other! Both ideas are fully indoctrinated into our culture, but which one is correct?

    Introducing first, in the red corner, hailing from the depths of human optimism, the current, reigning and defending champion: “You can do anything you set your mind to!”

    And in the blue corner, hailing from parts unknown, weighing in at a few books and some empirical studies, the challenger: “Stick to your strengths!”

    Scheduled for three rounds, this might be the biggest title fight in the personal development history! The outcome of this fight might determine what you choose to do with the next phase of your life, and change your destiny forever!

    Or, it might just be mildly interesting. Either way, keep reading.

    Round 1 – Definition

    What exactly does it mean to say “You can do anything you set your mind to”? It’s a tribute to the power of dedication, persistence, and time, or course. It means that even against all odds, these three pillars will support your success; all you have to do is try hard enough for long enough.

    This perspective may or may not include the idea that “all men are created equal”. It may or may not concede that certain things comes easier to some people than they do to others. The phrase simply means that over the long-term, no inherent talent or current ability will play a greater role in getting you what you want than the above three factors.

    “You can do anything…” is simply a tribute to the power of dedication, persistence, and time.

    Of course, this is a very positive and uplifting message. It gives us hope and makes us all that little bit more equal. So naturally, it’s a popular concept within motivational literature.

    What about the opponent? When we say “Stick to your strengths”, what do we mean by that? We mean actions you can consistently do well, which lead to productive results. We also mean useful traits, and strengths of character.

    A strength is a label given to a part of your brain or nervous system that is more efficient than other parts. As you go about your life, different types of thought, behaviour and feeling are called upon, either by your own actions or in response to something happening to you. The requests that your brain processes quickly or effectively are your strengths.

    In Now, Discover Your Strengths, Marcus Buckingham uses a technological analogy. He explains that if your brain is like the internet, with the synapses in your brain being equivalent to the different connections between computers, your strengths are like your T1 lines (or whatever technology happens to be fastest at the time you read this!). They process input and provide an output much faster than other areas of the brain.

    If you’ve got a tendency to respond to the world with what we’ve labelled “kindness”, it’s because the synapses that lead to altruistic actions are strong and fast. Nature always takes the path of least resistance, so when you perceive an opportunity to be “kind”, you usually take it. So the idea behind the saying is, shape your life around your strengths, because it will be hard or even impossible to go against the grain.

    Round 2 – Evidence

    Try googling “You can do anything you set your mind to”. You’ll find a load of very inspirational articles, each containing examples of people who have defied the odds. A cancer-ridden triathlon winner, an entertainer who succeeded across multiple fields, a man who became a kickboxing champion in six weeks. From this, the articles conclude that yes, you can do anything you set your mind to. These people did, so why can’t you?

    Well, maybe it’s because these examples have all been selected specifically to support that point! I could write an article called “You can’t do anything you set your mind to” and fill it with some great examples of human failure – unsuccessful political systems, disastrous military campaigns, music careers that never left the ground; it would be no more valid. More on why, here.

    We need stronger evidence than this. It comes in part, from Carol Dweck. Dweck and colleagues have studied the effect that beliefs about intelligence can have on various types of task performance. Basically, if you believe intelligence is a fixed entity, you’ll perform worse than if you view it as malleable. In the book, Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid, Dweck’s chapter explains these concepts and gives examples of some of the studies that have been done. For instance, when college students were taught that intelligence is malleable, their GPA increased, along with their commitment to their school work.

    These results show that positive beliefs about the effects of effort can increase performance and motivation. So far so good, but they don’t explain how far a person can go with this. For that information, we turn to a different area of research.

    Some interesting studies have been done on the effects of deliberate practice. At low levels of practice, things like genetics and natural aptitude account for most of the variation in ability. But after ever increasing amounts of practice, the sheer volume of training starts to take over, and eventually it accounts for more ability than any other factors. In many fields, it was found that no one had reached the level of mastery without around 10 years of deliberate practice, involving about 10,000 hours of training. This is regardless of natural strengths or ability. (1)

    That’s a strong case for the champion, but what about the challenger?

    “The ‘best of the best’ shape their lives around their strengths.”

    The Gallup Organisation has been very active in researching strengths. As part of their work they interviewed over 2 million individuals in almost all professions, looking for patterns between the top achievers. They found that the “best of the best” shape their lives around their strengths, and found ways of developing and applying these strengths in the areas they wanted to become effective in.

    So while practice might override talent at the highest levels, it seems it’s easier to get there by using practice that involves strengths: If this wasn’t the case, Gallup would have found many top achievers who weren’t employing their strengths. (2)

    Researchers have also looked at the quality of activities that employ strengths versus those that don’t, finding that people are more intrinsically motivated to do activities which use their strengths. (3) In my own dissertation, I found that people using their strengths experienced more flow (the state of being ‘in the zone’, totally focused on the task), and enjoyed the activities more.

    Perhaps because of the above benefits, people who start to use their strengths on a regular basis become happier. One study asked people to integrate their strengths into their lives, and measured their happiness over the next six months. They found their happiness had increased each time it was measured. In StrengthsQuest, Donald Clifton and Edward Anderson note that regular strengths use leads to more confidence, optimism, and direction in life. (4)(5)

    Round 3 – A thought experiment

    Let’s take the points from the previous round and see how they might work in an example.

    Imagine two people, Bob and Jane. Bob is extroverted and full of zest, with a natural sense of humour. He’s always ‘on the go’, looking for something fun to do. Jane is introverted, intelligent, and prudent. She spends most evenings in front of a fireplace with a good book. How well would each of them do in the role ‘stand up comedian’? Could Jane, do well in this field, if she put her mind to it?

    If self-help books could speak, they’d chorus an enthusiastic ‘yes’. People supporting a strengths perspective would answer a resounding ‘no’. Who’s right?

    “Going against the grain would be a tough, inefficient, unsatisfying way to reach excellence.”

    The work on dedicated practice suggests that given enough practice, and a long enough timeline, the answer is, yes, Jane could be an expert comedian. Of course, Bob could get there more easily; he would find more satisfaction in practising, be more motivated, and progress faster. Because Jane is going against the grain, her success depends on whether her natural tendencies allow her to get enough practice in. The process of reaching excellence would be a chore, and she’d have more setbacks and frustrations to overcome. But if she could find a way to keep going, in theory, she could make it.

    I say ‘in theory’, because in practice it’s probably rare that someone could maintain that level of training without any intrinsic enjoyment of it. Without love for the activity itself, it’s easy to imagine Jane burning out long before reaching 10 years and 10,000 hours of practice. It would be a tough, inefficient, unsatisfying way to reach excellence.

    On the other hand, employing strengths is much easier. Bob would be happier overall, have more motivation to practice; for him, it will all just seem easier and more natural. Another great example is The Beatles, who clearly had a natural aptitude for music, and loved performing. They had clocked up nearly 10,000 hours of practice before they even released a single – they are an extreme example of what can happen when you combine your strengths with massive amounts of practice, rather than have the two work against each other!

    Final Bell!

    When the final bell rings, both fighters are still standing. The first two rounds were pretty even, both combatants landing some strong blows. But in the third, “You can do anything you set your mind to” started looking a little worse for wear. “Stick to your strengths” is your winner and new champion, earning the victory on points!

    When people say “you can do anything…”, they mean that even against tough odds, you can succeed if you have enough persistence and determination. While that may technically be true, the phrase speaks only of the end result, and says nothing about the quality of the journey we must undertake to get there. By sticking to your strengths you reduce the number of options you have, but what you lose in quantity you make up for in quality. Unless there is some hugely important reason to go against your strengths, or a massive sense of meaning you attach to it, being happier and deriving more satisfaction from what you do is always going to be the better option.

    Recommended Reading:

  • 21 days to form a habit? Bullshit!

    We’re in such a rush these days, aren’t we? Whatever we want, we want it yesterday. Unfortunately, things usually take a lot longer than that. To get any kind of good result, we usually have to take some kind of action regularly, over a long period of time. Especially if it involves learning a skill. This is where the idea of habits comes in – you make a habit of the action you need to take, and do it everyday automatically. Then, somewhere down the line, the result will just happen – if you can wait that long.

    “Whatever we want, we want it yesterday.”

    The standard self-help advice for installing a new habit is to do the activity on a daily basis, for 21 consecutive days. Thirty days is also popular. The idea seems to originate from Maxwell Maltz’s famous book, Psycho-Cybernetics. Maltz was a plastic surgeon, and noticed it took around 21 days for people to become accustomed to their new appearances, or for ‘phantom limb’ sensations to disappear. He later linked his observation into theories of self-image, and the 21 day rule came to be.

    Despite its popularity, the 21 day rule has never been tested empirically, to my knowledge. I’ve even read sites claiming that 30 days is overkill when forming a habit. These are all sweeping generalisations, obviously. It would depend on exactly what you meant by ‘habit’, and the nature of the behaviour you’re trying to establish.

    Repetition over a period of time seems like a sensible way to form a habit; but what if the habit involves lots of smaller behaviours and tasks? If the 21 day rule is accurate, would you need to multiple the amount of sub-tasks by 21, to get the true amount of time required?

    Take something like healthy living. Within that, you’ve got exercise, healthy eating, not smoking, and so on. Within that, you’ve got stretching, weights, cardio, eating whole foods, vegetables, no processed foods, and so on. If you’ve ever seen someone try to do all this at once, you’ve seen someone fail (in less than 21 days).

    Twenty-one days is an improvement on ‘yesterday’, but maybe it’s still a bit short. If you can install just one of the above, say, eating no processed foods, you’d probably be better off one-year down the line than if you tried all of the above for 3-4 weeks, spread out over that same year (each followed by a week of bingeing after you burn out). If you turned a new point from that list into a habit every 21, 30, or even 60 days, the long term benefits are not only greater, but more sustainable too.

    This is a completely testable idea. At the moment, I’m trying to become more organised and productive. I’m overcommitted at the moment, I have this site and a few other sites to run, I’m writing up my dissertation for submission to a journal, plus normal stuff on top of that like the gym and my day job. While I was at university, I was similarly swamped, and bought the classic productivity book Getting Things Done (GTD), by David Allen.

    Here’s GTD in a nutshell: Write down everything that you need to do or plan to do in your life. Then store all these things in a system which alerts you when each thing needs to be done. Simple. By doing this, you get everything ‘off your mind’, and you never feel overwhelmed. You know the system will let you know when you have something to do, so you can relax until then.

    It works exceptionally well. You most important thing to do is always at your fingertips, you never get that “what should I do next?” feeling, and you don’t feel so overwhelmed that you seek out your preferred method of escapism (beer and films for me).

    The only problem for me, was that the system falls flat after a few weeks. I set it up, it runs perfectly for a while, then it gradually deteriorates until it no longer exists. Then I start again.

    This is apparently a common problem with GTD – it’s too much. Leo Babauta, of Zen Habits, follows a similar philosophy to me. He created a book to supplement GTD, called Zen To Done, which breaks the GTD system down into 10 parts. You employ only one or two of these each month, until the whole thing becomes habitual. I bought Zen To Done as it seems ideal for me: I’m probably not going to get any less busy over the next few years, and if it takes 10 months to get to the finished product, so what? It’ll be less stressful, much less effort, and a perfect test of my theory (for myself at least).

    I’ll let you know how it’s going each month. In the meantime, if you want to join me in my experiment, feel free. It’s easy, just pick something you want to do, break it down into 10-12 things, and add them in, one month at a time. Then, if you can, compare your progress after a year to the previous year. I’ll bet you did better. This is not new advice: every school kid hears about the tortoise and the hare. The tortoise won, remember. 🙂

  • Divided Minds

    Have you ever started a diet or exercise program, and quit after a week?  Have you ever lied in bed too long when you know you should get up?  Ever woken up next to the missing link?  Everyone has taken actions that they didn’t consciously plan to do.  The reason for this is that different parts of your mind have different agendas.  It’s pretty common knowledge these days that there’s a ‘conscious’ mind and a ‘subconscious’ mind. The conscious part is what you experience as being ‘you’.  All the other parts of your mind are subconscious, and work away without your involvement.

    Having a mind like this quite an interesting experience.  The subconscious parts make a lot of our choices, and guide a lot of our actions.  But because we only experience the conscious part of our mind, we don’t fully realise this.  Plus we are very good at inventing stories and rationalisations, to make it seem like we decided to do all these things in the first place.

    How we experience the mind makes it seem like driving a car.  The subconscious is the car, and we’re the driver. With this metaphor, we call the shots and decide where to go – the unconscious mind then puts its resources to work in taking us there. We’re driving the car… we steer, we choose how fast we go, and we can change direction at any time.  The subconscious can get us from A to B, but can’t choose where B is – all it can do is offer suggestions on the sat-nav, and hope we listen.

    In reality though, it’s the other way around – the conscious mind exists to serve the subconscious mind. In The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Heidt offers a different metaphor – a rider and an elephant. The elephant is the subconscious mind, the rider the conscious mind.  The elephant is a big, burly beast, and will pretty much do whatever it wants. The rider isn’t strong enough to push the elephant around; all it can do is shout and nudge, and hope the elephant will listen.

    Thailand Elephant Rider - painting by Helen Carson
    Thailand Elephant Rider – painting by Helen Carson

    The painting to the right, by Helen Carson, illustrates this idea perfectly.  The rider has no whip, no reigns – no means of directing the elephant besides a word in it’s ear. The elephant leads the way and goes where it wants – even if the rider doesn’t want to!

    Many clever studies have been done to show that the elephant is calling most of the shots.  In one famous study, researchers asked people to write down behaviours they thought were characteristic of either intelligence or stupidity.  Then each person was given a general knowledge test.  Even though the participants had no idea that these two tasks could be related, the people that wrote about intelligence did better than average on the tests.

    If you did a task like this, you might think it was a bit mundane.  You wouldn’t really care about the characteristics of intelligence… but you’re getting paid, so you do it.  Besides, maybe you can get in a bit of daydreaming while you’re at it.  But behind the scenes, the elephant is doing some processing of its own, priming you for what might be ahead.  The people that wrote about stupidity did worse than average on the tests.

    This makes you wonder about news headlines.  If exercises like this can affect things like test results, what’s the net effect of headlines like “Financial Crisis!”, “Knife Crime Increasing!” and “Terrorist Attacks”?  Yet another justification of my decision not to watch television or read newspapers!

    But why does the mind work like this?  Why aren’t we in control as much as it seems we are?  It’s because consciousness is a pretty new invention, whereas the rest of the mind has been around for a long time. It has survived millions of years of evolution, and been passed through many species.  Along the way, bits have been added on and taken away – whatever didn’t work was weeded out.  What’s left is a tried and tested formula.  The rider is just the latest addition to that design, the latest hardware upgrade.  The elephant is better off for having a rider, or it wouldn’t have one, but there’s no sense in reshaping everything that has proven effective for millions of years, just because the mind suddenly realised it can think!

    All our subjective experiences, our identities and identity crises are basically the result of this new addition.  They are there because they help the elephant to survive, just as things like memory and emotions helped other species’ to survive, at earlier points in time.

    In reality though, there isn’t a divided mind.  It’s all the same thing, just like the liver, lungs and heart are parts of the same body.  It’s only the new rider module’s ability to self-reflect that makes it seem, to the rider at least, that there’s a divide.  But as we’ll see, when the rider figures out that he exists, some more practical and useful conclusions can be reached – which is kind of the point of him being there in the first place!

    Recommended Reading: