Author Archives: ghotchkiss

Maximizers vs. Satisficers: Why It’s Tough to Decide

First published February 18, 2010 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

In last week’s column, I introduced the study from Wesleyan University about how decisiveness played out for a group of 54 university students as they chose their courses.  The student’s eye movements were tracked as they looked at a course comparison matrix.

Weighing all the Options vs Saying No

In the previous column, I talked about two different strategies: the compensatory one, where we weigh all the options, and the non-compensatory one, where we start eliminating candidates based on the criterion most important to us. Indecisive people tend to start with the compensatory strategy and decisive people go right for the linear approach.  I also talked about Barry Schwartz’s theory (in his book “The Paradox of Choice”) that indecisiveness can lead to a lot of anxiety and stress.

The biggest factor for indecisive people seems to be a fear of lost opportunity. They hate to turn away from any option for fear that something truly valuable lies down that path. Again, this is territory well explored in Tversky and Kahnemann’s famous Prospect Theory.

The Curse of the Maximizer

Part of the problem is perfectionism, identified by Schwartz as a strong corollary to anxiety caused by impending decisions. The Wesleyan research cites previous work that shows indecisive people tend to want a lot more information at hand before making any decisions. And, once they’ve gone to the trouble to gather that information, they feel compelled to use it. Not only do they use it, they try to use it all at once.

The Wesleyan eye tracking showed that the more indecisive participants went back and forth between the five different course attributes fairly evenly, apparently trying to weigh them all at the same time.  Not only that, they spent more time staring at the blank parts of the page. This indicated that they were trying to crunch the data, literally staring into space.  The maximizing approach to decision-making places a high cognitive load on the brain. The brain has to juggle a lot more information to try to come to an optimal decision.

Decisive people embrace the promise of “good enough,” known as satisficing. They are less afraid to eliminate options for consideration because the remaining choices are adequate (the word satisficing is a portmanteau of “satisfy” and “suffice”) to meet their requirements. They are quicker to turn away from lost opportunity. For them, decision-making is much easier. Rather than trying to juggle multiple attributes, they go sequentially down the list, starting with the attribute that is most important to them.

In the case of this study, this became clear in looking at the spread of fixations spread amongst the five attributes: time of the class, the instructor, the work load, the person’s own goals and the level of interest. For decisive people, the most important thing was the time of class. This makes sense. If you don’t have the time available, why even consider what the course has to offer? If the time didn’t work, the decisive group eliminated it from consideration. They then moved onto the instructor, the next most important criterion. And so on down the list.

Tick…Tick…Tick…

Another interesting finding was that even though indecisive people start by trying to weigh all the options to look for the optimal solution, if the clock is ticking, they often become overwhelmed by the decision and shift to a non-compensatory strategy by starting to eliminate candidates for consideration. The difference is that for the indecisive maximizers, this feels like surrender, or, at best, a compromise. For the decisive satisficers, it’s simply the way they operate. If the indecisive people are given the choice between delaying the decision and being forced to eliminate promising alternatives, they’ll choose to delay.

This sets up a fascinating question for search engine behavior: do satisficers search differently than maximizers? I suspect so. We’ll dive deeper into this question next week.

A Farewell to SEMPO

Today, the election for the new board of SEMPO is open. It’s a little bitter sweet for me. For the first time in 7 years, you won’t find my name on the ballot. I’ll be stepping down from the board and letting new blood take over.

I’ve been privileged to serve on the SEMPO board since 2003. Only Dana Todd and Kevin Lee, both founding members, have put in a longer tour of duty. In that time I’ve served as Chair of SEMPO for two years and have been the Research Chair, along with Kevin, for almost the entire time. I’ve seen SEMPO grow along with the industry to the point today where it has hundreds of members around the world. Not bad for an organization that started with a handful of search marketers meeting after the sessions had ended at an industry conference, looking to create a shared voice and gain a little more respect. I would say – mission accomplished!

But there is still so much more to do! I’ve had the opportunity to help the current executive start to define what SEMPO’s role could be in the future. The challenge, as it is with anything involving search, is trying to define the scope of what constitutes our reach. Search in the last decade has morphed and seeped into every aspect of our lives. Defining the role of an organization that tries to wrap it’s arms around that has been an ongoing challenge. And this is a challenge that isn’t going to get any easier.

SEMPO has never had a dearth of aspiration. We have dreamed big! We have consistently punched above our weight. We have ridden over rough patches of controversy and dissension. SEM’s are an outspoken lot. Most have us have heard first hand the uproar that ensues when you get a bunch of search marketers in the same room. Imagine, then, the challenge of trying to be the global voice for those loud, passionate, stubborn and thoroughly glorious marketers. Passion has infused SEMPO from day one, from the drive of Barbara Coll to the amazing and ongoing dedication of SEMPO leaders including Dana Todd, Kevin Lee, Jeff Pruitt, Massimo Burgio, Chris Boggs, Bill Hunt, Sara Houlobek and many others. I have been privileged and humbled to serve on the board with all of them. They will always be my mentors and friends. We have been on an amazing journey.

This is not the place for a list of the accomplishments of SEMPO. This is just a place for me to say thank you for the opportunity. And in offering thank yous, I would be remiss if I did not include some of SEMPO’s amazing administrative support team at Virtual, Inc, especially Amanda Pierce, Paula Hunter and a man I hope I can always call friend, Andy Freed. There are others, but those are the ones that I have spent the most time with.

In an industry that’s a fractious and quick to criticize as this one is, it’s always easy to point blame. It’s much harder to stop bitching long enough to dig in and and do something about it. I can tell you from experience, SEMPO boards have always had the interest of the industry firmly at the core of what they do. Not one member I have ever served with has been in it for their own glorification or interests. Not one. Because after 7 years on the board, I can tell you there are much easier ways to grab the spotlight than to serve on SEMPO’s board. The amount of dedication and commitment required is substantial, and, at the executive level, nothing short of monumental. We, each one of us, love this industry and are here to push it forward. We have struggled with the best way to do that, given that our dreams are consistently much bigger than our resources, but our motivations have never been in question.

I have my own goals and plans for the coming few years and knew it was time to step down, both for my sake and for the sake of the organization. As tough as it is for me to personally turn this corner, I know it’s the right path to take. When you cast your vote, I ask you to do so with careful consideration. We need a strong and healthy SEMPO, because the organization has provided a respected voice for this industry. Search marketing now has a global footprint and that voice has to continue to be heard. It has to be heard from Beijing and Oslo, from Milan and Buenos Aires, from Osaka and Sydney. And it has to be heard from Phoenix, Denver, Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Toronto, Vancouver and Seattle

I like the saying Farewell, as it really embodies my wish for SEMPO. Fare well in the future. Continue to Dream and Do. Continue to be passionate. Continue to talk, connect and be heard.

I’ll miss you.

What I Learned at TED: What It Means to be Human

It was 5 amazing days in Palm Springs. It was my first TED conference, TEDActive. And, as one would expect, it was a revelation. You leave TED with a cranium crammed with disparate ideas, all jockeying for position. On Saturday, at the poolside farewell party, we were all intellectually shell shocked, either sitting numbly in the Palm Spring sun or grabbing a watergun and reverting to childhood. I started talking to one Bing engineer and soon we were sucked back into a conversation that was much too intellectual for either of our idea-soaked brains to contend with. As he said – “I thought I had had my last TED-conversation. I gotta go veg somewhere!”

So, what exactly did I learn at TED? Well, it’s hard to pack over 50 minor and major explosions of revelation into one blog post, but there were some highlights and from them, one major theme. That I can share.

Don’t Judge a Book by It’s Cover

If one went by appearances alone, one would walk away from a TED conference horribly impoverished. The riches here are found in the most unlikely places. Take Temple Grandin. I grew up in a cow town in Alberta called Sundre. Sweats and rubber boots are perfectly acceptable on the main street of Sundre and jeans, a baseball cap and cowboy boots are considered formal wear (if the jeans are clean). Temple would be right at home. She came on stage, no nonsense cow girl that she is, looking every bit the part. Temple was terribly out of place, but Temple has been out of place her whole life. She is, as she explained, an anthropologist on Mars.

grandinTemple is a high functioning autistic, with Asperger’s. She has a PhD and is possibly the best known autistic in the world. She is THE leading expert in livestock handling and has written over 100 academic papers, both on her chosen area of expertise and on autism. Temple has given the world a great gift, a glimpse inside the fascinating and baffling mind of autism. The problem with autism is that it often comes with a highly developed skill in one area, in Grandin’s case, empathizing with animals, but little skill in communicating that to others. Temple Grandin has been our guide and interpreter into autism. And on the TED stage, she was amazing. We soon forgot her outside appearance and gave ourselves wholly over to her message.

RaghavaAnother was Raghava KK – a young Indian artist. Raghava first appears to be an immature, giggling and slightly nervous teenager that is about a deep as a wading pool. But that impression lasts about 25 seconds. Then you dive into a bottomless ocean of passion, insight, emotion and, above all, compassion. Raghava held us spellbound for 18 minutes as he led us through his short but amazing life, including no less than 4 phoenix like artistic deaths and rebirths, each precipitated by a major life event.

These were just two examples. There were many more: Dan Barber, a chef, who is one of the best communicators I have ever had the pleasure of seeing on stage,  and Adora Svitak, a 12 year old from Tacoma who caused us to completely rethink our notion of “childishness.”

The Dualism of Humans

So, those were some of the highlights. There were many. I particularly liked Robert Scoble’s recap. He was, of course, at TED in Long Beach and I was in Palm Springs, but the content was the same (by the way, don’t feel that TEDActive is a step down from TED, it’s a step in a different direction, more informal, more casual and, according to many, more fun).

But what was the overall theme of TED? For me, it brought to light an idea I’ve been wrestling with for some time – the dualism of human nature.

When I say dualism, you may think of a Cartesian sort of dualism, a divide between the physical and the spiritual, between mind and matter. But my dualism is more rooted in evolutionary psychology and brain function. This dualism splits the nature of humans into two levels of neural function, cortical and sub-cortical. It’s the difference between “Blink” and “Think”. And that dualism was the thread that run through almost every session at TED 2010.

It started right from the opening talk, given by one of the iconic figures in helping uncover this human dualism – Daniel Kahnemann, the inventor of behavioral economics. Kahnemann explored the difference between experiential happiness and remembered happiness. You see, our happiness is usually based not on what we did, but what we remembered doing. And that is altered by our subconscious biases. For example, the end of our experience often determines how we feel about the whole thing. Hence the logic of the big finale. And remembered happiness doesn’t account for duration. Now, rationally this makes no sense. That’s one half of the dualism. But ration doesn’t live in the other half. That is ruled by emotion. So, our happiness is whittled out somewhat arbitrarily by our emotional biases.

I suppose if we accept that, we could go on accepting our rational short comings. But here’s the other part about dualism. Our irrationality is hidden from us. In fact, we take our irrationality and thinly disguise it with a layer of supposed rationality. Again, let’s return to our happiness. Our future decisions are dictated not by what we actually experienced as happiness, but by what we remember as happiness, which is filtered through our irrational emotions. This means that all this irrationality is baked right into what we believe is ration without our being any the wiser. We build our houses of logic on the shaky ground of emotional bias. This is the essence of behavioral economics.

This is essential to understand in looking at this dualism. It’s not two separate halves, it’s more like two different strings tied into a complex Gordian knot. Logic and emotion are intertwined and interlinked. Even when we think we’re standing on the purely rational side, every decision we make is being influenced by emotion, lurking just below the cortical surface.

Sarah SilvermanThe yin and yang of emotion and logic is not a bad thing. In this union lies love, idealism, art and the essence of our humanity. But we also have to accept that in it lies hate, fear, prejudice and the essence of our animalism. We have to accept and understand who we are and, more importantly, the limitations of our logic. We have to call a spade a spade. And this, to me, what the theme that ran through TED. It started with Kahnemann, but it tied Michael Specter’s talk about how fear and irrationality can bring science to a standstill, Michael Shermer’s presentation about how we are biased towards decisions that minimize risk but also minimize opportunity, Sam Harris’s view that morality can no longer be artificially divorced from the rigors of the scientific method and even chef Jamie Oliver’s plea for us to stop eating ourselves into oblivion. But our duality came into it’s sharpest focus during the controversial presentation by comedian Sarah Silverman. Here, in the most intellectual of arenas, Silverman tested our ability to divorce our minds from our emotions by delivering a gut punch to our sense of propriety. It was impossible to remain intellectually detached from Silverman’s satirical attack on taste and political correctness. Even TED curator Chris Anderson couldn’t help himself, twittering that Silverman was “god-awful” and afterwards realizing he too had been caught in a visceral trap, forcing him to offer the most passive aggressive apology I have ever heard the next morning. The collective intellect of TED struggled with our reaction, which could find no redemption in logic. Some laughed (I did), some were disgusted (I had twinges of this). But it was what it was. We are human, as Silverman brilliantly revealed, and we reacted in a human way. Let’s accept that. Let’s embrace that.It is time to uncover the irrational roots of our logic and make decisions with a full and complete understanding of what really drives us.

For me, after all the talks and presentations, that was what stuck. The question posed by Chris Anderson at the beginning of TED was, what does the world need now? For me, the answer was – The world needs a better understanding of what it means to be human, to be gloriously imperfect and irrational. The world needs us to not be hindered by our irrationality but be driven by our passion. The same things that can hold us back, if we choose not to understand them, can drive us forward, if we accept and accelerate them.

Decisiveness and Search: Two Different Strategies

First published February 11, 2010 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

In “The Paradox of Choice,” author Barry Schwartz speculates that we all might be happier if we had fewer options in life. Our consumer-based society continually pumps out more and more options, forcing us into making more and more decisions. Schwartz convincingly draws a parallel between decisiveness and happiness. The less time we spend making decisions, the more we’ll be satisfied with our lives, he says.

A new study out of Wesleyan University explores the actual cognitive mechanisms of decisiveness. This has direct implications for search marketers, because every time we use a search engine, we’re forced to make decisions. In fact, every online interaction is a branching tree of decisions. The study provides new insight into the decision-making process we use as we guide ourselves through the online landscape.

Study Set-Up

The researchers at Wesleyan used a scenario familiar to their sample of 54 students: they had to pick courses for the upcoming semester. Course options were set up on a matrix that allowed students to evaluate their options on a few different criteria: time of the course, instructor quality, relevance, amount of work required and interest in topic. There were no “no-brainer” options. In each alternative, trade-offs were required.

The researchers also introduced a variable into the mix: the opportunity to delay final course selection.

Finally, they asked the students to use the course grid to help make their selections while using an eye-tracker to capture exactly what they looked at on the grid. After the task was completed, participants were asked to grade themselves on a standard decisiveness scale.

Decisive vs. Indecisive Strategies

Building on previous academic work on decisiveness, the researchers found that individuals tend to use two different strategies when making decisions.  The compensatory strategy tries to weigh all the decision attributes together, literally creating an evaluation formula in the decision-maker’s mind.  If there are five different decision criteria, all are considered at the same time and are weighted by the importance of each to the individual.

In a purely rational world, this would seem to be the optimal strategy, but as Schwartz pointed out, we are not rational decision-making machines. In their Nobel prize-winning work on Prospect Theory, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahnemann  (and more recently, Dan Ariely) showed that we use irrational risk-triggered biases in our decision-making. These throw some significant wrenches into the workings of our decisiveness. Emotions get involved and we start feeling anxious. Decisions, even about things that will bring eventual rewards, start to cause us stress.

The other decision strategy is a non-compensatory, linear strategy. This is the foundation of Herbert Simon’s famous “satisficing” approach. Here, alternatives are quickly cut down by a sequential consideration of criteria, beginning with the one most important to the decision-maker. In the study scenario of picking courses, many looked first at the time the class would be taught, reasoning that if the time didn’t work for them, there was little point in considering the other things the course might offer. This quickly narrowed the consideration set. From there, they moved on to the next most important criterion. This sequential approach is relatively ruthless in eliminating candidates for consideration.

This study, along with others, found that indecisive decision-makers tend to start with a compensatory strategy, while decisive people start short-listing immediately with a non-compensatory strategy. In the next column, we’ll see how this difference in strategies was clearly shown in the eye tracking results. I’ll also explore how indecisive individuals are often forced to abandon one strategy for the other, which can cause significant stress.

The Psychology of Entertainment: Will Video Games Become Too Real for Us to Handle?

Man_Playing_A_Video_Game_1575481-310x416In yesterday’s post, I explored our psychological attraction to violent action thrillers. Today, let’s go one step further. What is the attraction of violent video games? And how might this attraction deepen and even become pathologically dangerous as the technology behind the games improves? It’s a question we’re speeding towards, so we should stop to consider it.

In TV and film, violent action triggers a chemical reaction in the brain that we find stimulating and pleasing. As cortisol and dopamine get released, we experience a natural high. Strong evidence points to a connection between sensation seeking (triggering the high) and addictive tendencies.

The Veil of Non Reality

There is a “veil of non-reality” that moderates this reaction however. The high we get from violent entertainment comes from the limbic structures of the brain, triggered by the amygdala and other sub-cortical neural modules. This is the primal part of the brain that ensures survival in threatening situations, which means that responses are fast but not deliberate. The higher, cortical parts of the brain ride overtop of these responses like a governor, toning down the responses and modulating the overactive danger response mechanisms. It our brains didn’t do this, we’d quickly burn ourselves out. Cortisol is a great stimulant when it’s needed, but a steady diet of it turns us into a quivering pile of anxiety-ridden stress.

When we watch entertainment, this modulating part of the brain quickly realizes that what we’re watching isn’t real and puts its foot on the brake of the brain’s natural desire to pump out Cortisol, dopamine and other neuro-chemicals. It’s the “voice of reason” that spoils the fun of the limbic brain. Despite the fact that there’s car’s exploding left and right and people are dropping like flies, the fact that we’re watching all this on a 2 dimensional screen helps us keep everything in perspective, preventing our brain from running away with itself. This is the veil of “non-reality” that keeps us from be fooled that this is all real.

The Imagined Reality of Entertainment

But let’s stop for a moment and think about how we’re consuming entertainment. In the past decade, screens have got bigger and bigger. It’s no coincidence that we get a bigger high from watching violence on the big screen than from watching it on a 20 inch home TV. The “veil of non-reality” starts to slip a little bit. It seems more real to us. Also, we feed off the responses of others in the theater. We are social animals and this is especially true in threatening situations, even if they are simulations in the name of entertainment. We pick up our social cues from the herd.

It’s not just the size of the screen that’s changing, however. Technology is continually trying to make our entertainment experiences more real. Recent advances in 3D technology have not only made James Cameron even wealthier, they also deliver a stronger sensory jolt. Watching Avatar in 3D is a sensory explosion. The veil of “non-reality” slips a little further.

But improvements in graphic technology can only go so far in fooling the brain. Much as our eyes might be deceived, we’re still sitting passively in a chair. Our interpretation of the world not only relies on input from the senses, it also relies on our own sense of “body” – Antonio Damasio’s somatic markers.

The Satisfaction of Control

This is where video games are quickly approaching a potential crisis point in sensory overload. Even the best Hollywood thriller requires us to sit passively and consume the experience. We have no control over plot, dialogue or the character actions. We can only engage in the experience to a certain level. In fact, much of the appeal of a Hollywood thriller comes from this gap between what’s happening on the screen and what’s happening in our own minds. We can imagine possible outcomes or perhaps the director gives us knowledge the protagonist doesn’t have. We experience suspense as we see if the protagonist takes the same actions we would. We silently scream “Get out of the house!” to the teenage babysitter when we know the psychopathic killer is upstairs.

But video games erase this limitation. With a video game, we’re suddenly in control. Control is a powerfully seductive condition for humans. We naturally try to control as many elements of our environment as possible. And when we can exert control over something, we’re rewarded by our brains and a natural hit of dopamine. That’s why completing a puzzle or solving a riddle is so inherently satisfying. These are tiny exertions of control. In a video game, we are the authors of the script. It is we who decide how we react to dangerous situations. Suddenly we are not a passive audience. we are the actors. This is cognitive engagement at a whole different level. Suddenly the appeal of sensory stimulation is combined with the rewards we get from exercising control over novel situations. That’s a powerful one-two punch for our brains. And the veil of “non-reality” slips a little further.

Virtual Reality

The negative impacts of video games have been studied, but again, like TV, studies have been largely centred around one question: does the playing of video games lead to increased aggression and violence in children? And, like TV, the answer seems to be a qualified yes. For those already prone to violence, the playing of video games seems to reinforce these attitudes. But it’s also been argued that the playing of video games provides a cathartic release for violent tendencies.

Less research has been conducted on the cognitive impact of video games, and it’s here where the bigger problem might lie. A few studies have shown the playing of video games could be addictive. A Japanese study found that excessive video game playing during adolescence seems to alter the way brains develop, impairing the ability to focus attention for long periods of time. In fact, a number of studies have shown links between exposure to excessive sensory stimulation through electronic media and the incidence of ADHD and other attention deficit disorders. It’s this longer term altering of how our brains work that may represent the bigger danger in video games.

Video games combined violent scenarios, which we know to provide sensory jolts to the brain, with the seduction of control. What has limited the addictive appeal of video games to this point are two things: how realistic the scenarios are perceived to be and the way we interact with the games. And, in both these areas, technology is moving forward very quickly.

Video game graphics have come a long way, but they still lack the photo realism of a typical Hollywood movie. However, the distance between the two is lessening every day. How far away are we from a video game experience that matches the realism of Hollywood? Huge advances in computer graphics and sheer processing power are bringing the two closer and closer together. The day is not far away where our experience in a video game will feel like we’ve been dropped in the middle of a movie. And, with 3D and virtual reality technology, even the physical separation of a screen will soon disappear. The imaginary world will surround us in a highly realistic way. What will that do for the “veil of non-reality?”

The other area where video games have improved dramatically is in the way we control them. The control pad with various triggers and buttons was a artificial way to interact with the video game world. A spin-jump-kick combination was triggered by pushing down a few buttons while we sat in a chair. This helped our brain maintain it’s distance from the imagined reality. But Nintendo’s Wii changed how we interact with video games. Sophisticated sensors now translate our own body motions into corresponding digital commands for the game. Even our bodies are fooled into believing we’re actually playing golf or participating in a boxing match. Interestingly, Nintendo made the choice to make the graphics on the Wii less realistic, perhaps trying to maintain a “veil of non-reality.”

The Wii opens the door to a much more realistic way of controlling video games. Now our own body movements control the virtual character. Suddenly, our body is providing reinforcing feedback to our brain that this might just be real. When you combine this with photo-realistic visual input and audio input, one could forgive our brains for not being able to determine what is real and what isn’t.

Entertainment Overload?

If technology continues down the path it’s own, the virtual reality of a video game may be indistinguishable from the true reality of our lives. If the “veil of non-reality” permanently slips, we have a huge potential problem: our lives pale in comparison to the sensory possibilities of a virtual world. That’s why our brains may not be equipped to handle the overload. We may get addicted to sensation as the brain is fooled into giving us stronger and stronger hits of cortisol, dopamine, adrenaline and other natural narcotics. When the “veil of non-reality” slips away forever, our brains may not be equipped to handle the new virtual reality.

The Psychology of Entertainment: Why We’re Hooked on Violent Action Thrillers

In previous posts, I explored what encourages long term loyalty to a TV show. All of this entertainment psychological navel gazing was prompted by the original question: how does entertainment “hook” us and how can marketers use that to effectively connect with potential customers, especially online?

The Intrigue of Violence

heath32201_468x312Before we move on from TV, there is one genre we have yet to explore: the action thriller. Why does violence intrigue us? If you think about it, there is nothing rational about this proclivity we have towards violence. In our society, our own bodies are considered taboo. The female breast, the source of sustenance for all of us when we’re born, cannot be seen on TV. Yet we regularly watch, even expect, primetime shows where humans lives are snuffed out without a second thought. If you stop to seriously contemplate this cultural paradox, there can be no logical answer. Why would we possibly be entertained by watching others of our species be subjected to harm? Yet the draw of violent action is undeniably human.

By the time the average American child is 18 they will have watched 200,000 acts of violence on TV. And we, as parents, rarely question this form of entertainment. On any given night, on one channel alone, you’re likely to see a least a dozen murders. In 8 seasons of 24, Jack Bauer has personally dispatched over 200 people (according to http://www.jackbauerkillcount.com). There are no fewer than 5 websites that keep tally of Bauer’s body count. Season 4 was the bloodiest, with Jack adding 44 souls to the death toll. Now, if you consider that each episode of 24 represents a single day in Bauer’s life, that means he’s a pretty busy killing machine. Even allowing for the fact that Bauer doesn’t seem to sleep (or urinate, for that matter), that’s still a murder every 32.7 minutes. Now..that’s entertainment!

But why is violence entertaining? It’s not as difficult to understand why sex sells. After all, it’s tied into our need to procreate, so the evolutionary linkages are pretty easy to understand. But our love of violence presents more of a mystery.

It’s More than Good vs Bad

As I wrote before in a previous post, we have pretty simply formulas for a successful narrative – the good guys are supposed to triumph and the bad guys are supposed to be defeated. Action thrillers wrap themselves around this central truth, with the good guys routinely dispatching the bad guys (The Bauer/Bad Guy Kill Ratio certainly reinforces this psychological truth). Every so often, just to keep things interesting, someone close to Bauer meets an untimely end. Those thinking Jack Bauer in romantic terms would do well to reconsider. Bauer’s wives and love interests also have a habit of dying. Losing a sympathetic character hieightens the dramatic impact of the narrative. But if we have this inherent connection with stories, why do we need violence? Would we be just as satisfied if Jack Bauer soundly trounced his enemies in a good game of backgammon? I suspect not.

So it’s not just the good against evil archetype that we look for in an action thriller – it’s the violence itself. And this comes from the same mental circuit that we explored when we looked at why we laugh, our danger detection circuit.

The Sensational High

The human body responds in a unique way to signals of danger. The brain readies the body for fleeing or fighting. And it does so by a sudden release of neuro-chemicals, including the hormone cortisol and both adrenaline and noradrenaline. These chemicals not only ready us for action, they also cause us to believe that we can overcome opposition. Confidence in threatening situations provides an evolutionary advantage, as long as it leave the door open to a rapid exit of the odds are too heavily stacked against us.  Fear, danger and violence all provide us with a natural high that makes us feel more powerful, more positive and more confident. Also, dopamine, the fuel of our reward center, is released as we encounter novel situations. These chemicals, acting together, create a feeling of satisfaction for us.

Psychologists call this need for stimulation sensation seeking. Like most human traits, it’s not universally present or consistent. We have a normal distribution curve of sensation seeking throughout the human population. Marvin Zuckerman created the sensation seeking scale in the 70s. Some of us have an addictive need for sensational stimulation. Some of us avoid it at all costs. Most of us lie somewhere in between. And, not surprisingly, males are more likely to seek sensation through aggressive physical activity and by watching on-screen violence. Televised sports, especially high contact sports like boxing, wrestling, football and hockey all cater to the male need for physical, often violent stimulation.

Studies have found strong links between sensation seeking and addictive personalities. Those that constantly seek sensation are most likely to become addicted to cocaine (which provides a similar high by fooling the same circuits of the brain), alcohol and even gambling. In one interesting twist, some Parkinson’s patients who receive L-dopa, a therapy to replace dopamine, typically lacking in Parkinson’s, suddenly developed a powerful appetite for gambling. By altering the brain chemistry to lessen the adverse affects of their patient’s condition, the doctors unwittingly upped their need to seek sensation.

Hollywood as the Pusher

If danger provides us with a natural high, Hollywood has learned to push this hardwired hot button repeatedly and often. The action thriller is a distillation of sensation. In 60 to 120 minutes, we are treated to a buffet of sensation, all signaling our brain that it should deliver another hit. In our normal lives, few of us are in situations that necessitate the release of these neuro-chemicals more than a few times each year. There is more danger packed into a half hour of primetime TV than most of us encounter in our entire lives.

Given the condensed nature of these threatening stimuli, the brain can’t respond as fully as it would in real life situations. Because our cortex is running governor on all this, continually letting us know that this is all make-believe, the hits are dramatically modulated, providing a minor buzz of stimulation. Still, those with a need for stimulation get what they’re looking for from the average thriller. At the end of the show they feel entertained.

There is increasing concern over the long term effects of this constant stimulation. Does the violence we see of TV lead to increased violence in real life? Academic opinion is divided on this, but the balance seems to be tilted to the “yes” side. If we take a normal distribution of violent, anti-social tendencies amongst the human population (typically, these studies look at the effect of televised violence amongst children) we would have the typical bell curve, with some decidedly anti-violent and pacific, some pathologically violent and the most of us somewhere in the middle. There is mounting evidence that the flood of violent stimuli delivered through the TV set and other entertainment mediums shifts this curve to the violent side. TV violence won’t make a peaceful child suddenly violent, but it can make the child prone to violence more apt to play out their tendencies. TV seems to shift the odds in favour of violence. There is also a self-reinforcing loop here. Violent people seek out violent entertainment. Peaceful people tend to avoid it. Our choice of entertainment reinforces our natural tendencies.

Pure Violence is Not Enough for Long Term Connections

Now, if the action thriller is literally delivering a chemical high to our brain, this would seem to indicate that they would be almost irresistible entertainment choices. Fortunately, it seems that humans have slightly more complex needs than just a never ending high. If we look at thrillers in terms of long term viewer loyalty, violence alone is not enough. While a action block buster might be enough to keep us enthralled for the short term, we need more from our shows to keep us coming back season after season. Mere sensory stimulation catches our attention, but deeper connections with characters are required for emotional bonding over longer periods of time.

The entertainment industry has a long and dubious history of gratifying our sensation seeking needs. But recently, an even more potent sensation “fix” has been discovered. In a violent TV action show, we can watch but we can’t participate. This helps the brain maintain it’s cognitive balance, understanding that this is all a show, that it doesn’t represent reality. This allows us to modify the release of natural hormones and neuro-transmitters. But what happens when we have the ability to interact with these violent, imaginary scenarios? Video games up the ante by adding the very powerful element of control. I’ll explore that in the next post.

The Psychology of Entertainment: How American Idol, Survivor and Dallas Hooked Us

In this series of posts, I’ve covered off at some length why we find some things inherently funny. We’ve also talked about the importance of connecting with characters in developing a long term loyalty to the show that separates the long running hits from the one season wonders. But obviously, there is more than just comedy on TV. There’s drama, Reality TV and Action Thrillers, all dealing with the same basic elements of characterization and narrative (even Reality TV, which is really unscripted drama). With this, let’s look at how some different shows have approached the challenge of long term loyalty.

What Made Some Show Hits?

Survivor

survivor logoSurvivor was the most successful summer replacement in history. It rocketed to popularity in 2000 and was responsible for the flood of reality TV we’re still saddled with. The popularity of Survivor, however, has dropped dramatically over the past few years. One possible reason is that Survivor forces you to reestablish connections every single season. The situation is more important than the characters in Survivor. Just as we start to care about a character, they get voted off the island. We watch Survivor like an anthropologist would, intrigued by the challenge and how the human cast reacts to it, but unable to form connections that endure from season to season. The producers realized this and started to bring back past favourites for an “All Star” survivor, hoping to re-establish past connections, but by then it was too late. Our interests had moved on. The connections had been discarded. Survivor had “jumped the shark.” Other reality shows, such as Big Brother and the Apprentice have faced this same inherent “shelf life” problem. In terms of gaining long term loyalty, characters we connect with will always trump intriguing situations, for reasons I explored a few posts back.

West Wing

WestwingMy personal favorite. But as I said in an earlier post, even my degree of connection with West Wing suffered after the third season. Writer Aaron Sorkin’s scripts demanded a high degree of investment on the part of the viewer. The byzantine tangle of situations, delivered through machine gun quick, impossibly clever dialogues, was more like intellectual gymnastics than a relaxing hour in front of the tube. Earlier this week, I talked about the psychological attraction of wit. We all wish we were wittier and the characters on West Wing, thanks to Sorkin, were impossibly clever and witty. It left you breathless just trying to keep up. However, Sorkin continually delivered huge returns on that investment. For me at least, West Wing hit highs I haven’t seen since. After four seasons, Sorkin moved on. Also, the inevitable cast churn started. Perhaps we were just worn out from trying to keep up, but in it’s last 3 seasons, West Wing continually lost steam.

Other long running dramas, including ER and Dallas (technically the most successful show in history, if you look at global syndication as a measure), relied on various formulas of social connectedness. ER wrapped in our preoccupation with health (another inherently wired hot button in humans) with rich characterizations. Dallas took the soap opera primetime, offering a shallower but undeniably fascinating tangle of greed, betrayal, sex, love and occasional redemption through the actions of more sympathetic characters. Dallas was like junk food for our brains, playing to our lowest psychological denominators. It’s a path many shows have followed.

American Idol

AmericanIdolSo, in the examples above, it appears we need an ongoing narrative to keep us engaged, right? Then how do I explain the success of American Idol? There is no narrative. And just like Survivor, the cast of characters changes each season. So why is American Idol the most popular TV show in recent memory? Well, it turns out that American Idol does rely on a narrative. It relies on our narrative.

If our connection with characters provides the glue that keeps us tuning in week after week, how would I explain the success of American Idol? While we might start identifying with one particular contestant, there is no real narrative that drives American Idol. It’s a talent show. And it’s not the only online success. America’s Got Talent, Dancing with the Stars, the Susan Boyle phenomenon. What is the mechanism at play here that entertains us? Again, it seems to come down to narrative, but in this case, it’s our narrative, not the characters, that proves to be the glue.

TV Provides a Reference Point for Ourselves

Our connectedness to characters seems to rely not so much on their situations, but on our own. Somewhere deep inside, we project their fantasy on our reality. The narrative of our favorite characters have to have some hooks or bearing points that we can anchor in on. There has to be some degree of affinity. We can relate to the situation (med students watching Grey’s Anatomy) or we can relate to a character’s qualities (I’d like to be Chandler Bing’s friend). We can fantasize about being in a character’s shoes (being Jack Bauer in 24) and we can care about a character’s well being (Will Schuester has to dump his wife and hook up with Emma Pillsbury). A TV show has to give us a reason to want to live our lives vicariously through it’s characters and situations. The formula for American Idol relies on the same hooks. We want to be on stage too. It’s the same hook that made Rock Band and Guitar Hero massive best sellers amongst video games.

What connection do we have with the contestants on these massively popular talent shows? Why are talent shows inherently appealing to us? Let’s return to Susan Boyle and Britain’s Got Talent. Why did we get a chill down our spine when this frumpy Scottish spinster suddenly opened her mouth and belted it out? Why was it so deliciously satisfying when the smirk was wiped from Simon Cowell’s face? Well, it’s because we humans travel in herds. Seriously.

Monkey See, Monkey Aspire to Do

Television Britain's Got TalentWe admired Susan Boyle. We admire talent when we see it. And we especially admire talent when it’s undiscovered. Why?

Joseph Henrich and Francisco Gil-White have a theory about that. They believe admiration is like a short cut to success. And unlike other species, where social prestige comes primarily through physical aggression, humans can take many paths up the social ladder. The examples of humans achieving social status through talent or intellectual ability far outnumber those succeed through physical domination. Our brain is our greatest asset and human society has evolved to recognize our unique advantage.

When we see someone suddenly winning a crowd over, we can’t help but feel chills of admiration going down our spine. (Here’s a link to the video on YouTube, just in case you’ve forgotten the sensation. It’s been viewed almost 90 million times) Their success could be our success. They provide a new potential path in our own personal narrative, a road to prestige that we to could go down. And the appeal of the talent show format is that these are undiscovered talents. Their current social status is not so different from our own. In fact, as in Susan Boyle’s case, based on appearance alone, we initially put ourselves several rungs up the social ladder. So, if Susan could suddenly soar up in social value, our odds must be even better (ignoring for the moment that we can’t sing like her). We measure our chances against the yardstick provided by Ms. Boyle. We can readily imagine ourselves in her no-nonsense leather shoes. It’s why we are predisposed to root for the underdog. And the more “under” the dog, the bigger the cheers.

What is the Darwinian logic to this behavior? It’s not so difficult to understand. The path to social success, and all the evolutionary advantages that accrue to one who attains it, is easier if you follow in someone else’s footsteps. We are a social animal and one of the advantages of that is that we can advance faster if we learn from other’s failures and triumphs. We are hardwired to both admire, criticize and topple fallen idols (a la Tiger Woods). Reality talent shows like American Idol and America’s Got Talent take full advantage of these behavioral traits.

So, we’ve covered the required elements of the drama, the comedy and Reality TV. But so far, I still haven’t touched one genre of TV entertainment, the action show. More on that next week.

The 150 Millisecond Gap: The Timing of Brand Love

A few weeks ago, I was sitting in a meeting room at Simon Fraser University, looking at two squiggly lines on a graph in a Powerpoint slide. In fact, five of us in the room were all looking at it intently. Among the five of us, there was a PhD and a handful of Masters degrees in Neurology and Psychology. I contributed nothing to this impressive collection of academic achievement. Still, there was something on the chart that fascinated me.

SI140gapimage

The chart was the result of a neuroscanning experiment we conducted with SFU and Isabel Taake and Dr. Mario Liotti last year.  We were exploring how the brain responded to brands we like, brands we don’t like and brands we could care less about. The study was an ERP (Event Related Brain Potential) study. The idea of the study was to divide up the groups, based on brands they buy and brands they don’t buy and measure their brain waves as they’re presented with pictures of the brands with an EEG scanner. After, these waves were averaged and the averages of each group were compared with each other. What we were looking for were differences between the waves. We were looking for gaps.

It turned out we found two gaps. The brain waves are measured based on time, in millisecond increments. When we initially did the study, we were looking for something called the DM effect. This effect has been shown to represent a difference in how we encode memories and how effective we are in retrieving them later. We wanted to see if well liked brands showed different levels of brain activity when it came to memory encoding than neutral or disliked brands. The answer, as it turned out, was a qualified yes. What was most interesting, however, was the difference in the brain waves we saw when people were presented pictures of  brands they love and brands they either dislike or  feel ambivalent about. There was something going on here, and it was happening in two places. The first was happening very quickly, literally in the blink of an eye. We found our first gap right around 150 milliseconds – in just over 1/10th of a second. The second gap was a little later, at about 450 milliseconds, or about half a second.

Brands = Faces?

Previous ERP work often used faces as the visual stimuli that subjects were presented with. Researchers like working with faces because the human brain is so well attuned to responding to faces. As a stimuli, they provide plenty of signal with little noise. What researchers found is that there were significant differences in how our brains processes well known faces and unknown faces. They also found differences in how we processed smiling faces and scowling faces. And the differences in processing showed up in two places, one in the 150 millisecond range and the second at about 300 – 500 milliseconds. The first gap is what neurologists call the Vertex Positive Potential. The second is called the P300. I’ll explain what each of these means in more depth in a second.

What was interesting with this study is that we were seeing the same  thing play out when we substituted familiar brands for familiar faces. Respondents were responding to brands they liked the same way they would respond to a friendly face they recognized. So, what’s the big deal about that? And why two gaps? What was the significance of the 300 milliseconds that separate the two? Well, it’s the difference between gut instinct and rational thought. What we might have been seeing, as we stared at the projector screen, was two very different parts of the brain processing the same thought, with the first setting up the second.

The Quick Loop and the Slow Loop

Neurologists, including Joseph LeDoux and Antonio Damasio, have found that as we live our lives, our brains can respond to certain people, things and situations in two different ways.

The first is the quick and dirty loop. This expressway in our brain literally rips through the ancient, more primal part of our brain – what has popularly been called the Lizard brain (neurologists and psychologists hate this term, by the way). Why? Because if we hesitate in dangerous situations, we’re dead. So, we have a hair trigger response mechanism that alerts us to danger in a blink of an eye. How quick is this response? Well, coincidentally, it’s usually measured in the 100 to 200 millisecond range. This is the VPP, the Vertex Positive Potential. It’s an emotional processing of a stimulus, an immediate assessment of threat or reward.

Previous research (Jeffreys Takumachi 1992) found that the VPP is common when we see faces but could also be found when we looked at some objects.  Some, but not all objects. What we (and by we, I mean Isabel and Dr. Liotti) did was substitute preferred and non-preferred brands for faces. And we saw the same VPP gap. Typically, this early processing is done by the amygdala (our danger detection module) and other areas of the brain including the orbitofrontal cortex.  If you look at the map of neural activity, you’ll find more frontal activity in the “Buy” group. The brain is responding emotionally to what it is seeing and it’s doing so almost instantaneously, in the blink of an eye.

Slide17

But then there’s a slower loop that feeds the signal up to our prefrontal cortex, where there’s a more deliberate processing of the signal. If the signal turns out to be non threatening, the brain damps down the alarms and returns the brain to it’s pre-alert status. Cooler heads prevail, quite literally. The time for this more circuitous path? About half a second, give or take a few milliseconds. This more deliberate evaluation represents the second gap, the P300 gap, we saw in our averaged brain waves. This is a more deliberate evaluation of the stimulus. It’s here where our reasoning brains kick in and either contradict or reinforce the early signals of the VPP gap. If it’s a smiling face, we go beyond instant recognition and start to retrieve (from memory) our concept of the person behind the face. The same is true, I suspect, for our favorite brands. The neural map here shows the difference in scalp potential activity between the “Buy” group and the “Non-Buy” group. The heat we see is the home of brand love.

Slide19

Where Brand Love Lives

In neurological research, different methods deliver different insights. The ERP methodology we used provides accurate timing, thus the discovery of the 150 and 450 ms gaps. But fMRI scanning provides accurate tracking of the exact locations of neural activity. Another study, conducted in 2004, starts to give us some clues as to exactly where brand love lives. Dr. Read Montague and a team at Baylor University staged a rather elaborate repeat of the Coke-Pepsi Challenge, but this time, people took the challenge while they were in a fMRI scanner. I’ve written before about the study if you’re interested in more detail about how they pulled it off.  Today, what I want to talk about is where in the brain brand love lives.

Coke is one of the most beloved brands in the world. It elicits strong loyalty amongst its fans, to the point where they swear it tastes much better than it’s rival – Pepsi. Well, as Montague found, if they didn’t know what they’re drinking, this isn’t really true. Even the most fervent Coke fan often choose Pepsi as their preferred drink when they didn’t know what they were drinking. But when they knew the brand they were tasting, something very interesting happened. Suddenly, other parts of the Coke fan’s brain started lighting up.

cokestudy

The hippocampus, the left parahippocampal cortex, the midbrain and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex started lighting up. This is significant because it indicates that the brain was actually retrieving concepts and beliefs from memory (the hippocampal activity) and the retrieved concepts were being integrated into feelings of reward (the prefrontal cortical activity). The brain was enhancing the physical sensation of taste with the full strength of brand love.

So?

Perhaps we’re starting to see not only the home of brand love, but also the timing. This was why I fixated on that small gap between the squiggly lines at 150 milliseconds. It’s because this represented our immediate, visceral response to brands. Before the brain really kicks in at all, we are already passing judgement on brands. And this judgement will color everything that comes after it. It sets the stage for our subsequent brand evaluations, happening at the 450 ms gap. This is when the brain structures identified in the Baylor study start to kick in and reinforce that “blink of an eye” first impression. Brands appear to deliver a one-two punch.

We’re currently planning our follow up research for 2010. I’m not exactly sure what it will entail, but you can bet we’ll be looking much closer at those 150 and 450 ms gaps!

The Psychology of Entertainment: Men, Women and How We Process Humor

Yesterday, I talked about context and it’s impact on comedy. What makes something funny in Scotland wouldn’t necessarily be as funny in Switzerland or South Africa. If different nationalities process jokes differently, there must be other dividing lines as well, right? Yes, and the biggest one is the line that segments the sexes. Men and women have significantly different humor processing hardware. Women tend to think before laughing, monitoring the social temperature before making a judgement about what’s funny. A man’s response tends to be less deliberate, a more direct connection to our primal “humor” centres.

And it’s this divide in the senses that provides some clues on the mechanisms used to process humor. Studies have found that unless both the right and left hemispheres of the brain are fully engaged in the task of processing humor, we won’t find a joke funny. This is why you never find a joke funny if it has to be explained to you. If we use the left hemisphere (the logical side) of our brain to analyze a joke too extensively, it ceases to be humorous. The suddenness of the gap closing, the elimination of incongruity and the feeling of mastery is no longer there. You’ve taken too long a road to the punchline and the humor got lost on the way.

In humans, humor seems to be a balancing act between the left and right hemisphere. The left gets the facts in order, and the right seems to provide the synthesis that produces the humor. Neurologists have found that patients with lesions to their right hemisphere can understand the “logic” of a joke but simply won’t find any humor in it. Knowing that an interplay between the hemispheres is required to produce humor explains the differing responses from men and women when it comes to what’s funny. Women have more robust wiring between the right and left hemispheres.  The important thing, however, is that we process humor subconsciously. As I said yesterday, if we stop to think too long about a joke, it ceases to be funny.

The Difference between Slapstick and Wit

three_stoogesYesterday, I talked about what makes a baby laugh. In effect, I stripped humor down to it’s essential building blocks. But, as we get older, we get more sophisticated. We move beyond the universal foundations of humor and start to develop tastes. Some of us love Oscar Wilde. Some of us love Tyler Perry. So, what is the difference between high brow and low brow humor?

Why do we laugh when other people hurt themselves? Why was it funny when Larry slapped Moe, or poked Curly in the eyes? What kind of sick, sadistic bastards are we? The Germans even coined a word for it: Schadenfreude – which translates literally as “joy from adversity”.

There is a double punch-line to slapstick comedy. The first comes from the fact that laughter and danger live in the same parts of our brain, as I explained in yesterday’s post. We have an immediate and complex reaction to physical calamity. It surprises us, which triggers the appropriate part of the brain, which in turn responds with a double hit of fear and laughter. Which side of the dividing line we end up depends on the seriousness of the calamity. Minor bumps on the head (when they happen to others), slips, falls, knocks and bumps can all trigger laughter as an immediate response. If the damage is more seriousness, our laughter quickly turns to concern. Remember yesterday when we looked at how a 5 month old’s laughter is triggered by conquerable danger, in a playful setting? These same mechanisms stay in place throughout our lives and partially explain our response to other’s physical misfortunes. In comedy, Slapstick is stylized so that we can be certain nobody is getting hurt too badly. Facial expressions, sound effects and mock moans all signal that this is just good fun. Look at the picture of the Three Stooges I included with this post. No one could look at the expressions on those faces and make the mistake of thinking that there’s anything remotely serious about the ear twisting that’s going on. We distance the physical violence from the result of that violence. It’s the entire premise of the game show Wipeout, as well  as 85% of the clips on America’s Funniest Home Videos.

The Social Side of Humor

But there’s more to it than just a mixed up fear/laughter response. Humor depends on our social radar. It depends on how we position ourselves in our social network. This is where the Schadenfreude part of the equation plays out. We find it funny when  Wile E. Coyote falls off a cliff but we don’t when the same fate befalls the Road Runner. Why? Because Wile is the bad guy and the Road Runner is the good guy. Archetypes are important in comedy. This goes back to Aristotle’s rules for drama: bad things can happen to bad people, good things are supposed to happen to good people, but when those two get mixed up, it’s a lot less satisfying to us. Schadenfreude works best when the good/bad roles are clearly defined.

So, how do we define Schadenfreude for men vs women? This is another place where males and females diverge in their opinions of what we find funny. In men, it typically plays out in terms of physical violence. We men laugh when others get hurt. With women, it’s more often defined as a social comeuppance. Women laugh at social ostracization.

Tom Green vs Kate Hudson: Guy’s Movies & Chick Flicks

Let’s visit the 6th grade school yard at lunch time. Over in this corner we have a group of guys laughing. What are they laughing about? Chances are, it’s something to do with some type of bodily emission or various parts of the male and female anatomy and how they might interact. Guys are, on the average, predictably base about what we find funny. And much as I wish we outgrew this, a quick glance down what’s currently playing at the local Cineplex will probably prove me right.

But there, over in the other corner, is a group of girls laughing. What are they laughing about? Chances are it’s not about farting or doody. It’s more likely laughter at the expense of some poor unfortunate distant member of their social circle. Social status is a key ingredient in comedies aimed at women, usually with a romantic twist thrown in.

High Brow Humor

Do we ever rise above the limitations of our base instincts when it comes to humor? Thankfully, yes. Many of us appreciate wit for it’s own sake. So, what is it about the witty remark that we find so appealing?

Perhaps the answer can be found in how we respond to wit. A witty remark almost never elicits a belly laugh. Witty remarks cause us to smile. A chuckle is usually the most we can hope for. Belly laughs are usually reserved for more physical types of comedy. Why the difference? Let’s return to our 5 month old. Babies both smile and laugh. They laugh during rough housing and more robust play sessions. They smile when they recognize the face of their mother or a grandparent. Laughter seems to come from our danger/humor circuit. Smiling comes from a more social place in our brain. In chimpanzees, a smile signals social submission. So, what does this have to do with wit?

We admire wit. We aspire to be witty. We identify with the mental acuity that typifies a witty person. We all want to be Chandler Bing, Conan O’Brien or, in an earlier age, Dorothy Parker. Wit is a signal of social station. Again, we find that what we find funny and what we find socially desirably are inextricably linked.

Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words. – Dorothy Parker

Now that we’ve looked at what we find funny, on the next post I’ll return to a question I started to ask: what separates a TV hit from a miss?

The Psychology of Entertainment: What We Find Funny

Did you hear the one about….

A rabbi, a priest and a prostitute walk into a bar….

Knock Knock….

A lot of decidedly unfunny academic papers have been written about what makes us laugh (the one I referred to for this post was  Robert Storey, “Comedy, Its Theorists and the Evolutionary Perspective,” Criticism 38.3 (1996), Questia – what a hoot!). Freud has his own ideas that involved a sudden release of psychic energy, sort of like a mental steam release valve. It’s a sign of the dryness of the academic world to note that there is vigorous academic debate about what we find funny.

At the risk of examining an inherent human trait that’s probably better left alone, if we’re going to look at the psychology of entertainment, we have to look at what we find funny. And to begin, let’s look at what makes a baby laugh.

Getting a Baby to Laugh

babylaughBabies get humor at a pretty early age. Most babies start laughing in their first half year of life. So, obviously, there must be some fundamental qualities of humor. In understanding what we find funny, it’s helpful to look at what makes a 5 month old baby laugh.

Think about how you get a baby to laugh. A game of Peekaboo is usually effective. Tickling and gentle rough housing can usually elicit a chuckle. A adult face zooming into close proximity while babbling verbal nonsense also seems to do the trick.

Now, if we look closely at each of these activities, we start to realize there’s a macabre and twisted underbelly to humor.

Peekaboo generally works best with the primary care givers, the parents. The closer the adult is to the baby, the more likely you’ll get  a smile or laugh. But the game basically mimics the disappearance of the person closest to the baby and then brings them back. Now you see me, now you don’t, and now you see me again.

Tickling and rough housing is a toned down mock attack. The same is true when we jam our faces into that of an infant and spout baby talk. We get them to laugh by scaring the bejesus out of them. Is it any wonder that babies seem to be balanced on the fine line between laughing and crying during most of these activities? It doesn’t take much to slip from humor to fear. As the baby gets tired or if a stranger tries the same game as the parent, you’re more likely to get tears than laughter.

The Primal Building Blocks of Humor

This starts to tell us what the primal elements of humor might be. For a baby, we take a threatening situation and down play it dramatically, letting the baby feel that it’s just play. The baby picks up signals from us that there is no real threat, leaving them free to enjoy the game.  In this benign version of toned down danger, the baby builds coping skills for the world around them. This mastery of our environments, our ability to align things with a sense what’s right and achieve congruity, continues to play a critical role in what we find humorous as we get older.

By the way, humans aren’t the only animals that laugh. Other primates, such as chimpanzees, also laugh, and there the dividing line between hostility and humor is almost non existent. The toothy grin in a primate is not too many steps removed from baring your teeth in preparation for battle. And a smile is the primates sign for submission to a superior.

This line between danger and pain is one that humans continue to ride through our lives, and some enjoy the journey more than others. Some smile and laugh like idiots on a roller coaster (myself included), others are paralyzed in fear. But the difference between the two extremes is not as far as you might think. Research seems to show that both feelings originate from the same centres of the brain and it’s our threshold for sensation stimulation that separates laughter from screaming.

The Psychology of a Joke

The jokes we find funny can tell much about us as individuals. Again, jokes rely on closing gaps of incongruity, a sudden revelation that suddenly allows a situation that highlights a discrepancy to make sense. We master the situation when we “get” the punchline, the source of the humor.

But the funniness of a joke depends on our frame of mind. What we find incongruous and the things that offer a pleasing solution to that incongruity differ from person to person. A highly religious person may be offended by a dirty joke that would be gang busters amongst a bunch of guys having a drink after work. The different view of context and competing emotions of disgust render the joke unfunny to more “upright” recipients.

This dependency on cultural context can help explain why jokes seldom translate well from culture to culture. The more the joke relies on a frame of reference steeped in the uniqueness of a culture, the less likely it will be to successfully cross borders. In 2002 a study was done to find the funniest joke in the world. The winner was:

A couple of New Jersey hunters are out in the woods when one of them falls to the ground. He doesn’t seem to be breathing, his eyes are rolled back in his head. The other guy whips out his cell phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps to the operator: “My friend is dead! What can I do?” The operator, in a calm, soothing voice, says: “Just take it easy. I can help. First, let’s make sure he’s dead.” There is a silence, then a shot is heard. The guy’s voice comes back on the line. He says: “Okay, now what?”

The classic elements of humor are all here. The initial situation, the set up, the twist and the sudden understanding of the twist, resulting in, apparently, universal laughter. Notice that the context is so broad and independent of a cultural context that anyone, anywhere, should “get it”. There is nothing culturally specific about this joke.

But now let’s look at what the winner in the US was:

A man and a friend are playing golf one day at their local golf course. One of the guys is about to chip onto the green when he sees a long funeral procession on the road next to the course. He stops in mid-swing, takes off his golf cap, closes his eyes, and bows down in prayer. His friend says: “Wow, that is the most thoughtful and touching thing I have ever seen. You truly are a kind man.” The man then replies: “Yeah, well we were married 35 years.”

The humor in this joke depends on understanding how fanatical some males are about golf, a context familiar in the US, not as familiar in Sri Lanka or Zimbabwe.

The funniest joke in Canada revealed a nastier side of our culture:

When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ballpoint pens would not work in zero gravity. To combat the problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 billion to develop a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to 300 C. The Russians used a pencil.

Much as we Canadians love our neighbors to the south, we also love to see the U.S. get it’s comeuppance. The humor of this joke depends on a shared cultural perception of Americans “overdoing” it on the world stage. Canada’s reputation as a source of world class comedians and satirists has been honed by this love/hate relationship with the U.S. Perhaps it’s not coincidental that this same tendency has produced some of the world’s best known observers of human behavior and social peculiarities, including Malcolm Gladwell, Steven Pinker and Marshall McLuhan.

In tomorrow’s post, we’ll talk about how we process humor and why we can laugh at both Oscar Wilde and Three’s Company.