Scientific American Mind September - October 2016
Scientific American Mind September - October 2016
Scientific American Mind September - October 2016
MIND
BEHAVIOR • BR AIN SCIENCE • INSIGHTS
September/October 2016
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Mind.ScientificAmerican.com
NEW INSIGHTS
ON SLEEP
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S PE CIA L R E P O R T
WORK
HOW
VACATIONS
BOOST YOUR
SMARTER, BRAIN
MIND
™
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS:
Gareth Cook, Robert Epstein, Ferris Jabr,
Emily Laber-Warren, Karen Schrock Simring,
Victoria Stern, Sandra Upson I love my job, but research suggests I’m in the minority. A 2015 sur-
COPY DIRECTOR: Maria-Christina Keller vey by the nonprofit Conference Board found that only 48.3 percent of Americans
SENIOR COPY EDITOR: Daniel C. Schlenoff are satisfied at work. This has not always been the case. In the late 1980s and mid-
COPY EDITOR: Aaron Shattuck
PREPRESS AND QUALITY MANAGER:
1990s, job satisfaction hovered around 60 percent. To make matters worse, Amer-
Silvia De Santis icans spend an awful lot of time at their less than joyful jobs: according to Gallup,
MANAGING PRODUCTION EDITOR: Richard Hunt an average of 47 hours a week for full-time workers —nearly a full day beyond the
SENIOR PRODUCTION EDITOR: Michelle Wright 40-hour week. What does it take to find more fulfillment, less stress and greater
SENIOR PRODUCT MANAGER: Angela Cesaro productivity on the job? That’s the question we set out to answer in our special
PRODUCT MANAGER: Cianna Kulik
DIGITAL PRODUCTION MANAGER: Kerrissa Lynch
report, “Work Smarter, Work Happier,” which begins on page 31.
WEB PRODUCTION ASSOCIATES: Many modern employees worry that robots and artificial intelligence threat-
Nick Bisceglia, Ian Kelly en their livelihood. Computer scientist Sandy Pentland of M.I.T. turns this idea
EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATOR: Ericka Skirpan on its head by showing how technological devices can actually foster the most
SENIOR SECRETARY: Maya Harty
human part of labor: the social connections essential to teamwork and innova-
SENIOR PRODUCTION MANAGER: Christina Hippeli
ADVERTISING PRODUCTION CONTROLLER:
tion. “In the laboratory and in real life, we have found that these aids can help co-
Carl Cherebin workers communicate better, find greater success and enjoy work more,” he
PRODUCTION CONTROLLER: Brittany DeSalvo writes in “Betting on People Power.”
BOARD OF ADVISERS: In “No Workplace Like Home,” journalist Rachel Nuwer explores the grow-
HAL ARKOWITZ: Associate Professor of Psychology, ing trend of telecommuting, examining research that shows how distance work-
University of Arizona
ers can exceed their office-bound peers in both productivity and job satisfaction.
STEPHEN J. CECI: Professor of Developmental
Psychology, Cornell University And in “Give Me a Break,” contributing editor Ferris Jabr looks at solutions to
R. DOUGLAS FIELDS: Neuroscientist, Bethesda, Md. what may be the single biggest stressor for the modern desk jockey: the failure to
SANDRO GALEA: Dean and Professor, unplug from the always on, always connected workplace.
Boston University School of Public Health As much time as we invest on the job, we spend even more hours sleeping. Or
S. ALEXANDER HASLAM:
trying to sleep. This is an active area of research for brain scientists, and both our
C O V E R P H O T O I L L U S T R AT I O N A N D T H I S PA G E : A A R O N G O O D M A N
MIND CONTENTS
F E A T U R E S
32 38 44
Betting on No Workplace Give Me a Break
People Power Like Home A wealth of psychologi-
Smart technology is Telecommuting, a cal research shows
notorious for replacing growing trend, can that mental downtime
workers, but it can also boost everything from is vital for productivity 64 B O O K E XC E R P T Generation Z:
be used to enhance profitability to personal and health. Some Online and at Risk?
human collaboration happiness— provided companies are finally For teens, more followers online may
and innovation. it’s done right. starting to listen. mean fewer friends in real life — and a
BY ALEX “SANDY” BY RACHEL NUWER BY FERRIS JABR path to psychological problems later on.
PENTLAND BY NICHOLAS K ARDARAS
18 20 22
D
M N
A ? A
R L
K
7 27 74 76
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MIND
BEHAVIOR • BRAIN SCIENCE • I NSI GHTS
instead you chose to reinforce the fear
that is expressed in our national news
media about Muslims.
PRESIDENT: Dean Sanderson Virginia McAfee
E XECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT: Michael Florek
Boulder County, Colorado
E XECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, GLOBAL ADVERTISING
AND SPONSORSHIP: Jack Laschever
PUBLISHER AND VICE PRESIDENT: Jeremy A. Abbate THE TROUBLE WITH SHAME
ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT, BUSINESS DE VELOPMENT: In “For Shame,” Diana Kwon mentions a
Diane McGarvey teenager posting “raunchy photographs
VICE PRESIDENT, CONSUMER MARKE TING:
Christian Dorbandt
to the Web.” There is a lot of inherent
DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL DIGITAL DE VELOPMENT: bias in the choice of that adjective! Raun-
Richard Zinken chy? Sexual or provocative, perhaps —
ASSOCIATE CONSUMER MARKE TING DIRECTOR: and perhaps not at all a turn-on to count-
Catherine Bussey
less people.
SENIOR CONSUMER MARKE TING MANAGER:
Lou Simone I have a Ph.D. in human sexuality,
CONSUMER MARKE TING OPERATIONS MANAGER: and I have lectured internationally on sex
Kay Floersch education and behaviors. Unfortunately,
MARKE TING DIRECTOR: Diane Schube
slut shaming, fat shaming and other
SALES DE VELOPMENT MANAGER: David Tirpack
PROMOTION ART DIRECTOR: Maria Cruz-Lord
slams are still rampant, even in our more
MARKE TING RESE ARCH DIRECTOR: Rick Simone DANGEROUS BELIEFS accepting times. Raunchy— or was it ar-
ONLINE MARKE TING PRODUCT MANAGER: Zoya Lysak In “Fueling Extremes,” Stephen D. Reicher tistic and beautiful? Is the self-awareness
MARKE TING AND CUSTOMER SERVICE COORDINATOR: and S. Alexander Haslam repeatedly lay of the girl who knowingly posted her pic-
Christine Kaelin blame on the victims, as in, for instance: tures simply not okay for the author?
HE AD OF COMMUNICATIONS, USA: Rachel Scheer
“counterterrorism efforts in many coun- Safe, sane and consensual sex is okay.
COMMUNICATIONS AND PRESS OFFICER:
David Barnstone tries give little consideration to how our It should not be the object of shame, guilt
SENIOR INTEGRATED SALES MANAGERS: responses may be upping the ante.” or someone else passing judgment.
Jay Berfas, Matt Bondlow Unfortunately, pacifism will not Robert Berend
CUSTOM PUBLISHING EDITOR: Lisa Pallatroni
work with the Islamic extremists who Beverly Hills, Calif.
RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS MANAGER: Felicia Ruocco
believe that it is their mission to establish
SENIOR ADMINISTRATOR, E XECUTIVE SERVICES:
May Jung a Muslim caliphate on earth and that all Kwon’s article seems to confuse shame and
nonbelievers must be killed. All of the humiliation. Shame is a basic and prima-
HOW TO CONTACT US love and understanding that the authors ry human emotion— we are born with it.
FOR ADVERTISING INQUIRIES: would like us to bring to these folks will Humiliation is what you feel when some-
Scientific American Mind not deter them, for one moment, from one has “shamed” you, publicly, but it’s a
1 New York Plaza, Suite 4500
New York, NY 10004-1562 committing horrific acts that they believe different emotion than basic shame or a
212-451-8893 advance the caliphate. version of shame with the added negative
fax: 212-754-1138
FOR SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES:
Edward Graf emotions of anger (at being disrespected)
U.S. and Canada: 888-262-5144 Alexandria, Va. and/or fear (of social rejection).
Outside North America:
Scientific American Mind In cases where shame leads to a pos-
PO Box 5715, Harlan, IA 51593 I was disappointed that your three articles itive outcome, it is because shame has
515-248-7684
www.ScientificAmerican.com/Mind about terrorism focused only on the ac- arisen on its own after the person has
TO ORDER REPRINTS: tions of groups such as ISIS and did not had time alone to process and reflect. In
Reprint Department acknowledge the greater threat of other situations where shame leads to defen-
Scientific American Mind
1 New York Plaza, Suite 4500 sources of terrorism. Overwhelmingly, sive digging in, despair or even suicide, it
New York, NY 10004-1562
212-451-8877
those who have committed terrorist at- is because someone else has tried to make
fax: 212-451-8252 tacks in the U.S. and Europe are not the person feel shame.
reprints@sciam.com
Muslims. You should have mentioned all Shame cannot be commanded or de-
FOR PERMISSION TO COPY OR
REUSE MATERIAL FROM SCIAMMIND: of the homegrown terrorists in the U.S.— manded— because then it is humiliation
Permissions Department for instance, the recent terrorist acts in instead, and humiliation is toxic. Trying
Scientific American Mind
1 New York Plaza, Suite 4500 Colorado Springs, in which a Planned to control someone else’s behavior by
New York, NY 10004-1562 Parenthood clinic was attacked. manipulating his or her emotions almost
212-451-8546
www.ScientificAmerican.com/permissions You had the opportunity to make a never leads to anything positive or con-
Please allow three to six weeks more scientific statement about who the structive. An obvious analogy: I cannot
for processing.
terrorists that really threaten us are, and make you love me. Most of us get that
days to be quick, personally. Why not be- tion rests on studies such as the 2004 Scientific American Mind
1 New York Plaza, Suite 4500
gin immediate psychological counseling Treatment of Adolescents with Depres- New York, NY 10004-1562
in conjunction with drugs? At the very sion Study. In this study of 439 youths, 212-451-8200
MindLetters@sciam.com
least, the man’s anxiety may have been 109 were given fluoxetine (Prozac). Study TO BE CONSIDERED FOR PUBLICATION,
assuaged while awaiting the effective- conclusions reveal that in the short term, LETTERS REGARDING THIS ISSUE
MUST BE RECEIVED BY OCTOBER 15, 2016.
ness of Berman’s pending psychotropic combined treatment of CBT and fluox-
ILLUSTRATION BY TKTKTK
The Science of
Restless Nights >
M I N D. S C I E N T I F I C A M E R I C A N .C O M SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND 7
Trouble Sleeping?
I L L U S T R AT I O N S B Y E L L E N W E I N S T E I N
AVERAGE
AVERAGE SLEEP
BEDTIME DURATION
Australia 8.0223
New Zealand 8.0667
Who Gets the Belgium 8.0217
pants of all ages rated the images. “Exercise some caution when posting a selfie,” says
The researchers found that people who Daniel Re, a researcher at the University of Toronto and
regularly take selfies thought that they the paper’s primary author. “It might not be perceived the
looked more attractive and likable in their way you intend.” — Matthew Hutson
ZOBRIST CUBE
is also linked to her son. So she may call
TM
her daughter by her son’s name.
In general, the study found that under-
graduates were almost as likely as old
people to make this mistake and men as 20,000 Puzzles in a Box!
likely as women. Older people and women
33 POLYCUBE PIECES & 52 PAGE CODE BOOK
made the mistake slightly more often,
Deffler says, but that may be because
grandparents have more grandchildren to Never get bored by a cube assembly puzzle
mix up than parents have children. Also, again. Each code in the code book specifies
mothers may call on their children more a different set of pieces that assemble into
a cube. The codes are sorted by difficulty
T I F FA N Y B E U C H E R
M I N D. S C I E N T I F I C A M E R I C A N .C O M
S A N D R O D I C A R L O D A R S A G e t t y I m a g e s ; I M A G E F O R I L L U S T R AT I O N P U R P O S E S O N LY
shoff and Grogan-Kaylor also wanted to address two concerns lished of the longitudinal studies on this issue; when he did, the
often raised about the body of research linking spanking to relation between spanking and mental health problems was
childhood problems. The first is that much of it has evaluated much smaller than it had appeared without these controls in
the effects of physical punishment in general, without homing place. As a further demonstration of the importance of careful
in on the effects of spanking specifically— and because physi- statistical controls, Robert Larzelere, a psychologist at Okla-
cal punishment can include tactics such as hitting with objects, homa State University, and his colleagues reported in a 2010
pinching and biting, this “lumping problem” may ultimately study that grounding and also psychotherapy are linked just as
exaggerate spanking’s risks. The second concern is that many strongly to bad behavior as spanking is but that all the associ-
published studies are “cross sectional,” which means that they ations disappear once controls are used.
evaluate the effects of spanking by collecting data at a single Still, a number of individual studies have found associa-
point in time, making determinations of cause and effect dif- tions between spanking and negative outcomes, even after con-
ficult. A cross-sectional study might, for instance, find that ag- trolling for preexisting behaviors. Thus, Gershoff says that in
gressive 10-year-olds were more likely than docile 10-year-olds spite of the lingering controversy, the safest approach parents
to have been spanked as toddlers, but that does not mean that can take is not to spank their kids. “Studies continue to find
spanking made them aggressive. They may have been spanked that spanking predicts negative behavior changes — there are
because they were acting out back then, too. no studies showing that kids improve,” she says. In other
To confront these issues, Gershoff and Grogan-Kaylor did words, not a shred of data suggests spanking actually helps
several things. First, they limited their meta-analysis to stud- kids become better adjusted— and with the large body of work
ies that evaluated the effects of spanking, slapping and hitting suggesting it might do harm, why take the chance?
children without the use of objects and found that spanking is — Melinda Wenner Moyer
“Extraordinary.”
Although most investigations have focused on adults, new evidence indicates that
exposure to urban environments early in life — being born or growing up in a city— mat-
ters most. To look more closely at this critical stage of life, a group led by Helen Fisher, —Nature
a psychiatrist at King’s College London, and Candice Odgers, a psychologist at Duke
University, conducted a longitudinal study involving 2,232 twin children in the U.K. when
they were ages five and 12. Half the kids at each age lived in cities. The investigators “Brain Storms is well
measured psychotic symptoms by conducting in-depth interviews with the children at
age 12 to determine whether they had experienced hallucinations or delusions.
worth checking out,
Their analysis revealed that growing up in the city nearly doubled the likelihood of
whether you are a new or old patient,
psychotic symptoms at age 12 and that exposure to crime, along with low social cohe- a significant other of someone with
sion (that is, a lack of closeness and supportiveness among neighbors), were the big- Parkinson’s disease, or simply a
gest risk factors. Although most kids who have psychotic symptoms will not develop curious reader.”
schizophrenia as adults, psychotic incidents can predict a wide range of mental health —Anna Tan, Parkinson’s News Today
problems, including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and substance abuse.
Complicating the matter, schizophrenia is a highly heritable disorder, meaning
genetic factors may also contribute. One process that might be occurring is social drift, “Uplifting and deeply
whereby people with mental illness tend to move into poor city neighborhoods with
substandard health care. In a recent study, published in May in Translational Psychia- informative.”
try, a team led by researchers at the University of Oxford assessed genetic and envi- —Doug Clifton, The Miami Herald
ronmental influences in three different cohorts of Swedish individuals: more than two
million siblings, 1,355 twin pairs, and molecular genetic data collected from blood
samples in another group of twins. They found that the risk of living in a deprived neigh-
“A story that unfolds
borhood in adulthood was heritable and associated with an increased genetic risk for like a confounding
mystery, replete with missteps,
schizophrenia. The authors believe previous studies failed to account enough for this
familial confounding— although other experts disagree. One point of contention is that
the new study looked at adults, whereas much existing work has shown that the city’s promising leads, red herrings and
influence in early life makes the biggest impact. amazing discoveries.”
Scientists will likely need to combine the hereditary and environmental factors to
—David Takami, The Seattle Times
understand how city life truly affects mental health. “Emphasizing the role of genes
over the environment— or vice versa — is an overly reductionist approach to the science
SCIENCE MATTERS
and ignores the fact that both sets of factors are relevant to psychosis onset,” says
James Kirkbride, a psychiatric epidemiologist at University College London who was
not involved in the new studies. “No one is denying genetic factors, overall, contribute
GE T T Y IMAGES
a greater extent to risk, but of the two, only environmental influences can be amelio-
rated currently.” According to Kirkbride, the science confirms that efforts to reduce the
negative impact of urban living should focus on disadvantaged neighborhoods, where
books.scientificamerican.com
the cycle of poor mental health may persist across generations. — Diana Kwon
Scientific American is a registered trademark of Nature America, Inc.
G E T T Y I M A G E S; I M A G E S F O R I L L U S T R AT I O N P U R P O S E S O N LY
of your mind and carry on with the chat. Now correctly if it had been presented between
a recent study in Nature Communications suppression tasks as opposed to recall tasks.
suggests that trying to banish that memory In another experiment described in the ramp up and down. In that process, other in -
may cause you to forget the details of your same paper, the researchers used functional formation that you’d like to remember later
conversation more quickly than you would MRI to look at participants’ brain activity dur- may get lost as well.”
have otherwise. ing retrieval and suppression. They discov- Jesse Rissman, assistant professor in
In the study, participants started by mem- ered that suppression subdued activity in the department of psychology at the Univer-
orizing a number of word pairs. Researchers their hippocampus, a brain area responsible sity of California, Los Angeles, says he is fas-
then showed them one word from the pair. The for both forming new memories and recalling cinated by the results of the study, yet he
participants had to either retrieve or suppress old ones. This dampening may hinder the abil- adds that it would be hard to test its real-
the other. In between some retrieval/suppres- ity to register new experiences occurring at world implications.
sion tasks, the researchers showed the sub- that moment. “This area of the brain doesn’t The findings could explain why some peo-
jects unrelated pictures of objects in an unex- have a quick on or off switch that you can sim- ple report learning issues after a traumatic
pected setting (say, a peacock in a parking lot). ply toggle back and forth,” explains lead experience —if they often try to suppress bad
Later the team surprised the participants author Justin Hulbert, a cognitive psycholo- memories, they might hinder their brain’s
with a memory test in which they were shown gist at Bard College. “It takes some time to ability to form new ones. — Dinsa Sachan
says, “what we found was one of the volatile compounds in the monitor the effects of their medication and give advance warn-
cleaning solution in the hospital.” Every patient had indeed ex- ing of attacks. The new sensor he is developing with collabora-
haled it—but it had nothing directly to do with the illness. tors would plug into a cell phone and use an app to report on ni-
Car exhaust also shows up in people’s breath, it turns out. tric oxide levels. “Your phone,” Dweik says, “would become the
And other factors can muddy the waters: microbes that live in the device. That’s the future.” —Veronique Greenwood
O
O
UR
A GUIDE T
WORLD
How to Be a Better
voter
Some pundits say that this election has
turned everything we thought we knew
about U.S. politics on its head. I tend to
agree more with those who note that divi-
siveness and bombastic attacks have
always been a part of presidential races.
Consider the election of 1800, when the
campaigns of John Adams and Thomas
Jefferson traded accusations that one had
a “hideous hermaphroditical character” and
the other was “the son of a half-breed Indian
squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.”
What does feel different this election cycle
is the level of emotion stirred up among vot-
ers. Violence at rallies; protests galore; fam-
ilies at one another’s throats on Facebook.
(Or is that just my family?) Strong emotion
doesn’t always make for good decisions. It’s
time to take a deep breath, clear our heads
and learn how to cast our votes well.
M A G OZ ( i l l u s t r a t i o n ); PA U L PA N TA Z E S C U © i S t o c k . c o m ( g l o b e )
ter informed.” But political science studies
ing, anger or bias.” That can be tough to do, what they’re saying,” Shore says. have found that a majority of Americans
however, because a good politician knows
#3 Watch the next debate with your are ignorant of some pretty basic political
exactly how to push our emotional buttons, knowledge such as actual trends in crime or
eyes closed. A recent study by
says Leslie Shore, a communications ex- unemployment or whether the economy is
Joan Y. Chiao, then at Northwestern Univer-
pert who teaches effective listening at St. doing well or not. You can think of casting
sity, a founder of the new field of cultural
Mary’s University of Minnesota: “Word a “bad” vote as being a bit like air pollution,
neuroscience, found that voters perceive
choice can be very specifically used to in-
male candidates as more competent and he says. “If you drive an inefficient car and
duce a response in the listener.” Strong
dominant than female ones, based on facial pollute a lot, your individual contribution
emotion, however, can interfere with our
features alone. What’s more, voters of both isn’t that big of a deal. But if we all do that,
ability to think critically.
genders tend to prefer physically attractive it is.” Not everyone may agree with the idea
#2 Don’t get all your news from female candidates, whereas attractiveness that a good citizen should abstain from vot-
social media. Most of us have doesn’t matter for male ones. Most of us ing if he or she can’t cast a “good” vote, but
unfollowed, unfriended or muted contacts like to think that we won’t let outdated gen- it resonates with me. Here’s hoping we take
on Facebook, Twitter and other networks der stereotypes affect our vote, but it’s our responsibility to heart and endeavor to
because their political views make us mad. worth a self-check anyhow. do our civic duty well. — Sunny Sea Gold
in Psychosomatic Medicine. Women with death from infection. In men, a link was
a strong sense of humor were found to found only for the risk of death from in-
live longer in spite of illness, especially fection— those with high humor scores
cardiovascular disease and infection. had a 74 percent reduced risk. The gen-
Mirthful men seem to be protected der differences could be due to a slight
against infection. decline in humor scores as the men aged, When these hormones, such as cortisol,
Norwegian researchers reported the authors suggest. No association was are chronically elevated, they suppress
findings from a 15-year study on the link found for the social and affective compo- immune functions.
between sense of humor and mortality nents of humor. Although there is a genetic compo-
among 53,556 women and men in their The cognitive component is a fairly nent that determines sense of humor, it is
country. The team assessed the cogni- stable aspect of personality and may in- also developed through socialization. “I
L U C Y L A M B R I E X G e t t y I m a g e s (m a n)
tive, social and affective components of fluence the way individuals attribute expect that children who lack adult mod-
humor using a validated questionnaire, meaning to everyday experiences, says els for the use of humor as a coping re-
and examined death from specific condi- study co-author Sven Svebak, a profes- source in the face of challenges are less
tions: heart disease, infection, cancer and sor emeritus of neuromedicine at the likely to activate their sense of humor to
chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Norwegian University of Science and cope with everyday life when they grow
The findings show that for women, Technology. In this way, it may buffer up,” he says. But if you had a humorless
high scores on humor’s cognitive compo- against conflict in social interactions childhood, never fear—studies show peo-
nent were associated with 48 percent less and overall stress, preventing the escala- ple can learn to embrace the absurdity of
risk of death from all causes, a 73 per- tion of stress hormones, Svebak says. life at any age. —Tori Rodriguez
M I N D. S C I E N T I F I C A M E R I C A N .C O M S C I E N T I F I C A M E R I C A N M I N D 17
Folk Illusions
What schoolyard tricks reveal
about young minds
I L L U S T R AT I O N S B Y S T E V E N H A R R I N G T O N ; S E A N M C C A B E ( M a r t i n e z - C o n d e a n d M a c k n i k )
Because Susana was so focused on her was stronger in the nondominant arm and more striking in men (supporting previous obser-
vations that women have greater sensitivity to touch). They proposed that the phenomenon
arm, she had failed to notice Iago touch-
might be partially explained by the late firing, or “afterdischarge,” of cortical somatosensory
ing a different part of her body. The trick neurons in response to specific signals from skin mechanoreceptors that are driven by slow-
reminded us of the tactics used by theat- moving tactile stimuli.
CHURCH BELLS
PSYCHOLOGY
Getting Out
the Vote
Behavioral research offers several
proven strategies for boosting turnout
on Election Day
By Supriya Syal and Dan Ariely
by making a plan relative to people who an experiment that used people’s desire from 31st to 19th place out of 34 devel-
did not receive a phone call. (The average to shape or conform to a worthy self- oped countries in a Pew Research Cen-
effectiveness of commercial phone identity, that is, the identity of “some- ter analysis.
banks, assessed from dozens of studies, one who votes.”
is about one percentage point.) In a study published in 2011, psy- To Vote or Not to Vote
chologists at Stanford University and Although tackling political barriers
Everyone Else Is Doing It Harvard presented would-be voters in to voting remains critical, the great
Conventional wisdom (and practice) the 2008 presidential election in Cali- strength of these behavioral interven-
suggests that we could convince people to fornia and in the 2009 gubernatorial tions lies in their ability to overwhelm
vote by stressing that their particular bal- election in New Jersey with a preelection obstacles by catalyzing citizen motiva-
lot is very important because not many survey that framed voting as either an tion. And for people who do not vote be-
other people are voting. Yet findings in
behavioral science indicate that most of
us are motivated by the desire to conform
to the social norm—meaning we are more
PROMPTING VOTERS TO PLAN WHEN, WHERE AND
likely to do what most people are doing. HOW THEY WOULD GET TO A POLLING PLACE IS FAR
Two get-out-the-vote field experi-
MORE EFFECTIVE THAN A GENERIC REMINDER.
ments during the 2005 general election in
New Jersey and the 2006 primary elec-
tion in California tested these hypothe-
ses. They found that individuals were expression of self-identity (“How im- cause they believe one person’s ballot
much more motivated to vote when they portant is it to you to be a voter?”) or cannot change election outcomes, be-
believed lots of other people were voting simply an activity (“How important is it havioral science also offers a reason why
compared with when they thought rela- to you to vote?”). In both cases, partici- voting is important for individuals.
tively few others were voting. pants completed the survey the day be- Research has found that in addition
In another field experiment run by fore or the morning of the election. to signaling who we are to others, our
researchers at Yale University and the Being “a voter,” one might argue, is actions tell us something about our-
University of Northern Iowa during the about who you are as an upstanding cit- selves — shaping our own preferences
2006 primary election in Michigan, po- izen — a part of your identity that feels and beliefs. From this perspective, peo-
tential voters received direct mail noting good to embrace and act on. The act of ple who do not vote are not merely ab-
that both they and their neighbors voting is simply that, an action, and one staining from the democratic process in
would be informed of who had voted af- that anyone can, in principle, take. The one instance. They are also “telling”
ter the election. Amazingly, this led to results showed a remarkable 10.9 per- themselves: “I don’t care about politics.”
an 8.1 percent increase in turnout— one centage point increase in turnout among Moving forward, they may also become
of the most successful get-out-the-vote people in the “voter” identity condition. less interested in civic rights, local gov-
tactics studied to date. Conventional di- Such an increase nationally could ernance, foreign affairs, and so on. And
rect-mail reminders, in contrast, yield have historic consequences. Indeed, it for those who do vote, participation is
just a 0.162 percent increase in turnout would bring American voter turnout not just an expression of interest in cur-
on average, according to a 2013 estimate up to 64.5 percent— ahead of both Can- rent politics but also a seed that could
based on 110 studies. ada and the U.K., lifting the nation grow into an active political life. M
If most of us vote, then being part of
the truant few who do not feels like we
are shirking a social contract. Publicizing MORE TO EXPLORE
voting records may therefore increase
■ If They Were to Vote, They Would Vote for Us. Namkje Koudenburg, Tom Postmes and Ernes-
the salience of this social obligation and tine H. Gordijn in Psychological Science, Vol. 22, No. 12, pages 1506–1510; December 2011.
possibly bring shame on nonvoters. Fol- ■ Academic “Dream Team” Helped Obama’s Effort. Benedict Carey in New York Times; November
lowing through, however, allows them 13, 2012.
to maintain their self-identity as contrib- ■ Todd Rogers on “Turning Mass Intention into Action” at TEDxCambridge, 2013: www.tedx
uting members of society. cambridge.com/portfolio-item/todd-rogers
■ U.S. Voter Turnout Trails Most Developed Countries. Drew Desilver. Pew Research Center.
Published online May 6, 2015.
All about Identity ■ Beyond Good Intentions: Prompting People to Make Plans Improves Follow-Through on Impor-
Some of the largest-ever experimen- tant Tasks. Todd Rogers, Katherine L. Milkman, Leslie K. John and Michael I. Norton in Behav-
tal effects on voter turnout come from ioral Science & Policy, Vol. 1, No. 2, pages 33–41; December 2015.
M I N D. S C I E N T I F I C A M E R I C A N .C O M S C I E N T I F I C A M E R I C A N M I N D 21
PHYSIOLOGY
one side of our brain can be awake feature of daily life across the animal
kingdom, despite the fact that it leaves
the sleeper unable to confront potential
Flies, birds, mice, dogs, monkeys and threats, remains mysterious.
BY CHRISTOF KOCH people all need to sleep. That is, they Still, much progress in characterizing
show daily periods of relative immobili- the physiology and capabilities of the
Christof Koch is president ty and lack of response to external stim- sleeping brain has occurred over the past
and chief scientific officer at uli, such as light, sound or touch. This re- century, driven by the ability to record
the Allen Institute for Brain duced sensitivity to external events dis- electrical activity of the brain (via elec-
Science in Seattle. He serves
on Scientific American Mind’s tinguishes sleep from quiet resting, troencephalography, or EEG, on the sur-
board of advisers. whereas the capacity to awaken from face of the skull), of the eyes (via electro-
1 sec
EEG In a modern sleep laboratory, wakefulness and the different stages of sleep are defined by
various measures of electrical activity. They include EEG (electroencephalography), which
tracks neural activity in the neocortex; EOG (electrooculography), which tracks eye move-
EOG ments; and EMG (electromyography), which measures muscle tone. The frequency and
amplitude of EEG signals fluctuate sharply during the various sleep cycles. Muscle tone
tends to decrease throughout the course of the night, whereas rapid eye movement (REM),
EMG the time when dreams are most common, follows the non-REM (NREM) stages of sleep.
oculography, or EOG), and of facial or University of Chicago discovered an un- oscillations, that slowly wax and wane.
other muscles (via electromyography, til then unnoticed distinction in two dis- Electrical recordings of individual nerve
or EMG). For scientists, it is this triad tinct forms of sleep: rapid eye movement cells in the neocortex directly under-
of simultaneous measurements that (REM) sleep and non-REM (NREM) neath the skull show regular occurrenc-
operationally defi nes the state of sleep, sleep. When subjects are awake, before es of on periods, when cells fi re a series
leading to both surprising and counter- entering either of these states, their brain of all-or-none electrical pulses, called
intuitive insights. waves, recorded via EEG electrodes on spikes, as happens when a person is
Even without these tools, there are the skull, display a typical pattern of awake. Pulses alternate with off periods,
some basic things we do know about
F R O M “ D R E A M I N G A N D T H E B R A I N : F R O M P H E N O M E N O L O GY T O N E U R O P H YS I O L O GY,” B Y Y U VA L N I R
B Y O L EG I . LYA M I N E T A L ., I N N EU R O S C I E N C E & B I O B E H AV I O R A L R E V I E W S , V O L . 3 2, N O. 8; O C T O B E R 2 0 0 8 ( E EG a c t i v i t y )
A pod of bottlenose dolphins
N ATA L I A P R YA N I S H N I KO VA A l a my ( d o l p h i n s ); F R O M “C E TA C E A N S L E E P : A N U N U S U A L F O R M O F M A M M A L I A N S L E E P,”
dozes lazily. Each member
keeps one eye open, gazing
away from the pod to watch for
predators. As one eye closes,
the opposite cortical hemi-
sphere goes to sleep (as indicat-
ed by the deep and slow waves) Right Hemisphere Sleep Left Hemisphere Sleep Full Wakefulness
while the same-side hemi-
sphere remains vigilant. The
nighttime goings-on are dis-
tinctive from relatively placid 1
daytime EEG activity (far right).
Rows 1 and 2 show EEG mea-
surements in the right and left 2
cortices, respectively.
intensity as they do during the day. Mus- awake, the deeper and more frequent One Hemisphere on Watch
cular tone is gone — to all intents and slow waves occur the following night. Until recently, deep sleep in humans
purposes the body is paralyzed— except Conversely, early in the morning when was thought to be a global condition: a
for the breathing musculature and the sleep pressure has lessened, SWA dimin- person is either asleep or awake but not
jerky, rapid and symmetric movement ishes, and sleep becomes shallower. both simultaneously. Put differently,
in each eye that give this phase of sleep Likewise, taking a nap reduces night- their brain is either in deep sleep, as char-
its name. time slow waves. acterized by slow-wave activity, or
Most of the night is spent in NREM, A number of consumer devices now awake, but not both. Yet birds and aquat-
with the most restorative deep sleep and on the market play regular soft tones ic mammals such as dolphins and whales
its associated SWA, taking up 20 to 25 through headphones at the same fre- display the remarkable phenomenon of
percent of a full night’s slumber. Slow- quency as the SWA to entrain deep-sleep unihemispheric slow-wave sleep: one half
wave activity is homeostatically regulat- waves and thereby induce a more restful of their brain is awake, including an open
ed — that is, the longer somebody stays power sleep. eye, and the other half shows the electri-
during a second night sleeping in livered to the ear projecting into the left
–6
the scanner. Also, the more asym- hemisphere were much more likely to
metric the pattern of SWA during trigger an awakening during the first
–4 the fi rst night, the longer it took night than sounds to the opposite ear and
subjects to fall asleep. Part of the hemisphere. This left-right asymmetry
left hemisphere, in essence, is not disappeared during the second night’s
–2 sleeping as deeply as the right one sleep. Furthermore, it took the left brain
during the first night. less time to awaken in response to the de-
0 To test the extent to which the viant sound than the right brain.
Day 1 Day 2 left hemisphere is more vigilant in an In short, while sleeping in an unfamil-
unfamiliar environment, the team iar place, the left cortical hemisphere is
Unusual sounds that occurred while study
subjects slept their first night in a new place delivered tones via earphones to 13 more vigilant and responds stronger and
spurred elevated activity only in the brain’s subjects (different from the initial faster than the right one. Evolutionarily,
left hemisphere — measured as signal 11 volunteers, who were by now used this reaction makes a great deal of sense.
amplitude in microvolts (μV). This semivigi-
lant state vanished on the second night.
to the sleep setup). Most of the tones It is important that a sentinel— here the
were the same, but on rare occasions left cortical default-mode network—
a different one sounded: beep, beep, monitors the unknown environment for
beep, boop, beep, beep. The oddball threatening events while we sleep. The
cal signatures of sleep. This is most like- tone drew attention and triggered a sig- human brain, it turns out, is endowed
ly a protective mechanism, enabling the nature electrical response. When the de- with a less dramatic form of the unihemi-
S O U R C E : “ N I G H T W AT C H I N O N E B R A I N H E M I S P H E R E D U R I N G S L E E P A S S O C I AT E D W I T H T H E F I R S T- N I G H T E F F EC T
animal to fly or swim and monitor its en- viant tone is played to the left ear, its out- spheric sleep found in birds and some
vironment for threats with one hemi- put is predominantly relayed to the right mammals. For humans, familiarity with
sphere while the other gets some rest. cortical hemisphere, which shows the a place breeds a deep night’s sleep.
It now turns out that even for people, characteristic vigilance response. If we consider the individual we rou-
I N H U M A N S ,” B Y M A S A KO TA M A K I E T A L ., I N C U R R E N T B I O LO GY, V O L . 2 6 , N O. 9 ; M AY 9, 2 0 16
there is more to sleep than meets the During the fi rst night, the left hemi- tinely share a bed with—whether spouse,
(shut) eye. Frequent travelers will be fa- sphere had a more pronounced vigilance partner or child— to be the most impor-
miliar with the first-night effect, the ob- response to these deviant tones as com- tant social component of the environ-
servation that the initial night in an un- pared with the right hemisphere. The en- ment, then I suspect that the left hemi-
familiar place, whether a hotel, a friend’s hanced vigilance response also led to the sphere might also be more watchful dur-
apartment or a tent, is less restful than left brain being more frequently aroused ing the fi rst night we sleep alone in our
subsequent nights. We find it more diffi- (as defined by EEG criteria) than the familiar bedroom. It knows something
cult to shut our mind down and wake up right hemisphere. is amiss, and we’ll sleep less restfully as
groggy. A team of researchers under During the second session in the a consequence.
Yuka Sasaki and Takeo Watanabe of scanner, both left and right hemispheres In my next column, I will discuss an-
Brown University set out to investigate responded weakly and in the same man- other recent discovery: how deep sleep
this phenomenon [see “Why We Toss and ner to oddball sounds, as they did to the can intrude into our waking brain. M
Turn in an Unfamiliar Bed,” on page 9]. stereotyped beeps during both nights. If
Eleven healthy volunteers slept for a brain network in the left cortical hemi-
two nights inside an advanced neuroim- sphere acts as a night watchman for the MORE TO EXPLORE
aging scanner that allowed recordings of sleeper, then an irregular event regis- ■ Night Watch in One Brain Hemisphere dur-
the brain’s weak but ever changing mag- tered only by the left brain (via the right ing Sleep Associated with the First-Night
netic field. The scientists focused on slow- ear) should elicit a faster response than Effect in Humans. Masako Tamaki et al. in
wave activity, measuring its strength in an oddball sound delivered to the right Current Biology, Vol. 26, No. 9, pages 1190–
1194; May 9, 2016.
four networks in the left cortical hemi- brain (via the left ear). This idea was test-
From Our Archives
sphere and four in the right. Intriguingly, ed in a third group of 11 volunteers: they
■ Quiet! Sleeping Brain at Work. Robert
they found that the left cortical default- had to lightly tap their fingers whenever Stickgold and Jeffrey M. Ellenbogen;
mode network, a set of interacting re- they heard the sounds while asleep in the August/September 2008.
*Jane is a pseudonym. Some details of her story have been altered to further protect her identity.
M I N D. S C I E N T I F I C A M E R I C A N .C O M S C I E N T I F I C A M E R I C A N M I N D 27
ANOREXIA NERVOSA: costs as well— to her relationships, to her 5 percent for every decade of illness.
DIAGNOSTIC CRITERIA* career. Instead of dreaming about a great Anorexia nervosa is often misunder-
This life-threatening eating romance, Jane would dream of the cup- stood by a public that tends to glorify
disorder is identified by cakes she could not let herself have at her thinness and view rule-ridden eating as
these three behaviors: niece’s birthday party. Instead of think- an act of enviable self-control. This is
ing about the best lead for her next story, nothing new. In the Middle Ages, a
Dietary restriction leading to she obsessed over calories and exercise. handful of religious figures, including
a significantly low body weight Jane’s ritualized and restrictive ap- Saint Catherine of Siena, were admired
for one’s sex, age, development proach to food, her obsession with calo- for engaging in extreme self-starva-
and physical health. ries and her painfully low body weight tion— a condition termed “holy anorex-
are common symptoms of anorexia ner- ia.” Today we see self-starvation in the
Intense fear of becoming fat
vosa, a dangerous eating disorder that name of a culturally sanctioned pursuit
or persistent behaviors that
interfere with weight gain. affects roughly one in 200 American of thinness. But there is nothing glorious
women. Anorexia has a high relapse rate about this disease, nor does it provide
Disturbed experience of one’s and ranks among the deadliest of all psy- any actual measure of true control. Rig-
body weight or shape, undue chiatric conditions. Individuals with the id, behavioral routines gradually close in
influence of body weight or
disorder, about 10 percent of whom are on the afflicted individual until life be-
shape on self-evaluation,
or a lack of recognition of the men, enter a state of starvation that can comes entirely about numbers on a food
seriousness of low weight. cause numerous medical complications, label, or a scale, or a clothing tag.
including heart ailments, anemia, bone A new line of research suggests that
loss, infertility, and more. A young wom- the core of Jane’s condition — her low
*Adapted from the DSM-5.
an with this illness faces six times the weight— is not simply a matter of self-
average risk of death for someone her control. Rather her routines now occur
actions were goal-directed, motivated by age, according to a 2011 meta-analysis almost automatically without regard for
achieving a particular outcome. In rela- of 36 studies, and mortality rises by the outcome. Jane weighs herself each
tively short order, she got the result
she really wanted: weight loss.
Years later Jane, now in her 30s
and a newspaper reporter, contin-
ued to eat the same lunch in the
same way. Huddled over her desk in
the newsroom, she tried to avoid
unwanted attention and feared any-
thing that might interfere with the
routine. She no longer felt proud of
her behavior. Her friends stopped
complimenting her “self-control”
years ago, when her weight plum-
meted perilously low. So low that
she has had to be hospitalized on
more than one occasion.
The longed-for weight loss did
not make her feel better about her-
self or her appearance. Jane’s curly
hair, once shiny and thick, dulled
and thinned; her skin and eyes lost
their brightness. There were other
M I N D. S C I E N T I F I C A M E R I C A N .C O M S C I E N T I F I C A M E R I C A N M I N D 29
Work
Smarter,
Work
Happier
D
id you take a holiday this summer, or were you Fortunately, science may offer an antidote for the weary
too busy at work? You’re hardly alone if you fall worker. Behavioral research is coalescing around the idea that
into the latter category. In the U.S., 42 percent being productive and happy actually go hand in hand. As the
of us fail to use up our paid vacation days—to the writers in this three-part special section explain, many of the
tune of more than $52 billion in unclaimed ben- same tactics that foster an employee’s fresh thinking and im-
efits a year, according to a 2014 analysis by prove time management and performance also bolster his or
Oxford Economics. We work long days, too: her social support, autonomy and job satisfaction. Each story
the average full-time employee clocks about offers practical, research-backed advice on matters such as
47 hours a week. how to promote greater collaboration through technology,
It would be one thing if we labored so much out of love. But how to work more effectively from home, and how to boost
a survey of 5,000 households published last year by the non- creativity with mental and physical breaks.
profit Conference Board revealed that more than half of work- The lesson, in essence: a happier, less stressed worker is
ing Americans found their job unsatisfying. also a more successful one. —The Editors
IL LUST R AT IO NS BY R A D IO
Betting on
People Power
By using technology to facilitate idea exchange
in the workplace, organizations can raise their
collective smarts
By Alex “Sandy” Pentland
Let’s say your company is in trouble—new competitors are coming on strong, and it’s your
job to assemble a crack team to act fast, solve problems and secure the firm’s future. What
qualities would you look for? Would you try to pick the people with the most experience? The
strongest résumés? The highest IQs? These traits are important, but your best bet might be
to observe your candidates at a cocktail party. In that setting, you could quickly get a sense
of how well they find new ideas, make allies and discover potential conflicts.
These abilities are fundamental for building human need systems that support our social brain’s talents for
enterprises that are creative and agile. Our social reading other people’s behavior and fine-tuning rela-
brain— which gives rise to our capacity to manage peo- tionships, just as today’s computer tools extend our
ple, interactions and relationships — is the most power- memories and computational skills. By teaching com-
ful component of human intelligence. Indeed, the so- puters more about how humans interact best, the hope
called social brain hypothesis holds that humans have is that they can play the role of social secretaries and
a relatively large brain, compared with other verte- facilitate genuine social connections.
brates, mainly because of our need to keep track of all To understand how this might work, think of an
this social information. To date, though, our society organization as a kind of brain, with the employees or
has not developed many useful applications to support members as the individual neurons. Static firms — sym-
our social brain. Facebook, LinkedIn and other net- bolized by the ubiquitous “org chart”— have fixed con-
working sites are mostly gossip machines, opinion echo nections and, as a result, a limited ability to learn. Typ-
chambers or CV catalogs. In many ways, they are run ically their departments become “siloed,” with little
more for the benefit of their owners than their users. communication between them; the flow of fresh, cross-
But imagine if we could create tools and informa- cutting ideas is blocked. In that state, firms risk falling
tion feeds to reveal what is really going on inside com- to newer, less ossified competitors. But if we could su-
panies, cities and governments — not just with our percharge an organization’s social skills, the connec-
“likes” and friends. To accomplish this feat, we would tions — among employees, departments and teams —
FAST FACTS
TURBOCHARGING TEAMWORK
nn
To boost innovation, we need systems that support our social
brain’s talents for reading other people’s behavior and fine-tuning
relationships, just as today’s computer tools extend our memories
and computational skills.
o High-performing teams show a specific pattern of communication —
one in which all members contribute more or less equally. The
author and his colleagues are developing apps to help co-workers
optimize their communication patterns and work smarter together.
In the most productive groups, everyone speaks
pn
Developing the best strategy in any scenario calls for striking a
balance between engaging with familiar practices and people and
concisely and makes roughly the same number
seeking out fresh ideas. of contributions.
Seeing Is Believing
As part of our research at M.I.T., we have deployed collab-
oration wearables in more than two dozen different work en-
vironments: among creative and research staffs, at consulting
firms, and in banks, pharmaceutical companies, military in-
stallations, call centers and postoperative hospital wards, to
name just a few. These real-world analyses have demonstrated
just how powerful the relation is between a company’s perfor-
mance and its pattern of communication— not the actual con-
tent of that communication but how it spreads.
Critically, we find that rich channels of communication—
ideally face-to-face interactions but also videoconferences
among small numbers of people — tend to be vital for ideas to
gain momentum. This finding is perhaps not so hard to ex- The most effective information exchanges
plain. Unlike e-mail and other forms of electronic communi- happen in small groups meeting face-to-face
cation, face-to-face dialogue is imbued with all kinds of non- or via videoconferencing, so that people can
verbal cues. I refer to them as honest signals because they con- more readily interpret nonverbal cues.
vey the truth about people’s thoughts and intentions, regardless
of what they actually express in words. These cues tell us when
someone is bluffing, interested in our ideas or not really pay- ply that customer service was in another part of the building.
ing attention at all. And it is on this nonverbal level of interac- When bank management saw our analysis, they moved the de-
tion that people can intuit where they stand in a group’s hier- partment nearer to everyone else. Greater proximity meant more
archy and get a sense for how decisions are unfolding. input from these employees. As a result, several new ad cam-
One of our case studies highlighted just how well face-to- paigns took off where previous initiatives had failed.
face interactions can grease the wheels of progress. In 2009 we
used collaboration wearables to assess why operators at an Follow the Bouncing Ball
American bank’s call center handled calls at wildly different More recently, we have been finding that we can optimize
speeds — despite the fact that their workdays were largely the flow of ideas during face-to-face conversations using real-
scripted and fairly uniform. We found that among several dif- time visual feedback. For instance, we have developed an ap-
ferent teams, those who, on average, handled calls the fastest plication for small groups, now being commercialized by
were also those who talked to the most other operators. Man- Google, in which a floating ball displayed on a screen repre-
agers at the call center had scheduled individual coffee breaks sents the conversational tide. The position of the ball shows
to try to cut down on such socializing. But when we prescribed who is dominating the conversation around a conference table
team-wide coffee breaks to encourage the operators to share at any one time. In tests, we find that this tool encourages more
more ideas — not just about work but life in general— the lag- people to join in at meetings — shaping the pattern of commu-
ging teams rapidly caught up. Profits rose by $15 million when nication so as to maximize collective intelligence. This kind of
the bank’s bosses implemented our advice at all call centers. feedback is especially valuable for people participating in a
An earlier case study showed how teams also win when they
meet face-to-face with colleagues outside their own groups. In
THE AUTHOR
2007 we assessed the communication patterns among five de-
partments within a German bank, collecting data from e-mail ALEX “SANDY” PENTLAND directs the Human Dynamics
records and name-badge-style wearables. We noted that nearly Laboratory and the Connection Science program, where he
all communication with members of the customer service de- develops computational social science based on big data, at
partment was via e-mail. Almost no one spoke to them in per- the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also Toshiba
son, whereas the other four departments interacted frequently Professor of Media, Arts, and Sciences there and director
in hallways and around coffee machines. The problem was sim- of the M.I.T. Media Lab Entrepreneurship program.
often greater than the sum of its parts. A big discovery my international competition, organizations ranging from small
colleagues and I have made, now in hundreds of case studies, family businesses to giant government bureaucracies face in-
is that we can consistently improve on the decisions of top creased pressure to raise productivity and accelerate innova-
bosses or leadership committees by incorporating the opinions tion. This pressure has serious ramifications for many work-
of employees who actually have skin in the game. ers, whose skills are becoming obsolete and whose jobs are dis-
For instance, call-center workers often have better ideas appearing. But I believe that we can reduce this disruption and
about how to meet customer demand than the people who do fi- pain by focusing on technology that complements the unique
nancial planning, and production engineers know more about social abilities of humans rather than focusing on technology
how a new product is shaping up than its designers do. The that replaces people.
secret to creating an agile, robust organization is closing the loop By tracking the flow of ideas among colleagues, we are find-
between workers and bosses so that employees are both helping ing ample new support for an old notion: innovation happens
to create corporate plans and executing them. This circulation when you bring diverse people together to bounce ideas off one
fits with another key finding: developing the best strategy in any another. Companies that bet on enhancing their social brain
scenario involves striking a balance between engaging with fa- will be better at interacting with customers and planning for
miliar practices and exploring fresh ideas. the future. By using wearables and computers to keep track of
To investigate how people maximize the wisdom of a how well communication patterns match business processes,
crowd, we worked with eToro, a social-network stock-trading companies can achieve both greater agility and higher perfor-
site where people can see what trades other people choose, dis- mance while still being people-centered and humane. M
cuss them and copy them. In 2012 we analyzed some 5.8 mil-
lion transactions and found that the traders who fared best
MORE TO EXPLORE
maintained the most diverse networks. Up to a certain point,
they made better forecasts as they combined insights from ■ Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance
of Human Groups. Anita Williams Woolley et al. in Science, Vol. 330,
more people using different strategies. But when they started pages 686–688; October 29, 2010.
adding people with approaches that were only slightly differ- ■ The Strength of the Strongest Ties in Collaborative Problem Solving.
ent from their own, their forecasts declined. We calculated that Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye et al. in Scientific Reports, Vol. 4, Article
C O U R T E SY O F A L E X P E N T L A N D
the forecasts from “Goldilocks” groups — those with eight to No. 5277. Published online June 20, 2014.
10 very diverse people and their strategies — reliably beat the ■ Social Physics: How Social Networks Can Make Us Smarter.
Alex Pentland. Penguin, 2014.
best individual forecasts by a margin of almost 30 percent. Fur-
From Our Archives
thermore, when we showed traders with the least diverse so-
■ The Data-Driven Society. Alex “Sandy” Pentland; Scientific American,
cial networks how to optimize their reach, they doubled their October 2013.
return on investment. ■ How Diversity Works. Katherine W. Phillips; Scientific American,
Given the increasing pace of technological disruption and October 2014.
No Workplace
Like Home
Ditching the office can boost both
profitability and personal happiness—
provided it’s done right
By Rachel Nuwerr
This is not a self-critique. It’s a summary of my as a freelance journalist, the assessment points out
Distributed Worker Personality Profiler, a psycho- that some of my personality quirks may present a
metric assessment created by Work EvOHlution, a challenge. If an editor is stressing me out with what
company founded by an organizational psychologist I perceive as unrealistic demands, my knee-jerk reac-
whose goal is to use scientific evidence to help peo- tion to fire off a frustrated e-mail could make the sit-
ple excel at flexible work arrangements. Employees uation worse. Fortunately, as the assessment’s cus-
and managers use it to determine how naturally suit- tomized feedback advises, there are work-arounds.
ed an individual is to working outside a traditional I can pause before responding, go burn off some
office. The Profiler flags potential pitfalls and pro- steam at the gym, or write an angry draft e-mail and
vides advice on how to circumvent them. For exam- then delete it.
ple, although I am very satisfied working from home The test’s creators believe that telecommuting is
Remote Future
Despite the holdouts, telecommuting
is fast becoming just another way of be-
Job satisfaction increases with more time ing on the job. As technology allows for
spent working at home— up to a point. It more meaningful digital connections, ex-
plateaus at 15 hours a week of remote work, perts such as Gajendran predict that we
might eventually do away with the need
and then it dips. for certain workers to physically come to-
gether at all. In the process, employees
who can excel at telework may become
more attractive to managers, too.
comes often attributed to ending tele- than 900 Belgian workers. This research These changes promise to shape
working. Yet that conclusion, Stanford’s found that working from home is relat- not only the working landscape but
Bloom says, is flawed: “Yahoo is a great ed to greater innovation but that work- the physical one as well. Offices could
example of why case studies are mislead- ing outside the typical nine-to-five scale back; urban infrastructure could
ing because if you looked at it, you’d say schedule may have small negative effects become less congested; and workers
banning working from home leads to on creativity. could choose to live hours from compa-
surging stocks. But those outcomes Bloom and his colleagues hope to ny headquarters.
could have been driven by something better identify the relation between in- Those implications may also extend
else.” In fact, Yahoo’s spike in profitabil- novation and telework with a follow-up to changes in how we relate to one an-
ity was short-lived. to their China study involving workers other and interact. “We’re social ani-
Whether or not Mayer’s decision whose jobs entail more collaboration mals, and we’ve been working face-to-
was the right one, there is some evidence and creativity. In the meantime, he sug- face for the entire evolution of human-
that innovation could be stymied by tele- gests that managers interested in mak- kind,” Calgary’s O’Neill says. “It won’t
work. A small survey-based study, pub- ing the telework switch covertly pilot be overnight that people can adapt to
lished in 2008, found that creative their own experiments. Bosses can use this extreme mobility, but I think we are
thinking took a hit when people worked an event— a storm, a road closure, the moving into an age where remote work
remotely and that complex projects, Olympics — as an excuse for allowing is inevitable.” M
especially ones with a tight deadline,
were better suited to in-person collabo-
rations. (To measure innovation, the re- MORE TO EXPLORE
searchers asked 83 employees from sev- ■ Making Telework Work: Leading People and Leveraging Technology for High-Impact Results.
eral industries to rate how well they Evan H. Offstein and Jason M. Morwick. Nicholas Brealey America, 2009.
agreed with statements such as “In my ■ Jason Fried on “Why Work Doesn’t Happen at Work,” at TEDxMidwest, October 15, 2010:
work, I discover new solutions for bot- www.ted.com/talks/jason_fried_why_work_doesn_t_happen_at_work?language=en
tlenecks that remain unsolved.”) The ■ Workshift: Future-Proof Your Organization for the 21st Century. Jason Morwick, Robyn Bews,
Emily Klein and Tim Lorman. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
lesson, according to Jan de Leede, an
■ How Effective Is Telecommuting? Assessing the Status of Our Scientific Findings. Tammy D.
assistant professor of human resource
Allen, Timothy D. Golden and Kristen M. Shockley in Psychological Science in the Public Interest,
management at the University of Twen- Vol. 16, No. 2, pages 40–68; October 2015.
te in the Netherlands and the study’s From Our Archives
lead author, is that companies should ■ Commuting Takes Its Toll. Annette Schaefer; October/November 2005.
carefully consider the type of work ■ Cubicle, Sweet Cubicle. S. Alexander Haslam and Craig Knight; September/October 2010.
at hand before embracing telework. ■ Your Creative Brain at Work. Evangelia G. Chrysikou; July/August 2012.
Give Me a
Break
A wealth of psychological research shows that mental
downtime is vital for productivity and health. Some
progressive companies are finally starting to listen
By Ferris Jabr
The moment that incited Mark Bertolini’s workplace revolution did not happen in the office,
at a conference or even when he was thinking about his job — it occurred during a family vacation.
But it was not a happy moment; in fact, it nearly killed him.
In February 2004 Bertolini, then 47 years old, was on a skiing trip with his family in Killington, Vt.
While speeding downhill, he collided with a tree and fell 30 feet down a ravine. The plummet frac-
tured bones in his neck and back and severely damaged nerves in his arm. Yet he lived, gradually re-
gaining mobility despite chronic pain. Not wanting to remain on pain medications for the rest of his
life, he turned to yoga and mindfulness meditation, which teaches people to observe their thoughts,
feelings and perceptions as they arise without judgment or resistance.
He was so impressed by these pain- and stress-reduc- formally investigate the outcomes of these innovations.
ing therapies that he started to wonder whether his 50,000 In a three-month study of more than 200 Aetna em-
employees might benefit from them, too. Bertolini is chief ployees, individuals who engaged in meditation and yoga
executive officer of the health insurance giant Aetna. slept better, felt less stressed overall and had more efficient
By 2010 Bertolini had enlisted the help of the Ameri- heartbeat recovery rates after stress than those who ab-
can Viniyoga Institute and the meditation instruction com- stained. In a follow-up study involving more than 1,000
pany eMindful to customize free yoga and meditation employees, presented this past May at the International
classes for Aetna employees, even providing spaces at the Congress of Integrative Medicine and Health, meditation
office to practice. And he did not stop there. He also and yoga were correlated not only with less stress but also
teamed up with health psychologist Ruth Wolever, then with 47 to 62 minutes of increased productivity per week.
at Duke University and now at Vanderbilt University, to The practices even seemed to reduce employees’ spending
M I N D. S C I E N T I F I C A M E R I C A N .C O M S C I E N T I F I C A M E R I C A N M I N D 47
members of the House of Lords, to local elected officials, to well- Centered Impulsivity dials. Put another way, politics came out
known radio and TV anchors. They all deemed a few key traits as a profession in which an official consignment of legalized,
to be indispensable for any politician. Foremost, they agreed that precision-engineered psychopathy would come in rather handy.
politicians must be able to make difficult decisions under consid-
erable pressure. They need to be able to juggle many multifacet- Our Fearless Leaders
ed crises, ranging from the threats posed by rogue nations to Several years ago psychologist Scott O. Lilienfeld of Emory
those caused by natural disasters. They have to be willing to send University, who co-developed the Psychopathic Personality In-
their country’s young people to war in the certain knowledge ventory and is a Scientific American Mind advisory board mem-
that some will lose their lives. And they need excellent self-pre- ber, joined psychologists Steven Rubenzer, Thomas Faschingbau-
sentation skills and superficial charm— specifically, the ability to er and others in an intriguing collaboration. First, researchers
feign empathy even if they do not feel it. As Teddy Roosevelt once handed out the latest iteration of the NEO Personality Invento-
said: “The most successful politician is he who says what the peo- ry, which assesses the so-called big five personality traits, to bi-
ple are thinking most often and in the loudest voice.” (Indeed, ographers of, or experts on, every U.S. president up to and includ-
some observers credit the rise of Donald Trump to precisely this, ing George W. Bush. Just as in my study, these experts used their
at least among a portion of the electorate.) in-depth knowledge of their subjects to answer on the presidents’
Finally, the politicians I interviewed noted that even to run behalf. Based on these responses, Lilienfeld then extrapolated to
for office, politicians need supreme self-confidence. It then takes what extent each president exhibited various psychopathic char-
that same kind of Teflon-coated self-belief and unrelenting fo- acter traits. From these data, I subsequently created two top-10
cus to implement policy. Dealing with opponents often calls for lists, ranking the presidents’ scores in Fearless Dominance and
considerable ruthlessness and mental toughness. As one senior Self-Centered Impulsivity [see box above].
British politician told me: “The only way to tell who’s stabbing The results could not have been clearer. Similar to what I sur-
you in the back in politics is to see their reflection in the eyes of mised from my survey of British politicians, higher settings on
the person who’s stabbing you from the front!” the Fearless Dominance dials were associated with higher ratings
The picture of an ideal candidate that emerged from this sur-
vey was one of a charming, persuasive, self-confident individu-
al who can be ruthless when necessary and who is also heat-
THE AUTHOR
resistant: he or she can maintain focus, keep a cool head and per-
form under fire. In terms of our personality mixing desk, the best KEVIN DUTTON (@profkevindutton) is a research psycholo-
setting would be “high” on all the Fearless Dominance dials, gist at the University of Oxford and author of two popular
variable for the Coldheartedness dial and low for the Self- science books, Flipnosis and The Wisdom of Psychopaths.
historians and political scientists consistently rate the two Roo- above—including Jesus and Saint Paul—has a notably high total
sevelts among the top-five greatest American presidents of all score and a top quintile finish on at least one of the three dimen-
time, and in keeping with that assessment, they appear first and sions. British prime minister Margaret Thatcher falls just short
M I N D. S C I E N T I F I C A M E R I C A N .C O M S C I E N T I F I C A M E R I C A N M I N D 57
we would shrug our shoulders. But a deepest mysteries of being human: how send electrical signals generated by my
C a l i f o r n i a , S a n D i e g o A N D R . D O U G L A S F I E L D S
C O U R T E SY O F H O W A R D P O I Z N E R U n i v e r s i t y o f
number of researchers have begun to use the brain creates the mind. brain to instruments inside a special-
ized backpack I am toting. I also wear
large goggles equipped with 12 minia-
FAST FACTS
ture video projectors and high-resolu-
TEACH THYSELF
tion screens.
n Unsupervised learning involves no instruction, punishment or reward. The day before my visit here, I toured
o Brain waves coordinate large groups of neurons across the brain and change in characteristic the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier Midway at
ways during unsupervised learning.
its anchorage in San Diego Harbor. Lit-
pn
Scientists can predict how rapidly a person will be able to learn by monitoring his or her brain
functions at rest. tle did I know what a happy coincidence
Researchers are using the secrets of how the brain represents and retains information to read that would turn out to be: Poizner and
thoughts and transmit them to other people. his colleagues had modeled their virtu-
waves are being recorded is a break- of a volt in flashes that last a thousandth
THE AUTHOR
through in itself. Usually people must of a second— a signal so faint that to de-
keep still during electroencephalograph- tect the firing of a single neuron, you R. DOUGLAS FIELDS, Ph.D., is
ic (EEG) recordings to eliminate electri- would have to open the skull and place a neuroscientist and an adjunct
cal signals generated by their muscles as a microelectrode into direct contact professor at the University of
S E P T E M B E R 1 8 , 2 01 3 (c e n t e r )
they contract, which would obscure the with the nerve cell. Still, when large Maryland, College Park. He is
feeble brain waves. Poizner’s group de- groups of neurons fire together, the en- author of Why We Snap, about
vised hardware and software to elimi- suing fluctuations in the electrical field the neuroscience of sudden
nate this noise as subjects move about of the tissue surrounding them are suffi- aggression, and The Other Brain,
freely. “We’re putting you in the video ciently strong that electrodes on the about glia. Fields serves on
game,” Poizner says. scalp can detect them. These EEG re- Scientific American Mind’s board
I wander over to an oval hatch and cordings are much like the roar of a of advisers.
H U G O G A M B O A h t t p s : //c o m m o n s .w i k i m e d i a . o r g /w i k i / U s e r : H g a m b o a ( b r a i n w av e s )
this activity through electrodes on the scalp. These bursts of form cooperative groups.
the threat. The quickest draw in such a University of British Columbia, new- ing by observing their brain activity,
gunfight would not even know he had borns can recognize their mother’s voice which has intriguing implications for
pulled the trigger. and prefer their native language. Psy- how unsupervised learning works. Mar-
Poizner’s research reveals another chologist Barbara Kisilevsky and her cel Just and his colleagues at the Center
B Y J O S E P H S N I D E R E T A L ., I N J O U R N A L O F N EU R O S C I E N C E , V O L . 3 3 , N O. 3 8; S E P T E M B E R 1 8 , 2 0 1 3
ripple in the evoked brain wave about colleagues at Queen’s University in On- for Cognitive Brain Imaging at Carnegie
half a second later, the result of the brain tario found that even fetuses at 33 to 41 Mellon University can reliably say
cogitating on the anomaly and putting it
into context. “We think this represents a
second pass [of neural processing],” he Faster than the blink of an eye and
says. “The first pass is, Something is
wrong. The second is, Oh! Okay, I’ve before our mind can grasp it, our brain
now incorporated the new information
into my reconstruction of the environ-
knows that something has changed.
ment.” Researchers have reported simi-
lar results in very different experiments. weeks of age show startle responses to whether a person is thinking of a chair
When a subject hears an unexpected re- their mother’s voice and to a novel for- or a door, or which number from 1 to 7
mark—“I take my coffee with cream and eign language, which means that these a person has in mind, or even what emo-
dog,” for example—a similar brain-wave sounds capture their attention amid the tion the person may be feeling— anger or
response erupts at about the same time. surrounding buzz. disgust, fear or happiness, lust or
We often fail to appreciate the com- shame — simply by looking at a function-
Finding the Way to Speech plexities of language because we use it al MRI scan. Specific clusters of neurons
Learning our native language constantly every day in conversation and throughout the brain increase activity
through everyday experience is very in our thoughts. But when we try to with each of these concepts or emotions,
much like unsupervised learning of a learn a second language, the challenges and these clusters appear in the same
new space. Despite the complexity of become obvious. places from one person to the next.
language, we all master our spoken Prat and her colleagues have been In research to be published this year,
tongue as children, simply by experienc- monitoring brain-wave activity of sub- Just is demonstrating that he can read
ing it. “We know that in utero, fetuses jects learning a second language to see minds even when people are learning ab-
be five minutes. Remain still.” As she ■ Human Cortical Θ during Free Exploration Encodes Space and Predicts Subsequent Memory.
Joseph Snider et al. in Journal of Neuroscience, Vol. 33, No. 38, pages 15,056–15,068;
dims the lights and slips out the door, September 18, 2013.
she says, “Just relax. Clear your mind.” ■ Decoding the Representation of Numerical Values from Brain Activation Patterns.
I try, but my mind is racing. Can this Saudamini Roy Damarla and Marcel Adam Just in Human Brain Mapping, Vol. 34, No. 10,
contraption really tell Prat how easily I pages 2624–2634; October 2013.
could learn a new language while I sit ■ A Direct Brain-to-Brain Interface in Humans. Rajesh P. N. Rao et al. in PLOS ONE, Vol. 9,
No. 11, Article No. e111332; November 5, 2014.
here doing nothing? I recall a similar
■ A New Mechanism of Nervous System Plasticity: Activity-Dependent Myelination. R. Douglas
boast Poizner had made to me in his VR Fields in Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Vol. 16, pages 756–767; December 2015.
lab — that he could predict how well peo- ■ A Bilingual Disadvantage in Metacognitive Processing. Tomas Folke et al. in Cognition,
ple would perform in his spatial-learn- Vol. 150, pages 119–132; May 2016.
ing experiment from an fMRI scan of From Our Archives
their brain activity as they sat and let ■ When Two Brains Connect. Rajesh P. N. Rao and Andrea Stocco; November/December 2014.
ing body of evidence shows that social me- between the ages of 18 and 24 send or re- only the highlights. In a 2014 study, so-
dia and immersion in the digital world can ceive an average of 109.5 messages on a cial psychologists Christina Sagioglou
be contributing factors in the development normal day, whereas all adults (18 and and Tobias Greitemeyer, both at the Uni-
versity of Innsbruck in Austria, found an-
other reason why people can feel down
FAST FACTS
after Facebook sessions: they feel that the
A BIG DISCONNECT?
time spent is not meaningful.
n The rise of social media has made us the most connected society to date, but it has also In addition, online socializing may be
coincided with an apparent decline in our mental health.
interfering with our face-to-face encoun-
on
Social media use is proving addictive for some people, and this new digital way of connecting
may not satisfy our deep-seated need for true human contact. ters. That is troubling because we know
p Teens may be particularly vulnerable to developing hypertexting habits and what is known as that we can get physically and psycholog-
Facebook depression. ically ill without real human contact. In-
THE AUTHOR
this hardwired thirst can be overwhelm- said. “When I did not have those two lux-
ing in the information age, in which ev- uries, I felt quite alone and secluded in my NICHOLAS KARDARAS is executive
ery hyperlink, tweet, text, e-mail and In- life.” Another put it in even more direct director of the Dunes East Hampton
stagram photograph can be an opportu- terms: “I clearly am addicted, and the de- in New York State, where he treats
nity to experience something new. As pendency is sickening.” According to a clients with addiction and mental
with an alcoholic in a liquor store or a 2015 study of millennial communication health issues.
start with gravitating toward digital ex- our dopamine receptors on perpetual cal contact. He already knew that in pri-
cess, or is the digital excess creating or re- high alert as we anticipate, like Pavlovian mate grooming, touch activates the endor-
inforcing the impulsivity? Possibly both. dogs, the next “ping” that promises to of- phin system; now we know that the same
TOMATO, TOMAH-TO that soldiers prefer Green Giant–branded found and vacuous at the same time —
corn to an identical military ration — just “liking is learning,” says one; “do not
You May Also Like: Taste because most of them expect rations to trust the easy like,” warns another—
in an Age of Endless Choice taste terrible. but they do deliver a Zen Buddhist–like
by Tom Vanderbilt. Knopf, 2016 The book roams through other intrigu- payload of unity and sense that, after
($26.95; 320 pages) ing anecdotes on topics ranging from cat ambling pleasantly but aimlessly along
fancier conventions to search engine for 300 pages, I took as blessed relief.
results. My favorite section came in the That’s just a reflection of what I like.
How does a book final pages, where Vanderbilt provides a Your mileage, as the Internet expression
whose very title tele- “field guide to liking” that synthesizes the goes, may vary. But I suspect that is
graphs “noncommit- “small themes [and] little signposts” in Vanderbilt’s point: to investigate, accept
tal” still end up feel- his book. Some of these “tasting notes,” and ultimately celebrate the unbearable
ing like it doesn’t as he wryly calls them, may sound pro- shruggie-ness of being. —John Pavlus
do what it says on
the tin? As I loped
through writer Vander- BLURRED LINES
bilt’s breezy chapters,
I struggled to catego- The Fate of Gender: Nature, Nurture, and the Human Future
rize You May Also Like by Frank Browning. Bloomsbury, 2016 ($28; 320 pages)
among things that I
knew I liked, in hopes
of getting a sense of where the book was In 2015 Caitlyn Jenner became one of the world’s most famous
taking me. Was it a vivid collection of transgender women, gracing the cover of Vanity Fair and mak-
social science parables à la Malcolm ing the short list for Time magazine’s “Person of the Year.” Jen-
Gladwell’s best sellers? A cerebral diag- ner’s public transition from Bruce to Caitlyn— along with a new
nosis of our technocultural anxieties, as focus on gender fluidity in mainstream television programs,
in Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows? A first- such as Transparent— has helped build awareness of the trans
person mystery tour, to be shelved with community. But greater acceptance has not proved universal.
Mary Roach’s Stiff, Gulp and Bonk in Some segments of society have expressed a fear that these
bookstores? The answer: Yes, all of the recent developments mark the “death of gender”— in which the
above. But also, no. Kind of? distinctions between men and women will simply vanish.
Vanderbilt does not seem too con- In his new book, former NPR reporter Browning buries that
cerned to impress any organizing theory idea. He argues that rather than disappearing, gender catego-
on his subject, the vagaries of human ries are morphing to fit our biological reality. He relays the sci-
preference. “The picture of taste I have ence of gender while acquainting readers with the turbulent history of gender politics.
presented is hardly reassuring,” he writes Through this exploration, he makes the case that gender has always existed along a
in the book’s conclusion. “We often do spectrum: “We are all of us both male and female, and the way we express our ‘mascu-
not seem to know what we like or why we linity’ and ‘femininity’ depends on the circumstances in which we find ourselves living.”
like what we do.” Remember, that’s the He further dismantles the idea that gender ambiguity is unnatural, noting that trans-
end of his book. While many pop-sci sexual and homosexual plants and animals abound. The California sheephead fish, for
authors unspool their epiphanies with log- example, begins life as an egg-bearing female and may transition to a male. Among
ical, airtight precision, Vanderbilt offers humans, about one in every 2,000 babies is born with ambiguous genitals, such as unde-
up a kind of book-length “shruggie”— that scended testes or an enlarged clitoris that could be considered a micro penis. In the past,
modern ideogram for affable bemuse- physicians routinely chose one sex for these “intersex” individuals and performed gender-
ment: ¯\_( )_/¯. You end up rather where assignment surgeries. But pediatricians are increasingly opposing such interventions as
you started; comme ci, comme ça. growing evidence suggests they can cause psychological trauma and gender confusion.
That said, the scenes, hypotheses Regardless of their genitalia, children experience gender stereotypes from the min-
and musings that Vanderbilt shares are ute society labels them a boy or girl. These influences, along with hormonal ones— such
informative in their own free-associative as levels of estrogen and testosterone — affect brain development, shaping male and
ways. He explains that when we “like” an female differences in physiology and behavior that continue to unfold as we age. Gen-
experience, especially a conspicuously der, Browning explains, emerges through the dynamic interaction between our biology
affective one such as a taste or smell, it and environment. Kids start to form their gender identities early, and many transgender
seems to emerge from cross talk among individuals report gender dysphoria, or unease with their apparent sexual identity, well
cognition and emotion, expectation and before puberty.
adaptation. Some preferences, he notes, Browning introduces us to people who routinely challenge gender norms. He inter-
may be biologically “hardwired”: even views transgender individuals who have struggled for acceptance in conservative Mor-
babies born tragically without a fully mon-dense communities; women who act as surrogates for gay couples; sociologists
developed brain prefer sugary substanc- who are working to break the taboo of female masturbation in China. He also describes
es to neutral ones. “No one living really educators who have discovered that in gender-neutral classrooms, where children take
dislikes sweetness,” as Vanderbilt puts on both male and female roles, gender stereotypes largely disappear.
it. But memories and stories can exert The Fate of Gender is a fascinating read. One quibble is that Browning overlooks
a tidal pull on taste, too. Scientists at some recent research on transgender brains. But overall the book will make readers
the Department of Defense’s Combat think hard about how, as a society, we have shaped gender identity and are reshaping
Feeding Directorate, for example, know what it means to be male and female, either and both. — Diana Kwon
M I N D. S C I E N T I F I C A M E R I C A N .C O M S C I E N T I F I C A M E R I C A N M I N D 71
esis— the ability to grow new a family member, teacher or coach, despite not displaying the attributes deserving of
brain cells— in adults. such praise. Social-learning theory, when applied to the development of narcissism,
Regardless of the mechanism, suggests that a person who receives constant admiration, regardless of his or her actual
mounting evidence is revealing a ability, will come to expect such feedback from everyone. Such a child may fail to ac-
robust relation between physical quire a realistic self-concept, one that acknowledges both their flaws and their virtues.
fitness and cognitive function. The second trajectory involves the opposite scenario. Children who grow up in
In our 2014 study, published in families that are cold and depriving may also develop narcissistic personalities. Re-
Neurology, we found that physi-
cal activity has an extensive,
with videos and audio —imagine not peruse on a screen. Research suggests,
Are tablet just reading about the Battle of Brit- however, that the impact of e-readers
ain but seeing a newsreel as well. on comprehension is smaller when we
devices a good Unfortunately, there are down- read for pleasure. It is easy to see why it
teaching tool? sides, too. Sometimes this technolo- may be less perceptible for recreational
— Galina Ivanova Spain gy fails, leaving teachers to scramble reading. Most people read light fiction
for a backup plan. Some students do and nonfiction for enjoyment, so a
not have access to tablets outside of small hit to our understanding is no big
Daniel T. Willingham, a profes- school. Disadvantaged students may deal (even though you would likely fol-
sor of psychology at the University not have Internet connectivity at low the latest John Grisham thriller
of Virginia and author of Raising home. And most problematic, studies better on paper). Textbooks, however,
Kids Who Read: What Parents and Teachers show that kids typically understand serve up more challenging material, on
Can Do, responds: less and take longer when they are
reading from electronic textbooks as
As you might guess, scientists do not compared with printed materials.
have a complete answer to this ques- This difference in comprehension
tion, and the partial answer is compli- and reading time is not huge, but it is Studies show that kids
cated. The advantages offered by tab- pretty consistent, which probably ex-
lets or, more generally, electronic text- plains why most students say they dis- typically understand less
books seem legion: they are portable; like electronic textbooks. Even students
publishers can easily update the con- experienced in using digital technolo-
and take longer when
tent; students can get immediate feed- gies prefer paper. they are reading from
back; and the text can be supplemented What is going on? For starters, the
cool features of electronic textbooks — electronic textbooks,
if they are not carefully implemented—
do not guarantee a better grasp of the
which probably explains
material. For instance, an educa- why most students
ceiving inadequate validation and tional video that distracts from,
support can be painful and frustrating. rather than complements, the text dislike them.
To cope with this dejection, children may will actually hurt comprehension.
protect themselves by repressing negative Also, the look and feel of an
feelings and replacing them with a dis- e-book matter. Despite ongoing
torted, grandiose self-concept. Similar to advances in technology, users which students know they will be test-
the first trajectory, the children’s self- still experience more eye fatigue ed. As a result, they are careful to ob-
concept can then become unrealistically when they read from a screen. serve how well they grasp what they
inflated and inconsistent with their true We also know that readers tend are reading.
skills and accomplishments. To support to understand better when they Software and hardware companies
this view, they may also come to expect flip virtual pages; comprehension are trying to overcome these learning
constant admiration from others. declines if they scroll, perhaps be- issues, but for the time being, the word
These patterns can be hard to cause flowing text can disrupt vi- on e-readers at school should be: “Pro-
change. Narcissists frequently make sual attention, and they more of- ceed with caution.” M
good first impressions, but they struggle ten lose their place.
to maintain long-term relationships— Companies are working to
both personal and professional. And make electronic pages look more
although researchers have begun to like paper, although they are Do you have a question
develop psychotherapy-based interven- still figuring out which design about the brain you would like
tions to curb narcissistic traits, narcis- features are critical to improving an expert to answer?
sists often will not acknowledge that a user’s experience. Send it to
they need them. Theoretically, if the main MindEditors@sciam.com
problem is design-based, it should
affect our grasp of anything we
M I N D. S C I E N T I F I C A M E R I C A N .C O M S C I E N T I F I C A M E R I C A N M I N D 73
1 WORD WHEEL
5 MAGIC SQUARE
Can you spot the eight-letter word Fill in this square using the following letters: B, E, E, L, L, M, R, R and U.
wrapped around the question mark? When placed in the correct cells, they spell out common words in the rows
and columns.
D C A S T
M N A ? ? ?
S ? ? ?
A ? A
T ? ? ?
R L
6 BUILDING BLOCKS
K
Which of the four blocks, A through D, replaces the one with the question mark?
2 CALENDAR CONUNDRUM
If today is Monday, what is the day
after the day before the day before
tomorrow? ?
A B C D
3 ALPHABET ARITHMETIC
Substitute a different number for
each letter so that the math works.
(Hint: Each letter equals the same 7 WEATHER WATCH 9 ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE
number each time.) What weather alert is an anagram of, Which is greater? The number
ABCDEFGHI and possibly described by, the phrase of seconds in 100 hours or
© 2 0 16 A M E R I C A N M E N S A , LT D., L E A R N M O R E AT H T T P ://A M E R I C A N M E N S A .O R G /J O I N
×I “Radar Noting Now”? of inches in 100 yards?
+AJ
AAAAAAAAAA
8 NAME THAT PREFIX 10 BOARD GAME
What three-letter word can sit in front Chad and Hunter need to make five
4 DE-CEEIPR THIS of each of the following words to make wood boxes fast. Chad must chop for
four new words? one minute to make one board. Hunt-
Which words can you make using er needs one minute to assemble five
each of the letters C, E, E, I, P and R _ _ _ BLED _ _ _ ROW
boards into one box. How long does
exactly once? _ _ _ GIN _ _ _ TIN it take them to make the five boxes?
Answers
Answers
3,600 inches). initials of compass points. × 9) + 10 = 1111111111.
next board. (360,000 seconds versus the squares form the works out to (123456789
Chad is chopping the 9. Seconds in 100 hours 6. B. The yellow spaces within and J = 0. Then the puzzle
but the last box while MARGIN, MARTIN). 5. CAST, ABLE, SLUR, TERM. 3. A = 1, B = 2, and so on,
can assemble all 8. MAR (MARBLED, MARROW, and PIECER. 2. Monday.
10. 26 minutes. Hunter 7. TORNADO WARNING. 4. RECIPE, PIERCE 1. LANDMARK.
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•Jorge
Dwayne Godwin is a neuroscientist at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
Cham draws the comic strip Piled Higher and Deeper at www.phdcomics.com
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