Mind Control, Part 2

It's time for Mind Control: The Return to Mind Mountain. The podcast crew focuses on persuasive technology, environmental influences and moral enhancement in part two of this two-part episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey, they're welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast
that looks at the future and says they're terribly, terribly,
terribly moody of human behavior. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm

(00:22):
Joe McCormick, and today we are embarking on part two
of a two part podcast. So if you have not
heard Part one, the one that came out just previous
to this one, you should probably go back and listen
to that first, because that was part one of our
podcast about mind control, right, and that one we really
focused on propaganda and the way of presenting information, not

(00:46):
just propaganda but also advertising, and how the presentation of
information can help at least nudge behavior in the way
that you might want it to go. Absolutely, although in
the past all of that was done via traditional media
as we would call it today, Uh, print and cartoons

(01:07):
and movies and television stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, and
so it was it was true done by traditional media.
It was also done i think a lot of times
with a kind of more intuitive methodology, though you certainly
had people like Edward Burnet's who we talked about in
the last episode, who applied some kind of scientific ways
of studying how to change people's minds on mass But

(01:30):
today we want to talk about a more more modern,
scientific technological approach to the ways different people are looking
at changing human thought and behavior and whether that's ever
the right thing to do, whether and to what extent
it's possible to do. So, Yeah, what's going on today

(01:51):
in the world of changing how people think and behave.
And you know, there are a lot of different reasons
you might want to to do this right, There might
be reasons to try and you're trying to find the
best way, to say, design a community so that people
are generally happy there. It doesn't necessarily have to be
anything kind of sinister going on, although that also is

(02:14):
something we always have to keep in mind because you're
talking about manipulating human behavior. And also it could easily
be something that we seek out for ourselves, something that
we want to change one of the behaviors we have,
either enhance something that we already do or stop doing
something that we don't want to do anymore. Uh, And

(02:35):
then you wouldn't argue that it was sinister. It might
be seen under the umbrella of self improvement, but those
same principles might be applied to a more broad audience
than just a one on one kind of thing. Sure,
I mean, there are a million different ways we try
to influence the ways other people think and behave, and

(02:56):
not all of them are bad, certainly, I mean you
have advertiser and propagandas people trying to support their own
interests by working on your brain. But then there's also,
like I mean, just think about every relationship you have
with people that you love and care about. You do
in those relationships do some work trying to make sure

(03:16):
that those people keep liking you well. Sure, even you know,
displayed behaviors that are important to you, like uh, not
hooking themselves on meth, or like actually doing the dishes
or taking you out to dinner. Those are the three

(03:36):
things that I look for in all of my relationships. Dinner,
no meth. And I was gonna see, I was gonna
say that at our at our old office location, I
would occasionally walk across the street and purchase a dozen
or so miniature cupcakes and then distributing about the office.
Whenever I felt that public opinion of Jonathan Strickland was

(03:57):
falling below the necessary threshold of a crude form of mind.
If that was delicious propaganda problematic. Now that we have
moved our office and we're no longer close to Highland
Bakery grocery right across the grocery, it's on a bakery.
They have to bakery in the grocery anyway. So yeah,
so today I think we wanted to look at some
of the modern methods. One of the first things that

(04:20):
came up. I had never heard of this before we
started doing research for this episode. But it's a concept
known as persuasive technology. And that's the concept of using technology,
be it be it traditional media or the internets or gadgets,
or user experience within applications. Uh, and all of that
kind of stuff too. And I quote here change users

(04:42):
attitudes or behaviors through persuasion and social influence, but not
through corrosion or deception. That is a quote from a
call for papers from conference on Persuasive Technologies. Okay, so
it's not trying to deceive you or or bully you
or something like that, but methetically, but it is trying
to use these methods to affect the way your brain works,

(05:06):
change your habits or your opinions or your emotion and
the study of computers specifically as persuasive technology was basically
pioneered by one B. J. Fogg, And I love that
Fogg is the last name of a dude who's clarifying
things for all of us. So sure, sure, uh no, no, no,

(05:26):
that's completely scientifically accurate. Yeah, it is Fog with two cheese,
but I'm just saying. Um. He in fact coined a
term for the study of computers as persuasive technology, which
is captology, and founded a persuasive Tech lab at Stanford
way back and from the website of that lab, and
this sounds like it could have come from one of
the science fiction novels we talked about in our first

(05:49):
episode on this subject. Uh that it says the best
design solutions today change human behavior. Yet despite decades of research,
challenges remain for people who designed to influence. And first
persuasion seems a dirty word. It shouldn't be. We should
now embrace that we're in the business of behavior change.
Next problem, conceptual confusion. The landscape of persuasion can be disorienting,

(06:12):
muddied by impractical theories and over hyped techniques. Are new
work provides a clear view of behavior change, including language
that is simple yet accurate. So uh again, like the
messaging here seems like that kind of like you could
easily apply kind of a sinister undertone, but it's not.
It's definitely not, because the word persuasion definitely has, you know,

(06:35):
its own baggage that that we associate with that word.
Like I said earlier, we're all trying to persuade in
various ways all the time. Now I went ahead and
search through this website and played around with stuff, and honestly,
I think that the approach is kind of cool. They've
identified sort of a streamlined way of identifying behaviors that
either you want to encourage or discourage, and how to

(06:58):
go about doing that, whether it is something you are
trying to do on a personal goal level, like you know,
the example they use often is exercise more, or if
it's something that you want to do. When you are
designing a product and you want people to use the
product and to gain satisfaction from that product, you want
to make sure you've designed it and marketed it properly

(07:21):
so that people when they purchase it are happy with
that because word of mouth is going to get you
more sales, and also just generally like, if you have
a goal that your product is supposed to do a thing,
here are the steps you need to make sure you
follow in order for it to actually do that thing.
So I think in the terms of something like the
we uh game console, that was one of those things

(07:44):
that that took off really quickly, and I think part
of it was that Nintendo had done such a great
job of presenting it as an alternative to the consoles
that were putting in a lot of uh focus on
high end graphics and high and uh uh you know
processing power. Yeah, those things were seen as sort of

(08:04):
like the Hot Rods for gamers, whereas the WE became
something for your family. Yeah, that was exactly how they
positioned themselves, and it worked. Like Gangbusters. You couldn't find
a WEE for the longest time. Now you could look
at Nintendo and say, well, the WE eventually fell out
a favor, but I would argue that was not because
the way they positioned themselves, but rather that there was

(08:25):
a lack of uh supportive games there that people wanted
to continue playing, and that ultimately there weren't enough people
who were leveraging the control system for the Wii from
a developer standpoint, probably because it's pretty difficult to develop
for that kind of thing. Uh. And that was the downfall,
not the initial positioning, which worked great at any rate.

(08:47):
The Persuasive Technologies Lab had created a roadmap called the
Behavior Wizard. Yeah. I think of it kind of like
those Microsoft wizards, Like I see here making a document. Uh,
clipping would pop up, but don't know, it's not nearly No,
clippy does not pop up. Wouldn't it be great if
you had a clippy for your brain? Though? Look, I
already hate myself enough, dude, like like a cortex like Cordy. Yeah,

(09:13):
I see that you're trying to change your behaviors. I
think I would just I would just have a reptile
brain pop up and say, um, at any rate, yes,
it would definitely be up there. So here's how b J.
Fogg says this persuasive technology, the captology, can be effective.
How it actually works. Um. First, he says that you

(09:36):
have to keep three things really in mind whenever you
are trying to change behaviors. And the first is something
I touched on in our previous episode. That simplicity is
important when you design systems meant to change behavior because
human beings are in general lazy. So you've got to
make it easy to do if you if you don't
make it, if it takes effort to do, the more

(09:58):
effort it takes, the us likely that behavior is going
to change. And this isn't like an insult to us.
I mean, another way to phrase human beings are lazy
would be to say you don't want to waste your time. Yeah. Again,
like if you say, the harder something is, the more
you have to invest in order to really change that behavior.

(10:19):
So the goal is make it as easy as possible. Uh.
And the easier you make it, the more likely change
will actually happen. So that's another way of looking at it.
But but they summoned up by saying you guys are lazy.
The second thing to keep in mind is that you
should employ triggers, which are prompts or cues or calls
to action, that kind of thing. And Dr Fogg's behavior
model identifies three types of triggers. You have facilitators, sparks,

(10:43):
and signals, and the difference between the types fall. You
are great, right, they fall. The differences fall on their
scale of motivation. Versus ability. So motivation is the will
to do something and ability is the skill to do
that thing. Uh. And he also points out that daily
habits are the most powerful of all behaviors and only
by understanding those can you ever hope to change them

(11:06):
because it requires a long term approach to behavioral change
and a lot of different approaches to to get to
to alter long term behaviors don't take that into account.
So an example of this might be you want to
stop smoking, and a lot of approaches may have it
be kind of a uh, quit and you're done sort

(11:27):
of thing, but that means you end up very often
going back to that habit after some given amount of time,
and that you really have to invest in this long
term view if you want to change a daily habit. Okay,
where does Clippy come in? Clippy does not come in
at all. You spoke of the behavior wizards, yes, but
Clippy is not a part of the behavior Wizard. Clippy

(11:48):
is probably a great way of convincing you not to
use that version of Microsoft Office. So that was the
intended purpose then success, right, So the the behavior Wizard
itself is map that guides you into ways to change behaviors.
And I actually went ahead and walk through this once
just to see how it would work out. And I
used to an example of exercise for myself. Uh. And

(12:12):
it gives you a very simple choice at the very beginning,
which is do you want to stop or decrease a
particular behavior or do you want to start or increase
a behavior? And I said I wanted to start or
increase because I want to exercise more and more frequently.
So after choosing start, I'm given three options, which is
to restart a familiar behavior, so something I used to

(12:34):
do but no longer, do start a brand new behavior,
or increase in existing behavior. So I'm already walking to work, uh,
to and from work, that's about six miles every day,
and I say I want to increase this behavior because
while walking is good, I'm not really doing any other exercise. Uh. Next,
it's asking me to define a time frame of how

(12:54):
long I want this behavior to go on. Um, I'm
not I don't actually have to say what the behavior
is at any point. By the way, you can just
keep that in your mind whatever it may be. So
in this case, I'm asked to define it as either
a one time thing, so I need to do this
the one and only time and then I'm done, or
for a period of time, like you know, a certain

(13:17):
set of months or years or whatever, working up to
your wedding or swimsuit season or something right right where
there is a definitive endpoint, or just from now on.
Now I want to do from now on because I
want to have a healthy lifestyle until I'm no longer living.
So I was why I would choose that one. After
you're no longer living, it's going to be freedo's and

(13:38):
pig skins forever. I guess technically I could have said
for a period of time, that time being when I'm
no longer breathing, but you know whatever for now on.
So next, that gives me a pathway to follow, and
they color code their pathways. It put me on the
purple path because I wish to create a long term
increase in an existing behavior. So the other pathways included

(14:01):
green which is to do a new behavior, Blue to
do a familiar behavior that you have stopped doing, Gray
path which was to decrease a behavior, or Black path
which is to completely stop a behavior. And each path
has its own requirements to achieve success. So the purple
path requires me to change at least one element from
the FOG behavioral model, and here are the three elements
they list. Increase the number of triggers that lead to

(14:24):
a desirable behavior. So, in whichever format of those triggers
I would use, those two help encourage me to pursue
this enhance my ability to perform that behavior. In other words,
make it easier for me to do whatever that thing is.
This might involve looking for a gym that's really close
to my house, so it makes it a lot easier

(14:44):
for me to get there and do this sort of thing.
Or amplify the motivation for doing the behavior with intrinsic
and extrinsic motivators. So intrinsic obviously would be things within myself. Extrinsic,
I'd be telling my friends, Hey, could you remind me
to stop being such a you know, lazy fat I,
And then that would help me motivate me to go
and decrease my lazy fat kindness. For example, making a

(15:07):
pact amongst your friends, like, hey, the next time that
we get together and watch some movies, let's all bring
vegetables instead of or even I have several friends we
eat nothing the Sorry, it's fine, I've got I've got

(15:28):
several friends who just uh this past weekend. No, they
all participated in a color run, so you know, it's
a fun group event where they're all exercising. I did
not participate in this, although I did do quite a
bit of walking this past weekend. But this would be
an example of something that could be an extrinsic motivator.
It's the participation of a social event that is completely

(15:52):
centered around what I want to do, in this case exercise.
So none of this is is sinister. This is all
just the is the way kind of setting yourself up
for success. Right. So, once upon a time, the Persuasive
Technology Lab sold resource guides to help people follow those pathways.
But as of now they say, well, the lab guides

(16:14):
were created in and they weren't really there. They haven't
been updated in a while, so we're no longer selling them.
If you are interested in this, you can actually contact
them and explain what the behavior is you're trying to
either increase or decrease, or start or finish or whatever,
and the Lab may be able to share with you
one of the guides that would be applicable to that

(16:36):
they might not, but they may. So this is interesting
because this seems largely, as you've described it, a sort
of a self applied and self motivated way of changing
thoughts and behavior, changing behaviors. Um. And I wonder how
well techniques like this, or even other techniques in the
persuasive technology field could be applied to others, which is

(16:59):
what we think of more often in the mind control domain.
Well and even in this case, well, whereas I was
using an example that was very much self Uh, if
you were using the same general kind of approach while
designing whatever it is you are creating in order to
put it forth into the public, then the ideas that
you would follow the same general pathway. You know, you

(17:22):
would identify what it is your product is trying to do,
whether it's trying to enhance a particular behavior or or
discourage it or whatever, and make sure that your design
falls in line with the same sort of approach. Right.
For example, let's say that you're creating an app. Uh,
maybe that does motivate people to to get fit, Yeah,

(17:45):
like like couch to five K Sure sure? Uh. You know,
if if your app has really bad design, um, like
it's difficult to use then if it's not using appropriate triggers, right, right,
then it's going to be successful in helping people do
this thing get couched five K and ultimately people won't

(18:05):
use it, which means ultimately the people who developed the
app don't benefit from it. So, uh, there are ways
of using this in a broader sense. And it's while
we've I've really focused on just this lab, it goes
well beyond one lab. Oh yeah. Like, like I said
at the top of this section, there are conferences yearly,
conferences dedicated to this whole field of research, and for example,

(18:29):
in the conferences, focus was on bringing together workers in
the fields of human computer interaction and persuasive technologies, with
the idea being that you know, persuasive technology researchers are
really steeped in the psychology of persuasion, which has only
recently expanded to include interactive technologies. You know, Previously it

(18:49):
was the print, the radio, the TV, stuff like that,
UM and that. You know. Meanwhile, human computer interaction researchers
are chock full of knowledge about interactive us A, bility,
UM and accessibility and experience, but might be less familiar
with the psychological persuasion side. UM focus was on mobile apps.
So so, so again we can see this kind of work. Uh,

(19:13):
this kind of this kind of research find its way
into realms that will ultimately impact us as consumers of
either products or services. Yeah. So there are I'm sure
lots of things that we could learn that would be
interesting about the way different user interfaces and and apps
and pieces of technology change our behaviors. I would love

(19:34):
to see just this may exist. I don't even know,
like an essay on the psychological effect in the long
term of the like button? Does that do to us?
I am creeked out by the potential of that of
that essay. No, no, I would love to read it,
um or even just a just an essay on how
successful Amazon's one click button is. Oh yeah, yeah, to

(19:57):
to increase the behavior of impulse buying. You guys have
seen that they Amazon has launched a new thing where
for certain brands, where it's a button that you connect
to your WiFi, a physical button that you connect to
your WiFi network. So you get a little plastic piece
that's got a button on it, connected to a specific
brand for specific product, and then if you push the button,

(20:19):
it automatically puts in an order of that product through Amazon,
and that's all you have to do. You just push
the button and then they send the thing to you. So,
for example, it could be like if you bump the box,
you well, if you if you get a deluge to
two things, two things one as soon as the well
it's each for one brand, right, So there's that you're

(20:42):
not gonna get everything out of Amazon's catalog. But yeah,
you could end up with like a whole bunch of
toilet paper if you're not careful. Except that it also
has a thing where pizza rolls button is stuck in
the on position it has. It also has a thing
where you will not get um, they will not send
you another another order until the first order that you've

(21:03):
requested has arrived at your house. So you have you
have like, yeah, you got a little kid visiting your
house and they come up to the button and just
start whacking away. You're just gonna get one of those.
So as long as you don't have something like a
private jet button where you're going to be like, well,
I wasn't planning on buying to private jets this month,
you should be all right. It's not like a pet

(21:25):
snake button or something or it's usually it's very specific stuff,
so like paper towels or dishwasher fluid, that kind of
stuff I use so much dishwasher fluid, I need a
button for it. Well, it's just one of the things
where you realize when you're running low, you just press
the button and then you don't have to worry about
it again. And for some things like paper towels, as
a as a puppy owner, right now, that would come

(21:48):
in incredibly handy when I'm coming down to that last
roll and let's just hit that button right now. Okay, Well,
we don't have to talk all user experience and technology
because in fact, there's a lot of science informing things
that go way deeper into the human experience. Uh, that
can change the ways that we think and behave. In fact,

(22:10):
one of the main ones that I've always heard about
in my life is color. Yeah, color psychology. Uh. I
don't know how big this was when you guys were kids.
When I was a kid, there was this whole thing
about you know, what's the best kind of way to
create colors in the elementary school classrooms for a learning environment,
that kind of stuff. Um, and there have been a

(22:32):
lot of studies on color psychology what kind of colors
might affect human behavior and decision making and our ability
to learn that sort of stuff. UH, and some of
the studies are really interesting, although there's a question about
how much of it um is UH is like, what
what are the methodologies behind it? Questionable methodology. But one

(22:54):
of the studies I read about that the color red
might help athletes beat the snot out of each other. Yeah.
Scientific American had a study or an article that talked
about study conducted by anthropologists at Durham University UH. And
the study had athletes who were participating in combat sports
like boxing and greco roman wrestling in taekwondo UH pitted

(23:19):
against one another and some of the athletes were wearing
outfits that were red and some were wearing outfits that
were blue. And they saw that the people who wore
red were winning more frequently than the ones who wore blue,
particularly whenever you were looking at a scenario where the
two opponents were really well matched, that their their skill
level was considered to be very close in range. So,

(23:43):
in other words, if you put a novice in red
against a taekwondo master or just in blue, that a
novice is probably not gonna take down the master. But
if you're talking about two people of comparable skill level,
it seemed that the ones who were wearing red were
winning more frequently. Now why that's the case, that's still
a valid question. We don't necessarily know the answer. It

(24:06):
could be that the ones who are wearing red were
suddenly becoming more aggressive and taking more chances, and were
thus ended up ending up, you know, with that great
risk and great reward. Uh. It could be that the
ones who were wearing blue were becoming more defensive and
we're not striking as frequently as the ones wearing red,

(24:26):
and therefore ended up ultimately losing. It could be that
the referees were favoring those wearing red over those wearing blue.
It could be a combination of these factors. We don't that.
The study did not go so far as to identify
specifically why the ones in red were coming out on
top more frequently. But there are other examples too. There's

(24:47):
there are examples about colors affecting our our purchasing decisions,
I mean their entire departments obviously, companies that are dedicated Yeah, yeah,
there are reasons why most detergents have orange and blue
color ring on their labels, and it's because at some
point someone did a study and said these are power
colors for power. Yeah, and then they get attention and
people pay attention to as opposed to like the clear

(25:10):
or the white detergent bottles that might be overlooked instead.
So yeah, I don't know if this is true. I
remember hearing when I was younger that it was like
McDonald's uses that red and yellow thing because it makes
people hungry. That might be totally not true, but it's
very well yeah, yeah, well it's at some point someone
decided red makes you hungry, and actually yellow usually makes

(25:32):
you angry, according to like classical color psychology. So I'm
not sure where the yellow yellow comes also like ketchup
and mustard, but I'm just you know, I'm just saying
it's a bigger place anyway. So it's like bizarre arched
fries descending into an ocean of ketchup. That's the way
I hate them. Uh So. Over at Virginia Text Pamplin
College of Business, there were a series of studies that

(25:52):
found the consumers reacted differently to products that were presented
on a red background versus those that were presented on
a blue background, and they responded differently in different scenarios. So,
in an auction scenario, for example, the consumers who saw
a red background on the product tended to bid more
aggressively than those who saw that same product on a
blue background. However, in negotiation scenarios where you have someone

(26:18):
you know already saying here's how expensive this product is
going to be, and then the you as consumer are
trying to bargain them down, they saw that people who
saw that product on a red background were less likely
to accept a higher payment price than those who saw
the same product on a blue background. So it's like
the red just generally made them more active in the
bargaining either way. Yeah, like like it wasn't so much

(26:39):
about the price point, but in like their level of participation. Yeah,
kind of. It is kind of weird because you could
think that if you had presented this one product as
an auction, the person seeing red was going to bid higher.
If you presented it as a negotiation, they were going
to demand it be lower in price. But it could
be the exact same product with the red background, just
two different scenarios. Some some research that I ran into

(27:01):
would probably say that that was due to agitation. Um,
But I'll get to that in just a moment. Yeah,
all that being said, color psychology is still a field
that's under a lot of study. Like I had mentioned before,
methodologies are an issue, particularly with earlier studies, especially the
ones that were dating out the nineteen fifties when this

(27:22):
was starting to explode as a field of study. Yeah. Well,
I'm sure this applies to a lot of the science
we're going to be talking about in this episode, because
it's dealing with that kind of like a behavioral conditioning.
And in these cases, I think a lot of times
these studies don't they're not reproducible. I don't know. And
in furthermore, anytime that you're trying to really sess out

(27:44):
the reasons for human behavior, there are so many factors
at work there. Sure. Yeah, and also just the idea
that a lot of these studies get communicated to us
through various forms of the media that may be oversimplifying
or for multiple stating the significance of exactly like it

(28:05):
might be that people with a red background or five
percent more likely to do something than with another color.
And it's like Wow, look at that right orlikely? And
unless you're able to isolate all the other variables, like
Lauren was saying, it's really hard to make a definitive conclusion.
But there are other other stimuli that could potentially alter

(28:27):
our moods to the point where our decision making is
in fact affected, like sound, like if you are tired
of my voice, you may want to strangle somebody, that
would be altering your decision making process. I'm sure unless
you had already planned to do that, which case, don't
do that. I'm sure you could devise a pretty effective

(28:47):
mind control method for me that would just make me
want to get out of a place that had the
fluorescent light buzzings. That's fair. So uh. I read a
piece in Psychology today. It was published way back at
nineteen eighty one that looked at the effect of sounds
and urban environments on the mental health of people who
lived there or you know how, how how they perceived

(29:08):
sound and noise. So the beginning of the article described
a very simple experiment in which a researcher was carrying
several volumes of books down the sidewalk and then would
drop some of those books as if it was just
an accident like tripping and dropping a couple of books.
And they also had, during various trials of this experiment,
a lawnmower that was either running so the lawnmower motor

(29:31):
was making noise, or it was not running. And they
found that fifty percent of the time when the researcher
quote unquote accidentally dropped books but the lawnmower wasn't running,
people would come to help the researcher to pick up
the books. So half the time when the lawnmower wasn't running,
someone would come and help out. But if the lawnmower
was running, only twelve point five percent of the time

(29:54):
would someone come to help them. So if this irritated
noise was going, people are just like, no, I just
want to get out of here and just keep on walking.
Presumably that's why they were thinking. Obviously, a study can't
really find out what people are thinking yet because we
haven't installed the necessary technology to read thoughts. Uh So.
The piece then went on to explore how unwanted noise

(30:15):
and the way we perceive it can affect our mental health,
and in general, unwanted noise can cause things like stress, anxiety, irritation,
sleep deprivation, that sort of stuff factors that can influence
our decision making processes. But just like we were talking
with color, we don't know to what extent this can
affect us. It clearly does affect us, But does it

(30:37):
affect us to a point that we are making decisions
based mainly on that? Probably not. It is a it
is one of many factors. And with all of these
questions about about whether it's user experience in an app
or color or sound, to what extent could these things
be used with precision someone trying to get a particular

(30:58):
result out of your right like could could could I
have someone orchestrate a situation where I walk into a
red noisy room and that makes me do what they
want me to do? Probably not? Uh, And Joe, you
and I even talked about something like this about the
wind turbines, about how people who have perceived a low
level noise from wind turbines say it's negatively impacting their

(31:21):
lives and therefore they don't want wind turbines installed uh
in near their neighborhoods. So it's I mean, this is
a real thing that really does real in the sense
that it's really affecting people, whether whether it's physically affecting them. Right.
Another real thing that really does work and is manipulatable

(31:41):
is sent Oh yeah, we actually so funny story. We
got our idea to do this whole podcast about various
methods of subtle and explicit mind control after we did
an episode about the future of smells and how we
learned that there is at least some amount of research

(32:01):
suggesting that certain smells changed the way we act in
certain scenarios or yeah, and the way we perceive things
as well, and that it can be a subliminal smell,
it can be below our threshold of detection and yet
still have an effect. So, for example, UH, one of
the studies we talked about involved people looking at a
series of different UH photographs of people having kind of

(32:23):
a neutral expression on their faces. But they the control
group was just in a room looking at pictures, and
the experimental group was in a room looking at pictures,
but the room had a subliminal level scent of I
think it was a floral scent, pleasant floral scent, and
that the ones who were in the room that had
the floral scent ended up saying that more of the

(32:44):
faces looked likable than the control group did. And so
it suggests that when we are subjected to this kind
of stimuli, our perception can be um, somewhat somewhat nudged,
not necessarily to the point where we're going to make
a completely new decision, but we might have a different
first impression. We may have a different emotional association with

(33:09):
whatever that situation happens to be. So if the first
time you ever encountered something was accompanied by a really
unpleasant scent, you may have an unpleasant association with whatever
that thing is. So which you know, again it's it's
not like it's not like mind blowing revelation, but it
is interesting that the smell does not have to be
at a detective level. Yeah, yeah, that was the thing

(33:31):
that that part was really and I mean, how do
you control for that? So now now we're talking about
if someone can get me into a red, noisy room
that smells like very fatally of jazz man, there you go,
could they get me to do what they want me
to do? And again, um, probably not unless it's just

(33:51):
like do you want to leave the room? And I'm like, well,
if this is all it is is a red noisy room,
then yeah, I want to go. You know, you're saying
you're saying you're not likely to encounter of the scenario
because you're picturing it as a physical location, like somebody
getting you to go into a red, noisy room with
a certain smell. But I think that there is much
more potential for using these kinds of factors to influence

(34:14):
us when we imagine them coming in digital form. So instead,
think about the way you are sort of living in
your computer for a lot of the time. You know,
you what you're looking at. Your entire world is what's
on your computer screen. You've got your headphones on. That's
what you're hearing. Sound really sad and well, unfortunately we

(34:37):
know we all we all become immersed in our devices,
and that can be in a lot of ways, kind
of like going into a room where somebody gets to
control all the environmental conditions. They're controlling what you hear,
what you see, what the colors are, if you buy
that that smell orama kind of stuff we talked about
in the Future of Smells episode, there may even be

(34:58):
digital ways of influencing and introducing sense into your environment.
So I can see this being sort of like an
electronically deliverable environment that can be controlled to influence your
behavior and thoughts. Yeah, maybe something a little more simple,
like here is a virtual experience that is meant to

(35:22):
help you relieving anxiety and stress. Like that, it could
easily see. But as as opposed to something like, you know,
here's an experience that you are unaware is attempting to
affect your behavior to certain ends, I'm not entirely certain
that would work. That happens all the time. Every single
time that you walk into a store or a restaurant,

(35:43):
you are entering an environment that has been created specifically
to get you to do certain things, and that's usually
buy more stuff. And a whole lot of research has
gone into this field. It's called environmental psychology. Um it
includes the music, the color, the scent um, and again
a caveat. Like I said before, there are so many

(36:03):
variables that go into any individual person's decisions to stay
in a place and make purchases there. So it's it's
really hard to assign any of these individual stimuli the
responsibility of driving a customer's behavior. But when discussing environmental psychology,
lots of researchers depend upon a model that was created

(36:24):
by Arabian and Russell in four and that is pleasure
arousal dominance. And that's not some weird fifty shades a
great thing. That is a three D graph of feeling
pleasure versus displeasure, aroused versus calm and in control versus controlled. Okay, Uh,
Now that second vector aroused versus calm or or or

(36:47):
agitated versus column, as I said earlier in this episode,
is what gives a lot of researchers fits. Because some
research indicates that across the board, people make more snap
purchases when they're aroused, when there's loud music or bright
colors or something like that. Um. But some research indicates

(37:08):
that people make more purchases overall when they're calm, because
they're more likely to stay in a place longer. But
you know, if we go with the music example, what
types of music lead to those feelings? Uh? In one
study that was published in Advances in Consumer Research in
n they found that playing popular music arousing music basically

(37:29):
boosted sales that were made to younger men, but playing
instrumental music calming music boosted sales made to older women.
M hm. But there's still a lot of questions to
be asked. You know, was the music familiar or unfamiliar
to the people? Hypothetically familiar music is more arousing, uh,

(37:50):
hypothetically un you know, you know, if you're if you're
listening to unfamiliar music and going like, what is that
music about? Let me look it up on my phone,
that can lead to a higher state of arousal. How
how loud was the music? I had the customers just
gone through a breakup and listened to a lot of
Taylor Swift And was Taylor Swift playing and did that
motivate them to buy more or less? I you know,

(38:10):
it's hard to say. Yet again, that makes me think
about the potential for personalized advertising, like with incorporating these
environmental kind of factors. Then again, I don't know how
that would really happen for like an online shopping experience.
I mean, you don't want to go to an online
shopping destination and have it start playing music at you.

(38:31):
Just seems I don't turn it off. I don't want
to go anywhere and have it play music at me
unless I have chosen to listen to music, right, Yeah,
And that's what that's my immediate like, where is the
mute button on my computer? Reaction whenever I encounter that. Sure,
but there are some online shops, uh, usually like private
boutique kind of shops that will have and if they're clever,

(38:52):
that they'll have a little button that says, would you
like to play the accompanying music? And that will that
will give you some some stuff to listen to while
you're buying lots of things on Earth clicks. Yes, Uh,
sometimes out of curiosity, I'm like, I do want to
know what they want me to listen to? Right now?
That sounds horrifying. Yeah, that's kind of interesting, I guess I.

(39:14):
You know a little tidbit out there for restaurant owners
who have websites, don't have your website AutoPlay music. It
doesn't make me want to eat your food more. However,
just go to the Oatmeal and read their web comic
about what not to do when you're a restaurant website,
because that's that just really sums u up. Have have
the hours of operation on every page, yes, and have

(39:38):
make sure your menu is up to date. Those are
my two big ones. Post your address, Just post your address.
That's that's a good one too. Please yeah, but hours
of operation. Don't put it on contact. That doesn't make
any sense. All right, I think what I think, I've
gone off on a tangent. Let's you know what. I
need to calm down. So I'm just gonna take my meds.
Here you talk about the next thing, you know, Hold

(39:58):
on a second, But that was that was a blatant transition?
Would it wouldn't have been blatant if you hadn't pointed
it out? Okay, let's talk about drugs, because it is
no secret at all that drugs can affect your behavior.
That is the purpose of some of them. Yes, yeah,
But the question is about the level of precision with

(40:19):
which people could intentionally use drugs to modify their own
behavior or the behavior of others. So we're familiar with,
for example, a psycho pharmacological drugs, the drugs we take
to help us with like subjective mental states or just
an example would be antidepressants or anti anxiety medication or

(40:41):
something like that. It causes changes in your brain chemistry
that translate into changes in subjective experience and behavior. But
research is showing that some particular drugs can have an
influence on not just that, but on people's ethical decision making,
so not just how they feel their internal states, but

(41:04):
how they make decisions and what their values are and
what they do. So, in the scholarly literature, using scientific
or technological methods to induce a change, hopefully for the better,
in one's ethical tendencies or capacities, is known as moral enhancement.
And there's a lot of debate among like philosophers and
ethicists about you know, what does it really mean to

(41:27):
say that we could use external you know, methods and
drugs and surgeries and brain stimulation and things like that
to change our morals? What would that is? Does that
action actually have a moral quality to it? Like is
it moral to take a pill that you think would
make yourself more moral? See? Well, I mean that's a

(41:52):
philosophical argument that we could we could actually have right now,
because well, let's get into that in a minute, because
first I should talk about the fact that this actually
seems very likely to be possible. Just a few examples
of chemicals that could potentially change moral or social behavior.
One is oxytocin. That's a naturally occurring hormone. So there's

(42:13):
already oxytocin in your body. Um, and it's associated with
a wide range of effects in the brain, mostly centered
around like intimacy and bonding kind of hugging, cuddling, happy
times chemicals. So the release of oxytocin is triggered in
maternal infant bonding behaviors, and for that reason you can
probably guess that it's been named as a potential candidate

(42:35):
for chemical moral enhancement. UM. And if we discover, for example,
that taking a nasal spray dose of oxytocin makes people
more empathetic, increases nurturing behaviors, encourages trust, and cuts down
on anxiety, why wouldn't we want to live in a
world where everybody sort of hits the squared to oxytocin

(42:57):
before coming into the office in the morning. It's like
it's just a spray of cuttle juice. I don't know.
I sit between Josh and Chuck and I'm not sure
I want to get cuddled. Um. But then it's funny
because oxytocin is kind of a flagship for the complications
that exists now with our incomplete understanding of how drugs

(43:18):
affect are our moral and ethical decision making, Because on
the one hand, it does seem to have this effect
like encourages these positive pro social emotions like like trust
and bonding, but at the same time it may come
with its own problems. For example, I've seen reports suggesting
that in addition to all the positive traits, oxytocin might

(43:40):
be associated with increased ethnocentrism in group, loyalty outgroups, suspicion
uh the ideas that it might encourage sort of lots
of good pro social qualities for the close inner circle
of people at the expense of relationships with strangers and
people perceived to be outside. This is fascinating to me.

(44:01):
It kind of makes me think of of primitive cultures
that were that were, you know, in fairly close proximity
with one another, where you study the language of those
cultures and often the word that they give for themselves
tends to mean the people, and the word that they
give for other cultures that are within the proximity tends

(44:22):
to be something like those heathens over there, or those
those those folks that we don't like to talk about,
that kind of thing. And it sounds like this is
this is kind of instilling that are potentially could be
you know, kind of giving those sort of same feelings
that we we witness in primitive culture. Right. Well, part
of the thing is we we just don't know the
full range of effects yet, because you know, these relationships

(44:46):
between our total sort of profile of behavior and single
chemicals and how to act on the brain is very
complex and difficult to understand. Oh, of course, although you
know with with this particular example, we know that this
is a hormone that does stuff in our body, that
does brain stuff in our body in these ways. But

(45:06):
what about drugs that aren't necessarily intended to do brain
stuff in our body? Yeah, we've actually discovered that some
drugs already used for other purposes have a side effect
of having implications for our moral and ethical decisions and behaviors.
For example, I've just one thing that people talk about

(45:26):
is SSR eyes taken for various reasons, can help change
the way people look at certain moral dilemmas. And then
here's a big one. What about a drug to reduce racism?
They have a drug for that, Well, I mean we
have a drug where there is a suggested link. So

(45:48):
there's a drug called properanal all. It's used as a
beta blocker for people with like cardiovascular conditions. So if
you have high blood pressure heart disease, you might take
propranol al UH to relax your circulatory system and uh
decrease your blood pressure. Well, a study published in Psychopharmacology

(46:09):
in found that one side effect of this drug is
that it seems to reduce people's implicit negative racial bias. So,
in a double blind test environment, thirty six white volunteers
were randomized, divided into groups, and the test group was
given a single forty milligram dose of propranol all and

(46:32):
then there was of course a placebo controlled group, and
the participants were given tests of both their explicit levels
of racial prejudice like you know what they would report,
and then also a racial implicit association test. It's sort
of this thing to find out what you're unconscious racial
biases are. UH. And the author's reported quote relative to placebo,

(46:55):
propranol al significantly lowered heart rate and abolished implicit rate
shull bias without affecting the measure of explicit racial prejudice.
Propranolol did not affect subjective mood, So that's that's really interesting,
and the difference between what people think they're doing and

(47:15):
what they actually are doing is is a factor that's
been studied in a lot of these fields that we're
talking about. Yeah, and so this was a small study,
and the authors themselves call out for more researchers to
try to find so they they ask, you know, please
more people try to replicate this and see what you
come up with. Um. But whether or not this particular

(47:37):
drug or any of its family can actually make us
less racist, just the possibility of such a chemical is
really worth talking about because in my mind, the fact
that most people who exhibit racist behavior claim not to
be racist when you call them out for it signals
to me at least that I think most people, even

(47:57):
most fairly racist people, record noie that racial bias is
generally a bad thing, and many would be willing to
take a pill to reduce their own racial bias if
they could. Maybe maybe one would hope so if at
the worst, I would hope that they would say, well,
this isn't going to do anything because I'm not racist

(48:18):
as well, you know, can't hurt to take it, right,
as long as it was something where like what are
the side effects? Other side effects, well then you're fine,
Well yeah, and I'm not advising it. Yeah, that's obviously
we are not telling people to start taking a heart
disease medication, but certainly not randomly on the black market. Right,

(48:38):
So there may be other drugs that have similar effects
that don't have side effects, right. We don't know yet,
but the fact that that's a possibility is very interesting
because it brings up the question of what is it
ethical to try to get other people to do to

(48:59):
change their behavior years. I mean, if we if it
turned out that we discovered there was a pill then
and we tested it rigorously and said, huh, you know,
it looks like this pill has no negative side effects
except that it generally makes people have a little bit
less anxiety and it decreases racial bias by would it

(49:22):
be would that be a drug you could say, Okay,
everybody in society should take this. Yeah, that's a tough
that's a tough one. I mean, to me, the question
of ethics really comes in the pursuit of using these
these techniques specifically to alter human behavior. Um from like
a study perspective, because I think implementation is always going

(49:44):
to be problematic. I mean, obviously, if you are living
in a a culture where the the good of the
many outweighs the good of the few, and that's the accepted, um,
you know, worldview for that culture. Maybe, and you would
actually have this as a prescribed element where you had

(50:05):
to take it, because that's just culturally what people believed.
But in other places I think it would be problematic
at best. To me, the two main factors that go
into whether or not it's ethical to attempt to alter
human behavior our intent and implementation. By that, I mean,
what what is the purpose for attempting to change human behavior?

(50:28):
If your intent is to make the environment a better
place to live, and therefore people tend to make more
quote unquote moral or ethic ethical decisions because the environment
they are in is a more pleasant environment. I see
nothing wrong with that, because ultimately what you're saying is
I'm trying to do my best to make this environment

(50:49):
a good one for people. So in this case, I
would say things like, when you're going in for redevelopment
of urban landscapes, that would potentially be good, although we
also know there are big issues with that too, like
you could end up driving prices up and then pushing
people who could most benefit from that renewal outside of

(51:11):
that area, which obviously we don't want to do that.
You're defeating the purpose then, so it's a very delicate
thing to do. That kind of leads into the implementation.
How do you actually implement these things so that you're
trying to change behavior if you're doing it in a
way where it's not invasive or intrusive. Uh, and you aren't,
you know, trying to specifically herd people into a particular

(51:35):
type of behavior. I don't have a whole lot of
objections to it. Obviously, the more invasive or uh uh,
you know, unescapable you make this kind of implementation, the
more I get really nervous about it. So those are
the two factors to me that are the most important.
And it's not like a binary system where one is

(51:56):
good and one is bad. It's definitely several shade across
the spectrum. And uh, these these various that the two
factors can play very important roles in different ways. Yeah.
I think one of the main distinctions that is becoming
quite obvious is people choosing behavior changing stimulations and conditions

(52:18):
to apply to themselves versus applying that to other people,
like without their knowledge or without their consent. That's of
course in the second condition where it becomes really difficult.
I mean, I don't think anybody really has much of
a problem with use. Somebody choosing to use whatever kind
of techniques or drugs or anything science can come up

(52:39):
with to make themselves exercise more by their own choice,
or to make themselves have, you know, less racial bias,
or to make themselves more generous. That all seems pretty fine.
I think most most humans agree that that's a personal choice. Yeah,
And so of course we would probably also mostly agreed

(52:59):
that it's wrong gong to use techniques like this against
other people's will to coerce them or to exploit them.
But what about in these middle case scenarios where you
are basically coercing people but for something that seems to
be for the greater good. That's where it gets really sticky. Like,

(53:19):
for example, there is talk of using a hypothetical aggression
reducing impulsiveness reducing drug as a cure for somebody convicted
of a violent crime. Now, I have very little doubt
that we could find several drugs in the future that
would accomplish this goal. That doesn't seem implausible to me

(53:41):
at all. But it's the ethical question. Is it an
unacceptable violation of the freedom and the privacy of the accused.
On one hand, my intuition sort of says unequivocally, yes,
you can't force people to take drugs that will change
their personality. Is getting back to a clockwork orange, Yeah,
that that seems very very wrong. On the other hand,

(54:03):
what do we do now to somebody who's convicted of
a violent crime, Well, we lock them in a prison,
or in some cases, like historically or depending on where
you are in the world, you might physically injure them
or kill them or something. And then there's even in
the prison scenario where rehabilitation is supposed to be a factor, uh,

(54:23):
in reality that the rehabilitation effect doesn't seem to be
um taking high priority in a lot of cases. Yeah, yeah,
And so I don't know. I mean, locking someone in
a prison is not at all a nice thing to
do to them. I mean most to most people accept
that that's something you have to do, but it's sort
of a necessary evil. So if someone's a murderer, they're

(54:45):
a hit man for the mob or something, most people,
I think feel like it's okay to lock that person
up somewhere where they can't hurt other people. So would Yeah,
So would it really be worse to offer that hit
man instead the option of a reduced sentence and the
option of taking a drug that makes of people in

(55:06):
previous cases less likely to commit acts of violence in
the future. Uh. It's a tough call because intuitively, I
still don't like it. It seems creepy. But then again,
you know that's my intuitions. If I went with my gut,
I would be telling the right brothers that if man
had been meant to fly, etcetera, he'd been born with
a aerodynamic hydrogen s act. Well, and there's a historical

(55:29):
case that we can point to immediately in the technology
world where you know, this very thing had been employed
and it wasn't for violence but for homosexuality. UH. Touring
was given the option to UH to Touring, he was
given the option to be chemically castrated rather than be

(55:54):
incarcerated for his homosexuality, which he he opted to do,
and then ultimately he would, depending upon your the the report,
he committed suicide or was incredibly unfortunate in consuming too
much arsenic from apple seeds. I Uh, I thought about
that exact same comparison. The one thing that makes that
very different than what we're talking about, is that touring

(56:16):
was very obviously I mean, at least to all of
us in the room, I think we would agree the
victim of a deeply unjust law. Yeah, oh sure, and
also like he actually did something deeply evil that except
that you know, again, it's it's all based upon whichever
whichever culture is imposing this, right, I mean, in our
culture obviously now we're having this change where people are

(56:39):
more accepting of homosexuality, but which yes, again I agree,
hooray for that. But there are other cultures where they
might still very much considerate. In fact, there are other
cultures where they very much considered a crime. And so, uh,
you know, it's it's one of those things that we
do see is being employed right now. It's just not

(57:02):
in the case of this pill will make you less violent, right,
And of course it is a different thing to say, uh,
imprisonment versus chemical castration and imprisonment versus a really good
drug that has no negative side effects that lets you
be who you are but less violent. Two. I mean

(57:23):
there are side effects to being chemically castrated and those
are negative. Yeah, And of course I'm I'm not going
so far as to advocate that less violent I'm saying
it's a tough call. I don't know what we should
do in that scenario. Yeah. Well, and if I may
kind of Devil's advocate, uh, I, I would say that

(57:45):
the question is nearly moot when you get right down
to it, Because although I do believe in the wonders
of modern medicine continuing into the incredible future, psychology is
not a science that can be applied evenly across the population. Um.
Even psychiatry is really a guessing game, certainly at our

(58:05):
current level of knowledge. And and I'm not sure that
I can envision an immediate future in which we've gained
enough new knowledge to to to make it so. You know, um,
that the human body and brain are so complex, There's
so much going on with each individual person that that
any given uh method or drug is is difficult to

(58:28):
apply across an entire culture. Uh. But if I, if
I had to take a side, I guess I would
say that, you know, i'd agree with you too, like like, no,
it's not ethical too ever try to change someone else's
behavior probably, uh, But but sometimes factors more important than

(58:49):
ethicality do influence our decisions in the same way that
it's also not ethical to lock somebody in a prison.
You just might have to do it considering the alternative well,
And and in my case, when I'm thinking about altering behavior,
I think I'm looking at it a little less in
a little less of an extreme case than than what

(59:10):
has been proposed here. Mostly we'd be talking about just
changing day to day behaviors and everybody, Yeah, really, what
I'm thinking about is improving things like demonstrably improving things
like cleaning up environments, making places more pleasant to live
and work in, that sort of stuff, where again, you're

(59:32):
setting up a person for success. You're removing some of
the negative things that could uh influence decision making to
making choices that would harm yourself or others. Not that
it eliminates it, but that it decreases some of the triggers,
some of the motivations for that behavior. So in other words,

(59:52):
you're not you're not so much trying to change someone's
behavior as you are trying to make the environment as
conducive to good behavior as possible. That's really the only
way I would see it as being something I would
accept personally. Well, sure, and there could be other ways
that there are things that have a big impact that
really matters more so than just like, you know, can

(01:00:14):
we convince people to buy more hamburgers or uh, But
that aren't necessarily associated with like here's a hit man
for the mob who were trying to reform, with with
drugs or with a happy you know, red room that
plays good music or something. Um No, I mean there
can be things like public opinion. I mean, this sort
of gets us back to the propaganda thing. But there

(01:00:35):
there are problems that almost everybody recognizes when faced with
them explicitly in the ways we deal with public problems.
For example, we just are not very good at long
term thinking. I mean we live in like a you know,
in ostensibly a semi properly functioning democracy where your vote

(01:00:56):
has some kind of meaning, where you can vote on
the issues that matter to you, but we were consistently
not doing a great job of casting the kinds of
votes that would be most beneficial to people in a
hundred years from now. You know. Yeah, everyone's more concerned
about like what they're getting for lunch tomorrow than what

(01:01:18):
their grandchildren will be getting for lunch. Yeah, And so
I don't know, I mean That just kind of makes
me think, like, well, what if we found a drug
that or you know, or smell or something in your brain. Yeah,
that makes people more likely to think long term instead
of just about short term personal games. All I have
to do is find that secret to reversing aging, and

(01:01:41):
then we will very much be concerned with long term.
I'm not sure we would actually think we would still
be very short term and just be like, Wow, things
sure are crappy now. I think we care about ourselves
tomorrow way more than we care about ourselves in forty years.
I guess it depends. It's interesting. I mean, I I
probably would lean towards that at least for the again,

(01:02:02):
the short term, but I think that would be something
we would grow out of. Unfortunately, the question is whether
we would grow out of it before it was too
late to do anything about it. At any rate. We're also,
you know, in the future, we're already talking about things
like brain computer interfaces that I mean, there's some that
already do exist that work on various levels that we've
talked about in this podcast, and we've also mentioned the

(01:02:22):
fact that this interaction doesn't just go from brain to computer.
It can go from computer to brain. Uh. But, as
Lauren was saying, human brains were super complex and we
barely know what's going on right now. Like we we
can have a very high level view of how the
brain works, but when you get down to specifics like

(01:02:44):
can you make someone remember a specific memory or experience
a specific thing? Um, it's that gets a lot trickier.
There's a reason why when you read about the knowledge
and the effects of neurochemicals and things like that day,
you'll often see phrases like associated with because like we

(01:03:06):
we have a very very wide, i'd say, but also
very loose understanding of what's going on inside the brain
and how that correlates to subjective experience and behavior. So
now that that knowledge is going to increase, it's going
to continue to increase over time, and maybe someday it's
possible that will come up with methods that could allow

(01:03:27):
us to very specifically alter someone's views, perspectives, behaviors, experience, whatever.
But that day is not really gonna be close, right,
It's gonna be far. It's twenty four years. You think, yeah,
it's weird that the singularity war off guys, really strange,

(01:03:50):
but yeah, it's one of those things where maybe one
day the sort of the real dystopian science fiction kind
of views of the future will be uh closer to
a potential reality. I mean, you might argue that we're there,
depending upon which dystopia you're looking at and how cynical
you are. Uh. Now, my hope is that by continuing

(01:04:11):
these kind of conversations and really just getting into the
discussion of why this is so complicated beyond just ethics
but to biology as well, that we will get a
better understanding not just of of how we work, but
why we work the way we do. And uh, this
has been really fascinating to cover this pair of topics,
this pair of episodes about these topics, and you know,

(01:04:34):
the Smell one I think was a nice way of
leading us into this. And obviously we could have done
five or six or ten more episodes that are based
on this, We could have done deeper dies on these things.
So if you guys out there were really fascinated by
this and you want to hear more discussions, or there's
something specific you would like to hear more about, you
should let us know, Or if you just have a

(01:04:54):
suggestion for any sort of future episode, we're going to
be doing some listener mail episodes very shortly. You can
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(01:05:14):
us a message, and we'll talk to you again really soon.
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