Die Nacht des Krampus

Heute Nacht ist Krampusnacht. Besprechen Sie mit Robert und Joe auf STBYM die beliebtesten Urlaubsmonster aller.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you welcome to Stuff
to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Crampus Night, isn't it. That's right?
Today is or tonight rather is Crampus Knocked, the night

(00:25):
during which the Beast of Christmas comes down from the
mountains and terrorizes alpine towns around the world. Right, it's
so given that this episode falls on Crampus Knock, we
realized we had a solemn duty, a solemn holiday duty,
to explore Crampus in depth. Man, I think Crampus just

(00:47):
took a walk through our kitchen because I just went
through there and there was such a reek. There was
like a waft of aged shrimp all throughout the microwave area.
Does Crampus smell? You know? I would imagine you would
smell somewhat of sulfur and rot. Yeah, I mean one
would think or or certainly the hides would have a
daintness to them, right. Um. But but the smell was

(01:10):
often overlooked because generally it's more it's it's generally thought
of as more visual spectacle. Uh, certainly for those of
us far away from the Alpine regions that that either
have to make do with some facsimile of Crampus rights
in our own cities or simply have to make do
with with footage and images and illustrations of what these

(01:33):
rights consist of. Now, Crampus was really having a moment
like a couple of years ago. I think like the
suddenly interest in this creature surged, uh, And I feel
like it's it's calmed down enough now that we that
we can properly tackle it. Yeah, but I think the
good news is that I think it has calmed down
to like a steady infection of of Western civilization beyond

(01:55):
the Alpine regions. You know, certainly here in the United States,
like Crampus Uh has you know, sir urged infected the
holiday host And now I think we can say Crampus
is part of our our holiday traditions here in the
United States. Now, another thing is you said you were
going to be leaning into the holidays this year, and
man you have been. But what we we do promise
it's not going to be all Christmas stuff the rest

(02:16):
of the year. It was just that you saw that
it was coming out on Crampus knocked and we we
couldn't do but go to the horns exactly. So let's
talk a little bit more about Crampus, because some of
you may not actually be familiar with crampas or you
might not have you know, as you know, a robust
and understandings as other folks out there. So the short version,
of course, is that Crampus is an Alpine holiday monster

(02:39):
used as negative reinforcement, a threat of punishment for bad
behavior against children. He is the bad cop to St.
Nicholas's good cop. He is uh the stick, whereas St.
Nicholas is the carrot, though much more directly so than St.
Nicholas being the carrot, because the child doesn't actually want
to see St. Nicholas in their house that would perhaps

(02:59):
be traumatic. You want the treats and the goodies and
the presence that St. Nicholas brings, So the St. Nicholas
is like an indirect giver of the carrot. Crampus is
himself quite the stick, right and and but he is
something you wish to avoid. And that's the general idea.
The Crampus is what happens to the bad children. You,
young one, are not one of the bad children, are you.

(03:22):
Uh wait, so what exactly does Crampus do to the
bad children? Well? Uh so so it it very I mean,
the basic idea is that Crampus is going to come
and crampallow go and describe Crampus for everyone, though again
this is a situation where the exact incarnation of Crampas
is going to drift a little bit, and we're going
to discuss the wise of that in a bit a

(03:42):
little bit. Baffa metti, Yeah, a goat like beast man,
kind of a satyr, kind of a pan figure, kind
of a demon, like a furry, shaggy alpine demon from
the cold mountain wilderness comes down. Uh you know, he's
covered in bell's uh as a basket on it on
his back as switches may bring coal as well. Sometimes

(04:06):
it's shown to have like a big lolling uh you know,
giraffe like tongue. And basically he's going to come in
scare the bad children with the bad children with his switches,
and if you're particularly bad, throw you into his basket
and take you with him back to the wilderness to
either eat you out there maybe or maybe take you
to hell. Is is that sometimes part of it. Uh, yeah,

(04:28):
I think again, the exactly exact details are going to vary.
Sometimes I wonder if it's like, because clearly Crampus has coal,
perhaps he needs the children to work in the coal mine.
But that's just me. That's my my possible twist on it.
Now you're probably wondering, you know, where does this idea
come from. We know that it it definitely seems to
originate in the Alpine regions of Europe, but it's unsure

(04:51):
if it's truly a pre Christian pagan tradition. Um. Some
people say that it is, though it undoubtedly invokes pre
Christian pay and ideas and images, um, you know, regardless
of where it's actually or when it's actually emerging. But
at heart, he's a He's just a general bogey, right,
the embodiment of negative reinforcement of cultural norms in children.

(05:13):
And perhaps going back to our discussion of Jenny Green teeth, uh,
the bogey that is used to warn children away from
from still waters that are dangerous. Perhaps Crampus is an
embodiment of, you know, the general message that bad things
will happen to you if you do not take seriously
the rules and advice that your parents and your elders

(05:33):
present you with. So while yes, misbehaving will not actually
result in foul beastmen venturing down from the mountains and
dragging you away to some horrific fate, but misbehaving could
result in bodily harm, and certainly the potential for violent
mistreatment by others is you know, is possible in certain circumstances.
Either way, Crampus is an embodiment of fear in a

(05:55):
holiday that is often reduced to just a notion of
pure joy right, especially in the United States traditionally, But
his spirit is is certainly of the winter from which
our holiday traditions emerge. Uh, you know, he is the
the darkness of the holidays that is ultimately essential to
to winter um rights and winter belief systems that you

(06:18):
find in cultures around the world. Now, one thing that
I think is an interesting difference is that, like whether
or not there's really a St. Nicholas to bring you presents,
children will often end up with presents on Christmas Morning
with the implication that they have come from St. Nicholas,
but nobody ever actually gets carried off by Crampus. Yeah,

(06:39):
you know, you'll he's one of the big things here
is you have Crampus parades, traditional Crampus parades in alpine areas,
in which people dressed in the crampas costumes will parade
through the streets and um and scare children. Though certainly
nowadays they are not They're generally not permitted to touch
the children or to actually strike the children with sticks,

(07:00):
much less drag them away. Uh. But in previous decades, Uh,
you know, I imagine they perhaps had a little more leeway. Yeah,
I guess so. But either way, Yes, the idea is
that Crampus is a a performance. It is a is
a folk festival performance in which people dress up as
the monster and then the monsters parade through the streets.

(07:21):
And in this, you know, it touches on so many
other different folk traditions. There's something about Crampus that seems
to embody just like it just checks off so many
boxes for folk traditions, uh that you find throughout Europe
but also in around the world, you know, like the
making of bread totems that resemble Crampus, Crampus wearing the bells,

(07:43):
bells being objects that are typically used in folk decisions,
worn off evil spirits. Uh, Crampus as being a kind
of horned god as another thing that is often brought up,
you know, and of course there are many versions of
horned gods and horned beings and various religions and myth cycles,
uh you know, tied you know, particularly with the horned

(08:04):
god to the unpredictable nature of the hunt. Uh. So
he he really you know, stands uh, you know, on
this kind of nexus of so many different ideas, Like
it's easy to just go nuts chasing cramps through the
you know, through the centuries of of of human folk history. Well,

(08:24):
he's also just a classic hybrid monster. Yeah, yeah, I
mean that at heart he is kind of part part man,
part goat. I guess you'd say, part sheep, maybe part
you know, part beast, and in that like he ties
into some of our our oldest you know, magical ideas.
A hybridity is key to monstrosity. And what is thought

(08:47):
to be the first monster in the human imagination is
none other than the uh what the the low and
mench figuring from about thirty five to forty thousand years ago. Well,
the first that we have physical epiens. Because yeah, as
we talk about in our episode about the first monster.
You can't know what the first monster was, but this
seems to be like the earliest one where there's a
physical record of the monster. Yeah, and we did a

(09:08):
whole episode on that talking about like, you know, you
know certainly how this example was found and what experts
have thought about it, and how it ties into just
how how our minds work, like bringing two uh different
ideas together into a new idea, and what this new
idea encompasses totally. So what happens on Crampus Knocked, well, uh,

(09:29):
Crampus Knocked is the eve of the Feast of St. Nicholas.
It occurs every December five, and so Crampus descends from
the mountain, terrorizes with the children, drags the worst of
them away in that foul wicker basket covered in bells.
Sometimes he he hands out coal or root and bundles
of sticks, which is interesting. The bundles of sticks are

(09:51):
sometimes also met musical instruments, of course, because they can
be used to it with a percussion instrument. Um. But
you know, this is the overall just a parade in
which there's this threat of greater beatings or abduction if
you do not behave yourselves and um. And this is
another thing, like the Crampus parade through the streets also

(10:12):
has this kind of unruly atmosphere to it that ties
in with a lot of parade traditions that involve masks
and uh, you know, be steel guys is that people
take on and this you know, so again it runs
parallel to so many different things in human culture. Well,
it's one of the great ironies in the belief in
demons and devils that have haaunted us throughout the centuries,

(10:34):
which is that they are often used precisely to enforce
order like orderly behavior among children, and yet they are
themselves figures of chaos. It's like this unruly, unpredictable, wild
kind of thing will be there to punish you if
you break the rules. Why is that? I don't know
that that's interesting to me. Yeah, we'll certainly get into

(10:55):
the psychology of this more in the later portion of
the episode. Asked for the name Crampus comes from cramping,
which means claw in German, so which has a you know,
a nice nasty connotation to it, like this is the
claw the claw man. Um, let's see, goodness, where do
you even even go from there? So we talked about
crampas come, Crampas comes to town, Crampus parades through the streets,

(11:18):
or the Crampus, the cramp i, you know, multiple cramp
Crampus is some of these, especially these these modern Crampus parades.
You're talking like four hundred crampuses parading through the streets.
They're quite a festival. Sometimes there's fire, uh, you know.
Sometimes the costumes are a little more modern, but other
times they put a strong emphasis on maintaining traditional originality.

(11:40):
Wooden masks, actual um, you know, goat and sheep skins,
that sort of thing. So they are the basic ideas that, okay,
Crampus either incorporates pagan ideas or emerges from pagan ideas,
or even is ultimately rooted in pre Christian pagan traditions.
But then St. Nicholas does come along rounds. This is

(12:01):
the solemn Catholic precursor to the sort of jolly modern
Santa Claus that most of us grew up with, and St.
Nick gained popularity among German speaking people during the eleventh century. Now,
the story of St. Nicholas is itself full of fascinating diversions,
Like there's a great story where St. Nicholas. I believe
he comes across a place where an evil innkeeper or

(12:23):
somebody like that has murdered some young boys, and then
then St. Nicholas murdered them, chopped them up and pickled them,
and then St. Nicholas resurrects the chopped up, pickled boys. Uh.
And I guess the innkeepers somehow punished, Yeah, and and
and St. Nicholas. Is this the rather different figure from

(12:43):
from modern Santa Claus? To him that he is, I mean,
he's essentially like a former bishop of of what is
now Turkey. I think so. Yeah, he's and he's this
dour individual. So he's not really jolly. I guess he's
jolly in comparison to the beast man Crampus, but he's
not quite Santa Claus, that's for sure. He's more like
a Christmas saw Uman kind of. I don't know. I

(13:06):
think he's yeah, yeah, I guess he has kind of
It's kind of. Yeah. Anyway, in the centuries to follow,
Crampus becomes an essential part of these traditions. You have
Crampus and you have St. Nick. Uh. Certainly you have
Crampus knocked ahead of the coming of St. Nicholas and uh,
and this just becomes, you know, just a popular part
of the holiday, and at times it actually gets a

(13:28):
little too popular for some people. So Crampus has always
been just as Crampus as this this darkness to the light, uh,
compared to the light of St. Nicholas. You know, Crampus
even today is I think sometimes seen as kind of
an enemy of craft Christmas. Well, you know, the same
way they say, like it's hard to make an anti
war movie because war is inherently thrilling. It might be

(13:50):
hard to make an anti Satan like demon character because
demon characters are inherently kind of fun to act out,
and so like, there's always the risk that people might
be having a little too much fun acting out their
Crampus roles, unless the Church might need to bring the
hammer down, that's right. So you know, the Catholic Church

(14:10):
attempted to ban these festivals in the seventeen and eighteenth centuries,
but they weren't able to do so. Uh. And then
before Nazi Germany's Night invasion of Austria, Catholic Austro fascist
briefly held power and is reported in a ninety five
New York Times article titled Crampas disliked in Fascist Austria. Uh.

(14:34):
They pointed out that that at the time, the people
in power saw Crampus as a demonic, unruly and potentially
communist usurper of Christian traditions. Yeah. So basically the Crampus,
according to this article, Crampus postcards and candies you know,
had always been popular. But but they had they had
become so popular that Crampus had virtually taken over from

(14:58):
Sander like he was he was becoming the gift giver
as well. Um So, at any rate, there was an
attempt to uh uh, you know, to to to oust Crampus,
to to you know, to say it was a communist
because ultimately in some depictions he was reading wearing red
I guess. But they ordered anyone in a Crampas costume

(15:19):
to be arrested on site. Festive Crampas dances were outlawed,
and they even required all Santa clauses as well to
be licensed by the state and monitored. Fascist ruin everything
now um uh. In modern times, of course, there have
also been concerns about the potential trauma of subjecting children

(15:39):
to the idea of Crampus, or certainly the reality of
frightening um grown people in crampas costumes breaking through the street.
According to a two thousand six reports from Reuter's, concerned
parents and one child psychologists spoke out against the demons
violent influence, as well as so called childhood crampus trauma,
of which there are only a few cases, but at

(16:02):
any rate enough for some individuals to to want to
sound the alarm. Uh And you know what what made
the situation particularly interesting was that while Santa ended up
being banned for visiting kindergartens in Vienna at the time,
Crampus apparently still had access to the children, and so
there was a certain amount of outrage over that. Well.
You know, so I'm of two minds about this. Of course,

(16:24):
I love Crampus. I love the demons and the monsters
and all that that. That's sort of my personal jam.
But I also am very naturally disposed against terrorizing children
with supernatural threats. Uh So, I mean, I would I
would propose making Crampus more of a Halloween style thing.
What what vampires and goblins are to Halloween, Crampus could

(16:45):
be to the Christmas season, you know, not something that
you are taught is literally an existent threat that will
hurt you, but just kind of like a fun trapping
of the season. Ah, you know, and this week kind
of referring back to our episode on cuteness and monsters. Right, Ultimately,
if you want to declaw the monster, if you want
to deflux declaw the Crampus, what you need to do

(17:07):
is make him funny and or cute, especially cute. The
cuter Crampus becomes the you know, the less terrifying he is.
But then how will we get the children to behave um?
And now I mentioned earlier about how you know, the
tradition of of of Crampus has spread over the world
and uh, and as such you'll see some crampas parades

(17:28):
where there's more of a Hollywood and horror of film
culture reflected. Uh. Certainly, if you just start looking at
Crampus images online, some of them are going to look
more like demon costumes that you might buy at a
Halloween superstore. And then you're gonna see things that are
that are far more traditional looking. Um. And I was
looking at one particular article. This is a New York

(17:49):
Times article titled he sees you when You're sleeping and
gives you nightmare my Melissa Eddie, this is about the
celebration of Crampus and Munich. And in this article I
point out that that in in this particular Munich Crampus parade,
they only allow really traditional crampuses. So this means wooden masks, horns,

(18:10):
goat and sheep pelts, bells and switches. Um and uh.
She writes that local crampus clubs there will spend between
eighteen hundred and euros upwards of three thousand dollars each
year on masks and costumes made from local materials. How
do you join a crampus club? Is that very exclusive? Um?

(18:32):
I get the impression it's kind of like joining a
crew with a k uh down in New Orleans, you know,
for various parades. You know, it's kind of like you
have clubs that get together and put put together. Uh,
you know these these particular costumes and performance. It's not
like a horned beast. Country club is not where crampus
is gathered to use the pool and place. I don't

(18:52):
think so, but she points out the master or in
this case car from lime, Swiss pine or alderwood, and
the skin are going to be sheep or goats. Quote.
Although no one turns away a cramps wearing wild board,
which is nice, and so four crampas is strong. They
take to the streets, but there are rules no drinking
and again no actual hitting the children. But crampus traditions

(19:17):
are going to vary as well, al right, and our
pointed out on Atlas Obscure back in that it's it's
not what crampas looks like, so much is what he
does or threatens to do that matters. For instance, entire
all the cramps tradition there is that crampus is essentially
wearing this big suit of straw. So the crampuses look
kind of like a hay bale with the you know,

(19:38):
beast legs, arms and head and um, and and that's
just gonna be the way that cramps is depicted in
that particular area. And then you can you know, travel over.
For instance, there's a part of Bavaria where they don't
even have crampus. Instead it's a bouten Munden, which is
like a crampus figure. So um. The author here that

(19:59):
as Alice obscure Piece says, quote, like the tooth fairy,
he had a definite function but no definite form, which
I think it's a nice way of putting it. Now,
another thing that right and our points out is that
crampas traditions were ultimately, you know, traditionally a thing of
the country. They spread slowly and then eventually made their
way to the cities where illustrators there might have never

(20:21):
heard of such traditions before, so in depicting them, they
too might have had to rely on other demonic motifs,
such as devil motifs that were already you know, prevalent
in religious iconography, as well as pan and sader motifs
from art culture. So this would and then I would

(20:41):
imagine that this would end up influencing through the traditions
to some extent as well. So again it ultimately the
exact appearance of the creature is going to vary, but
it's the the intent that is that is almost pure
and its chaotic menace. I wonder what exactly it was
it caused the sudden international surge in crampus interest a

(21:04):
few years ago. Well, there's there's one possible answer to that.
I was treating an article in the Chicago Tribune from
from this year by Rick Cogan, and he points out
that the US explosion of Crampus might in part be
due to the two thousand four publication of The Devil
in Design the Crampus Postcards by Mont Beauchamp, an award

(21:25):
winning Chicago art director and graphic designer. So the idea
here is like this book came out, these images started
circulating around. UM. The images zo ended up being licensed
in some cases, or at least they were licensing request.
And this kind of sets off the online fascination with
Crampus and these Crampus images. You know, suddenly here's this

(21:45):
this new dark spin on the holidays. It starts appearing
in television shows. Uh what Venture Brothers I think was
one of the first things, first shows in which I
saw a depiction of Crampus, but I understand he's shown
up on like Supernatural was another one UM and eventually
had his own horror movie. I think that was in
the last couple of years. That was that. So my
dad's a big fan of it. This is like that.

(22:06):
That was probably the peat Crampus year, I think. So yeah,
would be like or something. Yeah, And of course, you know,
crap Crampus parades can now be found throughout the United States,
and there's one every year right here in Atlanta. That's
also it's sort of a more of a pub crawl
if I remember correctly, unless it's changed, uh, then like
a pure parade, like an actual license parade. But then

(22:30):
unsurprisingly you'll find parade crews in New Orleans that that
put on a Crampus parade every year through the streets
and then they finish up at a German restaurant there
in uh, in New Orleans. Okay, you Hollywood development people,
I've got an idea. I'm gonna pitch it to you
right now. Okay, it's a Miracle on thirty four Street,
but with Crampus instead of Santa Claus. So a little

(22:52):
girl be friends a goatman who thinks he who says
he's the real Crampus, and you don't know the whole
movie is either real Crampus or is he just a
regular goat man who thinks he's Crampas. I don't know.
I think, I mean, that's that's the thing. Americle on
thirty or four Street is a story about Santa and
a story about about letters and language, right uh. And

(23:15):
Crampus is basically unlanguaged, like there are no words with
Crampus there are no there are no prayers, there are
no letters to cramp just the unspoken implication get in
the basket. Yeah, he is just just just pure menace.
He's like Jason Jason befoorhees. Yeah, it doesn't need to speak,

(23:35):
you just his intentions are clear. Well, it goes back
to the lion man. It goes back to the basic
hybridity of monsters. Monsters don't have to say anything because
monsters are the message, right, their form speaks for them exactly.
So yeah, Crampas doesn't have to say a thing. Crampus
is the message. All right. Well, for the rest of
the episode, we're going to be exploring the biology and

(23:56):
the psychology of of Crampus knocked. But before where we
do that, we probably need to take a break, right, Yes,
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(25:45):
that was kind of an extended ramble in the first
part of the episode, but hopefully we were able to
get across some of the basic points of the Crampas traditions.
But it can be kind of difficult because again it's
it varies from place to place, from time to time.
Crampus is pure in his intent, in his just physical message,

(26:05):
but everything else is kind of up for grabs. You know.
I think it's time to play one of our favorite
games on the show, which is, let's take this monster
in a biologically literal way. Yes, uh, which is actually
kind of difficult to again to do with Crampus because
the actual interpretation of him changes so much. But uh.

(26:25):
I will start by mentioning like two literary worlds that
come to mind that provide fun parallels to the Crampus idea.
So one is a book by Michael Crichton, the book
Eaters of the Dead. Have you read this? I actually haven't.
I went through a strong Michael Crichton phase when I
was younger, but never got to this one. I was

(26:47):
in all the techno thrillers, not this one. Yeah, this
one is the odd non techno thriller, but it's really good.
It's essentially a spin on Bayo Wolf. Instead of Grendel,
the singular monster, you have of the people known as
the Windell, who are possible Neandertal descendants superiodically descend from
the mountain to raid vikings settlements. Uh so um, you know,

(27:10):
the clear inspiration for this again being Grendel who comes
down from the wilds and Bayowulf to assault the mead Hall.
Another literary parallel, it comes to mind the White Walkers
and George R. Martin's Song Lice and Fire Books, particularly uh,
the situation with Craster of Craster's Keep, who sacrifices his
male children to the White Walkers in order to sort

(27:32):
of protect himself, to maintain like this weird alliance with
the forces of of wilderness and gold and death. Yeah. Yeah,
these uh, these demonic entities to live out in the
in the freezing woods, and they they and they represent
a threat to human children. Right, So, playing with these

(27:53):
extrapolations of monsters from the winter wild, we might arrive
at a view of Crampus as a as as a
people who come down from the mountains to raid the
civilizations of man, but who might be bought off through
an offering of our worst human children, which they presumably
eat or yeah, or maybe put to work in the
coal mines. Um. As far as I can tell, this

(28:15):
would be you know, a pretty unique arrangement. Uh, in
part because outside of our myths and fictions, there are
no beast men. There are no inhuman others to deal
with in this manner. Uh. Though tantalizing lee enough, we
are dealing with Europe here, a place where humans end
any and Neanderthals seem to have coexisted for a number
of years. Um, And I was looking around. I was wondering, like,

(28:39):
surely somebody has has written about the possibility of cramps
having something to do with the anderw Toals, but but
nobody else has made that, uh gone out on that
that that limb, that's just me on that limb. But
at any rate, as we discussed in our recent cannibalism episode,
there there is clear evidence that both Neandertals and prehistoric
humans engaged in cannibalism, but there's nothing solid to suggest

(29:02):
that they really ate each other, though child sacrifice itself
can be found throughout cultures of the ancient Near East,
pre Columbian America's, pre modern Europe, parts of Africa, etcetera. So, so,
you know, this is just me spitballing here, But but
I don't don't think there's anything unbelievable about the idea
of humans offering up their worst children to a species
of mountain creatures, um as the you know, cold demands

(29:25):
of winter set in. In fact, you know, when you
think about one of the predecessors to Christmas was Roman Saturnalia,
which involved a great deal of public ruckus and sacrifices,
though apparently not of the human variety, or so we're told. Yes, Now,
as far as thinking about crampus creatures biologically, I mean

(29:46):
we we simply, you know, we could imagine them as
a cold weather adapted to Hamad species, uh, you know
what with all the fur and and again, it is
interesting to think about the fact that Neanderthals may have
been essentially that species adapted too cold the cold weather
the ice ages, though interpretations vary on that as well.
For instance, there's even one theory that states that Neanderdal's

(30:07):
might actually have been killed out by a cold dry
spell spanning centuries during the period of their decline. But
also when we can think about the fur and the
horns of the crampas, we can interpret that as clothing
and ritual garb, just like human beings might wear and
certainly do wear when they dress up as cramp as
in the streets. But we could also imagine some horned

(30:29):
humanoid as well. We have countless examples of such creatures
and beings and global myths, and even cases of humans
in the past with horn like growths, but nothing on
the level of a horned biped mammalian species. Now, as
for that tongue, I'm always intrigued by, especially some of
these cramp as illustrations in which the tongue is actually
wrapping around is screaming child. The closest analog you can

(30:53):
really find in nature is probably the eighteen to twenty
inch centimeter prehensile giraft. That's a good tongue. Yeah, if
you certainly you've got to see a giraffe at the zoo,
you've or certainly in the wild, if you've been so lucky,
then hopefully you've you've you've seen the way that tongue
can wrap itself around vegetation and then you know, pull

(31:16):
it free. It's like a snake coming out of the mouth. Yeah,
so that would be a possibility for our imagined Cramps creature.
But then that would again come to down to what's
the function of this tongue. Does that mean that Crampus
actually depends, you know, primarily on vegetation, and why would
he have the tongue and hands as well? Like that

(31:36):
seems like the physical form would be over investing in
vegetation manipulation unless he has to eat all those leaves
while scooping up screaming children, in which case I don't know.
Oh yeah, that's interesting. Or another way you could look
at it is, what if Crampus is not in fact
by people? Crampus could be a four like a critter,
right Yeah, perhaps perhaps is mostly going out on four legs,

(32:00):
but rat rises up on two legs when when wanting
to display a threat, right to make himself look bigger,
right right? Um? However, the I do have to say
that the idea of Cramps being a vegetarian, of course,
that that would play in well with what we know
of other like bovine creatures, and certainly uh, giraffe and
the and the related creatures like these are these are

(32:22):
herbivores so primarily so, so you know, those would be
the main parallels to some sort of a goat man
I imagine. But then again, if you go back in
the fossil record, you'll you'll find things like Andrew Sarkis,
which some paleontologers interprets a clothing hoofed carnivore. So you know,
I think there's hope there that you could have. You
could there, you could theoretically have some sort of a

(32:43):
hoofed goat creature that feasts sun flesh. Nice, But there's
already that stereotype that goats will lead anything, right, you
feed him a tin can and and the leader. I
don't know to what extent that's true. I'm sure you
shouldn't do Yeah, I certainly you should not. But but
you know, if you're like a petting zoo, certainly goats
are curious and they will they'll nibble on a lot

(33:04):
of different things. Um, it could be kind of a
squirrel situation here, the thing that uh that primarily eats vegetation.
But uh, you know, who knows what they'll dip into
given the opportunity. So to come back to the question,
could crampus exist, Yeah, I think theoretically, like there's nothing
you know, completely unrealistic about the idea. So um, you know,

(33:28):
you're sort of getting into like the plausibility of sasquatch
things like a large, hairy, bipedal creatures, uh, you know,
may dwell outside the bounds of human civilization. Now here's
an interesting question though, which is more real crampus who
no one is claiming to have seen in the wilds

(33:48):
or sasquatch in which people do make that claim and
and do devote their lives to the idea that it
really exists. Like one is extremely real in the in
the imagination, in human traditions, and the other is has
this cryptozoological standing for the most part, with with some

(34:08):
creep into you know, the cultural area as well well. Obviously,
I mean I'm pretty skeptical of of both. But I mean,
if you had to rule one is more plausible than
the other, obviously it would be it would be the squatch, right,
because the squatch is oriented toward plausibility. And not to
read too much into people's intentions, but you almost get
the sense that some of the reports are kind of

(34:29):
crafted in order to make it seem like a more
biologically plausible thing, right, Uh, and not just like a
fantasy monster. And then I saw in the woods, and
then ultimately, ultimately cramp is a celebration of a fantasy
monster that is a part of holiday traditions. You know,
the fantasy monsters are better. They carry baskets and sasquatch
does not. That's right. Yeah, So all this talk of

(34:51):
Crampus has got me wondering. So you've got to St.
Nicholas on one hand, the big bag full of toys
for all the good boys and girls, and then you
got Crampus, who has got the whip or the switch
the basket to carry the bad children off somewhere wretched.
I was wondering which idea is actually more effective at
motivating good behavior? Uh? And I want to be clear,

(35:12):
We're certainly not encouraging you to terrorize your children with
threats of monsters and other supernatural punishments. But I am
curious just in the abstract, which is more motivating to
two people in general and to children the promise of
rewards like toys or the threat of punishment is that
toys or horns? Yeah, this is This is one of

(35:34):
those big questions that I think every parent struggles with, uh,
you know, trying to figure out, you know, to what
extent should we keep it positive positive reinforcement? Uh, and
to what extent do you actually dip into the negative?
And you know, ultimately you generally don't want to dip
into the negative reinforcement. You don't we certainly don't want
to invent imaginary horrors to scare children. But on the

(35:58):
other hand, it comes back to the reality of the
Jenny Green teeth that there are real pressing threats to
a child's life in their immediate vicinity, and you want
to get the message across. Uh. You know, you don't
want to think about, uh, your child getting hit by
a car, for instance, by wandering into the street, but

(36:19):
you want to you want to drive home the message
that this could happen and so you should certainly not
do this thing. Well, right, I mean, it's totally different question.
I think once you get into the area of like
clear life threatening types of things. I mean, I think
the things people deal with on a more often day
to day basis, or just like how do you regulate behavior.
How do you get the child to to not, you know,

(36:41):
behave in a like obnoxious selfish way, uh, toward other children,
toward teachers and parents and all that. So I'm asking
the question in a general way here. We'll try to
give a general answer if I can, But obviously this
is going to depend on a lot of individual circumstances,
both of the people being motivated, the situation they're in,
the types of rewards and punishments on offer. And given

(37:03):
that reality, you probably won't be surprised to find that
the evidence here is somewhat mixed and confusing about whether
rewards or punishments are more effective. It depends a lot,
but I'll try to flesh it out a little bit.
So one thing that's important to remember is the difference
between positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, and punishment, which are three
distinct categories in psychology. Though the terms negative reinforcement and

(37:27):
punishment are sometimes used interchangeably, they do have subtle differences.
So positive reinforcement is when an action is encouraged with
a reward. So imagine you're designing a car that encourages
people to wear their seat belts. For positive reinforcement, every
time you put on your seat belt, maybe the car
gives you a candy, or it displays a little thing

(37:47):
that says good job. For negative reinforcement, you have to
imagine that the car does what many cars actually already do.
It makes an annoying sound or keeps beeping until hill
you put your seat belt on. So for negative reinforcement,
what this actually means is there's an existing negative stimulus,
which is the sound of the negative reinforcer, and you

(38:10):
can only make the negative reinforcer go away by doing
the desired action of putting on the seat belt. Punishment
is similar but slightly different. Instead of presenting a bad
effect and then removing it when you do something good,
it threatens you with subsequent bad effects if you do
something bad. So punishment would be more like your car

(38:32):
automatically writing you a ticket every time you drive somewhere
without your seat belt. Uh, And so negative reinforcement is
something that's already painful or unwanted, and you have to
do something right to make it stop. Punishment is something
bad that will happen to you if you do something wrong.
And then even within that, I think technically there's both
like positive punishment and negative punishment. Positive punishment would be

(38:55):
doing something you don't like, like the car shocking you
after you drive somewhere with without a seat belt. Negative
punishment would involve like taking away a benefit as a punishment,
so like if the car automatically disabled its air conditioning
after you drove without your seat belt. So which one
of these is cramp us? Uh? Crampus kind of shows
the way that some of the categories do have some overlap,

(39:18):
they kind of bleed together. I suppose it is in
one sense a threat of positive punishment, like this monster
will be coming to possibly whip you, But it's also
a bit of negative reinforcement, maybe because like maybe helping
mom and dad do the chores could do something to
alleviate the negative reinforcer, which is the nagging fear of
crampus that haunts your mind. Yeah, I think that's that's fair. Again,

(39:41):
there there's a an amorphous aspect to crampus, so it
would be it would be too much to expect him
to fit firmly in any kind of category. Well, but
it's not just crampus. Also, it's like tons of things,
like it's difficult to know exactly like where they fit
on the skip because you can frame them in different ways,
Like you can frame doing the exact same thing as

(40:03):
like an inhibition or a positive behavior, like are you
remembering to turn the lights off when you leave the
room a positive behavior? Or are you not leaving the
lights on when you leave the room. I mean, it's
sort of like hard to tell which is which in
some cases. Um, but so so to look at some studies,
there was one study from the nineteen seventies that came

(40:23):
across by Arthur F. Constantini and Kenneth the Hoving called
the Effectiveness of reward and punishment contingencies on Response inhibition,
and this was in the Journal of Child Psychology nineteen
seventy three, and so this looked at the relative strength
of rewards and punishments in in motivating behavior. It involved

(40:43):
training two groups of forty kindergarteners and forty second graders
in something called response inhibition training. This is training that
teaches children to suppress actions that are inappropriate for the context.
Their quote from the paper is, this is uh the
tendency to inhibit irrelevant acts and to select appropriate ones.

(41:06):
So basically it's self control, like in a laboratory context.
This kind of training might take the form of anything
from the marshmallow test, like getting kids to resist eating
a treat on the promise that a better treat is
coming later, to something called the Stroop test, which involves
showing people the name of a color printed in a
different color, and then they have to say the color

(41:28):
that the word is printed in. So, for example, you'd
see the word red printed in green, and you would
have to say green instead of red. And this is
taken as a suppressing activity, but because it requires the
suppression of the dominant response behavior, which is to simply
read the word you're seeing. But there are all kinds
of analogies for response inhibition training in the behavioral education

(41:52):
of children. If you're trying to train a child not
to grab things out of other people's hands or not
to wine when they want something, that's a form of
response inhibition training. Anyway. The short version is that this
study found that for this particular type of training, children
at both age groups learned the response inhibition on the
given task more efficiently when they were threatened with punishment

(42:15):
than when they were promised rewards. Though I should know,
because it's probably relevant what the punishments and rewards consisted
of Basically, children were shown an assortment of toys and
told that their performance on these training tasks would determine
a payout of marbles, which they could then use to
purchase the toys that they had been shown. So, in

(42:36):
the reward condition, good performance on the task was were
rewarded with the accumulation of marbles. You do good and
you get more marbles. In the punishment condition, you had
some marbles, and bad performance on the task was punished
with the removal of marble's awarded at the beginning. So basically,
the rewards and the punishments here both had to do
with toy buying power. And granted, toy buying power is

(43:00):
an immensely powerful force, and in the child's mind, oh,
I remember it. I remember that power. Uh. And and
so the author's right quote. The motivational effect of losing
marbles is apparently greater than receiving them, even when the
actual number retained by or given to the subjects is
the same under both conditions. Uh. Now note here that

(43:21):
the punishment, even though it is incredibly motivating to have
toy buying power, the punishment here is not an intrinsically
painful effect, but rather the withdrawal of previously awarded positive reinforcers.
And this probably has very important differences from a demon
with a whip. Yeah, this this would have more just
in common with sort of the crampest free idea that

(43:44):
Santa will either bring you the toys you want, less
toys or no toys based on your behavior exactly. So
this is just one study from the seventies, and I
was reading more recent opinions of scholars and child psychologists,
and the picture continue used to get more complicated from there.
So another thing I was looking at was a column
in Psychology Today by a pretty well known American child

(44:07):
psychologist named j. Belski, who had actually been the subject
of some kind of controversy after he published research that
seemed to show some mildly negative behavioral outcomes for children
who had spent a lot of time in daycare. I
don't know enough about him or his research to have
an opinion on that issue, but I thought I should
flag it since I saw something about it. But anyway,
Bellski argues here that rewards are generally more effective than

(44:31):
punishment at teaching good behavior, especially for young children. Uh.
And specifically he gives the example of rewarding good behavior
but simply ignoring bad behavior, and he writes that you know,
a lot of parents are are kind of intuitively averse
to this, like they would think, you know, why would

(44:51):
ignoring bad behavior be better than meeting out punishment when
a child does wrong? And Bellski calls attention to the
work of a of Dutch neuroscientists who study the effects
of simple rewards and punishments, and these are about as
mild as you can get for rewards and punishments. Basically,
it was children ages eight to nine and children ages

(45:12):
eleven to twelve, and they were trained to do a
computer task in which they had to discover and follow
some rules, and the inferring and following of the rules
could be reinforced either by rewards, which would consist of
a check mark when they got the right answer, or
punishments a big X when they got the wrong answer.
And the study found that the younger children improved more

(45:33):
when the feedback was positive, whereas the older children improved
more when the feedback was negative. Young adults eighteen to
twenty five also responded more to negative feedback in a
similar test, and The neuroscientists who carried out this research
had the children undergo brain scans while while learning through
these tasks, and the brain imaging work showed differences between

(45:55):
the brains of the younger children and the older children
while doing the computer task. The areas of the Surrey
real cortex associated with cognitive control, which is related to
the self control and the response inhibition we were just
talking about. In these areas, older children showed stronger activation
in response to negative feedback and younger children showed stronger

(46:15):
activation in response to positive feedback. So what could fully
account for the difference here, like why would younger children
learn faster from minor rewards and older children and young
adults learn faster from minor punishments. Belski offers an explanation
that's in line with the authors of the study quote,
information which stipulates that you did something wrong, is more

(46:38):
complicated than information stipulating that you did something well. So
younger children may simply have an easier time processing simpler,
positive rewarding information than negative feedback. As the authors noted,
learning from mistakes is more complex than carrying on in
the same way as before. You have to ask yourself

(47:00):
precisely what went wrong and how it was possible. That is,
it takes more analysis to figure out that what was
done is mistaken than that it is correct. So if
you think about it, I think that makes sense. Positive
reinforcements and rewards are actually often so simple as to
be nearly mechanical, Like, whatever you just did that was good,

(47:20):
keep doing that, do more of it. Punishments let you
know that you're screwing up, but they don't necessarily tell
you what you should be doing. Instead, they don't necessarily
model a positive behavior, so they can be confusing, frustrating,
de motivating. Uh. And so it seems that for pre
adolescent children, modeling and rewarding positive behavior is probably more

(47:41):
effective than punishing bad behavior, since it's easier for them
to understand and repeat. So, of course, an an important
note of difference here the difference between the effects of
like simple mild rewards and punishments that you get in
real time during an experiment, versus the effects of the
promise of rewards and the threat of like terrifying punishments

(48:02):
extended far into the future. Like Obviously, it's one thing
to test the difference between more toys and less toys
right now or checks and x's right now versus the
you know, the difference between awesome toys and monstrous doom
many months down the road. And I I wasn't able
to come across anything that was able to really model

(48:23):
like the threats of punishment and promises of rewards exactly
as they're presented to children around these kind of Christmas ideas.
But I have to imagine the like time delay plays
a big role there, right, You've got to get very
different effects when you're talking about rewards and punishments that
are long off in the future versus immediately apparent. Yeah,

(48:43):
I mean, especially when you're talking about Christmas, because we
all have I think has experience. When you're when you're
an adult, December just flies by like any month. But
when you're when you're a child, Um, you know, the
holiday time passes an entirely different way. Yeah, you know this,
the span of time between between December one and December

(49:06):
it seems immense um and uh and and certain and
yet at the same time, like are you gonna invoke
Santa Claus in April or in July? You know, like
that's it's so far away that it seems like it
would lose its impact. You know. Yeah, well that's a
good question. What at what time of year does Santa

(49:26):
Claus start to matter? Yeah? Or or for instance, the
elf on the shelf. You know, another sort of aspect
of this, uh, you know, penopticon, notion of of Santa
watching you at all times, or possibly watching you at
all times. You don't know, you don't know what's going
on in the eye of the panopticon. The panopticon, for
anyone who's not familiar with that term like this refers

(49:48):
back to a basic design for a prison in which
you have a large settilance cylindrical space with the cells
of the prison lining the inside walls. And at these
center of this vast cylinder there's a single guard tower
and there's really only like you know, one or two
guards in there, but you can't see where they're looking.

(50:09):
They could be looking into your cell. All cells are
visible to the panopticons central tower. Um, you just don't
know who they're looking at right now, and may well
be you. I mean I I certainly I bristle at
the idea of of enforcing the panopticons, especially supernaturally on children.
But then at the same time I think, well, that's

(50:30):
not unusual historically, right, I mean it just it seems
to be the norm that children are generally taught about
Santa Claus or ELpH on the Shell for about, you know,
just supernatural deities or anything like that that's always watching
what they do. Uh. So not not to suggest that
because it's been normal historically, it's okay, but yeah, that's

(50:52):
got to be like I mean, I was like that
when I was a kid. I remember thinking that, Yeah,
they're seeing everything. Yeah, and if you believe at all,
there's a crowd room full of folks watching everything you do,
every every vile deed you've perpetrated as a child. Uh,
Santa Claus is their crampus and elf Um, God Jesus,
you're the spirits of your elders. They're all they're just

(51:15):
waiting for you to slip up. Yeah. Anyway, coming back
to the research I was just talking about, So we
were talking about the possible reasons why rewards could be
more salient for young children, and it's because in some
cases it's a reward is an easier type of reinforcement
to process mentally and understand that punishments can be confusing.

(51:35):
It's harder to establish exactly the link between what you
did wrong, the punishment, and what you should be doing instead.
But the other question would be the other side of
the coin, what's going on in adults that appears to,
at least in many cases, make punishments more powerful than
rewards for them. Uh, this doesn't really explain it, but
it does seem in keeping with a widely observed principle

(51:58):
in cognitive psychology known as law aversion, which is this
bias where simply put, on average people are much more
strongly motivated to avoid losses than they are to acquire
equivalent gains. So what this means is that you've got
a bunch of experiments showing people would work harder, would
do more to avoid losing ten dollars they already have,

(52:21):
than they would to acquire ten dollars they don't have yet.
So monetarily the loss in the road, it's exactly equivalent.
But it's just the question of like it feels so
much worse to lose something you have than to not
get something you could get. It's kind of I've become
accustomed to a certain lifestyle mentality, and it's there in
all kinds of fiction, right, you know, like why is

(52:44):
why are the tragedies always about kings and stuff about
people in in great exalted places of power. It's like
there's this idea that that being reduced from a from
a high starting point is so much more awful and
tragic than having a thing has happened to you if
you were already suffering. Yeah, and I mean and certainly

(53:05):
for a child. You know, when when you get into them,
like the material possession of toys, like to to take
the toy away is it says, it's like almost a
violent act. You know, you've you've taken away, um, you know,
a part of their body almost. Um. There was there
was recently a time where my wife took our son

(53:25):
to like a thrift store and there was a stuffed
animal he really wanted and he m he remarked to
my life, he said, he said, this, U my, my
whole body wants this toy, you know, which I thought
was great because that really does sum out just how
um important Uh, these these physical toys are to us

(53:46):
as children, like our whole body wants them, and we
will be incomplete if we do not have it. And likewise,
if it is taken away from us you were taking
away a part of them. I don't know this is
the case, but I would suspect it's a lot harder
to deny a toy to a child once the child
has already had it in their hands. Like it's there's

(54:08):
gonna be way more grief about, Like you can't have
a toy that they've already picked up in a handle
versus one that's still on the shelves. And it's always
the worst when you're in like a Barnes and Noble
or something, you know, and then you see that your
child is carrying something from with them now from another aisle,
like they've already like the toy has imprinted on them.
It's gonna be that much harder and how much more

(54:30):
tragic to extract from the store without a purchase. It's
the pain. I feel it, all right. We need to
take a quick break, but we'll be right back. It's
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five hundred five hundred and start listening. Thank alright, we're back.
So a couple more studies. I was reading about rewards
and punishment and in their variable effects. So one was
published in Cognition by Jan Cubanick, Lawrence Snyder, Richard Abrams,
and I was reading a write up of this in
the wash You School of Medicine news site. UM So

(57:07):
this was study dealing with the relative effects of rewards
versus punishments on a difficult task where subjects had to
count numbers of like binaral clicks that they were hearing
and headphones, or count numbers of localized flashes of light
they saw, and it was a difficult test. And then
they were given randomized payouts of different value tokens between

(57:27):
five and twenty five cents, and the tokens were awarded
for correct answers or taken away for incorrect answers, and
so subjects who were rewarded tended to repeat their previous answer.
That's not surprising because, like you know, when you get
a reward, you the simplest thing to do is just
do what you did before. Meanwhile, subjects who were punished

(57:50):
strongly avoided repeating their previous answers, and the magnitude of
these effects were asymmetrical. This is what they found. They
found that losses had two to three times more motivating
power than equivalent gains did, but also effects for the
punishment factor. We're strong no matter no matter the magnitude
of the punishment, even very small punishments deducting five cents,

(58:13):
we're strongly motivating to produce changes in behavior. And so
one of the authors, Jan Kubanick, said to this news
site quote regarding teaching strategies, our studies suggests that negative
feedback may be more effective than positive feedback at modifying behavior.
Our study showed that such feedback does not have to
be harsh, since it appears that we tend to react

(58:35):
in the same manner to any amount of negative feedback.
From an evolutionary perspective, people tend to avoid punishments or
dangerous situations. Rewards, on the other hand, have less of
a life threatening impact. Uh So, okay, so that's one
thing here, But then a little bit on the other hand,
I was reading article in the Harvard Business Review by

(58:56):
a cognitive neuroscientists at University College London named Tali Shiro,
and contrary to what we were just learning about punishments
being more motivating than rewards and adults, Shiro begins the
article by drawing attention to a two thousand eleven study
carried out at New York at a New York State
hospital published in the journal Clinical and Infectious Diseases by

(59:17):
Donna Armelino at All and the basic gist is like this,
So You've got healthcare workers and they are supposed to
sanitize their hands whenever they enter and exit a patient's room.
Healthcare workers are constantly reminded of this fact and of
how important the practice is for stopping the spread of
potentially deadly infectious disease. And yet, when this hospital installed

(59:40):
cameras at hand hygiene stations to monitor the healthcare worker behaviors,
they discovered a dismal compliance rate. Only about ten percent
of medical staff sanitize their hands upon entering and exiting
patient rooms, even though they knew the cameras were present.
Then the hospital introduced a feedback mech is M to

(01:00:00):
see if this would improve the hygiene. It was a
simple electronic board on the wall which gave positive messages
like good job to workers who fully sanitize their hands
when they were supposed to, and the rates of hand
sanitization rocketed up from about ten percent to about nine percent.
And then these results were replicated at another hospital. So

(01:00:22):
the question is why, like why would this simple trivial
reward be more powerful as a motivator than the threat
of potentially spreading infectious disease which could literally kill people.
And Schiro has got a very interesting answer here. The
the suggestion is that this is actually consistent with a
large body of research in psychology and neuroscience that shows

(01:00:46):
that there's a difference based on whether you're trying to
get people to do something to perform an action, or
trying to prevent them from performing an action, and Shiro
says that the evidence indicates the threats of punishment or
more effective when trying to keep people from doing bad things. Meanwhile, rewards,

(01:01:07):
even minor positive reinforcements, are more effective if you're trying
to get people to actively do something, if you're trying
to motivate an action rather than prohibit it. So by
this token, the threat of spreading infectious disease might be
more effective at keeping people out of a restricted pathology lab,
so you know, the threat motivates you to stay out,

(01:01:28):
whereas the smiley face and the good job message are
more effective at motivating people to perform a simple positive
action over and over, like using the hand sanitizer and uh,
this was interesting. Shiro thinks this is consistent with the
evolutionary context in which motivation and inhibition arose. So like normally,
if you think about for an animal to get a reward.

(01:01:50):
Usually it needs to do something to go foraging for food,
to put in the effort to wu a made or whatever.
But in order to avoid danger, most of the time
it needs to not to do something like don't go
in the deep water, don't go off on your own,
don't eat this plant, that kind of thing. And the
author gives the example that this is why one of

(01:02:10):
the most primal reactions animals have to a threatening stimulus
is to freeze. When there's a threat and you don't
fully understand it yet you're still processing what the threat is.
The instinctual reaction is don't do anything, just freeze. And
I think that's an interesting explanation for what might be
going on there, But they also write that this might

(01:02:32):
be part of the explanation is probably not the full story,
because they're probably also social incentives for things like, you know,
showing something on a board in a hospital where everybody
can see it. Right. But Shiro and colleagues who also
conducted research showing a similar dynamic, where the short version
is volunteers were faster to press a button when they
would get a dollar than they were to press a

(01:02:54):
button to avoid losing a dollar. So the reward motivates
the action, but they were better at refraining from pressing
a button when doing so would prevent them from losing
a dollar than it would result in them gaining a dollar,
So the threat of punishment motivated inhibition. Uh. And another
interesting finding was the right that people often interpret positive

(01:03:16):
information like the promise of rewards as relevant to them personally,
while interpreting negative information like the threat of punishments as
not applying to them personally, as being you know, maybe
just something about other people that have the crampus happens
to bad kids, right exactly. But Sharrow concludes by saying,
it's not very effective to try to scare people into

(01:03:38):
action to make people actively do good things as opposed
to refraining from bad things. Rewards, even small rewards, are
usually more powerful than threats of punishment. And yet our
basic Santa story is totally screwed up because the hell
thing is Santa's watching, and there are all these things
you better not do in order to get the reward.

(01:03:59):
It's not it's not like the the the positive reward
is not attached to any kind of positive action usually, well,
I mean, for I think for a lot of kids
and maybe it's like, you know, you do your chores,
you help out around the house, you share, or you
do that kind of thing, right, Yeah, I guess so.
But it seems like the like the basic Christmas Carol

(01:04:20):
Ebenezer Scrooge kind of messaging towards adults, that the holidays
at a time when you should make, you should act,
you should do things to help give to charity, and
that sort of thing. Like that's more about the adults
Christmas messaging as opposed to the childhood Christmas messaging, which
is more like just don't be bad, which is kind
of a low threshold to set, right, Um, maybe it

(01:04:44):
should be more along the lines of go out and
do good things. Uh, you know, ask about ask about
helping out in the house more, ask your your parents
about doing things in your community, that sort of thing. Well, yeah,
I mean, I think one thing that comes up here
is that there's a lot of the way that rewards
and punishments work, or even not even rewards and punishments,

(01:05:06):
maybe things more just like motivation work for child behavior.
Can it can be sensitive to how you frame the
issue for the child, right, just like putting the exact
same behavior in a different context. It seems like it
could sometimes have a pretty strong effect on how that
behavior is regulated, right, Like instead of when a child

(01:05:29):
is being selfish or something and won't share their toy,
like you could yell at them and say they're being
bad and you know, they need to learn how to share.
Or you could say, hey, you know, let's let's practice
modeling sharing behavior or something, and and ultimately you're getting
at the same activity but framing it in a very
different way. I guess. One of the big things too,

(01:05:49):
is that certainly you may employ negative or positive reinforcement
in a given scenario like that, um, you know, depending
on the situation, in your exact parenting style. It's but
how many people really use the Christmas mythology and Christmas
ritual as negative or positive feedback? I don't know how

(01:06:11):
many do that. I don't know, Like I mean, in
my experience as a former child and current parent, I mean,
it seems like like gifts are obtained, like everything is
set in motion pretty early on, and it would have
to be some really bad like cramp is worthy behavior
to make they actually say, okay, we're scaling back on

(01:06:31):
the gifts. Now. This one's going back to the store,
they've been too bad. I mean, it seems like more
a situation where the holiday is set in motion and
then you say, oh, by the way, just be a
good child right now because we've got a lot on
our plate just making it through December. Well yeah, I
mean it's so you're you're talking about the reality there
that like often even when a child is maybe like

(01:06:52):
threatened with rewards or punishments concerning Christmas, a lot of
times there's not necessarily a lot of real causality taking place.
But they mean it could be a situation to where
the ritual has lost its potency in modern time. Certainly,
that would that would be in keeping with what our
holidays have become totally, and you know that there there
are other things too that you know might make you

(01:07:14):
think twice, even about the even if you're saying, okay,
well I'm not going to punishment route, I wouldn't threaten
child with with with crampus or whatever, which, okay, good
on you, But that might make you think twice, even
with the reward framing. Because I was reading an article
in The New York Times from by a therapist named
Heather Turgeon who pointed out some things I've never read

(01:07:34):
about before. She just mentioned some possible downsides of rewards
in addition to punishments for controlling child behavior, which are
For example, some studies find um that the introduction of
a reward structure can sometimes decrease intrinsic motivation for for like,
good behaviors, so like. And I'm not sure how consistently

(01:07:56):
this holds up, but at least in a few experiments,
like if a kid likes to draw all and then
you start paying them to draw, they will naturally start
to draw less. The same for sharing. Right, introduce a
payout scheme for sharing, and sharing decreases under naturalistic conditions. Uh.
And the author here writes, quote, this is what psychologists

(01:08:17):
called the over justification effect. The external reward overshadows the
child's internal motivation. Which I mean, that sounds like a
really tragic effect. If you actually were to bring something
like that about, right, I mean, you're you should your
your desire to do something should not be destroyed by
rewards for doing that thing, not until you enter the workforce.

(01:08:38):
And exactly isn't that I mean, like, that's one of
the dangers about you know. I mean, on one hand,
it's great to be able to do what you love
for a living, but there's a dark side to it.
Do right, you know, if you do what you love
for a living, it kind of has it has some
power to corrupt what you love it and makes it
about money. It makes it like this is what I
have to do. Yeah, now I get to stress out

(01:08:59):
about the thing that used to be my hobby. Yeah.
So anyway, I would say in the end, rewards and punishments, uh,
their effects on us, I think are very complicated. I
hope you have learned something for that from this, even
though I can't clearly say it's just one way or
the other. Rewards are better, punishments are better. But I
will say, do not punish your children with threats of demons,
no matter what I think, that is across the board

(01:09:21):
going to be bad. So, as with any Crampus ritual,
you may well have learned nothing, but hopefully it was
at least a spectacle. That's uh. At least it hopefully
entertained you. I hope your your tongue is lolling violently
thirty inches out of your mouth. Now. Obviously, we would
love to hear from folks out there, because I know
we have we have listeners around the world, certainly we

(01:09:45):
we have we probably have some listeners in the United
States that have participated in some of the newer Crampus
traditions here and then hopefully we have some listeners who
have witnessed or participated in some of the more traditional
rights of these alpine regions that we mentioned. And of course,
in general, I think we all have something no matter what.

(01:10:06):
If you celebrate anything like uh, you know, you know
Christmas or holiday traditions, or even if you don't, you
probably have something to say about negative and positive reinforcement
as a child or a or a parent. Uh, And
we'd love to hear from you about that. In the meantime,
if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff
to Blow your Mind, he don't know, over to Stuff
to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where you'll find them. Uh,

(01:10:28):
let's see what else. Um. Yeah, there's a merch store
up there if you want to check out our merch
you know, they're all sorts of year end sales going
on at the moment. Good place to get Christmas gifts. Yeah.
And then in terms of other shows, uh, there's the
second oil age for horror and science fiction. All those
episodes are out and you can binge them and then invention.

(01:10:49):
Our other podcasts, the podcast about human techno History, we've
been doing some episodes on toys, classic toys and where
they came from, who invented them, because certainly even something
like a slinky UH that had to be created, that
had to emerge from the human mind and and UH
and be brought to life through technology, and the story

(01:11:11):
of how that comes together is fascinating. So I hope
you check that show out as well, and whichever show
you're listening to, just make sure that you have subscribed
and that you were rating and reviewing it, because that
is a great way to help these shows out in
and ensure that they have more life absolutely huge things.
As always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
If you would like to get in touch with us

(01:11:32):
with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest
a topic for the future, just to say hello, you
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a
production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works For more podcasts

(01:11:52):
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