April 30, 2024 • 36 mins
We have found some pretty amazing ways to observe human behaviour and from it, discovered some especially interesting things about how we operate, who we are at our core, our irrational beliefs and so much more. In today's episode, we break down five of my favourite psychology studies of all time from jam, to mental escapism and binge watching TV, how many friends we actually need, the healing power of nature and the origins of imposter syndrome. Listen now!
Study One: The Stanford Jam Experiment
https://faculty.washington.edu/jdb/345/345%20Articles/Iyengar%20%26%20Lepper%20(2000).pdf
Study Two: In your 20s it's quantity, in your 30s its quality
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2015-10764-001
Study Three: Loneliness, Escapism, and Identification With Media Characters
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.785970/full
Study Four: The Imposter Phenomenon in High Achieving Women
https://www.paulineroseclance.com/pdf/ip_high_achieving_women.pdf
Study Five: Effects of Coastal Environment on Well-being
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in
the world, it is so great to have you here.
Back for another episode today, I have something a little
bit different for you. I'm really excited about this because
it is not what we typically do on the show.
(00:43):
Most weeks, we pick two topics that we encounter in
our twenties and we break down the psychology behind them.
Obviously you guys know this, But this week I want
to do the reverse. I want to start with the
psychology and the research and the studies and show how
that applies to our lives. So yeah, I thought it
(01:03):
would be a little bit fun. In all honesty, I
have been experiencing a bit of a creative block recently,
and I thought kind of the best way to counteract
that is to just get back to the core of
why I love this podcast and this job, which is
because of the science and how fascinating human behavior and
psychology is, and how as humans we are really really
(01:27):
you know, great and really creative at observing this and
measuring this and you know, studying ourselves also. You know,
sometimes there isn't enough space in an episode or a season,
or it's like kind of never the right time to
bring up a study that I'd love and want to share.
So that's what we're going to do today. I'm going
(01:47):
to talk about my five favorite psychology papers psychology studies
of all time and what they can tell us about
our twenties. Now, these five studies that I have for
you today, they are not going to be like your
classic psychology studies that people tend to think of. I
think we all have some idea of you know, have
(02:10):
Havelov's Dogs and the Stanford prison experiment and the bystander
effect or the Bobo Doll study. I think that those
are part of our like regular psychobabble and like collective memory.
But I want to go a little bit deeper, kind
of pass the classics into not the every day but
into the stuff that you would typically stay like published
(02:32):
in a journal in this day and age, the studies
that don't necessarily make headlines, even if they deserve to
I have a study on jam, I have a study
on friendship, one on mental escapism and binge watching television shows.
I've got one on gender and imposter syndrome. And as
(02:52):
a finale, my favorite study on something totally out of
left field, really, which is the ocean and the ancient
Greek concept of the lasso therapy. Okay, reading that through,
I'm like, that's quite a mix back. But hopefully there
is like something for everybody, there's something for you to learn.
I'm so pumped to get into it and hopefully just
(03:14):
give you some fun new party facts, some fun new
psychology trivia. So let's get into it. So, I know
I promised some lesser known studies, but I'm going to
start off with the most well known one that I
kind of have for you. It is known as the
(03:35):
Stanford Jam experiment. If you are a longtime listener of
the show, I have talked about this before, but never
in its entirety. You would kind of think of all
the ways that we can study human psychology, that a
condiment we put on toast isn't going to be one
of them. But I think psychologists and research is one
(03:55):
thing that they do have is like a very creative
knack for fine really like different ways to observe decision
making and human behavior and consumer choices using things that
seem quite ubiquitous. So the Stanford Jam experiment, it is
a classic study and it was conducted at Stanford University
(04:19):
by Sheena Yeager and Mark Lepper in nineteen ninety five,
so thirty years ago. And this study is essentially what
created the concept of the paradox of choice. So in
this experiment, they wanted to observe shoppers, grocery store shoppers
at an upstet supermarket. And how they did that was
(04:41):
they presented them with the tasting booth where they could
sample different flavors of jam. You know, we've all seen
that at like Costco or the grocery store, some new
product that they have, you get to have a free sample.
And so what they did was they set up two
kind of stores, one on day one and one also
one on the first weekend, and then the next weekend
(05:02):
they came back. So in the first weekend, which was
the first condition, the researchers offered a display with a
limited selection of six different jams. You know, your strawberry,
your marmalade, your classics. In the second condition, the weekend after,
they offered a much larger selection of twenty four gems.
(05:25):
What they wanted to see was how likely people were
to purchase a gem in each of these conditions. So
basically they were observing investigating how the number of choices
we are presented affects our ability to make decisions and
to be satisfied with our choices. I think, from a
(05:46):
surface level, like intuitively, you would think that when people
had more jam, they were more likely to make a purchase.
They were more likely to buy a jam because there
was a greater chance that the jars one of the
flavors matched their preferences. But actually, although people were more
attracted to the store when there were a larger number
(06:09):
of jams, people asked for more tasters, fewer people actually
made a purchase compared to when there was a smaller
assortment of only six jams. The second part of these
findings was that those people who had more options on
the first weekend were actually a lot less satisfied with
(06:30):
their choice, and they were more likely to regret it.
So when they went and talked to them afterwards and
they said, oh, was there another germ that you would
have wanted. How happy are you with your choice? How
excited are you with your new jam? They'd be like,
oh yeah, pretty good. I don't know, though, there seems
to be like maybe I should have gotten this other one.
What if the strawberry was going to be better than
(06:51):
the raspberry? Whereas with the people who had purchased when
there were only six jams, they didn't seem to have
that same level of back and forth with themselves. So
this experiment really highlighted the concept of choice overload, where
when we have too many options, this can actually lead
to decision paralysis, decrease satisfaction, and even avoidance of making
(07:15):
a decision altogether because we have too much to consider.
More options might seem like more freedom, but it actually
feels quite restrictive because unconsciously, I think we feel as
if we are more likely to make the wrong choice
given we have more options, and therefore we don't make
one at all. So this has so much application to
(07:38):
our twenties you wouldn't believe it. I think dating apps
are the first example I like to think of because
they are so commonplace in this day and age. Most
of us have encountered dating apps in some form, and
the thing about them is that they give us so
many options and choices. We have like endless matches and
(08:00):
our fingertips. If the first person you see on those
apps isn't the one, the next person might be, and
if they're not, you have another person, and another person
and another shot after that. But that can actually be
really overwhelming because everybody we encounter begins to lose their appeal.
The whole process becomes very paralyzing because we have choice overload.
(08:22):
We have too many people to consider. We get too
paralyzed by the possibility of wait, was that person the one?
But what about this person or the next person or
the next person, And so we don't end up going
on dates or meeting in person, or really engaging with
any of our candidates because it's hard to choose between them.
It's hard to feel satisfied with any one person and
(08:46):
want to pursue it further. Another important application is our
career choices. I think this is a common experience. There
are so many lives that we want to live, especially
in our twenties, when like the world feels very open
to us, there are so many future versions of ourselves
we want to realize that it can feel I think
(09:06):
quite impossible to choose just one and feel satisfied for that.
Do we go the traditional route, do we take a
gap year, do we do our masters? Do we want
to be more entrepreneurial, Do we want to start our
own business, work for ourselves, work for a company that
has security, or do something totally out of the ordinary,
(09:27):
you know, become an artist or a zookeeper, whatever. I
think the example is that our twenties are brimming with
opportunity and that is such a blessing. But the more
decisions we make when it comes to our careers, the
more doors I think seem to close. So it makes
it quite stressful and confronting, and intuitively, we don't want
(09:50):
to make a decision or make a choice and feel
like we're limiting ourselves. And that is, you know, a
real life example of this jam experiment. So my next
study is about another core aspect of our twenties. It's
about friendship and how many friends we need to actually
(10:10):
feel fulfilled, feel satisfied and to boost our wellbeing. So
in twenty fifteen, a thirty year longitudinal study out of
the University of Rochester was published in the Journal of
Psychology and aging. Thirty years, that's how long it had taken,
and it determined that in our twenties it is actually
(10:32):
the quantity of friends that we have, whilst in our
thirties it's the quality that seems to matter when it
comes to our psychological wellbeing. Essentially, what this study kind
of suggested or concluded is that in our twenties we
should actually be focused on building a large, expansive network,
(10:54):
even if not everybody is hand selected and our best friend,
whereas in our thirties it's about prune those relationships, being
comfortable with some of them fading, and really seeking out
quality friendship over quantity. So how did they conclude this?
This research, like I said, published in twenty fifteen, so
(11:14):
only ten years ago, but it began in the nineteen seventies.
So the researcher Paul Duberstein. He is a psychiatry professor
at the University of Rochester, and he followed one hundred
students who were once students at the university, so they
were once students, not anymore. He followed one hundred ex
students alumni from when they were students through their twenties,
(11:38):
their thirties and their forties now. At multiple points in
their twenties and thirties, they were asked to record their
daily interactions with others and to score them on intimacy
and unpleasantness. So they weren't doing this like all the time,
he would kind of like pop back up to them
for just a small period and say, hey, I just
(12:00):
needed to take some notes on this for a couple
days or for a week. Decades later, he got back
in touch with them and he asked them some questions
relating to their psychological well being, their sense of loneliness,
and quality of friendship. And what they found was that
having too many friends at thirty was actually a bit
(12:22):
of a problem because it could prevent you from developing
meaningful relationships. But on the flip side, just meeting more
people in your twenties, regardless of the depth of your
interactions and your relationships, that kind of has its own merits.
So what does this study tell us about friendship in
our twenties. I think it tells us two things. The
(12:45):
first thing is that you don't need to be too
worried about meeting your best friend at this age. If
you're in your twenties, you don't need to be concerned
by the fact that you haven't found your people yet,
because you have time. And it seems that this decade
is about prioritizing just getting out there right, just having
those situational friendships, those fleeting moments, even if they don't last.
(13:09):
Our thirties are the decade for quality friendship and for
kind of fine tuning and deepening those pre existing relationships.
I will say that a small problem with this research
was that it was mainly conducted before the invention of
social media. Things have changed a lot now, so it
(13:30):
would be really fascinating to see how these results may
shift as we have more interactions online, and you know,
face to face interactions aren't always the norm for catching
up and communicating and chatting with our friends. I think
one way you could adapt this study is to kind
of like download software onto participants phones that monitors who
(13:51):
they talk to on social media, whether they speak to
the same five people or like a broad community, and
then see how that relates to wellbeing in our twenties
or thirties, or whether it's the quantity of interactions like
dictated by social media versus the quality which we would
kind of assume come from in person interactions that count.
(14:13):
I don't know, just an interesting way of like adapting
this to a modern context, because I think it could
really tell us a lot more. If you want to
read about this study, any of the studies, I really
would recommend the article in the description. So our third
study is entirely different. We are switching gears away from
our careers and friendship and relationships to our TVs, to
(14:36):
our laptops. We're going to talk about binge watching, mental escapism, loneliness,
how those three things are correlated or have a relationship
to each other. I was having this conversation with my
friends the other day that the way TV shows are
released these days makes them so much easier to binge
watch and consume rapidly. I don't know if if you're
(15:00):
in your twenties, like in your mid late twenties, you
will remember when like Gossip Girl and gleebe would come
out and you would have to like wait each week
for the next episode, and then they would like take
a two week break, like randomly over Christmas or in
the summertime, and you would have to watch like Simpson's
reruns or whatever it was. Nowadays, like the whole thing
comes out all at once, and companies like Netflix and
(15:24):
Hulu and Apple, Amazon Prime, they're really focused on like
these mini series that we can consume really quickly and
then immediately go looking for something else. I'm gonna admit
I'm into it. I just finished Baby Reindeer on Netflix.
I'm like captivated. I got through it in three days,
and it's kind of one of those behaviors that you
(15:45):
just fall into. I think that it's a lot more
common though, amongst people who are seeking a kind of
mental escapism from their daily lives, whether that's because their
jobs aren't going well, they're lonely, something else is going on,
their relationship is breaking down. We turned to binge watching
as a form of mental escapism. So the study I
(16:09):
want to talk about that discovered this correlation was published
in twenty twenty one and it's titled Loneliness, Escapism, and
Identification with Media Characters. An Exploration of the psychological factors
underlying binge watching tendency. Okay, bit of a mouthful. So
in this study, they had a sample of four hundred
(16:30):
and ninety individuals mainly from the UK and the United States,
and they were asked about their typical media usage and
how many hours they spent watching TV, along with which
streaming services they were using that you know, could include
any of them, you know, like we said, Amazon, Netflix,
stand they just wanted to know. They were then measured
(16:52):
for loneliness using the UCLA Loneliness Scale and a binge
watching tendency test, which is a real thing we can
measure how likely you are to binge watch a TV show.
It asks questions like I always need to watch more
episodes to feel satisfied. Do you strongly agree or strongly disagree?
I keep watching even when I have other things I
(17:14):
need to do. I avoid sleep to keep watching my
TV series. Those are kind of the questions that operationalize
this concept of binge watching. So when the researchers looked
at the results, what they found was that higher feelings
of loneliness are associated with higher levels of problematic binge
(17:35):
watching behaviors an excessive TV consumption. This was interpreted as
a form of mental escapism, wanting a mental break from
your daily life by seeking solace in something that is
entirely different. And the reason why this kind of behavior
(17:55):
would be so common amongst those who were looking for
a mental escape is because binge watching is so low
effort and undemanding, but it provides a really engaging distraction
even when our mental energy reserves are super depleted and
we're super drained. I actually think that binge watching is
an activity that it's easier to continue than to quit.
(18:17):
Right Like, when you're approaching the end of an episode,
the next one is immediately going to play, meaning that
it's more demanding for you to stop and turn the
TV off than it is to just continue the show.
I also think that when we continually watch the same
kind of TV series that features the same characters, the
(18:38):
same plots, the same locations, it's less cognitively demanding than
switching to other activities, which is why when we're going
through I think, tough, lonely, draining periods of burnout, whatever
it is, we are more likely to turn to you know,
television or mini series or Netflix for comfort. Media companies
(19:03):
leverage this. They know we have a lot going on,
and they know that if they provide a comfortable place
for our brains to relax, we'll keep coming back, even
if it's at the expense of other things we want
to do with our days, with our lives. What can
we kind of take from this well. I think it's
about being aware of the why. Why can't we stop?
(19:24):
Why do we have to watch the whole thing in
one night? Why does so many of us find it
easier to kind of switch off in this way and
stay that way for hours then to do something more
active in our lives. I don't think that it's always
necessarily a bad thing, but when it does become a
form of mental escapism, whereby it's like you're kind of
(19:46):
sitting into a whole new reality, You're completely switching off
from your life. You're trying not to engage with what's
actually going on in your every day, that can be
quite problematic. I really love this study so much. I
think it makes a lot of sense. Right. We find
so much comfort in TV shows in the media, in binge,
(20:06):
watching something repetitive or something that we know, or something
that has just come out and as exciting and novel,
But sometimes we don't really think about the why behind
our excessive consumption behaviors. So it's a fascinating one. Again,
it will be in the description. So far we've covered
my top three. We have two left, and we're going
(20:28):
to get to them after this short break, so stay
with us. I think we've all heard about the idea
of imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome refers to a psychological pattern
where individuals like you and I doubt our accomplishments and
(20:50):
we have a persistent fear of being exposed as a fraud,
as a liar despite the evidence of our competence and
of our success in the fact that we are intelligent people,
we feel really undeserving. We feel like our successes and
achievements all come down to luck or external factors rather
(21:12):
than our own abilities, and therefore we're constantly in a
state of fear that people are going to figure out
that we really don't know what we're doing. This is
such a common feeling, and it's also such a well
known term that I don't think we actually know where
it comes from. So this brings me to study number four,
The Imposter Phenomenon in High Achieving Women, Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention.
(21:38):
That is the title of this article of this study
that was conducted at Georgia State University once again back
in the seventies, in nineteen seventy eight. So this research
and analysis it focused one hundred and fifty highly successful women,
women who had earned PhDs, who were respected doctors, professors
(21:59):
recognize for the academic success. They were at the top
of their field, and they were all linked not just
by their achievements, but this paralyzing sense that they didn't
deserve any of it, despite all the evidence to the contrary. So,
for example, in this study, these two researchers, doctor Paulin Klanz,
doctor Susan Immis, they spoke to these women, these one
(22:23):
hundred and fifty women, and some of the statements and
self reports that they collected during this study included these
students who were like absolutely convinced that there had been
some like administrative eraror in admitting them to like a
really prestigious college. There were heaps of graduate students who
(22:44):
had really high exam scores and they would say to
them full honestly, like they believed this to their core,
that something must have happened. Their scores were wrong, their
papers had been misgraded, there was faulty judgment by the professor.
There were also professors and doctors who would say, some
(23:05):
mistake was made in my selection process that gave me
my tenure, or obviously I'm in this position because my
abilities have been overestimated. There was another woman with two
master's degrees, a PhD, numerous publications who was a lecturer,
and she basically said, I'm unqualified to teach. This was
(23:29):
a mistake. This is just luck. Somebody is obviously screwed up,
and when they find out, I'm in big trouble. This
seemed so irrational and bizarre to these researchers because it
just seemed that all of the evidence was there. These
women should be totally secure in their accomplishments and where
(23:51):
they were in their lives. But within the context of
the nineteen seventies, they kind of hypothesized that the reason
women were experiencing this like syndrome more than men was
because of how they were socialized at the time to
be humble, to be meek, to not be intelligent, to
not take credit for their successes, whereas men were allowed
(24:13):
to be the heroes. They were allowed to be confident,
if not arrogant, and celebrate themselves publicly for their successes
and their achievements. They also kind of speculated that because
at the time, women weren't super common in these high profile,
exceptional academic and professional environments, they didn't really have a
narrative for their success because it seemed so unexpected compared
(24:36):
to those around them, So the most natural conclusion was
that it must be a fluke. The other thing they
also sought an explanation in was family dynamics and the
childhood that these women had, And this is a component
of imposter syndrome. I think people don't typically know about
(24:57):
how imposter syndrome really does have its roots in our infancy,
in our childhood, in our adolescence. What they concluded was
that these quote unquote impostors, they typically fell into one
of two groups. They fell into a group of high
achievers or the designated kind of intelligent member of the family,
(25:20):
or they were the sensitive member of the family, not
particularly special, not really made to shine. So the intelligent
child constantly worked to meet their family prophecy that they
were brilliant. She was told numerous examples of how she
had always been bright, how she was such a quick learner,
(25:40):
how she excelled from an early age. In the family
member's eyes, I think she's perfect. They lavish her with praise,
But then she encounters things the older she gets that
she can't do, and so she begins to doubt her abilities.
She no longer lives up to this like perfection with
ease idea that her parents and her family have pushed
(26:01):
on her. And if she's not the genius that she
was always told she was, she's an intellectual impostor. That
was group one of these women who were experiencing impost syndrome.
They were the women who, since young age, you know,
were lucky enough to have parents and family who really
celebrated them, perhaps too much so to the point where
(26:22):
they kind of had a too big to fail mentality.
On the other hand, they had this other group of
women who were experiencing imposter syndrome, who were kind of
always second, who were always runner up compared to the
bride sibling. They could never really impress their parents. Their
achievements and performance and accolades were never really seen as
(26:43):
that special to like directly quote from the article, these
women in one domain really crave validation and keep pushing
to prove their intellectual competence, kind of in rebellion of
what their parents and their family has always said. But
on the other hand, they also think that their family
must be correct. So this woman secretly doubts her intellect
(27:07):
and begins to wonder whether she has actually gained high
marks because of her social skills, because she has tricked people,
because there's been a mistake. And so the imposter syndrome
emerges from a constantly wanting to prove that she is intelligent,
that she is worthy, that she is successful, but then
having that self doubt that comes from that inner voice
(27:29):
her parents have instilled in her that she isn't smart enough,
that she doesn't deserve this. I really love this study
because it was honestly one of the first ever academic
pieces of research that focused on successful women and their
psychology and their upbringing. And it was conducted again by
two really amazing female doctors and female psychologists who went
(27:52):
on to create that term through this research, that term
imposta syndrome that is now like a huge part of
our collectives, psychobabble, and our language. But when you really
look into it further and you actually read their analysis
and their suggestions, there are so many more fascinating conclusions
than most of us are aware of. And I think
we like to throw around the term imposter syndrome, but
(28:15):
there is a lot of depth behind that, a lot
of fascinating history and of course psychology that this study
really goes into, so honestly, it is worth reading. The
first time I came across it, it genuinely changed so
much about how how I kind of saw myself, how
I saw my friends, my family, my childhood, my present
day insecurities and self doubts. Again it will be in
(28:38):
the description. So this brings us to our fifth and
final study of the day, and I want to end
on something kind of positive and beautiful and joyful. So
we're going to talk about a study that really articulates
some of the beauty and nice parts about being human
and kind of the fact that we are really connected
to nature and all living things around us. So the
(29:01):
whole subdiscipline of ecopsychology is really focused on that. And
if you've listened to this episode that we did previously
on the healing power of Nature, you'll know I kind
of have a real soft spot for any research, any concepts,
any theories that emphasizes our relationship and the importance of
being outdoors and rewilding our minds and our bodies. I
(29:23):
also grew up really close to the ocean. It was
such like a significant part of my childhood, like going
down to burly heads and crumb and waters in the
Gold Coast, and the sea is like one of those
places that I feel very comfortable in and at peace,
and I think it's you know, tangent here. But it's
a really huge blessing to have grown up like in
a country that has such a huge beach culture and
(29:45):
like access to this natural asset. And the thing that
I've always found is that being by the ocean is
one of the easiest ways to reduce my stress levels,
to reset, to bring about perspective in my life. My
dad used to always say that, like the ocean is
nature's natural healer and eases or wounds physical and mental.
(30:09):
And this study I'm about to tell you about actually
seems to provide some science and some evidence for that.
So this study was conducted in Japan and is titled
the Effects of Coastal Environment on Well Being. So they
wanted to know whether living by the ocean was better
for your health and better especially for your emotional and
psychological health. And they did this by comparing five hundred
(30:34):
and eighteen residents from the Heogo Prefecture, which is where
Kobe is the origin of Kobe beef, and they compared
people in this area who lived by the sea and
people who lived inland and in the major cities, and
what they found was this, people by the seaside seemed
a whole lot happier. They reported higher positive psychological effects
(30:56):
of the ocean. This was particularly the case for women
and elderly residents, but actually in general there was not
a single person who wasn't happier living by the sea,
and they wanted to know why this was well. I
think the argument they made is that the coast is
a therapeutic landscape. It brought upon really important and strong
(31:21):
feelings of restoration of awe and a peace of mind,
which it seemed harder for people who lived in big
cities to achieve. And that all kind of contributed to
a greater sense of mental well being. Access to the ocean,
to the sea, to the coast. It also seemed to
play part in this sense of like magnitude and the
(31:46):
sense that we are small, but because of that, what
we're doing doesn't really matter, if that makes sense, So
it feels quite existential, but actually it was quite liberating.
There was also to follow that up and other paper
that looked into this original study, and it found that
(32:06):
there is a more neurological impact of the ocean in
our psychology. Staring at the sea, staring at the waves
literally changes our brain wave frequency. It kind of puts
us in a mild meditative state that has a relaxing
effect on all of our senses. When we allow ourselves
to kind of watch the ebb and flow of the swell,
(32:28):
that has a genuine impact on our brain wave frequency,
on our brain activity. This may be a recent study,
but it's not a recent concept. There is a Greek
idea known as the Lasser therapy, which stems from the
Greek word the lassa meaning sea and therapy. Basically, the
(32:50):
ancient Greek believed that the ocean had genuine healing properties.
And I kind of have to agree it encompassed like
this whole range of treatments, Like the Lasser therapy was
like a genuine kind of like treatment plan you could
get from your ancient Greek doctor, and it included things
like seawater baths, marine mud raps, seaweed raps, inhalation of
(33:15):
sea miss and these treatments were believed to have various benefits,
not just physical. They thought they helped with circulation, with
relieving muscle tension, with kind of detoxifying the body. But
on a psychological and mental level, it also helped promote relaxation,
and it brought about a level of mental clarity and
(33:36):
peace for these individuals that is so valuable even to
this day for our emotional state. I got to say,
I love this study so much because it really highlights
how important nature is for our health, which is something
that I think we tend to neglect as cities become
more concrete, more industrialized, our life becomes busier, and we
(33:58):
are naturally kind of separated from the natural environments that
we evolved in. I think it's also a good reminder
that if you're feeling a bit restless, a bit unsettled,
a bit unsure about your future, about your current state
of affairs, if you're kind of looking for meaning, you're
looking for peace, the ocean is a really good place
to go. It is such a restorative environment. I always
(34:22):
say you never regret a swim in the ocean, and
I think that's true. I think it's true because when
you are like very much immersed in this natural environment,
you feel very small, but that allows you to feel
very free and it allows you to really slow down
from a lot of the industrial you know, hustle, culture,
(34:43):
rise and grind, mentality, and like focus in on the
fact that you are human, the fact that everything's going
to be okay, the fact that you know you have
this place for rest and this place for peace where
nature doesn't care about you, and isn't that kind of
like a beauty full, beautiful thing. So that was the
(35:03):
final study that I had for you today. I really
hope that you enjoyed this. This was actually so fun
for me. I think it's so rare that I get
to really break into like specific articles and studies and
spend like some serious time on them, let alone getting
to do that for five of my favorites. So I
really hope that you learned something. I hope that you
(35:25):
picked up maybe a new word, a new piece of
psychology trivia, a new thing to bring up at work,
bring up to your friends, bring up to your family.
And as always, if you did enjoy this episode, please
feel free to share it with a friend or give
us five stars on Apple or Spotify or wherever you're listening.
It really does help the show grow, and if you
(35:47):
enjoy this content, it would be great if it reached
new audiences and new people, so make sure you're following along,
make sure you're subscribed. If you have something to contribute
based on this disc if you have a favorite psychology
study that you want me to talk about, if you
have anything to say about the ones I've already spoken about,
(36:08):
please feel free to reach out to me on Instagram
at that Psychology Podcast, also with episode suggestions. I love
hearing from you guys. I love getting your feedback, so
make sure you're following us there as well, and as always,
be kind, be gentle to yourselves, and we'll talk very
soon
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in
the world, it is so great to have you here.
Back for another episode today, I have something a little
bit different for you. I'm really excited about this because
it is not what we typically do on the show.
(00:43):
Most weeks, we pick two topics that we encounter in
our twenties and we break down the psychology behind them.
Obviously you guys know this, But this week I want
to do the reverse. I want to start with the
psychology and the research and the studies and show how
that applies to our lives. So yeah, I thought it
(01:03):
would be a little bit fun. In all honesty, I
have been experiencing a bit of a creative block recently,
and I thought kind of the best way to counteract
that is to just get back to the core of
why I love this podcast and this job, which is
because of the science and how fascinating human behavior and
psychology is, and how as humans we are really really
(01:27):
you know, great and really creative at observing this and
measuring this and you know, studying ourselves also. You know,
sometimes there isn't enough space in an episode or a season,
or it's like kind of never the right time to
bring up a study that I'd love and want to share.
So that's what we're going to do today. I'm going
(01:47):
to talk about my five favorite psychology papers psychology studies
of all time and what they can tell us about
our twenties. Now, these five studies that I have for
you today, they are not going to be like your
classic psychology studies that people tend to think of. I
think we all have some idea of you know, have
(02:10):
Havelov's Dogs and the Stanford prison experiment and the bystander
effect or the Bobo Doll study. I think that those
are part of our like regular psychobabble and like collective memory.
But I want to go a little bit deeper, kind
of pass the classics into not the every day but
into the stuff that you would typically stay like published
(02:32):
in a journal in this day and age, the studies
that don't necessarily make headlines, even if they deserve to
I have a study on jam, I have a study
on friendship, one on mental escapism and binge watching television shows.
I've got one on gender and imposter syndrome. And as
(02:52):
a finale, my favorite study on something totally out of
left field, really, which is the ocean and the ancient
Greek concept of the lasso therapy. Okay, reading that through,
I'm like, that's quite a mix back. But hopefully there
is like something for everybody, there's something for you to learn.
I'm so pumped to get into it and hopefully just
(03:14):
give you some fun new party facts, some fun new
psychology trivia. So let's get into it. So, I know
I promised some lesser known studies, but I'm going to
start off with the most well known one that I
kind of have for you. It is known as the
(03:35):
Stanford Jam experiment. If you are a longtime listener of
the show, I have talked about this before, but never
in its entirety. You would kind of think of all
the ways that we can study human psychology, that a
condiment we put on toast isn't going to be one
of them. But I think psychologists and research is one
(03:55):
thing that they do have is like a very creative
knack for fine really like different ways to observe decision
making and human behavior and consumer choices using things that
seem quite ubiquitous. So the Stanford Jam experiment, it is
a classic study and it was conducted at Stanford University
(04:19):
by Sheena Yeager and Mark Lepper in nineteen ninety five,
so thirty years ago. And this study is essentially what
created the concept of the paradox of choice. So in
this experiment, they wanted to observe shoppers, grocery store shoppers
at an upstet supermarket. And how they did that was
(04:41):
they presented them with the tasting booth where they could
sample different flavors of jam. You know, we've all seen
that at like Costco or the grocery store, some new
product that they have, you get to have a free sample.
And so what they did was they set up two
kind of stores, one on day one and one also
one on the first weekend, and then the next weekend
(05:02):
they came back. So in the first weekend, which was
the first condition, the researchers offered a display with a
limited selection of six different jams. You know, your strawberry,
your marmalade, your classics. In the second condition, the weekend after,
they offered a much larger selection of twenty four gems.
(05:25):
What they wanted to see was how likely people were
to purchase a gem in each of these conditions. So
basically they were observing investigating how the number of choices
we are presented affects our ability to make decisions and
to be satisfied with our choices. I think, from a
(05:46):
surface level, like intuitively, you would think that when people
had more jam, they were more likely to make a purchase.
They were more likely to buy a jam because there
was a greater chance that the jars one of the
flavors matched their preferences. But actually, although people were more
attracted to the store when there were a larger number
(06:09):
of jams, people asked for more tasters, fewer people actually
made a purchase compared to when there was a smaller
assortment of only six jams. The second part of these
findings was that those people who had more options on
the first weekend were actually a lot less satisfied with
(06:30):
their choice, and they were more likely to regret it.
So when they went and talked to them afterwards and
they said, oh, was there another germ that you would
have wanted. How happy are you with your choice? How
excited are you with your new jam? They'd be like,
oh yeah, pretty good. I don't know, though, there seems
to be like maybe I should have gotten this other one.
What if the strawberry was going to be better than
(06:51):
the raspberry? Whereas with the people who had purchased when
there were only six jams, they didn't seem to have
that same level of back and forth with themselves. So
this experiment really highlighted the concept of choice overload, where
when we have too many options, this can actually lead
to decision paralysis, decrease satisfaction, and even avoidance of making
(07:15):
a decision altogether because we have too much to consider.
More options might seem like more freedom, but it actually
feels quite restrictive because unconsciously, I think we feel as
if we are more likely to make the wrong choice
given we have more options, and therefore we don't make
one at all. So this has so much application to
(07:38):
our twenties you wouldn't believe it. I think dating apps
are the first example I like to think of because
they are so commonplace in this day and age. Most
of us have encountered dating apps in some form, and
the thing about them is that they give us so
many options and choices. We have like endless matches and
(08:00):
our fingertips. If the first person you see on those
apps isn't the one, the next person might be, and
if they're not, you have another person, and another person
and another shot after that. But that can actually be
really overwhelming because everybody we encounter begins to lose their appeal.
The whole process becomes very paralyzing because we have choice overload.
(08:22):
We have too many people to consider. We get too
paralyzed by the possibility of wait, was that person the one?
But what about this person or the next person or
the next person, And so we don't end up going
on dates or meeting in person, or really engaging with
any of our candidates because it's hard to choose between them.
It's hard to feel satisfied with any one person and
(08:46):
want to pursue it further. Another important application is our
career choices. I think this is a common experience. There
are so many lives that we want to live, especially
in our twenties, when like the world feels very open
to us, there are so many future versions of ourselves
we want to realize that it can feel I think
(09:06):
quite impossible to choose just one and feel satisfied for that.
Do we go the traditional route, do we take a
gap year, do we do our masters? Do we want
to be more entrepreneurial, Do we want to start our
own business, work for ourselves, work for a company that
has security, or do something totally out of the ordinary,
(09:27):
you know, become an artist or a zookeeper, whatever. I
think the example is that our twenties are brimming with
opportunity and that is such a blessing. But the more
decisions we make when it comes to our careers, the
more doors I think seem to close. So it makes
it quite stressful and confronting, and intuitively, we don't want
(09:50):
to make a decision or make a choice and feel
like we're limiting ourselves. And that is, you know, a
real life example of this jam experiment. So my next
study is about another core aspect of our twenties. It's
about friendship and how many friends we need to actually
(10:10):
feel fulfilled, feel satisfied and to boost our wellbeing. So
in twenty fifteen, a thirty year longitudinal study out of
the University of Rochester was published in the Journal of
Psychology and aging. Thirty years, that's how long it had taken,
and it determined that in our twenties it is actually
(10:32):
the quantity of friends that we have, whilst in our
thirties it's the quality that seems to matter when it
comes to our psychological wellbeing. Essentially, what this study kind
of suggested or concluded is that in our twenties we
should actually be focused on building a large, expansive network,
(10:54):
even if not everybody is hand selected and our best friend,
whereas in our thirties it's about prune those relationships, being
comfortable with some of them fading, and really seeking out
quality friendship over quantity. So how did they conclude this?
This research, like I said, published in twenty fifteen, so
(11:14):
only ten years ago, but it began in the nineteen seventies.
So the researcher Paul Duberstein. He is a psychiatry professor
at the University of Rochester, and he followed one hundred
students who were once students at the university, so they
were once students, not anymore. He followed one hundred ex
students alumni from when they were students through their twenties,
(11:38):
their thirties and their forties now. At multiple points in
their twenties and thirties, they were asked to record their
daily interactions with others and to score them on intimacy
and unpleasantness. So they weren't doing this like all the time,
he would kind of like pop back up to them
for just a small period and say, hey, I just
(12:00):
needed to take some notes on this for a couple
days or for a week. Decades later, he got back
in touch with them and he asked them some questions
relating to their psychological well being, their sense of loneliness,
and quality of friendship. And what they found was that
having too many friends at thirty was actually a bit
(12:22):
of a problem because it could prevent you from developing
meaningful relationships. But on the flip side, just meeting more
people in your twenties, regardless of the depth of your
interactions and your relationships, that kind of has its own merits.
So what does this study tell us about friendship in
our twenties. I think it tells us two things. The
(12:45):
first thing is that you don't need to be too
worried about meeting your best friend at this age. If
you're in your twenties, you don't need to be concerned
by the fact that you haven't found your people yet,
because you have time. And it seems that this decade
is about prioritizing just getting out there right, just having
those situational friendships, those fleeting moments, even if they don't last.
(13:09):
Our thirties are the decade for quality friendship and for
kind of fine tuning and deepening those pre existing relationships.
I will say that a small problem with this research
was that it was mainly conducted before the invention of
social media. Things have changed a lot now, so it
(13:30):
would be really fascinating to see how these results may
shift as we have more interactions online, and you know,
face to face interactions aren't always the norm for catching
up and communicating and chatting with our friends. I think
one way you could adapt this study is to kind
of like download software onto participants phones that monitors who
(13:51):
they talk to on social media, whether they speak to
the same five people or like a broad community, and
then see how that relates to wellbeing in our twenties
or thirties, or whether it's the quantity of interactions like
dictated by social media versus the quality which we would
kind of assume come from in person interactions that count.
(14:13):
I don't know, just an interesting way of like adapting
this to a modern context, because I think it could
really tell us a lot more. If you want to
read about this study, any of the studies, I really
would recommend the article in the description. So our third
study is entirely different. We are switching gears away from
our careers and friendship and relationships to our TVs, to
(14:36):
our laptops. We're going to talk about binge watching, mental escapism, loneliness,
how those three things are correlated or have a relationship
to each other. I was having this conversation with my
friends the other day that the way TV shows are
released these days makes them so much easier to binge
watch and consume rapidly. I don't know if if you're
(15:00):
in your twenties, like in your mid late twenties, you
will remember when like Gossip Girl and gleebe would come
out and you would have to like wait each week
for the next episode, and then they would like take
a two week break, like randomly over Christmas or in
the summertime, and you would have to watch like Simpson's
reruns or whatever it was. Nowadays, like the whole thing
comes out all at once, and companies like Netflix and
(15:24):
Hulu and Apple, Amazon Prime, they're really focused on like
these mini series that we can consume really quickly and
then immediately go looking for something else. I'm gonna admit
I'm into it. I just finished Baby Reindeer on Netflix.
I'm like captivated. I got through it in three days,
and it's kind of one of those behaviors that you
(15:45):
just fall into. I think that it's a lot more
common though, amongst people who are seeking a kind of
mental escapism from their daily lives, whether that's because their
jobs aren't going well, they're lonely, something else is going on,
their relationship is breaking down. We turned to binge watching
as a form of mental escapism. So the study I
(16:09):
want to talk about that discovered this correlation was published
in twenty twenty one and it's titled Loneliness, Escapism, and
Identification with Media Characters. An Exploration of the psychological factors
underlying binge watching tendency. Okay, bit of a mouthful. So
in this study, they had a sample of four hundred
(16:30):
and ninety individuals mainly from the UK and the United States,
and they were asked about their typical media usage and
how many hours they spent watching TV, along with which
streaming services they were using that you know, could include
any of them, you know, like we said, Amazon, Netflix,
stand they just wanted to know. They were then measured
(16:52):
for loneliness using the UCLA Loneliness Scale and a binge
watching tendency test, which is a real thing we can
measure how likely you are to binge watch a TV show.
It asks questions like I always need to watch more
episodes to feel satisfied. Do you strongly agree or strongly disagree?
I keep watching even when I have other things I
(17:14):
need to do. I avoid sleep to keep watching my
TV series. Those are kind of the questions that operationalize
this concept of binge watching. So when the researchers looked
at the results, what they found was that higher feelings
of loneliness are associated with higher levels of problematic binge
(17:35):
watching behaviors an excessive TV consumption. This was interpreted as
a form of mental escapism, wanting a mental break from
your daily life by seeking solace in something that is
entirely different. And the reason why this kind of behavior
(17:55):
would be so common amongst those who were looking for
a mental escape is because binge watching is so low
effort and undemanding, but it provides a really engaging distraction
even when our mental energy reserves are super depleted and
we're super drained. I actually think that binge watching is
an activity that it's easier to continue than to quit.
(18:17):
Right Like, when you're approaching the end of an episode,
the next one is immediately going to play, meaning that
it's more demanding for you to stop and turn the
TV off than it is to just continue the show.
I also think that when we continually watch the same
kind of TV series that features the same characters, the
(18:38):
same plots, the same locations, it's less cognitively demanding than
switching to other activities, which is why when we're going
through I think, tough, lonely, draining periods of burnout, whatever
it is, we are more likely to turn to you know,
television or mini series or Netflix for comfort. Media companies
(19:03):
leverage this. They know we have a lot going on,
and they know that if they provide a comfortable place
for our brains to relax, we'll keep coming back, even
if it's at the expense of other things we want
to do with our days, with our lives. What can
we kind of take from this well. I think it's
about being aware of the why. Why can't we stop?
(19:24):
Why do we have to watch the whole thing in
one night? Why does so many of us find it
easier to kind of switch off in this way and
stay that way for hours then to do something more
active in our lives. I don't think that it's always
necessarily a bad thing, but when it does become a
form of mental escapism, whereby it's like you're kind of
(19:46):
sitting into a whole new reality, You're completely switching off
from your life. You're trying not to engage with what's
actually going on in your every day, that can be
quite problematic. I really love this study so much. I
think it makes a lot of sense. Right. We find
so much comfort in TV shows in the media, in binge,
(20:06):
watching something repetitive or something that we know, or something
that has just come out and as exciting and novel,
But sometimes we don't really think about the why behind
our excessive consumption behaviors. So it's a fascinating one. Again,
it will be in the description. So far we've covered
my top three. We have two left, and we're going
(20:28):
to get to them after this short break, so stay
with us. I think we've all heard about the idea
of imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome refers to a psychological pattern
where individuals like you and I doubt our accomplishments and
(20:50):
we have a persistent fear of being exposed as a fraud,
as a liar despite the evidence of our competence and
of our success in the fact that we are intelligent people,
we feel really undeserving. We feel like our successes and
achievements all come down to luck or external factors rather
(21:12):
than our own abilities, and therefore we're constantly in a
state of fear that people are going to figure out
that we really don't know what we're doing. This is
such a common feeling, and it's also such a well
known term that I don't think we actually know where
it comes from. So this brings me to study number four,
The Imposter Phenomenon in High Achieving Women, Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention.
(21:38):
That is the title of this article of this study
that was conducted at Georgia State University once again back
in the seventies, in nineteen seventy eight. So this research
and analysis it focused one hundred and fifty highly successful women,
women who had earned PhDs, who were respected doctors, professors
(21:59):
recognize for the academic success. They were at the top
of their field, and they were all linked not just
by their achievements, but this paralyzing sense that they didn't
deserve any of it, despite all the evidence to the contrary. So,
for example, in this study, these two researchers, doctor Paulin Klanz,
doctor Susan Immis, they spoke to these women, these one
(22:23):
hundred and fifty women, and some of the statements and
self reports that they collected during this study included these
students who were like absolutely convinced that there had been
some like administrative eraror in admitting them to like a
really prestigious college. There were heaps of graduate students who
(22:44):
had really high exam scores and they would say to
them full honestly, like they believed this to their core,
that something must have happened. Their scores were wrong, their
papers had been misgraded, there was faulty judgment by the professor.
There were also professors and doctors who would say, some
(23:05):
mistake was made in my selection process that gave me
my tenure, or obviously I'm in this position because my
abilities have been overestimated. There was another woman with two
master's degrees, a PhD, numerous publications who was a lecturer,
and she basically said, I'm unqualified to teach. This was
(23:29):
a mistake. This is just luck. Somebody is obviously screwed up,
and when they find out, I'm in big trouble. This
seemed so irrational and bizarre to these researchers because it
just seemed that all of the evidence was there. These
women should be totally secure in their accomplishments and where
(23:51):
they were in their lives. But within the context of
the nineteen seventies, they kind of hypothesized that the reason
women were experiencing this like syndrome more than men was
because of how they were socialized at the time to
be humble, to be meek, to not be intelligent, to
not take credit for their successes, whereas men were allowed
(24:13):
to be the heroes. They were allowed to be confident,
if not arrogant, and celebrate themselves publicly for their successes
and their achievements. They also kind of speculated that because
at the time, women weren't super common in these high profile,
exceptional academic and professional environments, they didn't really have a
narrative for their success because it seemed so unexpected compared
(24:36):
to those around them, So the most natural conclusion was
that it must be a fluke. The other thing they
also sought an explanation in was family dynamics and the
childhood that these women had, And this is a component
of imposter syndrome. I think people don't typically know about
(24:57):
how imposter syndrome really does have its roots in our infancy,
in our childhood, in our adolescence. What they concluded was
that these quote unquote impostors, they typically fell into one
of two groups. They fell into a group of high
achievers or the designated kind of intelligent member of the family,
(25:20):
or they were the sensitive member of the family, not
particularly special, not really made to shine. So the intelligent
child constantly worked to meet their family prophecy that they
were brilliant. She was told numerous examples of how she
had always been bright, how she was such a quick learner,
(25:40):
how she excelled from an early age. In the family
member's eyes, I think she's perfect. They lavish her with praise,
But then she encounters things the older she gets that
she can't do, and so she begins to doubt her abilities.
She no longer lives up to this like perfection with
ease idea that her parents and her family have pushed
(26:01):
on her. And if she's not the genius that she
was always told she was, she's an intellectual impostor. That
was group one of these women who were experiencing impost syndrome.
They were the women who, since young age, you know,
were lucky enough to have parents and family who really
celebrated them, perhaps too much so to the point where
(26:22):
they kind of had a too big to fail mentality.
On the other hand, they had this other group of
women who were experiencing imposter syndrome, who were kind of
always second, who were always runner up compared to the
bride sibling. They could never really impress their parents. Their
achievements and performance and accolades were never really seen as
(26:43):
that special to like directly quote from the article, these
women in one domain really crave validation and keep pushing
to prove their intellectual competence, kind of in rebellion of
what their parents and their family has always said. But
on the other hand, they also think that their family
must be correct. So this woman secretly doubts her intellect
(27:07):
and begins to wonder whether she has actually gained high
marks because of her social skills, because she has tricked people,
because there's been a mistake. And so the imposter syndrome
emerges from a constantly wanting to prove that she is intelligent,
that she is worthy, that she is successful, but then
having that self doubt that comes from that inner voice
(27:29):
her parents have instilled in her that she isn't smart enough,
that she doesn't deserve this. I really love this study
because it was honestly one of the first ever academic
pieces of research that focused on successful women and their
psychology and their upbringing. And it was conducted again by
two really amazing female doctors and female psychologists who went
(27:52):
on to create that term through this research, that term
imposta syndrome that is now like a huge part of
our collectives, psychobabble, and our language. But when you really
look into it further and you actually read their analysis
and their suggestions, there are so many more fascinating conclusions
than most of us are aware of. And I think
we like to throw around the term imposter syndrome, but
(28:15):
there is a lot of depth behind that, a lot
of fascinating history and of course psychology that this study
really goes into, so honestly, it is worth reading. The
first time I came across it, it genuinely changed so
much about how how I kind of saw myself, how
I saw my friends, my family, my childhood, my present
day insecurities and self doubts. Again it will be in
(28:38):
the description. So this brings us to our fifth and
final study of the day, and I want to end
on something kind of positive and beautiful and joyful. So
we're going to talk about a study that really articulates
some of the beauty and nice parts about being human
and kind of the fact that we are really connected
to nature and all living things around us. So the
(29:01):
whole subdiscipline of ecopsychology is really focused on that. And
if you've listened to this episode that we did previously
on the healing power of Nature, you'll know I kind
of have a real soft spot for any research, any concepts,
any theories that emphasizes our relationship and the importance of
being outdoors and rewilding our minds and our bodies. I
(29:23):
also grew up really close to the ocean. It was
such like a significant part of my childhood, like going
down to burly heads and crumb and waters in the
Gold Coast, and the sea is like one of those
places that I feel very comfortable in and at peace,
and I think it's you know, tangent here. But it's
a really huge blessing to have grown up like in
a country that has such a huge beach culture and
(29:45):
like access to this natural asset. And the thing that
I've always found is that being by the ocean is
one of the easiest ways to reduce my stress levels,
to reset, to bring about perspective in my life. My
dad used to always say that, like the ocean is
nature's natural healer and eases or wounds physical and mental.
(30:09):
And this study I'm about to tell you about actually
seems to provide some science and some evidence for that.
So this study was conducted in Japan and is titled
the Effects of Coastal Environment on Well Being. So they
wanted to know whether living by the ocean was better
for your health and better especially for your emotional and
psychological health. And they did this by comparing five hundred
(30:34):
and eighteen residents from the Heogo Prefecture, which is where
Kobe is the origin of Kobe beef, and they compared
people in this area who lived by the sea and
people who lived inland and in the major cities, and
what they found was this, people by the seaside seemed
a whole lot happier. They reported higher positive psychological effects
(30:56):
of the ocean. This was particularly the case for women
and elderly residents, but actually in general there was not
a single person who wasn't happier living by the sea,
and they wanted to know why this was well. I
think the argument they made is that the coast is
a therapeutic landscape. It brought upon really important and strong
(31:21):
feelings of restoration of awe and a peace of mind,
which it seemed harder for people who lived in big
cities to achieve. And that all kind of contributed to
a greater sense of mental well being. Access to the ocean,
to the sea, to the coast. It also seemed to
play part in this sense of like magnitude and the
(31:46):
sense that we are small, but because of that, what
we're doing doesn't really matter, if that makes sense, So
it feels quite existential, but actually it was quite liberating.
There was also to follow that up and other paper
that looked into this original study, and it found that
(32:06):
there is a more neurological impact of the ocean in
our psychology. Staring at the sea, staring at the waves
literally changes our brain wave frequency. It kind of puts
us in a mild meditative state that has a relaxing
effect on all of our senses. When we allow ourselves
to kind of watch the ebb and flow of the swell,
(32:28):
that has a genuine impact on our brain wave frequency,
on our brain activity. This may be a recent study,
but it's not a recent concept. There is a Greek
idea known as the Lasser therapy, which stems from the
Greek word the lassa meaning sea and therapy. Basically, the
(32:50):
ancient Greek believed that the ocean had genuine healing properties.
And I kind of have to agree it encompassed like
this whole range of treatments, Like the Lasser therapy was
like a genuine kind of like treatment plan you could
get from your ancient Greek doctor, and it included things
like seawater baths, marine mud raps, seaweed raps, inhalation of
(33:15):
sea miss and these treatments were believed to have various benefits,
not just physical. They thought they helped with circulation, with
relieving muscle tension, with kind of detoxifying the body. But
on a psychological and mental level, it also helped promote relaxation,
and it brought about a level of mental clarity and
(33:36):
peace for these individuals that is so valuable even to
this day for our emotional state. I got to say,
I love this study so much because it really highlights
how important nature is for our health, which is something
that I think we tend to neglect as cities become
more concrete, more industrialized, our life becomes busier, and we
(33:58):
are naturally kind of separated from the natural environments that
we evolved in. I think it's also a good reminder
that if you're feeling a bit restless, a bit unsettled,
a bit unsure about your future, about your current state
of affairs, if you're kind of looking for meaning, you're
looking for peace, the ocean is a really good place
to go. It is such a restorative environment. I always
(34:22):
say you never regret a swim in the ocean, and
I think that's true. I think it's true because when
you are like very much immersed in this natural environment,
you feel very small, but that allows you to feel
very free and it allows you to really slow down
from a lot of the industrial you know, hustle, culture,
(34:43):
rise and grind, mentality, and like focus in on the
fact that you are human, the fact that everything's going
to be okay, the fact that you know you have
this place for rest and this place for peace where
nature doesn't care about you, and isn't that kind of
like a beauty full, beautiful thing. So that was the
(35:03):
final study that I had for you today. I really
hope that you enjoyed this. This was actually so fun
for me. I think it's so rare that I get
to really break into like specific articles and studies and
spend like some serious time on them, let alone getting
to do that for five of my favorites. So I
really hope that you learned something. I hope that you
(35:25):
picked up maybe a new word, a new piece of
psychology trivia, a new thing to bring up at work,
bring up to your friends, bring up to your family.
And as always, if you did enjoy this episode, please
feel free to share it with a friend or give
us five stars on Apple or Spotify or wherever you're listening.
It really does help the show grow, and if you
(35:47):
enjoy this content, it would be great if it reached
new audiences and new people, so make sure you're following along,
make sure you're subscribed. If you have something to contribute
based on this disc if you have a favorite psychology
study that you want me to talk about, if you
have anything to say about the ones I've already spoken about,
(36:08):
please feel free to reach out to me on Instagram
at that Psychology Podcast, also with episode suggestions. I love
hearing from you guys. I love getting your feedback, so
make sure you're following us there as well, and as always,
be kind, be gentle to yourselves, and we'll talk very
soon
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