How Do Halloween Masks Affect Our Behavior?

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Welcome to Why We Do what We Do. I am
your anonymous host Abraham, and I'm your Do you remember
that Goosebumps book called The Haunted Mask host Chain. We
are a psychology podcast. We talk about the things that
humans and non human animals do, and for the entire
month of October we look toward the spookyer topics that

(00:45):
might be related to psychology, and we try and apply
a psychological examination of those topics to the extent possible,
although sometimes it ends up looking like us just like
taking a fun thing and talking about it, even though
it's not as directly related to psychology. But it's our podcast.
We can do whatever we want, so yeah, but I

(01:05):
think we usually get it in there. I think we
usually land somewhere around Psychology is like an aspect of this.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Yeah, we're usually pretty good about it.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
This one's more directly related, because we'll be talking about
Halloween masks and specifically how they affect and change our
behavior and what we might think about and do about
that sort of thing. But before we get into that topic,
I would like to welcome you. Thank you for being here,
and if you are joining us for the first time,
then I hope that you enjoy what you hear in
this discussion today, and note that it is a little

(01:38):
off of the normal beaten path from where we tend
to find ourselves with more traditional psychological discussions. And I
think relatedly, like in the disability and accessibility space, is
a very common place we find ourselves. Yeah, and if
you're a returning person, then I hope that you continue
to enjoy the stuff that you're hearing. Thank you for
continuing to listen. I think that's great. We appreciate you.

(01:59):
And if you'd like to support us, one way you
can do that is joining us on Patreon. You can
pick up some merch leave us a rating and review,
like subscribe to tell a friends, And I'll talk more
about those things at the end of our discussion. But
I think that that's what I have to say for preamble.
Is there anything that I'm missing before we get into.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
This, No, I think we're good now.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
All right, Well, this episode releases on October twenty seconds,
and so if you're listening to this on the release date,
then good on you for staying up on your podcast feed.
That's pretty cool. And speaking of which, Happy Smart is
Cool day, because that's what day it is, and listen
to the podcast is smart, and so you're cool for
being Well, it can't be smart sometimes it's not. But

(02:39):
listening to our podcast as smart and smart as cool.
So that's the.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Holiday, said like a real nerd. It's also wombat Day today.
Yesterday I learned that wombats have like a significant amount
of cartilage in their butt, so that when they hide
in their burrows, they hide in their burrows with their
butt out, so when productors try to bite their butts,
they can't really bite them. Is the amount of cartilage
it's in it wild?

Speaker 1 (03:03):
That is wild. I don't know what to think about
that besides it being wild.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
Yeah, yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot to unpack there.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
All right, Well, I guess sort of relatedly, it's National
Nut Day. Sure, like almonds and walnuts and things that
are probably actually seeds are given how botanical classifications work,
probably fruits or meats or something. But it's National nut Day.
This is what I'm getting at.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
Yeah, I like, I mean, I love nuts. It's Make
a Dog's Day Day, which I love.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
Yeah, yeah, code give a dog a bone or some
peanut butter. It is National caps lock Day, so congratulations.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
It's I'm only going to speak an uppercase from now on.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
It is a National coloring day in all caps.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
In all caps.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
It is International Stuttering Awareness Day. It's an important one.
Have we talked about stuttering on the show. I don't
know if we have. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
Okay, I feel like, why do we talk about speech disfluencies?
But I know, I don't think we've talk about stuttering.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
Hmmm. It feels like something we would have covered, but
I actually don't think we have off to look.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yeah, anyway, it is leave a review day, so please
do that. Yeah, that's what gets the word out for
a podcast.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
Five stars, greatest podcast ever I did. I just did
it for you. You can you can take that. You're welcome and.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
Think, yeah, there you go, just copy and paste.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
It is Scar Appreciation Day.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
I don't know. I don't really like what he did
to those hyenas. It's it's chemistry week.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
Oh those good? All right? And it is free speech week.
And what a hilarious saying that it's free speech. Yeah,
I know. I was like, the thing is like, that's
one of those things that gets champion is a thing
while it's being taken away. Yeah, I'm like, I am,
I am silencing you to protect free speech, like those
are opposites, sir.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah. Literally, Trump the other day during a press conference,
said we took their free speech away, like talk about
flag burning. So like, you know, yeah, let's just you know,
call speed a speed.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
Yeah. Yeah, free speech for people who say things that
I like and no speech for people who don't say
things I like.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
And that's yeah, free speech for me, but not for
the you know.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah, exactly right anyway, so rip free speech, spooky. Yeah,
We're going to keep making this podcast and making fun
of the jerks that ruin everything and mostly talking about psychology,
but periodically making fun of the jerks that ruin in
everything because they deserve it, because they suck and they
ruin everything.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
Anyway, we are not actually talking about them, not at
least deliberately intentionally right this moment, although we'll probably find
our way there. Yeah, as we're proceeding through this discussion,
because we're talking about Halloween masks, and these are a
this whole idea of halloween masks. This is a rich
area stimulating topic for many psychologists who really see this

(05:57):
as an opportunity to superimpose their brand of beliefs and
their sort of stamp of conjecture about identity onto a
broad cultural activity.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
Yeah, I'm really looking forward to unpacking why I dressed
up like Doctor Evil when I was thirteen years old
and what that means psychologically. You know, sure, sure, why not?
So today we're going to discuss what many psychologists have
said about Halloween masks, what we think they got wrong,
and what they did get right. In that last part's
gonna be a little bit shorter, but we're gonna we're

(06:29):
gonna unpack it a little bit because it is kind
of a fascinating thing. It's fascinating that people are so
fascinated by it.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
I guess yeah that Actually, maybe that's even more of
the angle here, is like why does this tickle you
so much? But there's also like I want to take
the things that they say and break them down into
manageable chunks or into oblivion where and it is appropriate
to do so.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
Yeah, I like it.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
Okay, So we should get into our definitions. We are scientists,
and we like to define things so that we all
understand what it is we are talking about. Masks or
masking refers simply to blocking or hiding something from some
sort of stimulus input. Right, That's pretty much all it is.
It's just it is just blocking or obscuring something in

(07:15):
some way. You can mask a bad smell by overwhelming
it with another smell. You can mask a room, for example,
if you're painting, by using masking tape to block paint
from staining unintended surfaces, Like I don't want to paint
the door frame or the door. I just want to
paint the wall around the door, so you would mask
the door. You can wear a mask to help prevent

(07:36):
the spread of communicable diseases. They do that a lot
in hospitals. You can ask them not to, but they
might refuse that. You can mask your thoughts and emotions
by portraying them in ways other than how they appear
to you. And of course, you can wear a character
mask that obscures your identity in the name of Halloween festivities.

(07:56):
It makes you look like some kind of ghoul or monster,
or more often than not, a minion or some other
like character very familiar to us from other like entertainment traditions.
But that's what masks are.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
Yeah, And just to be clear, abrah Hammer's referencing the
actual minions and not minions like you know, Igor or
Fritz or you know the fun ones.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah, and we he is actually talking to Banana and
talk like gibberish. Yeah, Yeah, that's what I'm talking about,
those lovable, adorable yellow folks.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
Yeah. And just so we're clear too, like we are
talking about possibly doing an episode on masking in the
autistic sense and what that means and some of the
impacts of psychological things. We're not talking about that today.
We may touch on some of the things related to that,
but it's not quite the same in this discussion. So
just to kind of like before folks kind of come
to us and say, that's not what I'm asking is we

(08:49):
are talking about like a different psychological phenomenon here than
what's like kind of the currently emerging research and psychology
around masking for autistic populations. Sure, yeah, all right, So
cultural examples of masks, specifically across cultures, there's so many
that we could talk about. Many cultures use mass for
a variety of festival activities, As we discussed in the past,
the Celtic festival of Sawwen spelled s a m h

(09:13):
ai n, which man I tried to learn. I tried
to learn Gaelic for a little bit, and like, so
many of the letter renunciations are so different, it's very
difficult language to learn for me at least.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
So yeah, heart, if you're a native English speaker to
pick up some of that, I think because of yeah,
a like has overlap but then does something very different.

Speaker 2 (09:34):
Yeah. Yeah, it's why Sean is sea n right. Yeah, So,
as we discussed in the past, the Celtic festival of
Sawin is a celebration of the end of the harvest
and the beginning of winter, and they believe this to
be a time where the veil between the living and
the dead was blurred, so they wore animals heads and
skins to hide from or protect themselves from wandering evil spirits.

(09:54):
And these are sort of like proto Halloween masks, which
is kind of interesting.

Speaker 1 (09:59):
Yeah, So there's other specific examples of mask wearing and
cultures and celebrations around the world. We're going to pick
a few of the most famous ones, so we're not
going to enlist everyone's favorite. So if you don't hear years,
I apologize, but we're doing sort of a thousand foot
view sort of thing. Diadlo s Muertos, which is the
Day of the Dead in Mexico, is a celebration that

(10:21):
blends Spanish influences and indigenous traditions for the people who
were there before they were destroyed by people bringing a
lot of disease over the ocean with them. This is
a celebration of life and remembrance for those who have passed,
and it includes activities such as donninge calacus, which are
or neatly decorated skull masks that you'd probably recognize because

(10:44):
they all have a very similar sort of thematic and
artistic feel to them as they belong to this sort
of tradition. Sort of like a Santa hat is so
representative of Christmas that you can use that on anything
and it will make it look Christmasy. This is sort
of how that artistic rendering of this festival is designed.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
Yeah, a generalization of it you'll probably be familiar with.
It's like a sugar skull is sometimes what it's called. Okay,
It's like brightly painted, very floral, very bold colors, very
bold lines and stuff like that. It's beautiful artwork.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
Yeah, they're very cool.

Speaker 2 (11:20):
Very recognizable when you see it. Kind of like, how
like in the middle of a podcast when an ad
shows up, you know exactly what that looks like. It's
very recognizable. So we're back and we're kind of going
over a couple of the more well known uses of
masks and cultural traditions. Many African tribal traditions, which may

(11:43):
even be older than those Celtic traditions we talked about,
often include masks which may represent animals or deities that
are important ceremonial or traditional practices. So they'll include those
in different types of songs, they'll include it in different
types of rituals that they might engage in. So just
kind of a unique indigenous type of thing there too.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
Yeah, Yeah, And sometimes they're just ceremonials. Sometimes they have
some like religious significance. They might represent or even be
believed to it be imbued with some kind of power.
But that is a tradition. Are there many versions of
the traditions that exist. There are sort of a very
famous Venetian carnival and that there are these Venetian masks

(12:24):
during the carnival in Venice. These are famous examples of
masks that, through anonymity, facilitate freedom and transcending social boundaries.
So it sort of is the great equalizer. It's like
all the people who are an upper class can sort
of go down in the middle, the people in the
lower can come up to the middle, and everyone's the same.
And it's a big socialist celebration where people wear masks

(12:47):
and don't know who each other are, and they are
very iconic and are easily recognizable.

Speaker 2 (12:54):
Yeah, for those of you who are Magul listeners, you
probably heard that idea of socialist practices and then immediately
turned off the But you know, I don't. I can't
imagine that there's very many of them.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
Yeah, they know it's no learning podcasts.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
Yeah, this is THEATA. Yeah, I think that's you know,
just a couple of cool examples of that. But there
are also practical reasons that they use masks, like folks
use masks, not just because it's decorative or because it's
fun or it's spiritual. So we want to go over
a couple of those as well. So the Japanese no
theater and oh or no theater uses no mass to
depict characters and represent emotions. This allows the actors to

(13:29):
fully embody their character and let go of their own identities.
Presumably that's going to be a talking point that comes
up quite often as we get through the rest of
them content.

Speaker 1 (13:39):
Here, yes, and then of course there's like other situations.
There are many countries. The United States is certainly one
where we have mascots. There might often in the United
States that are for sports teams, but in other traditions
in particular or some Asian countries use them to represent
like social ideas or policies or values. But these are

(14:00):
a large elaborate costumes and masks that have the identity
of the wearer be entirely obscured and unavailable most of
the time. It is not known as really just the
character that matters right in those settings and that actually
allows them to then be represented by any person as
long as the character is sort of animated and continues

(14:20):
to be brought to life by someone.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Theeves and burglars often wear a mask
while commenting crimes. Superheroes will often wear masks while superheroing,
and ice agents will wear masks while attacking and abusing people,
including elderly women and children, because they themselves are wearing
them for cowardice reasons.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
Yeah yeah, because they're pathetic because they're bullies.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
They're pathetic bullies and they're cowards. Yeah, we are now
at Abolish Ice podcast, not that we haven't been before,
but now we're explicitly saying that.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
Yeah, and actually I think, you know, they made a
really good point that I think wearing the masks actually
harms them as much as, like more than just revealing
their identities. Because they are scarier. I think people are
less willing to recognize their humanity, what little of it
there may be. But yeah, it does allow them to
hide behind their pretend power that they've been granted.

Speaker 2 (15:14):
So yeah, all right.

Speaker 1 (15:16):
There is also emotional masking social masking, which is particularly
prevalent among the sort of nerdivergent crowd, although not limited
only to that population. We are gonna, as we said,
probably tackle this in a more thorough discussion upcoming episode.
But this is behaving in a way that is accommodting
to social expectations and hiding their quote unquote true identities, thoughts,

(15:39):
and feelings. We'll come back to more of a discussion
about that a little bit later, but just to touch on, like,
as we're sort of enumerating the idea of masks, as
they exist, that one was worth at least mentioning and
touching on.

Speaker 2 (15:52):
Yeah. Absolutely. Now, as we're getting into the Halloween season,
we feel compelled to address questions about what it means
to wear a mask on Halloween and to what extent
masking for Halloween results and behavior change, and how we
might understand that. So first, let's unpact some of the
hypotheses proposed for understanding why people wear masks around Halloween
and what it does to their behavior, if it changes

(16:12):
their behavior at all.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
Yeah. Yeah, I think there's a built in assumption here
that it does change behavior, and we'll get into that.

Speaker 2 (16:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
Yeah, so it's worth like trying to unpack, like what
is that thing and how much does it actually happen? Yeah,
so getting into why people wear masks and sort of
what's the psychological significance of that. There's one hypothesis, and
I think even calling a hypothesis is a little generous,
but it's a hypothesis, is that wearing masks that depict characters, animals,

(16:43):
or public figures, it is a representation of an emotional
connection we have to some features of those beans whose
mask we're wearing. So for example, we might wear a
pirate costume because we envy the freedom of the life
of the one operating outside of society in the law,
those scaly wag pirates that aren't beholden to normal laws

(17:07):
and social niceties. Sure, and we're sort of like, oh,
I wish I could be like that. Or if you
connect with the idea of being a fun, loving, joyful
collectivist slave, you might dress as a minion from the
Suspicable Me cartoons. Or if you relate to being an
incompetent belinger and bigot who represents a failure of humanity
and evolution, you can wear a wispy white blonde wig

(17:30):
with a red hat, a suit and tie, and orange
skin and that will appropriately embody those values, I guess
is the way. Maybe are just traits. Let's just call
them traits.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
Yeah yeah, yeah, So this idea is dumb and it's
actually wrong more often than it is correct. So there
might be some people who specifically seek out characters because
they because of what they represent, like wearing a guy
Fox mask is a socially recognized symbol of rebellion, but
they can almost always articulate this, and most of the
time people choose a mask costume because of how well

(18:01):
they think it is to like it will be it'll
work to evoke a favorable social response.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
Which, like to them might be one where it like
gets people going like what are you wearing? And like
it gets sort of a little bit of confusion or
maybe a little bit of outrage, and like that's what
they were going for. But I think most people it's
like I look good in this, and so people compliment
how I look or I think that I at least
look good, or it's like it starts a conversation, and

(18:27):
it's like it's not like I might be even making
fun of something I don't like, so I'm dressing in
a particular way to sort of mock it. But that
like people get that, and so they'll engage with me
about that sort of thing. Yeah, So like that's a
really common way that's going on. So this whole idea
that like we commonly wear masks it embodies some like
desire we have to me is just like so shallow

(18:50):
and like dumb and like useless of an idea. Yeah,
it's barely worth entertaining, but it is like a one
that people have pitched.

Speaker 2 (18:57):
Yeah, I particularly enjoy dressing up to get a reaction
out of people like sure. And I also like the
creative part of coming up with the costume, because I
don't know if we've ever taught this on the show.
I talked about this on the show. But I never
dress up. I pretend to dress up and I come
up with some costume where I can just wear the
clothes that I'm wearing and that's my costume. But it's like,

(19:19):
so as an example, like one year I was a
nervous scientist. One year I was Frankie Krueger. I was
Freddy Krueger's nicer older brother that would just like apologize
for his behavior. I'm so sorry, he's the black sheep,
like he just we don't we never really talked to
him after he started kind of getting a little bit weird,
you know, like I do that. My favorite is still
the were wolf who just got back from being a
were wolf. So I was just a human and I

(19:41):
was like, man, I'm tired.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
That's pretty that's pretty good. I, on the other hand,
like to go very elaborate, large, complex costumes that take
time to orchestrate. Yeah, because that's sort of that's my
way of exercising my creativity is like I want to
like and I really personally like going out side of
like pop culture icons. I've been trying to come up

(20:04):
with just like random things. Like one year I was
an avocado. I was a sliced to avocado and the
pit was my belly and it was a very fun costume.
And actually it was really convenient because I could tuck
inside the costume like a turtle and then like people
thought that it was just like a prop that was
laying against the wall. It's just an avocado, so that
that was fantastic. Yeah. Yeah, but I've you know, I've
dressed up as like one time I went as I

(20:26):
guess I probably looked like a terminator. That wasn't what
I was going for. I was trying to look like
a machine that had human skin, and so there are
parts where my skin was peeling away and there was
a machine underneath that gave it a very terminator look.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
I like that.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
Yeah. One year I went is a stained glass window,
so my faces painted looked like a stained glass window.
So like, I really like going as like non traditional
things personally. Yeah, yeah, that's fun anyway, So that's the
whole idea that like one reason we wear costumes is
to let our and her desires out, or something done
like that it's wrong and it doesn't matter. Others suggest

(20:57):
instead that masks at Halloween are four of escapism. We
wear masks to indulge in another reality where we can
shirk our responsibilities, problems and suffering, and we can sort
of shake them, shake them off, we can get rid
of it, we can at least temporarily abandon that what's
going on in sort of escape. I do think that's
true for some people. I think it's going to be
relatively rare among most costume wears unless they decide to

(21:21):
make this their motivation after hearing this episode. But I
think that for the most part, a lot of us
like there is like an element of novelty to it.
But I think the like disappearing into a fantastical role
is actually fairly uncommon for people who put on a costume.
I don't really think that's a motivation or experience that
they have a lot of the time.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah, I mean, unless it's unless we're talking about somebody
who does this often and throughout the year, like it's usually.
I can't imagine like just one time a year they're
just like I'm gonna do this because like they're like
I would imagine it's maybe something that they might engage
in pretty regularly. So I think that that's maybe an
important aspect of this too.

Speaker 1 (21:58):
Yeah. Yeah, I think if escape is a powerful enough
motivator that they're willing to alter their appearance substantially so
that they can't be identified, my guess is they do
it a lot. Like I think once a year is
an insufficient outlet for that kind of like impulse. Yeah,
if that's what you're looking for, So probably they're quite
frequently obscuring themselves. But yeah, I don't think this is

(22:20):
very common for people who are just trying to dress
up for the holiday.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah, no, I don't think so either. Okay, so normally
this is the spot where we have another ad break,
but our ads have run out and what's moved in
as a Spirit Halloween. So here's like a Spirit Halloween
ad break of sorts.

Speaker 1 (22:35):
Oh I hope. So, speaking of escapism, you've escaped the
ad break and we're back. We're continuing our discussion around
hypotheses and ideas of why people wear masks and that
what effect that might have in some cases.

Speaker 2 (22:57):
Yeah, So Another ipothsist that's about masks suggest that masks
create a novel social environment in which we receive unique
reactions from people around us. It levels the social playing
field so that we may not necessarily be recognized as
belonging to any particular station or class in life, and
in doing so, people react to us differently than we
do when we're unmasked, partially through a lack of social

(23:18):
history and possibly through a shared interest in masks in
halloween costumes. Possibly also because masks can be a conversation
catalyst that sparks discussions between two people that may have
otherwise struggled to find something to talk about with one another.
So it's kind of like a great social equalizer in
some situations.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
Yep, I want to come back to that one a
little bit. Kind of yeah, but yeah, all right. Another
hypothesis hypothesis, I can say that word.

Speaker 2 (23:43):
That's a word you say so you often I do.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
Yeah, It's like I feel like it was weird for
me to struggle with it all of a sudden. It's
not usually a problem anyway. It suggests that masks allow
us to behave in a way that is inconsistent with
our usual patterns. Of behavior. The process of stripping ourselves
of our identity in our sense of responsibility and being
able to camouflage slash blend in. This is called d individualization.

(24:08):
There's a whole word for it, and that's this idea
here that like is it allows us to completely step
away because we are no longer identifiable as ourselves, and
the anonymity of the mask allows us to sort of play,
if you will, with different personalities, behavioral traits, and social
engagements without being beholden to the long term consequences of

(24:30):
violating usual expectations for our behavior at least, so like
behaving in a way that is out of character for
how most people are used to you behaving. If you
do that while wearing a mask, then it's like not
something they'll necessarily question to be like, well, you're kind
of playing a character. You're sort of hamming it up
for the role, and there's there's allows you to be

(24:53):
flexible in how you behave in those situations, which, as
I said, there's a sort of d individualization idea that's
thrown in here as a word that's supposed to mean something.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
Yeah, that makes sense. Now, this idea was explored in
a couple of Landmark and Offen sited studies in nineteen
seventy six and nineteen seventy nine. The first study by
Deani Frasier, Beaman and Kellem, published in the Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, observed over thirteen hundred trick or
treating children. They set up one of those take one
candy bowl situations and sent children to the bowl.

Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yes, it's like one candy per visit was the idea. Yeah, yeah,
but yeah, there were a couple of conditions that they
had going on. They had so they sent children over
to this they were like observing them in a way
that they didn't know they were being observed. And they
sent children who were wearing a mask and they were
not asking any personally identified information. There were children who
were wearing a mask but had been asked personally identified

(25:47):
information like their name and where they lived. And then
they had both of those conditions but with groups. So
they had masked and unmasked groups and groups that had
questions asked of them and not and then they all
so added a bonus follow up condition that they had
a mirror present over the bowl, so that they had
to look at themselves while they stole candy.

Speaker 2 (26:07):
Okay, interesting, Yeah, so the report of the children were
more likely to quote unquote steal an extra candy from
the candy dish if they were in a group, and
if they were wearing masks. They were more likely to
steal candy if they remained anonymous, like had not had
any personal information questions answered, if they were wearing a mask,
and if they were in a group. And they concluded

(26:27):
that deindividualization was to blame.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
Yeah, that was their whole idea, is like, because they
think that we don't know who they are, and they
can hide behind their mask and they have a group
of people who are more or less showing them that's okay.
That lack of individualization means that they're then more likely
to steal is how they sort of wrapped that up
and tried to sell it. Okay.

Speaker 2 (26:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:49):
In nineteen seventy nine they conducted a follow up study
with one of the original authors, Beaman, But now the
study is also featuring Clenson's vonum not that I don't
know if I pronounce those correct, but those are the
other authors on it. And they conducted two studies to
evaluate the effect of what they called self awareness in
the likelihood that children would steal Halloween candy. And this

(27:11):
is related to the idea of putting up the mirror. Zich,
how self aware are you and does that affect the
extent to which you're willing to take more candy than
you have been allotted.

Speaker 2 (27:21):
Yeah. So this study uses similar trigger trading paradigm as
the nineteen seventy six study, and in this iteration, the
authors placed a mirror behind the candy bowl to see
if quote self awareness influenced the decision to steal candies.
In the first experiment, three hundred and sixty three children
who were anonymous were more likely to steal an extra candy.
Children who had revealed personal identifying information were less likely

(27:41):
to steal, and this was mostly among older children, as
there was little or no effect to younger children. So
they replicated this with three hundred and forty nine subjects
in a second experiment in the same paper, and they
argue that self awareness i e. A mirror and a
lack of anonymity were the cause of the decrease in stealing.
So basically, they could see themselves and we knew who

(28:03):
they were.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
Yeah. To me, I read this and like to be fair,
I kind of had just cursory skim though I didn't
get into the nuts and bolts of the whole thing.
But to me, I felt what it sounded like they
landed on was like them having their personal ID, like
it personally identified information known was really common and related
to them not stealing, and like, then if you put

(28:26):
a mirror up, they also don't steal. And I was like,
the mirror feels pretty secondary to me and how this
has arranged, and I feel like you're imbuing it with
a lot of magical properties in terms of what the
mirror is supposed to do. I'm like, often enough I'll
pass by a mirror and I won't even look at
that mirror, And so like, are we clear that there
was any meaningful orientation to the mirror, and even if

(28:48):
there was, does that actually mean anything about how they
feel about anything?

Speaker 2 (28:53):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (28:54):
It's sort of like there's those diets that has people
like eating a mirror so that they experience shame while
they're eating, so that they'll eat less, And I was like,
the mess up my knowledge? Those don't work very well,
So I like, I don't I don't think and it's
not like this has been employed anywhere or really followed
up with. So I kind of feel like this was
a one and done. We didn't really get a robust
outcome sort of thing, right, but that was how they

(29:16):
tried to spend it at least.

Speaker 2 (29:17):
Sure, Okay, Anyway.

Speaker 1 (29:19):
Taken together, these studies popularize the idea that wearing a
mask changes our behavior and perhaps reveals our behavior, our
inner behavior. Is that who we would who we would
be if if we could just be anonymous, That we're unscrupulous, dangerous, selfish,
and possibly do illegal things. And that was sort of
that was an idea that was sort of born out

(29:40):
of this these couple of studies here.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
Yeah, so basically, yeah, you're wearing a mask, and you
are going to do bad things when you wear a
mask because you don't ask because of the consequences, or
are lesser because nobody knows who you are, or a
lock thereof yees. So, but let's let's unpack this a
little bit. Here's the big reveal of all this stuff, right,
So let's elaborate on the unique nature of our social circumstances.

(30:03):
We are a cooperative social species. We essentially depend on
each other from cradle to grave across the board. We
need people, we need interactions. Part of how we interact
with each other is that we have assigned identities to
one another through names that we can use to individualize
ourselves as well as find specific people for praise or
condemnation or some other reason.

Speaker 1 (30:24):
Yeah, so anonymity, the whole idea of anonymity. It only
matters because we can have an identity, and we can
use our identity to like track people and keep like
differentiate them, and because our language enables us to clearly
identify ourselves as individuals among our communities. So like, I

(30:45):
am not my community, but I am me although I
am a part of this community. You must first have
a concept that there's such a thing as me and
such a thing as you, and that those are two
different things. And like that sounds like a given, but
it seems to be fairly unique to humans. Yeah, that
like you can. I think the alternative is there's only

(31:07):
an eye, and I live in this world and there's
a world around me. But it doesn't really matter because
there's eye and that's it. But like I think otherwise
you can have this, Oh, there's also a you, and
you have an eye that's not my eye. That's different
because you are yourself and I am myself, and although
we work together here, we do have we are different people,

(31:28):
and we can distinguish each other from from one one
another right, and that that distinction is meaningful. And I
can then understand that what you see and me and
what I see and you can be compatible comparable things
and understanding how we think about each other. And that's again,
seems like it's an easy, obvious thing, but it seems
like humans are the only ones who do it quite

(31:50):
the way into the extent to which we do it right.

Speaker 2 (31:52):
So imagine if you train your dog to tolerate wearing
a Halloween mask. First, adorable, like just the best. I
have a weader dog and she has a hot dog
costume and it's hell nice.

Speaker 1 (32:04):
That's amazing, it's adorable.

Speaker 2 (32:05):
Now, would we expect your dog to change his behavior
in some radical, nefarious way because it's wearing a mask,
only in that it would likely receive a lot of
high quality attention for being uniquely dressed in the Halloween costume. Otherwise,
it doesn't matter to your dog. It has no concept
that it can hide its identity by obscuring the visual
features of its face. It just is there and it's
enjoying its pop cup.

Speaker 1 (32:27):
Yeah. And I think we've talked about before how like
visuals not really the sensory modality that's most relevant to dogs,
But that's kind of beside the point. The point is
simply that like them, wearing a mask is not going
to change their behavior because they don't. We don't have
any reason to think that they think that you can
recognize that they look different and that they'refull, you'll think

(32:49):
differently about them, and that that means something at all.
And the reason I think that's important to bring up
is to again understand there's something unique about the social
language nature of this, the social and cultural aspect of this.
So starting then with the understanding, we need to have
an idea that we can identify ourselves as unique and

(33:11):
belonging to a group, that our identity can be readily
identified by the group, that they can say that is Abraham,
that's that person over there, I know that person, and
that that means something, and that the group uses identity,
my name, your name, et cetera to bestow recognition and
praise and for detaining condemnation as it relates to our

(33:34):
behaviors and that we understand that if we change, if
we change something important about the salient features of our appearance,
people might treat us differently and may not be able
to later identify us even if we were to commit
some transgression. So I know that was kind of a
sort of long, befuddled way to say that. But the

(33:54):
point I'm trying to make here is that, like, let's
actually acknowledge that what's going on here is that's important
is that we are in a social group where we
use recognition and our names as identifiers to engage in
the sort of social contracts that we have. Yeah, and
that one we can we understand that when we block

(34:16):
those identifiers, that someone might feel like they no longer
are beholden to that social contract. In the same way, Well, it's.

Speaker 2 (34:25):
Kind of like how advertisers will hide their identities so
they can get away with showing another ad.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
All Right, we're back, I will say, at least on TV.
I don't know if I've heard this on podcasts as much,
but fragrances have the weirdest ads. It's they're just so bizarre.

Speaker 2 (34:50):
Yeah, and they always have a strange name. It's always
like tuberculosis by Gucci.

Speaker 1 (34:56):
Oh no, Like it's always you know, it's alway yourself
with the Jesus. It's always something like that.

Speaker 2 (35:03):
It's like something where it's like just like a completely
unrelated name to a scent that like maybe has like
I don't know, pints of oak. And then it's like,
you know, got some random actor or actress like this
random person that is like hawking it. You know, it's like,
you know, Tom Cruise shows up and it's like clear

(35:24):
by scientology, that's really good.

Speaker 1 (35:32):
Oh man, you got me pretty good at that one.

Speaker 2 (35:34):
Okay, So okay, all right, back to masks. So right
now we're talking about the social engagement hypothesis, and that
social engagement hypothesis is is pretty accurate and a significant
chunk of the conversation. That is, when we wear masks
and we wear costumes, people around us treat us differently,
which shapes some of our behaviors in that moment.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
It does. And like we may not be explicitly thinking
about being able to get away with crime when we're
dressed up for Halloween. Some of us probably think about that,
but like not most of us. But I think it's
more useful to think about the fact that we understand
that there are rules which imply that there are some
aversive consequences for violating those rules. But if you dangle

(36:17):
a pretty desirable reward, offer few expectations around that, and
make an excessive amount of that reward available, some may
take the opportunity to gain an additional reward. If there
is a decreased likelihood that any observers will be able
to even identify the individual responsible for the transgression, we
might even kind of expect this a little bit. So

(36:38):
I guess what I'm trying to say here in a
lot more plain terms, is like, if we think we
can get away with doing something that we'd much rather do,
or like get access to something we'd really like to
get access to, and the barrier for doing so is
like honor system, please don't, And like we also have
kind of made it so it's really unlikely someone will

(36:59):
be able to idents later. Then it's like I kind
of expect people to take advantage of that system. Yeah,
you know, they're like, here's a bunch of free stuff,
but plays only take one And you're like, yeah, but
you don't even know who I am and you can't
find me later, So I'm gonna go ahead and take five, right,
and no one's gonna be the wiser, And like, I

(37:20):
very much understand that, you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (37:22):
Yeah, one hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (37:24):
You know.

Speaker 2 (37:24):
Another part of the conversation, too, is that some of
us wouldn't violate any of the rules even if we
thought we or we knew we could get away with it,
which is actually a more interesting phenomenon than people engaging
in less self restraint, Like the idea of like under
certain conditions where anonymity exists, Like, what is it that
is preventing somebody from doing, like, from breaking the rule
that's established when they are completely anonymous? Like what is

(37:47):
that phenomenon looking like? And I think that is arguably
a more fascinating thing that humans do.

Speaker 1 (37:52):
Yeah, yeah, I think it's it's kind of cool to
talk about, like someone who is even when the prevailing
circumstances are you could get this thing for free and
no one would stop you or like come after you later. Yeah,
and you're like, I still won't do it, Like that's
that's like a fascinating thing to dig into, not the
fact that like someone would try and get away it.
I'm like, yeah, of course they would. Why wouldn't they,
Like an animal will do that, Everyone's gonna do that.

(38:13):
That's just like we're all like evolutionarily, it makes sense
to try and get what you can when you can,
So finding back against that is kind of the more
interesting question to answer. Yeah, but anyway, this does bring
us back to the discussion about the true self thing,
which I just think is not a very useful way
of framing this. Here's the thing about this, like this

(38:37):
whole idea of presenting your true self or what your
true self really is. And I hear this, We've talked
about this before, I think, but this idea of like
when you are backed into a corner, that's where you
show who you really are. I'm like, when you're your
most desperate, the most like unfamiliar desperate circumstance you have
never been in, that you have no contact with, that
you're like now just in a moment that's trying to

(38:59):
get out of some extremely terrible situation. That's who you
really are. Why that doesn't make it. That's like the
rarest version of anything you would ever do. Actually, if
you were ever in that situation again, you'd probably behave
differently because you have learned how to navigate that more
effectively given the intensity of it. So like, that's it's
just insane anyway, this whole idea of true self. The

(39:19):
thing I have about this is like, let's say you're
changing who you are to present a true self, if
you're making a deliberate choice, like I know I'm doing this,
I'm changing this self to present yourself in a particular way.
The idea that is obscuring your true self. I'm like,
I would argue that that choice, that decision to present
yourself in the way that does reflect who you are. Yeah,

(39:42):
it's the fact that how you like to be received
by your audience, rather than being someone who's like completely unfiltered.
They're like, I just say whatever pops in my mind.
I'm like, your behaviors make up your personality, and if
self restraint is a behavior, so that therefore engaging in
self for straint shows who you are, Like your knee

(40:03):
jerk reaction to something is not a good representation of
who you are. Particularly if you stop for a minute
and you're like, hold on, I've had a second to
think about this, I actually change my opinion or my
thought or my reaction because they're right, like that that
I would do the same thing in their shoes, Like
I totally get it. Or alternatively, like that doesn't seem

(40:24):
like a big deal. Oh wait, actually not, I think
about that. That is a really big deal. I need
to be more like upset about this. I've had both
of those situations happen. So like this idea that you
filter and like you're like I want to present in
such a way that this has a positive effect on
my audience and like that's not who I really am.
I'm like, yes, it is. You just made a choice

(40:44):
that you made that choice. You did it, so like
that is who you are and that's okay, Like that's
that's not something that we should say. Is like there's
nothing wrong with that. We are going to be doing
some amount of editing here, and like having a filter,
I think is a good thing. Like we see people
in power that do not have a filter, and we
see how horrendous it is. Yeah, belligerent, xenophobic, homophobic, narcissistic,

(41:10):
like completely full of bullsh presentation of what it looks
like to have no filter. Like that is an unenviable position.
I do not want to be that way myself. No,
So like if you take a second to think about
how you want to react to something. I think that
is being your true self.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
That's good. Do that, Yeah, do that? Yeah? Exactly. So
I think there's maybe something to say here, which is that,
you know, we all change our behavior to work as
effectively as possible in any given context. We might choose
not to swear around young children or our parents, we
self selected do that. We might choose not to talk
about our sex lives with our coworkers, again, completely self selected.
And would you argue that this is masking who we

(41:46):
are in these situations. I don't necessarily think so. I
think it's different than what we talked about earlier, with
like autistic masking and stuff like that. What we're doing
is we're responding to prevailing circumstances. We have audience control
over our verbal behavior in our thoughts, right, and we
just accordingly in a manner that works best for us
and for that situation. And this doesn't necessarily imply that
there are psychological demands related to that. We would also

(42:09):
like to ask how those who claim to be masking
would behave differently in those situations. And so those folks
that are kind of doing that, that are kind of
like just kind of haphazard talking about it versus like
people who might experience that they can't We're kind of
talking about this before the show started. It is like
there's a difference between like me walking into a space
and self selecting topics to engage in social situations. Right, Like,

(42:31):
if I'm talking about music, I'm going to select self
select how much music I'm going to talk about because
like for me, music is my special interest. Yeah, so
like in music and books, I'll talk about them all day,
but I'll self select, And like there's no psychological distress
as a result of that for me because I'm not
hiding anything other than like a topic or something like that.
But for folks that have a diagnosis that they're hiding,
like key features of a diagnosis, or people that belong

(42:52):
to particular demographics and they're hiding key features of that,
or acting a certain way that is not within their
normal behavior range or they're identified behavior range, like those
are those have different psychological effects versus like me going like, Okay,
I'm not going to talk about cursed or isis at
work because everybody's gonna think that I am angry because
I listen to a loud music, right. That's there's a

(43:13):
difference between that and going like I have to act
a certain way socially because even though like like for example,
like somebody who's autistic and masking might say, like, I'm
not going to stem in this space because if I stem,
then they're gonna think I'm weird. So I'm going to
suppress a behavior that is important for me in this space.
And that's and that's a different type of masking that
we're kind of like unpacking here a little bit.

Speaker 1 (43:35):
And as I said, we'll probably get to get that
at some conversation at some point. I do think that
I would I would still make the case that that
is as true a representation of who they are as
them engaging in stimming. But again that that's that's me
having beef with the word true, right, and like how
that's being used here. But yeah, no, I think the
the whole idea of like if you were to say, like, well,

(43:56):
that's not really how I feel, like, I'm sort of
that's not how I really feel about this. I'm just
speaking and through a filter, I'm like, what would you
have actually done differently here? Though, Like I'm really curious,
like you're like, no, actually, I really want to just
insult the crap out of this person to their face.
I'm like really really, like that's what, Like, hold on,
you would actually do that? I kind of want to

(44:16):
see now, Like I want to see if you actually
would go through with that, cause like I don't think
you would. I'm like, we have these moments where, like
the things we say about other drivers when we're in
our car, if we were face to face with that person,
most of the time, we wouldn't say those things, like
to be like I think, rather than having like a
litany of criticisms, I'd be like what the fuck man,
and you know, like start there where it's like I'm

(44:38):
not really making any specific accusations, and like I think
we can both acknowledge the situation is bad and now
we talk about it. And so anyway, I'm like I
kind of think that the people who claim this like, oh,
it's just it's just a filter. I'm just like, yeah,
but like, what would you actually have done? I feel
like you're actually doing the thing. You're just doing the
thing like that you were going to do. So I
take umbrage with the with that idea that they're that

(45:00):
they're really doing anything significantly out of character for them,
but that it does come back to again sort of
the true and then just being cognizant of our social situation.
And you know, I think there are some people who
maybe probably struggle to understand is this an appropriate time
for me to bring up this particular topic, And like
I think that is a skill, Like you learned that

(45:21):
you're like, oh, maybe I probably shouldn't make this joke
right now to this audience. Like I know that I
like to get a laugh and that makes me feel
good and I like to feel like I'm funny, but
like I know that, like also this group, that's probably
not the best thing time to bring this up, So
I shouldn't even mention that we have to play an ad. Okay,

(45:45):
we are back. I actually think that we more or
less addressed what we wanted to say about Halloween masks.
Is there anything that you like to add before we
get to our next part.

Speaker 2 (45:53):
I think I would say, uh, you know, it's not
that deep, like it's people like people like it's mass deep,
like it's it's very service level as far as like
wearing Halloween massly people enjoy it. It's part of certain traditions,
like it's really not anything to do with your in
your ego, your super ego, like nothing like that, like
it doesn't it just it's just it's just a thing

(46:14):
that people enjoy doing for social reasons more than anything
or spiritual reasons. And that's it.

Speaker 1 (46:20):
Fair, fair, all right, very good. Well, if you are
joining us for the first time, then something we like
to do at the end of our discussions is we
give some recommendations. Sometimes those are related to our topic
and sometimes they're not. But we are in spooky season,
so there's a good chance that they will be at
least some of the time. So we are going to
recommend some things. And that's really fun and I think
that that's uh, that's why we're all here. Actually, yeah,

(46:42):
before we do that, we do have some credits to
get through, So i'd like to let you know that
if you'd like to support our show, one way you
can do that is by leaving a rating and review.
It costs you nothing but a little time. Ratings, you
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we like to try and reach a lot of you

(47:05):
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stars means that we're more likely to show up in
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You can also make sure that you subscribe that you
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can share this with a friends, Like if you know
someone who's like got weird ideas about Halloween masks, you're like,

(47:27):
listen to these two experts. They have some really smart
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And if you'd really like to take the extra leap,
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and at the end of each discussion, we will take

(47:48):
a moment to really thank them for their generosity and
helping us continue to be a podcast so special. Thanks
to Mike m Megan, Mike t, Justin, Kim Brad, Stephanie, Brian, Ashley, Kiara,
and Charlie. Thank you all so much for just being
a really wonderful group of people that we we really
appreciate your help.

Speaker 2 (48:05):
Just the most beautiful and spookiest group of people we
could ask for.

Speaker 1 (48:09):
Spooking a good way. Spooking a good way. Yeah, yeah,
of course I need my team of people to help
me do this show, so writing and fact checking from
Shane and myself. Thank you for recording with me today.

Speaker 2 (48:17):
Shane, thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (48:20):
Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson, and our audio
producer Extraordinaiy the person who is ultimately the genius behind
all of this, mostly because he makes it sound so
good and he's so good to what he does, and
that's justin thank you.

Speaker 2 (48:34):
And he's so handsome. He's so handsome, my god, traditionally handsome.
Good lord.

Speaker 1 (48:38):
You see that face and you're just like that guy's
an actor, right, like he's a model. Probably that's yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:43):
Yeah, give him everything he ever wanted.

Speaker 1 (48:45):
Yeah, just if he asked for something, you just like
here his hundred dollars.

Speaker 2 (48:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:52):
Anyway, then, thank you all for listening. If you have
thoughts around Halloween masks, we would love to hear those thoughts.
You can email us directly by emailing us at info
at WWDWWD podcast dot com. I think I said you
can email us by emailing us. Maybe that goes with
our ka you can it's a fact. I mean you
can reach us by emailing us, is what I was thinking.
But I think I said you can email us by

(49:12):
emailing us, which is still accurate. You can also reach
us on the social media platforms. We're largely in blue sky,
but we're around, so find us there, and we appreciate
and look forward to hearing from all of you. We
do like constructive criticism. We also like keeping amounts of
praise and all of those are good. And if you
have something interesting to add, then we might read it
at the tail end of an episode and that's always
fun as well. Okay, I think I've gotten through those things.

(49:35):
Is there anything left before we get to our recommendations?

Speaker 2 (49:37):
No, I think that covers it all, right.

Speaker 1 (49:39):
Recommendation time. Yeah, recommendations.

Speaker 2 (49:50):
So I'm going to make a recommendation for an event
that aligns with the spooky season for a long time.
I was calling this Mickey's Scary Not So Scared Halloween,
and that's not what it's called. It's called Mickey's Not
So Spooky Halloween Party at Magic Kingdom. This is a
Disney event. And I myself am a Disney dork. I love,

(50:13):
I love, love love. I'm a Disney head. Yeah, and
so I'm a Disney adult, I mean, and that's I
should come out in admitute, right, I'm a Disney deult.
So what this is is it a special event that
takes place. The entire park is closed at a certain time,
and it's just basically a big Halloween party. What they
do is they theme certain rides so that it is spookier.

(50:33):
They have exclusive snacks that you can get during this
time they could only get during the party. And they
have trick or treating spots where you can go along
the park and trick or treat in the entire park.
One part that's really cool about this is they offer
an allergy an allergy specific candy option, so you can
go if like the candies that they have are they
don't meet your allergy needs, like if you are gluten

(50:55):
free or you are dairy free or in my dad lackose, intolerant,
or vegan. You can get a tooken into every one
of these places and then go to the front of
the park and cash it, and then I'll just give
you heaps and heaps of vegan candy and stuff like that,
like vegan gummies, vegan chocolate, stuff like that, gummies. I wish, oh,
my man.

Speaker 1 (51:12):
I did bring something. I'd be quite generous of them.

Speaker 2 (51:14):
Yeah, that would be great. I left this park with
uh because we took my mom for her sixtieth birthday
and they have, like you know, they have special parades
and shows and music and stuff like that. So I
left with a backpack full of candy. Like, and I
say a backpack, I mean like a full backpack full
of candy just from me trick or treating.

Speaker 1 (51:30):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (51:30):
Multiple people in our party left with the same amount
of candy, So it's an absurd amount that you get.
They're very generous with the heaps of candy that they
throw at you. The two cool things that came up
was that one right now, the Tron roller coaster is
specifically marketed for the Neutron movie where nine Nails is
a soundtrack, and so instead of like having a blue
color throughout your you have a red color. You're on

(51:53):
the evil team, and you listen to nine and Nails
on the roller coaster, which is kind of fun sure,
and then Space Mountain is already kind of a scary
ride because it feels like you're going to die on
it because everything is so close. But they decided that
the Halloween theme was that they were going to turn
all of the lights off, not just the effect lights.
So it's literally pitch black roller coaster in Space Mountain,

(52:16):
which is already a scary ride. Wow, And it was
really a lot of fun. So anyway, if you ever
get a chance to go, it's really truly a lot
of fun. And I had a good time. So it's
Mickey's Not So Spooky Halloween.

Speaker 1 (52:27):
That was quite the sales pitch.

Speaker 2 (52:29):
I don't get paid by Disney, by the way.

Speaker 1 (52:33):
Not sponsored by Disney, although we are accepting sponsorships from Disney.

Speaker 2 (52:36):
If you're interested, yeah yeah, if you want to send
us a sipens or ticket like passes or whatever, by
all means.

Speaker 1 (52:43):
Yeah, yeah, although if you try and cancel us, we
will criticize you.

Speaker 2 (52:49):
Yeah yeah, yeah, we'll have words.

Speaker 1 (52:51):
I am sort of similarly recommending a more actual, hello,
Halloween themed thing. It's because we're in October, so that's
kind of the stuff I'm engaged in. Is a TV
show I have recommended before. It is a baking competition show.
It's all about making illusion cakes or baked goods mars,
which is to say, these are cakes that are supposed
to look like something other than cakes. It's on Netflix.

(53:14):
It's a TV show called Is It Cake? And this
is Is It Cake Halloween? And I think this is
maybe not the first time they've done this, so I
think it Is It Cake Halloween twenty twenty five as
the whole deliminating sequence of words there. But yeah, it's
halloween sort of spooky themed show. And they have these
very talented bakers, many of them professional, and they bake

(53:36):
these cakes that look like weird things, like a like
a tombstone for example. They might bake and then they'll
try and have a panel of judges guess which one
of them is the cake out of like yeah, four
or five options. They'll look at it and they'll be like, Okay,
I think that one's cake, and like that's how good
the illusions are. Now. To be fair, they aren't allowed
to go up close to them this they stands a
good twenty feet away or so, but the cakes are

(53:58):
so well done that you can can't tell them from
the real thing. Yeah, which is pretty impressive. And they
do some really cool stuff on that. So and this
was short. I think there's only six episodes for this
little mini that they were doing for the holiday. But
it's a lot of fun. Go check it out. It's
a cool, cool little show.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
Yeah, I recommend that too. That show is a lot
of fun. It's very wholesome and like does it require
you to like use too much of your brainpower? You
can just enjoy it.

Speaker 1 (54:22):
Yeah. Yeah, Like they don't really get into like the
nuts and bolts of baking technique very much, although they
will talk like oh, I'm using modeling chocolate or I'm
using fondant or I'm doing this like thing that creates
this color pattern or something. Yeah, that is like cool,
but like you can also just watch and be like,
look at the neat shapes.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
Yeah you do that.

Speaker 1 (54:41):
They do that, even watching him do it, I don't
know how they did it.

Speaker 2 (54:43):
It's that good.

Speaker 1 (54:44):
It's wid Yeah, all right, cool. Well that's isn't cay
Calloween on Netflix and then Mickey is not so spooky
Halloween party? Did they do this in California? Do you know?

Speaker 2 (54:53):
I'm sure they do, but I know for a fact
they do it at Magic Ingdom in Orlando.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
Okay, so the way we're talking about the Orlando one,
it's possible there's a California one as well, So if
you're interested in that sort of thing. I actually think
I've been to this once and I had a great time, So.

Speaker 2 (55:07):
Yeah, it's good time.

Speaker 1 (55:08):
It would have been quite a number of years ago.
So all right. I think that's what we have to
say about that and Halloween masks, and I think we
said all of the other things, so I think we
can wrap it up. There is there anything I'm missing
or that I forgot you'd like to add before we
say oh goodbyes?

Speaker 2 (55:24):
Nope, not today. I think that covers it all right.

Speaker 1 (55:26):
Happy Halloween, everybody. This is Abraham and this is Shane.
We're out.

Speaker 2 (55:31):
Bye.

Speaker 1 (55:33):
You've been listening to Why we Do what we do.

Speaker 2 (55:35):
You can learn more about this and other episodes by
going to WWD WWD.

Speaker 1 (55:41):
Podcast dot com.

Speaker 2 (55:42):
Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day.

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