March 26, 2013 • 35 mins
Objects of Love: We live in a world of objects to which we assign varying degrees of worth, from old newspapers to treasured action figures, family heirlooms and golden idols. What's it all about? Where does this object attachment come from? Tune in to learn more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb. My name is Julie Tuglas. Julie.
Do you have any magical objects with you today? Any
good luck charms, any personal items of importance? Nope, I
(00:25):
was thinking about this. I'm not really into the sort
of magical thinking lucky items I have to say. Yeah, yeah,
hold up your hands. Do you have any rings on? Oh?
You don't have any rings on? Nothing? Nothing? Huh okay, Yeah,
I mean maybe I have my lucky underwear on. Maybe
I don't you, Um, I mean not underwear? No, well,
(00:47):
I mean nothing. Let's see what do I have on?
I mean right now? I just I have my wedding ring,
and I do. There's so there's a certain amount of
magical thinking involved in that. Um, do I have any
And No, I don't have any amulets on me right now.
But I in the past, I've I've certainly fallen in
the habit of using them. I think I've talked about
this before. I previously had a Ganesha remover of obstacles.
(01:10):
Remover of obstacles. The the Hindu god that is that
has the you know, the elephant appearance. Uh, And I
had featured on The Simpsons in a hilarious episode. Yes, yes,
also also made fun of there. But I would carry
it around because you know, remover of obstacles and you
know all this various ties into ties into creativity and all.
And so I would carry that in my pocket. And
(01:32):
then eventually I lost it, like it crawled out in
the washing machine or something and left me. And and
so I've always felt I felt kind of bad. I'm like,
where did Ganesha go? Did Ganesha abandon me? And then
and then I found Ganesha put him back in and
then and then he disappeared again and hasn't come back.
And and then also in the past, all occasionally like
(01:53):
pick up a rock, Like if I'm at the beach
and I'm having a particularly good day, I'll pick up
that rock and take it with me, and That'll end
up in my pocket for maybe a year or so. Um,
you know, because that kind of comes to symbolize like
a nice memory, and so I can take it out
and I can sort of think back to that time.
So what I'm hearing is that you have various kinds
(02:14):
of movies. Yeah, security blankets. Oh, yes, yeah, I guess
they are to a certain extent security blanket. I mean
they're not you know, apples to apples, but there is
this sort of warm and fuzzy thing that you're trying
to evoke with with an object, right, yeah, I mean
it's uh, I mean it's weird for me because like
when I'm if I'm holding a ganitia, I don't actually
(02:36):
think that I'm using this as a totem to to
get in touch with some sort of a god, you know,
like it's not like a literal interpretation of the amulet,
but there is a certain amount of positive thinking that
that comes with having it. And I've also wondered a
lot of times when I'm passing by my own desk
or coworkers desks, or seeing somebody's desk on TV where
(02:57):
they have action figures, uh, typically like a dude's desk,
you know, we have various action figures, and I wondered
to what extent our modern action figures kind of akin
to the amulets of old, you know, like today we
don't have a pathion of gods to really call upon
for the most part, but instead we have all these
various pop culture icons and cartoon characters that represent various
(03:21):
things at least on like a subconscious level, and we
keep them around to draw strength from them. You haven't
found the Pantheon room. They just Wantheon room. No, do
we have one? Oh my goodness, but to the room
with the black toilet and the black sink. Yeah, yeah,
the superhero bathroom. Okay, well, see I've been missing that.
But if you if you passed by my desk, you
passed by like Jonathan Strickland's desk, you passed by is
(03:41):
these office you'll see little little figures, you know. So
I wondered what I mean. Obviously they're on our death
they're in our workspace, they're in our work environment, informing,
you know, our our relationship with our with our work,
with with what we're trying to do with and and
representing a little bit of who we are. So to
what extent are those was becoming deities? I don't know. Well, okay,
(04:03):
so that's what we're going to try to get to
the bottom of today. We're gonna look at objects, our
relationship to objects, and we're going to try to figure
out how much of this has to do with our
own uh ability to acquire things, and whether or not
this acquisitiveness is natural to us, and then we're gonna
look a little bit at a compulse supporting too. When
(04:24):
it comes to materialism, it is really a distinctive human
trait for the most part, especially when you look at
its more outrageous examples. The one that I was really
partial to was the one I brought up by Steve
Taylor in his article The Madness of Materialism, which just
a great, short, little article, but he he mentions gold,
especially the like European colonists love of gold and in
(04:49):
their flashes with with the native peoples in the Americas. Uh.
There's one example that he brings up where in Indian
chief in Cuba learned that the Spanish sailors were about
to tack as end, so he actually praised to the
spirit of the gold to for for a like they've become.
They're trying to figure out why are these one of
these these people so into gold, this this shiny rock
(05:10):
from the ground. They must have some sort of They
must believe it's a god. They must believe that it
is that has supernatural powers, because otherwise, why would you
go to such ridiculous ends. Why would you wage all
of this bloodshed just to get it right? Because otherwise
it's like, well, you guys are just talking like ferrets
going after something shiny. So surely this piece of gold
has something to it. And he prayed to it right
(05:30):
and it didn't work. Didn't work because, as as he
points out in this article, as Steve Taylor points out,
a certain amount of hoarding of resources makes evolutionary sense.
You know we've talked before and in the wild there
are certain things that are scarce. I mean food itself
is going to be scarce, uh, to varying degrees. And
so to whatever degree we can plan ahead that we
(05:52):
can stockpilot, the better off will be. If that means
bearing nuts in the yard, if that means uh, you know,
finding something that is that is more rare in nature,
like sugar and being able to store that away like
like all that makes sense firewood. I mean, there are
things that are they're part of our survival that that
that makes sense when we're hoarding it. Well, it makes
sense I think to a culture that is settled. But
(06:15):
if you look at back at early man um in
particularly the fact that early Man was a nomadic species. Um,
then you know that hoarding or stockpiling just really wasn't convenient,
That's right. I mean yeah, if you're always on the
mood move if you even if you have kind of
like cyclical uh patterns to your to your movement, and
(06:36):
you know, going from you know, north to south depending
on what the weather is doing, Yeah, you're not gonna
be able to carry all of this with you. You
can maybe stockpile some of it, but you're not going
to carry it all on your back. Yeah. So there's
just a big question mark, like is this really genetic?
Is this something that's natural to humans, this impulse to
buy and possess things, or is it something that really
is um more symptomatic of modern man, particularly from the
(07:00):
nineteenth century on right, when things became much easier to produce,
to produce cheaply, and then to acquire cheaply. Yeah. And
I mean when it comes to stockpiling things that are important,
I mean, when once we get out of this uh,
this transitory nature of culture and we get into into
actually settling in areas and growing food, I mean, being
(07:20):
able to stockpile food. I mean that's part and partial
to a lot of our cultural growth as as a
as a species, our ability to put food away, have
more food than we need, and then specialize our roles
within a community. But what about just buying lots of
plastic things, right and putting them in a storage unit
and then that storaging in it being auctioned off in
(07:41):
a show called storage Wars or something like that. Right, Yeah,
because yeah, then it's it seems like we're definitely getting
into pathological area. We're getting into an area where it
is just it is a sickness. It is some natural
instinct that has been perverted. Because even even though the
you know, the native peoples of the Americas couldn't understand
the luss for gold, if you put gold within the
context of of of wealth and then wealth equals power, power,
(08:03):
wealth equals comfort, wealth equals food, then I can see
the cognitive steps you know, necessary to think I gotta
have all the gold, right because I have to possess
the symbol of it, which is probably a large part
of why we do have this such such a high
degree of acquisitiveness, right, like wanting to get acquire everything. Um.
But you know, the question is is that genetic Well
(08:24):
there was a study by Justine Giddon's, Julie Shermer and
Philip Vernon from the University of Western Ontario, and they
wanted to know how much of it was an environmental
how much of it which genetics. Of course, they turned
to the twins. Uh. They recruited two hundred and forty
pairs of twins, identical and fraternal, and they looked at
the benchmark of individual differences um, personality, values, happiness, and
(08:50):
we know about forty pc of those traits are heritable, right,
So to the surprise of these researchers, they found that
individual differences in materialism were almost entirely attributed to environmental
factors and not a genetic thing going on here. So
that kind of makes sense, right, And that actually makes
sense to me in the context of hoarding, because yes,
(09:12):
hoarding does have some pathological brain disorder elements to it,
but a lot of the triggers for hoarding our environmental. So, um,
you know, if you had a loved one who recently
passed away or something that was life changing, that kind
of sort of flipped the switch and hoarding behavior. And
when I talk about hoarding behavior, I'm talking about an
(09:32):
excessive collection of objects. This is like one of those
things where it's like I must keep every newspaper that
has ever come out. And it's not just keep them,
but like if you were to be separated from those newspapers,
you would suffer, you would feel pain, you would you
would be confused, you would have an inability to really
make clearheaded decisions about the sort of stuff in your life. Yeah,
and you've seen one of these shows. To me, that's
(09:55):
enough supporting shows, because it can be a bit much
to take in, and it can be and there they're
kind of depressing. Uh, but but I think I saw
one once where it was like food items and it
wasn't in a sense that like I need to save
all the sweet potatoes because I love sweet potatoes and
I need need to eat the sweet podata is later,
but it would be like, oh, the sweet potato looked
really good. This is a really cool looking sweet potata,
(10:15):
and like this weird emotional attachment to the sweet potato,
and then it must be kept even though it's rotting
in the refrigerator. Yeah. Well, it turns out that people
who have hoarding behavior or hoarding disorder, they actually have
a part of their brain. Um, this is an interior
singular cortex. This part of their brain is actually not
behaving the same way as quote unquote normal people, because
(10:38):
that is the part of the brain that's actually governing
your decisions in and you restraint. Is that also, um,
some some impulse control, yeah, um, but primarily it's the
decision making. And so if you take people who have
the hoarding disorder and you look at them in m
r I scans when they are considering whether or not
to part from an object that they own, you'll see
(10:58):
that You'll see the fuzzy nature going on there, so
you know that it is, Um, it is a brain disorder.
It is this this part of their brain that is saying,
I just don't know what to do here. And so
it's not just like Okay, I need to have everything
in the world, or there's some sort of gluttonous you know,
void that they're trying to fill. It really is coming
from the decisions that their their brain circuitry is making.
(11:23):
And um, this is I thought this was really interesting
when I found out about it. Um. Hoarding behavior actually
has some connection, or a lot of connection to narcissism.
So you think about narcissism and you think about vanity.
You think about narcissus, you think about the function in
the pool captivated by one's appearance. But it really is
sort of a coping mechanism, and I believe it was
(11:46):
Dr Rebecca Beaten. She explained this to me a couple
of years ago when I interviewed her um about hoarding.
She told me that kids who are feeling abandoned from
their parents, or they don't have a significant relationship with
a parent, or really any sort of guardian in other words,
they they're not getting that emotional connection or even sort
of the touch of the hug or any of that,
(12:08):
they begin to turn inward and they began to become
narcissists because they have to find self comfort from themselves,
and some of that gets attributed to objects. So then
they began to collect objects. Is this part of comfort,
and that's where you see the behavior played out. And
of course this brings to mind the Peanuts character Linus
and his blanket, right, his woobie, his his comfort blanket,
(12:32):
his uh or if you want to get into the
more technicals, his comfort object, his transitional object um, which
is something you see with a lot of a lot
of kids. I mean, it's Uh, let's see, did I
have no Now, my sister definitely had a blanket, uh
called blankie and uh, and it got to the point
where they ended up like cutting off the edge of
Blanky so that she could continue to carry Blanky around
(12:52):
with her. And I think she may still have I
think she still keeps blankly around. Well, you know, my
daughter's four, and the same thing has happened to her blanket.
She calls it Blankie's blankie. Wait, now, the part that
came off she carries around is called Blanky's blankie. So
it's the blank like the shard of blanket. It's all right,
it's like a like it's kind of like a religious artifact.
(13:14):
And she hides it in her bed and she's really
freaky about it, like we can't find it. It's like
blank is blanket. Well, I mean to an uninformed observer,
it could seem a little freaky because it's like, because
it is kind of borderline religious obsession, it may seem like.
In fact, if you go back to the nineteen forties,
attachment to a special object by a shot was regarded
(13:35):
as just pathological behavior and it's just a case of
childhood fetish reflecting something askew in the mother child relationship. Yeah,
I must be doing something wrong because your kid has
this gross the scrap of a blanket that they're carrying around.
And I think it's interesting that they look at it
as a fetish, particularly if you kind of take a
wide angle view of that period anyway, where you see
a lot of this idea as of fetish fetishism coming out. Um.
(13:58):
But yeah, it wasn't until the fifties right when they
started to say, you know what, this is actually a
normal thing, it's a good thing. Yeah. Yeah, people like DW.
Wincott started defining these is normal and necessary and is
a transitional experience, a key step in an infantsi ability
to distinguish this inner subjective world from the outside reality. So,
you know, through the even through the seventies and eighties,
(14:20):
there was still this sort of people are still clinging
to this old notion that it's there's something wrong that
the kid has some you know, some anxiety problems or something,
and that's why they're holding onto it. But but really,
the the the academic understanding of it was was pretty
much in place, Yeah, because they began to understand that
this could really help allay some of the fears, um,
some of the anxieties that children have. Of course they
(14:41):
haven't because remember they have an entirely new view of life,
so they have to categorize every loud sound, every image
and try to make sense of it. Is it a threat?
Is it not a threat? And so this transitional object
really does help because it is sort of like the
stand in for, you know, parental unit or something else.
(15:01):
There's a study by G. Japara, R. H. Passman, and C. Eisenberg,
and they found that during a routine third year pediatric examination,
the security object enhanced rapport with the examining nurse and
then children attached to a blanket who were allowed access
to it were rated as less distressed and they experienced
less physiological stress um and that is evidenced by the
(15:22):
heart rate and this is stallic blood pressure. So this
is in contrast to kids who are undergoing medical evaluation,
evaluation without their movies. Really, yeah, and certainly these woobies, um,
as you said that they can end up becoming like
an important parenting tool. I understand as well. I mean,
if you're if you're you use it wisely, right, I
mean it's i guess it's powerful stuff to play with,
But I was reading about how you know a parent
(15:44):
can can use it to their advantage, and a kid
needs the wovie too to remain comfortable in a position
when the month is away. I think it's really important
to um, like around age one and so on and
so forth, when when they start to feel the separation
anxiety as you say, like leaving the house or even
just sleeping at night, I think having something to grab
onto is really important. One of the interesting things about
(16:07):
studying transitional objects is that is that there's ultimately kind
of a lack of uniformity in the definition of it
and also the cultural significance of it. Like some of
the cultural stats are pretty interesting, like um, the United States,
sixty percent of children have at least a mild degree
of attachment to some sort of soft inanimate object. And
I think, looking back, I did have. I had a
(16:28):
stuffed rhinoceros named Rinchiu had an attachment to um. But
but I don't know. Then you're getting into like stuffed animals.
You're getting into a whole different area because those have personality.
I don't know, does Blankie or does Blankie's Blankie have
a personality. Do you think, well, sometimes Blanky's Blankie gets
some new trouble or does things like takes all the
(16:48):
toilet paper off the toilet roll or something like that.
But um, generally I think that's just general scoundrelness right now. Well, okay,
so anyway, six children in the US have some sort
of mild degree, thirty two percent exhibit strong attachment. But
then if you look at incidences of attachment in the
Netherlands and New Zealand and Sweden, that's that's comparable to
(17:08):
the United States. Korean children have substantially fewer attachments to blankets,
down to eighteen percent, uh that compared to American children,
but in Korean born children living in the United States
to play an intermediate percentage of thirty four percent. Five
percent of rural Italian children have transitional objects compared to
thirty one percent of urban Italians, and it goes as
(17:31):
far as the sixty two percent of foreign children living
in Rome. So I don't know, you just see the stats.
I guess kind of skewing towards urban areas. Yeah, as
we say, that's interesting to see that it can be
you know, within one country you could have such a
so many different variables there and oh but in London,
just sixteen percent of children have a special security object
(17:51):
in there the that's London. So there goes the the
urban argument. See, it's just it's it's hard to find
the exactly what's going on. There's just so many cultural
factor to look at the get well, and you have
to wonder too if if part of that is just
to say, like, that's not as accepted and therefore maybe
in that culture it's not as encouraged, or it's not
maybe as prominent, people don't see it as much. Yeah,
(18:13):
or maybe there's less of a culture of these are
my objects and these are your objects, and it's more
these are our objects. You know, some of us had
to do with memory to write, like they would go
back and say, oh, did I have an object that
I was connected to? And so they're collecting some of
this data from faulty memory where people are saying yes
or no and they couldn't exactly remember. I also want
to point out to that, uh, you know, transitional object
(18:37):
is very different from a pacifier, And of course a
pacifier is something that's used to self soothe and babies,
but I kind of think of it as gum for babies.
You know, it's an activity to to try to help
them with their eventual um eating skills. Uh, they're swallowing skills,
and it kind of helps keep them occupied if they're
hungry and you're trying to prepare a bottle or something
(18:58):
like that. But it is very different in terms of comfort. Yeah,
all right, we're gonna take a quick break and when
we come back, we will get into the world of
magical thinking, lucky charms and something called the I ke
ef fector Okay, so we're back, Yeah, and we're going
(19:20):
to get into the realm of magical thinking. This is
territory that we've we've moved through many times before, but
it it continues to be important because it really does
deal with how we think about the world and versus
how the world really is. I mean we Magical thinking,
of course, is uh the belief that an object, action,
or circumstance not logically related to a course of events
(19:40):
can influence its outcome. So in magical thinking, you get
into all these ideas of of everything from a haunted house,
the idea that oh, something bad happened here, so now
something is bad with the house, you know, like the
idea that that that that an event can affect the
physical object or even near mementos. I mean I've mentioned
(20:02):
my father's watch before, you know, like obviously that's that's
something that has significance to me. And there's a certain
amount of magical thinking involved there. Um, you know, even
if it's at a subconscious level, even if I'm not thinking,
oh this this has the spirit of my dad, and
I think, oh, that's that is that was his watch,
and there is some sense of him about it. So
magical thinking kind of uh, you know, is intertwined in
(20:24):
all our lives, uh, to varying degrees, and you know,
be it conscious or subconscious. One of the more more
conscious ways, of course, is with the idea of a
lucky charm. Yeah, and uh, there's something called apophenia, and
that is seeing patterns where there are none. And that
is a little bit of the suit based two magical thinking, right,
(20:44):
because again, if you let's say you're wearing something and
something great happens, you think, oh, those are those lucky socks,
and let's wear them every time that I have to
do this certain challenge and began to to make this
causal connection. But then there's always that difference between Oh,
I've got a big interview, I'm gonna wear those lucky
socks of mine. There's that, and then there's these are
my lucky socks. I must wear them every day and
(21:06):
they must never be washed, or they must be washed
exactly eight times to contain their their magic, you know.
I mean there's a line between just sort of helpful
magical thinking and UH and and and helpful lucky charm
and belief to uh. And then there's then there's a
whole realm of pathology. But it's a little O C
D in a way, right, so called adventitious reinforcing, and
(21:29):
then is making that connection and then keep you know,
doing whatever that ritual is over and over again so
that you can hopefully, you know, evoke those spirits of
magic to help you in your quest. So has anyone
studied lucky charms? Of course, not the cereal the cereal
that's a whole different kettle of fish. But but yes,
(21:49):
as far as studying the effects that lucky charms lucky
objects have on us. Uh, there's a really cool study
from the University of Cologne in two thousand ten, and uh.
They started off with just golf. They they invited these
these test subjects to come and uh and see how
many of tin putts they can make from the same location.
(22:10):
And when the experiment has handed them a golf ball,
they would they would sometimes just give them the ball
and say, hey, everyone's used this ball so far. You know,
no big deal. Here's a golf ball. Why don't you
hit it and see what I'll go in that hole
over there. And then sometimes they said, hey, this ball,
this must be a lucky ball, this one, this one's
really worked well for people. And then they they analyzed it.
(22:32):
They let everyone play a little golf see what happened,
and the mere suggestion that the ball was lucky significantly
influenced performance, causing participants to make almost two more puts
on average. See this is where like when David Eagleman says, like,
we don't have any free will, I began to really
sort of say, you know, he might be onto something,
because the mere suggestion that it's lucky would actually have
(22:56):
some sort of um bearing on your performance. That's crazy,
you know. So of course they weren't going to stop
just there, because generally, if you have a scientific experiment,
if you have a study going on. And it begins
and ends with people just playing golf one afternoon. You know,
that's probably not enough. You need to push it a
little a little further. Yeah, So what they did is
(23:17):
they had test subjects come in and they had them
them bring lucky artifacts with them, you know, be at
their their old blankie or they're you know, like me,
you know, I forgot about this. I always bring this
uh tri Steratops squeeze toy into the office with me. Yeah,
And I don't think of it as a lucky charterer.
I think of it more as like something to occupy
(23:38):
my hand when I'm feeling kind of without it. I
don't podcast without it. So there's a certain amount of
magical thinking involved, their certain amount of good luck charm
going on with that tristeratops. So anyway, they invited people
to bring in their tri Sterotops toys. They're they're lucky
you know, four leaf clovers, what have you and uh,
(23:58):
and then they started the us. They assigned them to
either a condition where they would be performing a task
in the presence of their charm or in absence of
their charm and uh. And then the participants rated their
perceived level of self efficiency and then completed a memory
task that was essentially a variant of the you know,
the classic card game concentration. So psychologist Lisaan and Thomish,
(24:22):
she found that those people who had their lucky charms,
they were doing a couple of things here to improve
their performance because really it does prove improve yours. That
was they found once again, if they had their lucky
charms on hand, they did better. Yes, they were setting
lawtier goals from for themselves, and then they were exhibiting
increased persistence right they were. They did not give up
(24:45):
as easily because they felt bolstered by these lucky charms. Yeah,
it's it's pretty crazy. I mean, it's the idea that
the so here's the try sarratops squishy in my hand
and bringing in I'm thinking, well, I've got to try
sarratops with me. I'm gonna you know, I'm not just
gonna go for norm. I'm going to shoot for higher
because I've got this, I've got the power up in
my hand, and then I'm gonna stick to it more
(25:05):
because because because my I'm focusing with my attention, I
have the the symbol of my my commitment with me
as well. Well here's where the fun house mirror shutters.
If you are aware of this effect, then supposedly this
no longer works anymore. If you become conscious that you
are attributing magical qualities to an object, then it's supposedly
(25:29):
is not going to be effective, you know. And I
don't really I don't really buy that part of the study. Well,
I think it depends. I think that this depends on
the individual, because for my own part, I find myself
able to drift in and out of believing in things
depending on what my day to day outlook is and
depending on, you know, how I want to view the world,
Like I find myself able to to a certain extent,
(25:52):
you know, engage in the belief that an object might
have some sort of you know, luck, or believe in
some varying levels of spirituality depending on on how I'm
viewing the day. So I can imagine somebody, you know,
logically knowing that something is just a piece of metal,
but then still buying into it enough to get that
effect out of it. Well, I think that's because you
(26:14):
have a creative, fiction twisted mind that's been trained that way.
So you can, I think, dive into magical thinking very easily. Yeah, well,
and then still be hanging out with reality. But I don't.
I'm not unique in that, and that that that so,
so I think the study is fascinating. That I do,
I do kind of disagree on that part. Um about
(26:36):
the idea that just merely by listening to this podcast,
we have deactivated all of your lucky arms out there,
I mean some of you, if you're the right kind
of person, that we just totally zapt all of your
your magic do dads? Sorry about that, Um, All right,
so let's change the subject and close this podcast out
on Ikea, because I kea. What is this but the
the iconic symbol of all objects known to man that
(26:58):
can be acquired by man? Right right? And of course
the thing we always come back to with Ikea anytime
we're talking about Ikea, anytime we're we're thinking about Ikea,
and I'm not talking about in the podcast, but just
in general all of us is the assembly of these items.
They come with the really well does well designed graphically instructions,
(27:19):
and you bring them home and you try to make
sense out of them, and then you take one or two,
three or four goes. That assembling it correctly. Generally, with
some there's a little bit it's like going through a
maze because you end up getting a dead corner and
then you realize, oh, I already used those screws in
the wrong spot. Let's see if they can actually be
removed without destroying the product? Is that little is it?
(27:40):
The l Is that a Elan wrench? Yeah? Okay, that
thing is ridiculous to me because you have you have
all these pieces in front of you, and then you
have this tiny little Alan wrench that's supposed to do
the job. Well, you can get a screw driver with
the Alan. Well, power tools always come out. That's the
joke of it, right, And I feel like the h
the little man that is that is the symbol of
(28:00):
the person that's supposed to be you is overly comical too,
And it's sort of like this commentary on the whole process.
I think he's supposed to be kind of disarming as
well when you reach the frustration point. See I see
his passage as being mocking. He's laughing at you. You're
just sitting in the living room floor, just surrounded by
half as symboled furniture. Yeah, yeah, beating away. Yeah. I mean,
(28:23):
I have, I have. There have been times when I've
been assembling Ikea furniture and I love i Kea furniture,
but there have been times when I've been assembling it
where I've just about lost my mind. Well see, I
think that is what plays into this whole idea of
this I keya effect right right, And this is the
idea ultimately, it's the idea that if we build something ourselves,
even if it's crap, we care more about it. And
(28:45):
you we've all encountered this with people. You know, it's
anybody that knows somebody who engages in a bit of
of art, a bit of creative endeavor would be it,
be it a be it somebody who's really good at it,
or you know, someone who's new to to the practice.
There's a tendency to to love your own work, even
when it's not good. Well, I mean you see this
(29:07):
in fiction writing a lot, right when you're going through
the editing process. Is that what was the term, kill
your children? You don't want to do it, darlings, kill
you darlings. You don't want to to This is your
creation and it doesn't fit in and it doesn't really
even matter to the plotline anymore. But it's very hard
to get rid of those things. Yeah, I mean it's
it's why you need an outsider to come in and
look at your stuff. That's the beauty of the editor. Um.
(29:29):
You know, that's why you know I have awesome ladder
Milk around to edit my work for the website, because
otherwise stuff would remain in there that really needs to
be cut. He needs you need a hard cruel louder
Milk is not cruel to come in and and and
take out all the unimportant organs, just rip them right
out of the body. Yeah, you do need someone putting
(29:49):
in comments next your work saying, hey, what's up with this? Yeah?
But see, this is really interesting about the IKEA effect.
Is that, um, you know in the NPR story about
this called Why You Left, that I keep it a
keya table even if it's crooked. Um, they're saying that
people don't have this editor coming in. And you see
this in company, see people getting really tied to this
idea of what a product is or what it is
(30:11):
that they're making it. Sometimes it's two years in the mak. Yeah,
you're putting just loads of time and energy into it
and you're just you're just you're in the jungle with it.
You're in the jungle, and then someone from the outside
comes in and goes, it's crooked. Yeah, you know, um,
and that you need that, you need you need that
sort of fresh perspective. So that's helpful. I mean, we're
we've kind of transitioned away from objects more into um
(30:32):
philosophy here. But hey, I mean, isn't that what objects
are doing in the first place. They're just metaphors for
us really. Yeah, So that the study was big on
stressing that that building your own stuff boost you're feeling
of pride and confidence signals to others that you are competent,
which I think is as good as well and reminds
me of that recent Portlandia sketch. Did you see this
with the duty build his own furniture? No? I didn't
(30:54):
see that one. He's he's like the all the women
want to date him and marry him and they can
make make him their own because they learn, oh, he
makes his own furniture, you know, because like it's you know,
it's just the perfect thing, right, But then they find
out that he makes really crappy furniture. But he just
doesn't realize it, so so it kind of fits in
(31:15):
with what we're talking about. But the third thing that
they found in the study that was interesting was that, uh,
this is a direct quote from the study, threatening consumers
sense of self increases their propensity to make things themselves.
So the idea to the idea here that that the
author talks about in this this article is that theoretically,
if you were to provide a visitor to Ikea with
(31:38):
a really difficult math problem to you know, to really
bust them down a few chops and make them make
them feel kind of stupid, then let him into Ikea,
they're going to be even more into the idea of
buying something and building it themselves so they can make
good again. So because their ego has been taken down
a couple of notches, and then if they can just
assemble something, they can regain that. Yeah, yeah, idea. I
(32:01):
think so, because it's it's kind of like anything, you know,
whenever you're logged in a in a process that is
just seemingly never ending that you don't really feel like
there's a sense of completion, or you have one of
those days where you work on eighteen different things and
finish none of them. Like, what you really want to
do is is nail something you want to say? I
went home and I made a girl cheese from start
to finish and then I ate it case close close
(32:24):
that loop. Oh that would get you a lot of ladies.
Hey he makes cheese. He makes cheese. Yeah, well not
from start to finish, not making your own bread and cheese.
That that would be impressive as well. But yeah, yeah,
I don't know. This is what writ the author was saying,
is that maybe I could start to game their customers
to their advantage and give them these math problems, or
just put up big placards that say, like, you know
(32:46):
you're awful and lousy, to put some furniture together and
you feel better. I mean some people love it. I
know people that are just in love with the idea
of putting together furniture. Well, Ikea Hacker is a great
website to see what people do to to sort of
change the the or to make it more unique, or
you know, try to game the furniture too. Haven't have
(33:09):
another purpose. I've been saying for a while that Ikea
needs to do like a game show where and the
teams of of Ikea hackers have to like compete against
each other, and maybe they're having to do a symbol
furniture in weird places like you know, in a hot
air balloon or on the subway. But my boy, I
think you got something there. Yeah it did that sound
like nineteen Yeah a little bit, A little bit right,
(33:30):
So there you go. Objects um, a little insight into
why we've surround ourselveselves with so much stuff while it's
so important. And I was really I was really interested
in you know, we're talking about that that space, that
that that your mind occupies, that that moment when you're
holding something in your hand and trying to decide whether
you can part with it and throw it away or
(33:52):
if it has value that it needs to be held
and and and maintained like that, That to me is
a very interesting frame of mind um to occupy. And
we've all been there, and uh and and and we
all kind of skew different ways. I think when when
faced with that situation, some of us will just throw
stuff away at the drop of the hat. My my
(34:12):
wife is one and and she's been a good influence
on me and making me more susceptible to getting rid
of things instead of keeping them around needlessly, so you
just have boxes of notes and stuff. Yeah, you know, Um,
if I'm in a store, which I don't really shop
that much, but if I'm in the store and I
see something I fancy, I actually will carry it around
for about fifteen minutes to see whether or not I
actually wanted in. Nine out of ten times I put
(34:34):
it back. That's a that's a good way of doing it.
I found myself doing that sometimes when there's like a weight,
you know, you're having to wait in line to to
check out, and you have the objects in your hand
and you really start to think about what you're doing
and decide, I don't know that I really need that,
And of course there realizes the danger of of online
shopping immediate. So, hey, what we would love to hear
(34:55):
from everybody about this, about your thoughts on your relationships
with objects, because we we all have the um and
I'd love to hear some stories. I love to hear
some some new insight on blank's that you were fond
of as a child, other stranger things that you attached
to as a as a child, things that you're still
attached to in as adult, The various deities that may
(35:16):
occupy your work desk, be they actual Hindu gods or
action figures. I have both online, so I no no judgment. Uh,
let us know what you think. We'd love to hear
from you at our Facebook account at our Tumbler account.
On both of those we are stuff to blow your mind.
We also have a Twitter account where our handle is
blow the Mind and you can always drop us a
(35:37):
line at blow the Mind at Discovery dot com For
more on this and thousands of other topics, Is it
how Stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb. My name is Julie Tuglas. Julie.
Do you have any magical objects with you today? Any
good luck charms, any personal items of importance? Nope, I
(00:25):
was thinking about this. I'm not really into the sort
of magical thinking lucky items I have to say. Yeah, yeah,
hold up your hands. Do you have any rings on? Oh?
You don't have any rings on? Nothing? Nothing? Huh okay, Yeah,
I mean maybe I have my lucky underwear on. Maybe
I don't you, Um, I mean not underwear? No, well,
(00:47):
I mean nothing. Let's see what do I have on?
I mean right now? I just I have my wedding ring,
and I do. There's so there's a certain amount of
magical thinking involved in that. Um, do I have any
And No, I don't have any amulets on me right now.
But I in the past, I've I've certainly fallen in
the habit of using them. I think I've talked about
this before. I previously had a Ganesha remover of obstacles.
(01:10):
Remover of obstacles. The the Hindu god that is that
has the you know, the elephant appearance. Uh, And I
had featured on The Simpsons in a hilarious episode. Yes, yes,
also also made fun of there. But I would carry
it around because you know, remover of obstacles and you
know all this various ties into ties into creativity and all.
And so I would carry that in my pocket. And
(01:32):
then eventually I lost it, like it crawled out in
the washing machine or something and left me. And and
so I've always felt I felt kind of bad. I'm like,
where did Ganesha go? Did Ganesha abandon me? And then
and then I found Ganesha put him back in and
then and then he disappeared again and hasn't come back.
And and then also in the past, all occasionally like
(01:53):
pick up a rock, Like if I'm at the beach
and I'm having a particularly good day, I'll pick up
that rock and take it with me, and That'll end
up in my pocket for maybe a year or so. Um,
you know, because that kind of comes to symbolize like
a nice memory, and so I can take it out
and I can sort of think back to that time.
So what I'm hearing is that you have various kinds
(02:14):
of movies. Yeah, security blankets. Oh, yes, yeah, I guess
they are to a certain extent security blanket. I mean
they're not you know, apples to apples, but there is
this sort of warm and fuzzy thing that you're trying
to evoke with with an object, right, yeah, I mean
it's uh, I mean it's weird for me because like
when I'm if I'm holding a ganitia, I don't actually
(02:36):
think that I'm using this as a totem to to
get in touch with some sort of a god, you know,
like it's not like a literal interpretation of the amulet,
but there is a certain amount of positive thinking that
that comes with having it. And I've also wondered a
lot of times when I'm passing by my own desk
or coworkers desks, or seeing somebody's desk on TV where
(02:57):
they have action figures, uh, typically like a dude's desk,
you know, we have various action figures, and I wondered
to what extent our modern action figures kind of akin
to the amulets of old, you know, like today we
don't have a pathion of gods to really call upon
for the most part, but instead we have all these
various pop culture icons and cartoon characters that represent various
(03:21):
things at least on like a subconscious level, and we
keep them around to draw strength from them. You haven't
found the Pantheon room. They just Wantheon room. No, do
we have one? Oh my goodness, but to the room
with the black toilet and the black sink. Yeah, yeah,
the superhero bathroom. Okay, well, see I've been missing that.
But if you if you passed by my desk, you
passed by like Jonathan Strickland's desk, you passed by is
(03:41):
these office you'll see little little figures, you know. So
I wondered what I mean. Obviously they're on our death
they're in our workspace, they're in our work environment, informing,
you know, our our relationship with our with our work,
with with what we're trying to do with and and
representing a little bit of who we are. So to
what extent are those was becoming deities? I don't know. Well, okay,
(04:03):
so that's what we're going to try to get to
the bottom of today. We're gonna look at objects, our
relationship to objects, and we're going to try to figure
out how much of this has to do with our
own uh ability to acquire things, and whether or not
this acquisitiveness is natural to us, and then we're gonna
look a little bit at a compulse supporting too. When
(04:24):
it comes to materialism, it is really a distinctive human
trait for the most part, especially when you look at
its more outrageous examples. The one that I was really
partial to was the one I brought up by Steve
Taylor in his article The Madness of Materialism, which just
a great, short, little article, but he he mentions gold,
especially the like European colonists love of gold and in
(04:49):
their flashes with with the native peoples in the Americas. Uh.
There's one example that he brings up where in Indian
chief in Cuba learned that the Spanish sailors were about
to tack as end, so he actually praised to the
spirit of the gold to for for a like they've become.
They're trying to figure out why are these one of
these these people so into gold, this this shiny rock
(05:10):
from the ground. They must have some sort of They
must believe it's a god. They must believe that it
is that has supernatural powers, because otherwise, why would you
go to such ridiculous ends. Why would you wage all
of this bloodshed just to get it right? Because otherwise
it's like, well, you guys are just talking like ferrets
going after something shiny. So surely this piece of gold
has something to it. And he prayed to it right
(05:30):
and it didn't work. Didn't work because, as as he
points out in this article, as Steve Taylor points out,
a certain amount of hoarding of resources makes evolutionary sense.
You know we've talked before and in the wild there
are certain things that are scarce. I mean food itself
is going to be scarce, uh, to varying degrees. And
so to whatever degree we can plan ahead that we
(05:52):
can stockpilot, the better off will be. If that means
bearing nuts in the yard, if that means uh, you know,
finding something that is that is more rare in nature,
like sugar and being able to store that away like
like all that makes sense firewood. I mean, there are
things that are they're part of our survival that that
that makes sense when we're hoarding it. Well, it makes
sense I think to a culture that is settled. But
(06:15):
if you look at back at early man um in
particularly the fact that early Man was a nomadic species. Um,
then you know that hoarding or stockpiling just really wasn't convenient,
That's right. I mean yeah, if you're always on the
mood move if you even if you have kind of
like cyclical uh patterns to your to your movement, and
(06:36):
you know, going from you know, north to south depending
on what the weather is doing, Yeah, you're not gonna
be able to carry all of this with you. You
can maybe stockpile some of it, but you're not going
to carry it all on your back. Yeah. So there's
just a big question mark, like is this really genetic?
Is this something that's natural to humans, this impulse to
buy and possess things, or is it something that really
is um more symptomatic of modern man, particularly from the
(07:00):
nineteenth century on right, when things became much easier to produce,
to produce cheaply, and then to acquire cheaply. Yeah. And
I mean when it comes to stockpiling things that are important,
I mean, when once we get out of this uh,
this transitory nature of culture and we get into into
actually settling in areas and growing food, I mean, being
(07:20):
able to stockpile food. I mean that's part and partial
to a lot of our cultural growth as as a
as a species, our ability to put food away, have
more food than we need, and then specialize our roles
within a community. But what about just buying lots of
plastic things, right and putting them in a storage unit
and then that storaging in it being auctioned off in
(07:41):
a show called storage Wars or something like that. Right, Yeah,
because yeah, then it's it seems like we're definitely getting
into pathological area. We're getting into an area where it
is just it is a sickness. It is some natural
instinct that has been perverted. Because even even though the
you know, the native peoples of the Americas couldn't understand
the luss for gold, if you put gold within the
context of of of wealth and then wealth equals power, power,
(08:03):
wealth equals comfort, wealth equals food, then I can see
the cognitive steps you know, necessary to think I gotta
have all the gold, right because I have to possess
the symbol of it, which is probably a large part
of why we do have this such such a high
degree of acquisitiveness, right, like wanting to get acquire everything. Um.
But you know, the question is is that genetic Well
(08:24):
there was a study by Justine Giddon's, Julie Shermer and
Philip Vernon from the University of Western Ontario, and they
wanted to know how much of it was an environmental
how much of it which genetics. Of course, they turned
to the twins. Uh. They recruited two hundred and forty
pairs of twins, identical and fraternal, and they looked at
the benchmark of individual differences um, personality, values, happiness, and
(08:50):
we know about forty pc of those traits are heritable, right,
So to the surprise of these researchers, they found that
individual differences in materialism were almost entirely attributed to environmental
factors and not a genetic thing going on here. So
that kind of makes sense, right, And that actually makes
sense to me in the context of hoarding, because yes,
(09:12):
hoarding does have some pathological brain disorder elements to it,
but a lot of the triggers for hoarding our environmental. So, um,
you know, if you had a loved one who recently
passed away or something that was life changing, that kind
of sort of flipped the switch and hoarding behavior. And
when I talk about hoarding behavior, I'm talking about an
(09:32):
excessive collection of objects. This is like one of those
things where it's like I must keep every newspaper that
has ever come out. And it's not just keep them,
but like if you were to be separated from those newspapers,
you would suffer, you would feel pain, you would you
would be confused, you would have an inability to really
make clearheaded decisions about the sort of stuff in your life. Yeah,
and you've seen one of these shows. To me, that's
(09:55):
enough supporting shows, because it can be a bit much
to take in, and it can be and there they're
kind of depressing. Uh, but but I think I saw
one once where it was like food items and it
wasn't in a sense that like I need to save
all the sweet potatoes because I love sweet potatoes and
I need need to eat the sweet podata is later,
but it would be like, oh, the sweet potato looked
really good. This is a really cool looking sweet potata,
(10:15):
and like this weird emotional attachment to the sweet potato,
and then it must be kept even though it's rotting
in the refrigerator. Yeah. Well, it turns out that people
who have hoarding behavior or hoarding disorder, they actually have
a part of their brain. Um, this is an interior
singular cortex. This part of their brain is actually not
behaving the same way as quote unquote normal people, because
(10:38):
that is the part of the brain that's actually governing
your decisions in and you restraint. Is that also, um,
some some impulse control, yeah, um, but primarily it's the
decision making. And so if you take people who have
the hoarding disorder and you look at them in m
r I scans when they are considering whether or not
to part from an object that they own, you'll see
(10:58):
that You'll see the fuzzy nature going on there, so
you know that it is, Um, it is a brain disorder.
It is this this part of their brain that is saying,
I just don't know what to do here. And so
it's not just like Okay, I need to have everything
in the world, or there's some sort of gluttonous you know,
void that they're trying to fill. It really is coming
from the decisions that their their brain circuitry is making.
(11:23):
And um, this is I thought this was really interesting
when I found out about it. Um. Hoarding behavior actually
has some connection, or a lot of connection to narcissism.
So you think about narcissism and you think about vanity.
You think about narcissus, you think about the function in
the pool captivated by one's appearance. But it really is
sort of a coping mechanism, and I believe it was
(11:46):
Dr Rebecca Beaten. She explained this to me a couple
of years ago when I interviewed her um about hoarding.
She told me that kids who are feeling abandoned from
their parents, or they don't have a significant relationship with
a parent, or really any sort of guardian in other words,
they they're not getting that emotional connection or even sort
of the touch of the hug or any of that,
(12:08):
they begin to turn inward and they began to become
narcissists because they have to find self comfort from themselves,
and some of that gets attributed to objects. So then
they began to collect objects. Is this part of comfort,
and that's where you see the behavior played out. And
of course this brings to mind the Peanuts character Linus
and his blanket, right, his woobie, his his comfort blanket,
(12:32):
his uh or if you want to get into the
more technicals, his comfort object, his transitional object um, which
is something you see with a lot of a lot
of kids. I mean, it's Uh, let's see, did I
have no Now, my sister definitely had a blanket, uh
called blankie and uh, and it got to the point
where they ended up like cutting off the edge of
Blanky so that she could continue to carry Blanky around
(12:52):
with her. And I think she may still have I
think she still keeps blankly around. Well, you know, my
daughter's four, and the same thing has happened to her blanket.
She calls it Blankie's blankie. Wait, now, the part that
came off she carries around is called Blanky's blankie. So
it's the blank like the shard of blanket. It's all right,
it's like a like it's kind of like a religious artifact.
(13:14):
And she hides it in her bed and she's really
freaky about it, like we can't find it. It's like
blank is blanket. Well, I mean to an uninformed observer,
it could seem a little freaky because it's like, because
it is kind of borderline religious obsession, it may seem like.
In fact, if you go back to the nineteen forties,
attachment to a special object by a shot was regarded
(13:35):
as just pathological behavior and it's just a case of
childhood fetish reflecting something askew in the mother child relationship. Yeah,
I must be doing something wrong because your kid has
this gross the scrap of a blanket that they're carrying around.
And I think it's interesting that they look at it
as a fetish, particularly if you kind of take a
wide angle view of that period anyway, where you see
a lot of this idea as of fetish fetishism coming out. Um.
(13:58):
But yeah, it wasn't until the fifties right when they
started to say, you know what, this is actually a
normal thing, it's a good thing. Yeah. Yeah, people like DW.
Wincott started defining these is normal and necessary and is
a transitional experience, a key step in an infantsi ability
to distinguish this inner subjective world from the outside reality. So,
you know, through the even through the seventies and eighties,
(14:20):
there was still this sort of people are still clinging
to this old notion that it's there's something wrong that
the kid has some you know, some anxiety problems or something,
and that's why they're holding onto it. But but really,
the the the academic understanding of it was was pretty
much in place, Yeah, because they began to understand that
this could really help allay some of the fears, um,
some of the anxieties that children have. Of course they
(14:41):
haven't because remember they have an entirely new view of life,
so they have to categorize every loud sound, every image
and try to make sense of it. Is it a threat?
Is it not a threat? And so this transitional object
really does help because it is sort of like the
stand in for, you know, parental unit or something else.
(15:01):
There's a study by G. Japara, R. H. Passman, and C. Eisenberg,
and they found that during a routine third year pediatric examination,
the security object enhanced rapport with the examining nurse and
then children attached to a blanket who were allowed access
to it were rated as less distressed and they experienced
less physiological stress um and that is evidenced by the
(15:22):
heart rate and this is stallic blood pressure. So this
is in contrast to kids who are undergoing medical evaluation,
evaluation without their movies. Really, yeah, and certainly these woobies, um,
as you said that they can end up becoming like
an important parenting tool. I understand as well. I mean,
if you're if you're you use it wisely, right, I
mean it's i guess it's powerful stuff to play with,
But I was reading about how you know a parent
(15:44):
can can use it to their advantage, and a kid
needs the wovie too to remain comfortable in a position
when the month is away. I think it's really important
to um, like around age one and so on and
so forth, when when they start to feel the separation
anxiety as you say, like leaving the house or even
just sleeping at night, I think having something to grab
onto is really important. One of the interesting things about
(16:07):
studying transitional objects is that is that there's ultimately kind
of a lack of uniformity in the definition of it
and also the cultural significance of it. Like some of
the cultural stats are pretty interesting, like um, the United States,
sixty percent of children have at least a mild degree
of attachment to some sort of soft inanimate object. And
I think, looking back, I did have. I had a
(16:28):
stuffed rhinoceros named Rinchiu had an attachment to um. But
but I don't know. Then you're getting into like stuffed animals.
You're getting into a whole different area because those have personality.
I don't know, does Blankie or does Blankie's Blankie have
a personality. Do you think, well, sometimes Blanky's Blankie gets
some new trouble or does things like takes all the
(16:48):
toilet paper off the toilet roll or something like that.
But um, generally I think that's just general scoundrelness right now. Well, okay,
so anyway, six children in the US have some sort
of mild degree, thirty two percent exhibit strong attachment. But
then if you look at incidences of attachment in the
Netherlands and New Zealand and Sweden, that's that's comparable to
(17:08):
the United States. Korean children have substantially fewer attachments to blankets,
down to eighteen percent, uh that compared to American children,
but in Korean born children living in the United States
to play an intermediate percentage of thirty four percent. Five
percent of rural Italian children have transitional objects compared to
thirty one percent of urban Italians, and it goes as
(17:31):
far as the sixty two percent of foreign children living
in Rome. So I don't know, you just see the stats.
I guess kind of skewing towards urban areas. Yeah, as
we say, that's interesting to see that it can be
you know, within one country you could have such a
so many different variables there and oh but in London,
just sixteen percent of children have a special security object
(17:51):
in there the that's London. So there goes the the
urban argument. See, it's just it's it's hard to find
the exactly what's going on. There's just so many cultural
factor to look at the get well, and you have
to wonder too if if part of that is just
to say, like, that's not as accepted and therefore maybe
in that culture it's not as encouraged, or it's not
maybe as prominent, people don't see it as much. Yeah,
(18:13):
or maybe there's less of a culture of these are
my objects and these are your objects, and it's more
these are our objects. You know, some of us had
to do with memory to write, like they would go
back and say, oh, did I have an object that
I was connected to? And so they're collecting some of
this data from faulty memory where people are saying yes
or no and they couldn't exactly remember. I also want
to point out to that, uh, you know, transitional object
(18:37):
is very different from a pacifier, And of course a
pacifier is something that's used to self soothe and babies,
but I kind of think of it as gum for babies.
You know, it's an activity to to try to help
them with their eventual um eating skills. Uh, they're swallowing skills,
and it kind of helps keep them occupied if they're
hungry and you're trying to prepare a bottle or something
(18:58):
like that. But it is very different in terms of comfort. Yeah,
all right, we're gonna take a quick break and when
we come back, we will get into the world of
magical thinking, lucky charms and something called the I ke
ef fector Okay, so we're back, Yeah, and we're going
(19:20):
to get into the realm of magical thinking. This is
territory that we've we've moved through many times before, but
it it continues to be important because it really does
deal with how we think about the world and versus
how the world really is. I mean we Magical thinking,
of course, is uh the belief that an object, action,
or circumstance not logically related to a course of events
(19:40):
can influence its outcome. So in magical thinking, you get
into all these ideas of of everything from a haunted house,
the idea that oh, something bad happened here, so now
something is bad with the house, you know, like the
idea that that that that an event can affect the
physical object or even near mementos. I mean I've mentioned
(20:02):
my father's watch before, you know, like obviously that's that's
something that has significance to me. And there's a certain
amount of magical thinking involved there. Um, you know, even
if it's at a subconscious level, even if I'm not thinking,
oh this this has the spirit of my dad, and
I think, oh, that's that is that was his watch,
and there is some sense of him about it. So
magical thinking kind of uh, you know, is intertwined in
(20:24):
all our lives, uh, to varying degrees, and you know,
be it conscious or subconscious. One of the more more
conscious ways, of course, is with the idea of a
lucky charm. Yeah, and uh, there's something called apophenia, and
that is seeing patterns where there are none. And that
is a little bit of the suit based two magical thinking, right,
(20:44):
because again, if you let's say you're wearing something and
something great happens, you think, oh, those are those lucky socks,
and let's wear them every time that I have to
do this certain challenge and began to to make this
causal connection. But then there's always that difference between Oh,
I've got a big interview, I'm gonna wear those lucky
socks of mine. There's that, and then there's these are
my lucky socks. I must wear them every day and
(21:06):
they must never be washed, or they must be washed
exactly eight times to contain their their magic, you know.
I mean there's a line between just sort of helpful
magical thinking and UH and and and helpful lucky charm
and belief to uh. And then there's then there's a
whole realm of pathology. But it's a little O C
D in a way, right, so called adventitious reinforcing, and
(21:29):
then is making that connection and then keep you know,
doing whatever that ritual is over and over again so
that you can hopefully, you know, evoke those spirits of
magic to help you in your quest. So has anyone
studied lucky charms? Of course, not the cereal the cereal
that's a whole different kettle of fish. But but yes,
(21:49):
as far as studying the effects that lucky charms lucky
objects have on us. Uh, there's a really cool study
from the University of Cologne in two thousand ten, and uh.
They started off with just golf. They they invited these
these test subjects to come and uh and see how
many of tin putts they can make from the same location.
(22:10):
And when the experiment has handed them a golf ball,
they would they would sometimes just give them the ball
and say, hey, everyone's used this ball so far. You know,
no big deal. Here's a golf ball. Why don't you
hit it and see what I'll go in that hole
over there. And then sometimes they said, hey, this ball,
this must be a lucky ball, this one, this one's
really worked well for people. And then they they analyzed it.
(22:32):
They let everyone play a little golf see what happened,
and the mere suggestion that the ball was lucky significantly
influenced performance, causing participants to make almost two more puts
on average. See this is where like when David Eagleman says, like,
we don't have any free will, I began to really
sort of say, you know, he might be onto something,
because the mere suggestion that it's lucky would actually have
(22:56):
some sort of um bearing on your performance. That's crazy,
you know. So of course they weren't going to stop
just there, because generally, if you have a scientific experiment,
if you have a study going on. And it begins
and ends with people just playing golf one afternoon. You know,
that's probably not enough. You need to push it a
little a little further. Yeah, So what they did is
(23:17):
they had test subjects come in and they had them
them bring lucky artifacts with them, you know, be at
their their old blankie or they're you know, like me,
you know, I forgot about this. I always bring this
uh tri Steratops squeeze toy into the office with me. Yeah,
And I don't think of it as a lucky charterer.
I think of it more as like something to occupy
(23:38):
my hand when I'm feeling kind of without it. I
don't podcast without it. So there's a certain amount of
magical thinking involved, their certain amount of good luck charm
going on with that tristeratops. So anyway, they invited people
to bring in their tri Sterotops toys. They're they're lucky
you know, four leaf clovers, what have you and uh,
(23:58):
and then they started the us. They assigned them to
either a condition where they would be performing a task
in the presence of their charm or in absence of
their charm and uh. And then the participants rated their
perceived level of self efficiency and then completed a memory
task that was essentially a variant of the you know,
the classic card game concentration. So psychologist Lisaan and Thomish,
(24:22):
she found that those people who had their lucky charms,
they were doing a couple of things here to improve
their performance because really it does prove improve yours. That
was they found once again, if they had their lucky
charms on hand, they did better. Yes, they were setting
lawtier goals from for themselves, and then they were exhibiting
increased persistence right they were. They did not give up
(24:45):
as easily because they felt bolstered by these lucky charms. Yeah,
it's it's pretty crazy. I mean, it's the idea that
the so here's the try sarratops squishy in my hand
and bringing in I'm thinking, well, I've got to try
sarratops with me. I'm gonna you know, I'm not just
gonna go for norm. I'm going to shoot for higher
because I've got this, I've got the power up in
my hand, and then I'm gonna stick to it more
(25:05):
because because because my I'm focusing with my attention, I
have the the symbol of my my commitment with me
as well. Well here's where the fun house mirror shutters.
If you are aware of this effect, then supposedly this
no longer works anymore. If you become conscious that you
are attributing magical qualities to an object, then it's supposedly
(25:29):
is not going to be effective, you know. And I
don't really I don't really buy that part of the study. Well,
I think it depends. I think that this depends on
the individual, because for my own part, I find myself
able to drift in and out of believing in things
depending on what my day to day outlook is and
depending on, you know, how I want to view the world,
Like I find myself able to to a certain extent,
(25:52):
you know, engage in the belief that an object might
have some sort of you know, luck, or believe in
some varying levels of spirituality depending on on how I'm
viewing the day. So I can imagine somebody, you know,
logically knowing that something is just a piece of metal,
but then still buying into it enough to get that
effect out of it. Well, I think that's because you
(26:14):
have a creative, fiction twisted mind that's been trained that way.
So you can, I think, dive into magical thinking very easily. Yeah, well,
and then still be hanging out with reality. But I don't.
I'm not unique in that, and that that that so,
so I think the study is fascinating. That I do,
I do kind of disagree on that part. Um about
(26:36):
the idea that just merely by listening to this podcast,
we have deactivated all of your lucky arms out there,
I mean some of you, if you're the right kind
of person, that we just totally zapt all of your
your magic do dads? Sorry about that, Um, All right,
so let's change the subject and close this podcast out
on Ikea, because I kea. What is this but the
the iconic symbol of all objects known to man that
(26:58):
can be acquired by man? Right right? And of course
the thing we always come back to with Ikea anytime
we're talking about Ikea, anytime we're we're thinking about Ikea,
and I'm not talking about in the podcast, but just
in general all of us is the assembly of these items.
They come with the really well does well designed graphically instructions,
(27:19):
and you bring them home and you try to make
sense out of them, and then you take one or two,
three or four goes. That assembling it correctly. Generally, with
some there's a little bit it's like going through a
maze because you end up getting a dead corner and
then you realize, oh, I already used those screws in
the wrong spot. Let's see if they can actually be
removed without destroying the product? Is that little is it?
(27:40):
The l Is that a Elan wrench? Yeah? Okay, that
thing is ridiculous to me because you have you have
all these pieces in front of you, and then you
have this tiny little Alan wrench that's supposed to do
the job. Well, you can get a screw driver with
the Alan. Well, power tools always come out. That's the
joke of it, right, And I feel like the h
the little man that is that is the symbol of
(28:00):
the person that's supposed to be you is overly comical too,
And it's sort of like this commentary on the whole process.
I think he's supposed to be kind of disarming as
well when you reach the frustration point. See I see
his passage as being mocking. He's laughing at you. You're
just sitting in the living room floor, just surrounded by
half as symboled furniture. Yeah, yeah, beating away. Yeah. I mean,
(28:23):
I have, I have. There have been times when I've
been assembling Ikea furniture and I love i Kea furniture,
but there have been times when I've been assembling it
where I've just about lost my mind. Well see, I
think that is what plays into this whole idea of
this I keya effect right right, And this is the
idea ultimately, it's the idea that if we build something ourselves,
even if it's crap, we care more about it. And
(28:45):
you we've all encountered this with people. You know, it's
anybody that knows somebody who engages in a bit of
of art, a bit of creative endeavor would be it,
be it a be it somebody who's really good at it,
or you know, someone who's new to to the practice.
There's a tendency to to love your own work, even
when it's not good. Well, I mean you see this
(29:07):
in fiction writing a lot, right when you're going through
the editing process. Is that what was the term, kill
your children? You don't want to do it, darlings, kill
you darlings. You don't want to to This is your
creation and it doesn't fit in and it doesn't really
even matter to the plotline anymore. But it's very hard
to get rid of those things. Yeah, I mean it's
it's why you need an outsider to come in and
look at your stuff. That's the beauty of the editor. Um.
(29:29):
You know, that's why you know I have awesome ladder
Milk around to edit my work for the website, because
otherwise stuff would remain in there that really needs to
be cut. He needs you need a hard cruel louder
Milk is not cruel to come in and and and
take out all the unimportant organs, just rip them right
out of the body. Yeah, you do need someone putting
(29:49):
in comments next your work saying, hey, what's up with this? Yeah?
But see, this is really interesting about the IKEA effect.
Is that, um, you know in the NPR story about
this called Why You Left, that I keep it a
keya table even if it's crooked. Um, they're saying that
people don't have this editor coming in. And you see
this in company, see people getting really tied to this
idea of what a product is or what it is
(30:11):
that they're making it. Sometimes it's two years in the mak. Yeah,
you're putting just loads of time and energy into it
and you're just you're just you're in the jungle with it.
You're in the jungle, and then someone from the outside
comes in and goes, it's crooked. Yeah, you know, um,
and that you need that, you need you need that
sort of fresh perspective. So that's helpful. I mean, we're
we've kind of transitioned away from objects more into um
(30:32):
philosophy here. But hey, I mean, isn't that what objects
are doing in the first place. They're just metaphors for
us really. Yeah, So that the study was big on
stressing that that building your own stuff boost you're feeling
of pride and confidence signals to others that you are competent,
which I think is as good as well and reminds
me of that recent Portlandia sketch. Did you see this
with the duty build his own furniture? No? I didn't
(30:54):
see that one. He's he's like the all the women
want to date him and marry him and they can
make make him their own because they learn, oh, he
makes his own furniture, you know, because like it's you know,
it's just the perfect thing, right, But then they find
out that he makes really crappy furniture. But he just
doesn't realize it, so so it kind of fits in
(31:15):
with what we're talking about. But the third thing that
they found in the study that was interesting was that, uh,
this is a direct quote from the study, threatening consumers
sense of self increases their propensity to make things themselves.
So the idea to the idea here that that the
author talks about in this this article is that theoretically,
if you were to provide a visitor to Ikea with
(31:38):
a really difficult math problem to you know, to really
bust them down a few chops and make them make
them feel kind of stupid, then let him into Ikea,
they're going to be even more into the idea of
buying something and building it themselves so they can make
good again. So because their ego has been taken down
a couple of notches, and then if they can just
assemble something, they can regain that. Yeah, yeah, idea. I
(32:01):
think so, because it's it's kind of like anything, you know,
whenever you're logged in a in a process that is
just seemingly never ending that you don't really feel like
there's a sense of completion, or you have one of
those days where you work on eighteen different things and
finish none of them. Like, what you really want to
do is is nail something you want to say? I
went home and I made a girl cheese from start
to finish and then I ate it case close close
(32:24):
that loop. Oh that would get you a lot of ladies.
Hey he makes cheese. He makes cheese. Yeah, well not
from start to finish, not making your own bread and cheese.
That that would be impressive as well. But yeah, yeah,
I don't know. This is what writ the author was saying,
is that maybe I could start to game their customers
to their advantage and give them these math problems, or
just put up big placards that say, like, you know
(32:46):
you're awful and lousy, to put some furniture together and
you feel better. I mean some people love it. I
know people that are just in love with the idea
of putting together furniture. Well, Ikea Hacker is a great
website to see what people do to to sort of
change the the or to make it more unique, or
you know, try to game the furniture too. Haven't have
(33:09):
another purpose. I've been saying for a while that Ikea
needs to do like a game show where and the
teams of of Ikea hackers have to like compete against
each other, and maybe they're having to do a symbol
furniture in weird places like you know, in a hot
air balloon or on the subway. But my boy, I
think you got something there. Yeah it did that sound
like nineteen Yeah a little bit, A little bit right,
(33:30):
So there you go. Objects um, a little insight into
why we've surround ourselveselves with so much stuff while it's
so important. And I was really I was really interested
in you know, we're talking about that that space, that
that that your mind occupies, that that moment when you're
holding something in your hand and trying to decide whether
you can part with it and throw it away or
(33:52):
if it has value that it needs to be held
and and and maintained like that, That to me is
a very interesting frame of mind um to occupy. And
we've all been there, and uh and and and we
all kind of skew different ways. I think when when
faced with that situation, some of us will just throw
stuff away at the drop of the hat. My my
(34:12):
wife is one and and she's been a good influence
on me and making me more susceptible to getting rid
of things instead of keeping them around needlessly, so you
just have boxes of notes and stuff. Yeah, you know, Um,
if I'm in a store, which I don't really shop
that much, but if I'm in the store and I
see something I fancy, I actually will carry it around
for about fifteen minutes to see whether or not I
actually wanted in. Nine out of ten times I put
(34:34):
it back. That's a that's a good way of doing it.
I found myself doing that sometimes when there's like a weight,
you know, you're having to wait in line to to
check out, and you have the objects in your hand
and you really start to think about what you're doing
and decide, I don't know that I really need that,
And of course there realizes the danger of of online
shopping immediate. So, hey, what we would love to hear
(34:55):
from everybody about this, about your thoughts on your relationships
with objects, because we we all have the um and
I'd love to hear some stories. I love to hear
some some new insight on blank's that you were fond
of as a child, other stranger things that you attached
to as a as a child, things that you're still
attached to in as adult, The various deities that may
(35:16):
occupy your work desk, be they actual Hindu gods or
action figures. I have both online, so I no no judgment. Uh,
let us know what you think. We'd love to hear
from you at our Facebook account at our Tumbler account.
On both of those we are stuff to blow your mind.
We also have a Twitter account where our handle is
blow the Mind and you can always drop us a
(35:37):
line at blow the Mind at Discovery dot com For
more on this and thousands of other topics, Is it
how Stuff Works dot com
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