January 29, 2013 • 39 mins
Undercover Actors and the Shadow Self: In this episode, we discuss the place where cover and identity collide in the human mind. It's a topic we first raised in our "Wrestling With Kayfabe" episode - so if you skipped that one because of the wrestling content, I urge you to give it a second chance. In this episode, we keep coming back to the idea of an avatar in the traditional sense: one of many physical forms that a formless deity may take in order to engage with a physical world. Your mind is that formless god, and all the versions of you are its avatars.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
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 and I'm Julie. In this episode,
we're gonna be talking about undercover actors in the shadows self. Now.
We're following up our pro wrestling episode The Keeping Cafe,
(00:25):
which published just prior to this one, UH. And in
that episode, we talk a lot about this UH, about
the idea of layering reality with these with fiction, particularly
as it involves institutions and sports and UH and product
performance products that are given to to an audience, layering
it with fiction to improve upon it and change it.
(00:46):
And we touched a little bit about what happens when
you put these layers of fiction upon yourself. We talked
to pro wrestler Colt Cabana Quis him a little bit
about what it's like when he has to play a
villain in the ring and then when he leaves the ring, uh,
you know, how he's able to shut that off, but
how he still feels like there is a certain amount
of him that is UH, that escapes into this villainous character.
(01:09):
And likewise there's a there's an aspect of him in
the really goody were not really goody two shoes, but
the good guy version of himself that he also portrays.
So in this episode, we're going to continue the sort
of exploration, but we're gonna be looking beyond the world
of pro wrestlers and looking into the world of actors
method acting, for instance, We're gonna look at undercover cops, uh,
(01:32):
and we're also going to look at our online selves
a little bit. And before we do so, just wanted
to UM, let you know a little bit about cafe
being in case you didn't hear the other episode. Cafe
is a term that's an old Carney term that he's
uh used to indicate that someone should keep being fake.
In other words, if you are wrestling, UM, and you're
(01:56):
it's a fake wrestling match, you want to make sure
you don't break out of characters, so you want a
cave ape, right. And we talked in that other episode
about how kfaving really pervades the fabric of our culture,
and this is something that has come up, I believe
with Cold Cabana. Um it has come up and uh
Eric Weinstein's article about k fabing uh that you can
(02:17):
find it everywhere. You can find it in reality shows
because a lot of these reality shows, as we know,
are scripted, and yet the audience doesn't seem to care
much like in pro wrestling, right that they don't care
that there's k saving going on. It's about the spectacle. Yeah,
and uh, but then it can also end up sort
of warping the individual, or seeming to because we asked
Cold about this and he said that, yeah, there are
(02:38):
times where a particular wrestler lets their gimmick, let's their
their fictional self, um, kind of alter their their real self.
Like they'll they'll buy into the gimmick too much, they'll
believe the hype about the character they betray, and on
some level it becomes with confused with who they are. Yeah,
that's why Eric Weinstein in his essay alluded to that
(03:00):
and said that sometimes they believe these confabulations of their
storylines so much so, like for instance, some sort of
infidelity or adultery, that they will actually then go on
to commit adultery. Some of these pro wrestlers and some
of these various storylines that they've had to play out.
So we start thinking about that, and of course we
look at ourselves and start to wonder, okay, what about
(03:22):
our own minds and our own consciousness and sense of
self Because when we get up in the morning, we
basically have to put on our public selves right when
we go out the door. And what is this story
that we're telling ourselves? What is this script that we're
we're following for ourselves? Yeah, and ultimately, who is that guy?
Who is that girl that you are in these various
(03:43):
environments like who's that Who's that person that you are
on the subway train versus that person that you are
in the office, versus that person that you are, uh,
you know, say tucked into bed with your significant other
or you know, talking to the cat in the meddle,
And I don't know. It's like every different an environment,
every different interaction with the external world, it tends to
(04:05):
summon a different you. Yeah. And although we tend to
think that we've got this continuity director in our head
making sure that we're always the same person we we
purport ourselves to be, there are opportunities for us to
break from the script. And that's what we're gonna look
at a little bit today. And when you start thinking
about scripts, of course, we have to look at actors yes, now, yeah,
(04:29):
when you start thinking about actors, and certainly that comes up.
You know, we're talking about like pro wrestlers who are
in an angle where they have to pretend they're having
an affair, and then they end up having the affair.
I mean, you can think of various examples of actors
and and they end up meeting on a set where
they're playing significant others and then they end up being
significant others to a certain extent, you know, And and
(04:49):
certainly I even remember I was in a community play
adaptation of seventy six. I was Thomas Jefferson and uh
and I ended up dating um Mrs Jefferson after the play. Uh.
So you feel like that the groundwork was put there
and that it was just like that whole debate about
whether or not you have any free will. It was
like the suggestion was there and you followed it. Maybe
(05:12):
I don't know, it's it's possible, but but but certainly
you see this at times. You see people that that,
and you hear stories about actors really getting into their roles,
particularly as far as method acting is concerned. So method
acting uh generally combines uh, the the you know, the
actor's consideration of the character's psychological motives and personal identification,
(05:34):
like they're they're getting there trying to get their mind
inside that of the character they're portraying, Like they're they're
asking themselves, who is this person? And then what do
I need to do to connect with them? Like how
can I connect my own feelings with the feelings of
this character and and therefore create a more um believable
presentation on the screen, this versus more you know, a
(05:56):
more traditional, like non method approach, where one just simply
it gets up there and and you know, recites the
lines and does so in a way that that mimics um,
legitimate deep felt emotion and uh. And then there's of course,
there are stories plenty of stories about actors who supposedly
like don't break character, like for like an entire week
(06:18):
of fifth filming, even though they're only filming like during
the day, like they're they're they're staying in character outside
of the picture um and uh. And the and those
stories are like you people get a little um auntsie
about that, particularly people who really follow the method. Uh,
and they'll say, well, that's not really what method acting
is all about, that's not what was actually you know,
(06:40):
originally part of the method as it was conceived. And
then you also have some some stories that just simply
didn't happen, like one of the famous ones is is
supposedly and again this is has never happened. But Solrence
Olivia and Dustin Hoffman, Um, we're on the seat of
Marathon Man and and Dustin Hoffman shows up just looking
like hell, just dirty and just just strong outlooking because
(07:00):
his character is supposed to be. And he explained, and
he explains it in preparation for the scene, he stayed
up all night and he didn't bathe and all this,
and Olivier supposedly responded by saying, my good Sarah, why
don't you just try acting? Ha ha ha. And it's
supposed to know, it's supposed to be a good laugh
at the method actor has expense saying, well, why don't
you just pretend to be the thing that you are
instead of trying to embody it. But what I like
(07:22):
about that is that's cafe being the cafebe, you know,
because here's this fake story about this about fake in reality, right, um, yeah,
And I think that's really interesting. What I like about
actors is I think they're very interesting creatures because they
are dealing with this duality of nature, right, and they
(07:45):
are having to inhabit this space and try to do
so in a way that really fools us. Right um.
Actor Tandy Newton has a great ted dot com talk
and she talks about what it's like to be an
actor and what it's like to inhabit another character, and
she has some interesting thoughts on it, and we just
(08:06):
wanted to share some quotes with you. She talks about
this idea that she always felt separate from other people.
She always felt like the other, particularly because she was
someone of color in England growing up and write away
and a female and so here she is already the other.
So she talked about this idea of oneness and separateness.
(08:26):
She said, our little portion of oneness is given a name,
is told all kinds of things about itself, and these details,
opinions and ideas become facts which go towards building ourselves,
our identity. So she's talking about this idea of self
and this little bit of self we can grab in
the world and define ourselves by. And she says, and
(08:46):
that self becomes the vehicle for navigating our social world.
But the self is a projection based on other people's projections.
Is it who we really are or who we really
want to be or should be. So she says that
this whole interaction with self and identity was really difficult
for her growing up. So she said that when she
found acting it was revelatory. She said, I can hardly
(09:08):
find the words to describe the piece I felt when
I was acting, my dysfunctional self could actually plug into
another self, not my own, and it felt so good.
Because she says that while she had a degree from
cab Cambridge, a thriving career, she herself was a bit
of a car wreck because she was so invested in
(09:29):
this idea of self and she hadn't quite yet figured
out that it is just a projection, it's an illusion.
And she says that that this, this idea of self
is something that we value above all else, and we've
created an entire value system in a physical reality to
support the worth of self. Yeah, it reminds me of
the study that we ran across. And this is from
(09:51):
Ellie a contage from the University of Amsterdam. She was
curious how much how much actors are aware of their
performance when they perform it and how into what extent
they're letting a character take over. Because we've we've we've
heard we've heard that before. We heard a little of
that from Cold Cabana about you know, you're you're playing
this character and you just your your juices get flowing
(10:11):
and you just you embody the character kind of possesses you. Right. So,
um So, this study was interested in that. So she
asked Dutch actors to rate their own emotions and the
emotions of the characters they were playing across a range
of different states from disgust to anxiety, tenderness, pleasure, fear,
et cetera. And as she found that positive emotions were
(10:34):
often felt by the actors as they played those characters emotions,
but the more and more negative the emotion that they
were supposed to portray, the less likely it was that
the actor word report actually feeling that emotion. So so
so in this study they found that actors were better
able to connect and be taken over by those positive feelings. Okay,
so they were able then to manage that system of
(10:56):
not being influenced so much by by their emotions are
the emotions of the character? Um See, this is why
I think It's such an interesting mind game, this acting,
because you do, you get into some very weird territory
about who you are and what reality is. Yeah, and
we've discussed before too, like we're talking about chest opening exercises,
(11:16):
which we talked about laughter and smiling and laughter. Year
then all this and it, you know, comes out to
that kind of that fake it till you make it
kind of vibe, the idea that just on a physical level,
if we, you know, we smile and it makes us,
it makes us begin to feel the emotions that would
have made the smile. When we put the effect out there,
(11:38):
it generates the cause, even if there was no cause.
And so what Tanny Newton is saying is that when
when you think about this self and you think, okay,
well I'm happy today, and and if you are so
malleable that you allow all these different forces to act
upon you, then what you're doing is you're confusing self
(12:00):
for actual living Because what she says is that it's uh,
the self is not an actual living thing. It's projection,
which are clever brains create in order to cheat ourselves
from the reality of death. So she's saying that it's
our ability to divorce ourselves from the concept of self
and then ground ourselves in others and outside experiences. That
(12:21):
really liberates us and allows us to live fully. So
I liked what she had to say about this from
an actor's perspective, because, Um, there there is a ton
of duality going on here. So what do you mistake
for the real thing? And what is the real thing?
I think is what we're trying to get at here.
Um In Underscore you get into questions of what is
(12:43):
there a real thing? Is there is there anything at
the heart of this or is it just a bunch
of masks encircling the formless um? And then and then
to what extent are some is something? If there is
a true you, then to what extent is the fake you?
Almost as powerful there was. There's a really great episode,
I think a shorty of Radio Lab that aired recently
(13:03):
called What's Up doc Um. I recommend you guys checking
it out, And I know a lot of you are
Radio lap fans anyway, But it concerned mel Blank of course,
the classic voice actor who you know did the voice
of Bugs, Bunny and countless others and voice and uh.
In the end up they talked to his son in
(13:23):
this episode, and he talks about like when he played
these care it wasn't just like all right, I'm gonna
do Wacky Voice number one in vacky Wacky Voice number two.
I mean he was there was almost there was a
sort of method acting mentality there where he knew these characters.
He would embody them and even though he's just doing
the audio, he would act out. You know, you could
you'd see physically his he was different when he was
doing one for voice versus the other, and uh and so.
(13:46):
And in this episode they talked about how at one
point he was in this horrible crash car crash on
dead Men's Curve in Hollywood Boulevard and he nearly died,
and he was he was out for two weeks in
a coma, and he would not spond to anyone, respond
to anyone. But then how do they get him to respond?
That's the crazy part. Well, this is yeah, this is
the crazy part. His neurosurgeon, Dr Conway, Uh, just he said,
(14:12):
out of nowhere, he just decided to call him bugs
Bunny called Mel Blank, one of his character's bugs Bunny
and said, uh, something like, hey, bugs, how are you
doing today? And then Mel Blank actually responded as bugs bunny,
what's up back? And in character right, he responds, he
(14:34):
comes out of his comma, basically inhabiting this character, and
he goes through a couple of other voices, um, I think,
including Porky Daffy and fog Horn Lankhorn, until he himself
mel Blank, the person the self that that we all
think of, is sitting there saying what's going on? Where
(14:54):
am I? So, Timmy, it points to this amazing moment
where you do have this question of like, well, how
much of mel Blank is the characters? And how much
of those characters is are is mel Blank? You know? Um?
To what degree is he himself or this fictionalized character
(15:15):
that he's inhabited. Now this leads us into another area
as we discussed earlier undercover cops, undercover agents, vice operatives
and uh and you know, in the interview with Colt Cabana,
and we asked him briefly about you know, what it's
like when he's out there and he's portraying a bad guy.
He has his character, the officer, Colt Cabana is like
a you know, vile uh, you know, foul mouth the
(15:38):
policeman and uh. And then he has to go back,
you know, he has to leave the ring, go into
the backstage area. And he says he's able to shut
it off like it's not. It doesn't bleed over into
his life after the fact. And of course that brings
to mind again these these vice officers, police officers who
have to go out and pretend to be drug dealers,
(15:58):
pretend to be, um, you know what happened some sort
of criminal element in order to infiltrate it and and
you know, and and actually get the actual criminals and
get them arrested. So what happens when they're doing that?
What happens when they have to play that part? And
then is there is there the chance that the the
the the criminal element they're pretending to be becomes the
(16:22):
real them? Did they end up? You know, essentially they're
pretending to be this monster and then the monster consumes
them and it does happen. Yeah, I mean this is
a high wire act, right, and um, you have a
bit about how there have been some instances right where
that shadow self has taken over. Yeah, yeah, And this
is of course, this is important stuff. This is stuff
(16:43):
that's been that's been studied because ultimately you're talking about
law enforcement, which is important. You're talking about individuals risking
their their lives and and ultimately their their sanity to
to engage in these kind of operations. So uh. Dr
Michael or Ato a professor of psychology at the University
of Ottawa. He conducted a ten year study of undercover
(17:05):
agents and uh he he looked at seventy two undercover
cops and out of the seventy two, um, there were
there were six that ended up being disciplined for acting
inappropriately during their missions. So one for one person that
was using cocaine. For another, it was conspiracy to self
class to self classified information about ongoing investigations. For one,
(17:29):
it was actually selling classified informations. For another, it was
sexual involvement with a confidential informant. For another, excessive use
of force. And for another it was theft of money
from an evidence locker. UM. I mean and uh And
you see the varying degrees of of shadiness in these
and you can imagine, like all right, you know, like
in the cocaine, you can imagine like a guy who's
posing as a drug dealer being put in a position
(17:51):
where he has to use the drug or someone says, hey,
he's you know, not hey use that drug, but but
you know, encouraging them to sample it to prove their worth.
You kind of see that as a trope in various
undercover cop movies anyway. But then other stuff like stealing
money from an evidence locker, like that's more of I
have come back from the role I'm pretending to be
(18:11):
and now I'm actually that in the evidence locker. I'm
that at at the base, at the home um where
I'm supposed to leave this criminal fake me behind. So
his ultimate finding, uh Dr Garrotto's finding was that undercover
agents with a disciplined self image and control of their
impulses almost unwaveringly saw themselves as merely playing the part
(18:34):
of a drug dealer. So like Cold Cabana or or
any number of actors, and out there they were able
to say, all right, um no, I'm back home now,
and at home, I'm the real me. I am this
version of me, and that other thing that that the
drug dealer that I was just pretending to be for
like six hours, that's just a show. That's just a fake.
So ultimately he says that it's what you need is
(18:57):
an internal set of social standards that prevent you from
losing your sense of identity. Yeah, it makes me think
back to our episode on will power and self control,
and I wonder if living a double life creates a
heavy cognitive load. We talked about this cognitive loade and
that if you have to remember, you know, let's say
(19:21):
two or more items as opposed to ten items, and
then have to take some sort of UM test and
self control afterward, you're going to be less likely to
follow through with self control if you have a high
cognitive load. So, in other words, if you're a double agent,
or you have a double life, then you have to
keep in mind this entire other story, which might erode
(19:42):
some of that self control, uh and lead to some
of these ego depletion that we've talked about before too.
That you just have a finite amount of mental energy
to dedicate to certain tasks. So I can see how
the shadow self could kind of take over very easily
in that instance. UM wanted to mention to that. Psychologist
Dr Alan Sillarian has has talked about what it's like
(20:05):
to work with secret agents. He says, the most secret
agents I have met have two signature traits fearlessness and
a high tolerance for anxiety. Whether because of bio biological
factors such as an elevated level of the mood enhancing
neurochemical serotonin, or because of the influences of their early lives,
these people seem to be extreme risk takers who can
(20:26):
tolerate and manage worry, tension, and stress with natural ease.
So you have to wonder that what point are the
stakes so high that the tension um begins to to
erode some of that self control. All right, well, we're
gonna take a quick break and when we come back,
we are going to discuss fiction. We're going to discuss avatars.
(20:46):
And when I say avatars, not only are you going
to talk a little bit about your online avatar, but
also the the older concept of the avatar itself and
not the movie. All right, we're back, and uh, we're
gonna talk a little bit about avatars here about the
online self, because this is a you know, we've discussed
(21:08):
already this idea that that we we assume different personas
U two varying conscious degrees whenever we're interacting with the
outside world. There there's a slightly different you when you're
talking to your mother. Uh, there's a slightly different you
when you're talking to the grosser, you know it. It's
(21:29):
there's just all these different masks swirling around the the
ephemeral self, and we just put on those different masks
to interact with the world. But here's this avatar, this
opportunity to build a new you from the ground up, right,
And what they found, Now, what some researchers have found
is that it isn't always too far from the real you,
(21:53):
the flesh and blood you. Uh, this is very interesting.
It's from an article called is It a Game? Evidence
for Social Influence in the Virtual World. It was published
in the journal Social Influence. And in the study, which
was conducted by Paul W. Eastwick and Wendy L. Gardner,
one avatar tried to influence another to fulfill a request,
(22:15):
because we're talking about here is relationships. They were using
something called there dot com for this, which is kind
of like second life, this kind of limitless virtual environment
where people create little versions of themselves and then they
kind of teleport around and interact with each other. And
you know, a lot of the fun is just sort
of outfitting your character, uh, you know, giving it certain
physical characteristics, so on and so forth. But at the
(22:38):
end of the day, like I said, it really is
about communication, because you're just mirroring what you're already doing
in society, or at least this is what this paper
is saying. Um. So yeah, you've got these. You've got
one avatar trying to influence another to fulfill a request,
just like in life. Right, I asked something of you,
you asked something of me. We try to cooperate together
to get something done. Um. The experiment, or in this case,
(23:02):
an avatar, first snakes an unreasonably large request to which
the responder is expected to say no, followed by a
more moderate request. Yeah. I think it was something like
go to like twenty screenshots from a particular environment in
this in this uh this world. So it's like if
you were like playing one of these quest games like Skyrim,
and you just it was like a ridiculously, ridiculously complex
(23:25):
mission for some seemingly low payoff. So as I expected,
the avatars, which is similar to people who participated in
the same experiment in the real world, were more likely
to comply with the moderate request when it was preceded
by the large request. Then when the moderate request was
presented alone. Now that's kind of a that's a tactic
(23:46):
that I think a lot of people use, Like if
I just go in for the it's sort of like
if you asked for a raise. If I asked for
a million dollars, then it's a lot easier to get
to the maybe X amount that I want, as opposed
to if I just asked for a thousand dollar raise. Um.
So what you see is that they exhibited a psychological
tendency to reciprocate the requests concession that change from a
(24:09):
relatively unreasonable request to a more moderate request. So one
of the other more striking findings was the effect of
what they call the d I t F technique, which
it was during the face. This is the way that
they made the request was significantly reduced when the requesting
avatar was dark toned. The white avatars and the d
(24:29):
I t F experiment received about a increase in compliance
with the moderate request. The increase for the dark toned
avatars was eighty. And again, this is a virtual world,
so there's there's no telling on the other side of
a virtual character if they are black, if they're white,
if they are male or their female I mean in
second life you see people going around is like you know,
(24:49):
monkeys and cats and dogs and stuff, and you know,
and there are various other examples of people playing you know,
very inhuman characters. So on some level we know that
the person and they decide can be any thing, but
we still ended up end up buying into the vision
that is presented to us. Yeah, we're still tether to
some degree to our our prejudices and that the social
(25:12):
construction in our mind of what we think the world is. Um.
So I thought that was interesting that that still what
it boils down to is that even though you've created
this avatar and uh it's supposed to represent this duality
within yourself, you're still you're still socializing and cooperating or
not cooperating in the same sense that you would in
(25:32):
your life. And of course another thing to keep in
mind with all this is that in these video game interactions,
you're of course not making eye contact. Now. I like
to think of a of a of a future time
when our video game characters we will have our actual eyes.
I think that could be. I think that would be
really cool. Yeah, but for now, they most characters and
(25:53):
video games have just the dead soulless eyes of the
Uncanny Valley. Um. But but one of the studies we
were looking at, and this was where was this from?
This was from the University of Haifa in Israel. Yeah,
So they asked seventy one pairs of college students who
did not know one another to debate an issue over
instant mass messenger and try to come up with an
(26:15):
agreeable solution. And they did a couple of fasces of this.
But the ultimate finding was that when their eyes were hidden,
the participants were twice as likely to be hostile because
they had and some of the the the the subjects
were were you they're reasoning like a skype webcam technology
so that they can they can make eye contact during
these interactions and others not. And so when the eyes
are hidden, hostility is more likely to occur. Which is again,
(26:40):
you know you're you're outside of the social contract, right,
because the way that you know that you're in a
social contract is by witnessing the other person's reaction to you,
all the non verbal gesturing that gives you an indication
of how they're feeling. So if you can't see that,
then it makes sense that you would miss those cues
or that they just wouldn't be present and enough to
sort of get you to line up with acceptable behavior.
(27:03):
So this, of course is one of the reasons why
we see rude behavior running rampant online. Yeah, that's why
you see like these outrageous examples of trolls, you know,
where someone's just out there just being completely awful, and
you know they whenever they're eventually exposed there you know,
or not allay, they're not eventually exposed, but in the
cases where they're exposed, you see, oh well, this actually
(27:24):
seems like a fairly normal person. How are they that
awful online? And you know it's because they're they're on
some level, they're not they don't see themselves as interacting
with real people. They're just kind of interacting with automatons. Yeah,
so I think they'll be interesting to see if the
shadow self, this sense of shadow self, becomes more acceptable
(27:45):
as we continue to communicate online and that we this
this duality maybe disappears a bit, because again, we we
think of ourselves as this continuity, right this script director,
and our our brain saying you are this, You're a
good person, you have integrity, you moved throughout the day
in the following ways, but then we act another way
when nobody is looking. So how much of that will
(28:07):
you know in the future be acceptable or not acceptable? Yeah. Finally,
the world of fiction, which we've talked about this before,
the story of the power of storytelling, the power of fiction.
But there was a little study that we ran across
that that ties in nicely with what we're talking about here,
and this is from Brigamany Young University research team led
by Sarah M. Coney, and she writes up in this
(28:31):
instance for the British Journal of Social Psychology, and she
was looking at how exposure to aggressive behavior in literature
has a psychological impact on readers. So in this case
they had to the test subjects read two different versions
of a story, like some people will read a story
where the outcome is that the conflict is solved with violence,
and in the other the conflict is not solved with violence.
(28:53):
And in both the cases they found that provoked people
who were given the opportunity to engage in the pacifics
civic form of rertalatory violence were more likely to do
so if they had just read a fictional account of
similar activities. So, in other words, the individuals who just
read this thing where someone solves a problem with violence.
If they are then if they then encounter a real
(29:14):
life conflict, they're more likely to be aggressive in that
that incident, which I I hadn't stumbled upon that study
until we started doing research on this, because we, like
you said, we've done We've covered this subject quite a
bit in the ability of the reader to take on
the persona of the character and also mirror neurons, uh,
(29:38):
you know, firing at the same time that a character
is throwing a ball in a book. Right. But to
see this, this concrete manifestation of the abstract aggression is
pretty amazing. And then I think that it points to
this idea that this again, that self is a very
tenuous thing, that this consciousness, this continue a d factory
(30:00):
that we try to have in our head of turning
out this idea of who we are isn't quite as
solid as we think it is. Yeah, And then then
we had this other study. We looked at researchers from
Ohio State University and they conducted like six different experiments
on about five different participants, and they found that stories
written in the first person can temporarily transform the way
(30:22):
readers view the world, themselves and other social groups. So,
for instance, they that they were particularly interested at one
point in what would happen when individuals were reading about
a character and then that character was then revealed to
be homosexual. This particular experiment, they had like seventy heterosexual
males and that they read this story and uh, they
(30:43):
found that it depending on where in the narrative the
revelation was made, it it had a big impact on
how they, uh they felt about the protagonist being gay,
and and also how they just envisioned that character. Like
if if it was revealed early in the story, then
they brought in a lot of baggage and a lot
of conceptions about what a gay character should be. But
(31:03):
if they revealed it later, then then all that stuff
wasn't necessarily thrown into the mix because they had a
chance to try to occupy that person's Yeah right, yeah,
very cool stuff. Yeah, it really makes you think about
the power of first person narratives, Like I instantly started
thinking about um Joyce Carol Oates book Zombie, which is
(31:24):
the first person perspective and the character is based loosely
on Jeffrey Dalmer. So you have a very dark and
troubled individual and you and and then I think that's
maybe the thing that's so you know, narcotic about text
like that is that it puts you in the mindset
of this individual. It is seemingly far removed from who
(31:45):
you are. But then ultimately you have to act yourself
how far removed if I'm able to embody that person
when I read this you? Uh, that was in the
book swap right for our early holiday gathering. Yeah, Lauren
the new co host on Tech Stuff, got that one.
So so right now she is her nightmarage. She's having
nightmares in the corner Jeffrey Dahmer. I'm just I'm gonna
(32:09):
throw some subluinal things out today Jeffrey Dahmer and just
see how she reacts. Wow. So um so, like I
say I said earlier, it makes me think about avatars,
not only in the in the the online avatar sense,
but in the the the old idea of the avatar,
which is steeped in Hinduism, comes from the Sanskrit word avatar,
(32:29):
which means descent, and the idea here is that you
have a god um and that God is just immaterial
and just completely separate from the physical world, and then
to descend to the physical world, the god has to
take on a form uh that can be understood by
the physical world and that can interact with the physical world.
For instance, Vishnu has ten different avatars, and they range
(32:52):
from there's a fish, there's a tortoise as a bore,
there's a dwarf, there's a and then and then there's Krishna,
and then there's Buddha, and then there's a pen the
avatar that's uh the form of a white horse with wings,
and it's a destroyer that will come at the end
of the world. So can I really like this this uh,
this metaphor for ourselves and the various selves we present,
(33:14):
you know, think of your your your ultimate inner thoughts
and everything that's going on inside you. You're kind of
like this vision of this this formless thing. And then
to interact with the physical world. To descend to the
physical world, you have to take on these various forms,
and they need different things and they have different applications
in different environments. Right, So that the type of self
(33:34):
that we roll out really sort of depends on which
avatar we need at the moment. Uh. You know what
one of my avatars is what's a duck? So Julie
takes on the form of the duck and uh, and
how do you use that avatar? Well, it doesn't really speak,
so I don't know. Alright, Shall we bring over the robots.
Let's call the robot over here and we'll do a
(33:55):
couple of quick listener mails. All right, Well, we've heard
a lot of great comments on our episodes on mazes
and labyrinths, and we heard from Andrew. Andrew writes and
this says, Hi, guys love the podcast and especially love
the episodes dealing with mazes and labyrinths. I think it
is noteworthy that modern psychology has been applied to the
construction of malls and shopping spaces that specifically create maze
(34:17):
or labyrinth like environments. Have either of you ever been
to Ikea? Of course we have because we live in
the same city as one, so everyone has to go.
It's it's a lot of mandatory. Um. The place is
a labyrinth, no two ways about it. You walk in
and you follow a path of consumption uh and leave
next to the entrance. Uh. This psychological tool of peace
(34:39):
and religious expansion is being used to proliferate consumer culture. Uh.
And then he goes on to say, you know, it's
rather different inside of a mall environment, where it's just
it's like a maze. There are all these like how
do I get out of here? How do I get
to the store I want to go to? How do
I escape the horrors of the food court? All these
questions come up, whereas indeed, I kea is so well
(34:59):
laid out and o versed in design that there's a path,
you flow, it's it's at least for the first hour,
it's a calming experience. Um and uh. And the book
that we we discussed in in in Maps and Labyrinths
also makes that point in regard to to hospitals and
similar environments. One of the problems there, of course, is
(35:21):
that you end up with a maze like hospital because
in many cases that you build part of a hospital
and then you build another wing onto it, and there's
another wing here, so you have all these layers coming
together to form this this this thing where there's no
cohesive design in place, which heightens your anxiety, particularly if
you're at the hospital to visit someone or you yourself
checking in. So not necessarily this sort of design that
(35:43):
you want this. The book is called Healing Spaces. Healing Spaces. Yeah,
and and and we were talking about government buildings just
yesterday and how it has like this, you know, Kafka
bureaucratic layering of of as, like uh, ways to get
to where you need to go, and almost seems intentional,
(36:05):
like we're gonna make you go down this a mile
long hallway and then we're gonna give you directions that
are you know, twenty different directions on top of that.
Um so, yeah, all right, well, here here a couple
more that. This one is from Jill Jill Wrightson and
says hello, thanks for the fantastic podcast. Labyrinth have become
close to my heart over the past few years. After
(36:25):
my husband and I eloped to San Francisco, we had
a marriage blessing at Grace Cathedral where I saw my
first labyrinth. He walked it and it was beautiful to
see every step really count. I was not comfortable to
have a prayer for or meditative practice in the open,
but I did find this box and book picture below,
and she included some some very some excellent to photographs
that there of labyrinths. At Christmas this year for my
(36:48):
own practice, the tracing and breath are a good connection
for me. I completely agree with what you said about
the mazes. They're frustrating and I don't know why they
were included in this pack. She's referring to the pack
of Mazes laborage. Yet meditative maze did prove to be
an oxymoron because the flas we discovered's nothing meditative about
being lost. Thanks again for all you do. It is
(37:08):
appreciated down here in Orlando. And then we also heard
from Kelly Kelly Road and said, hello, I just finished
listening to the Labyrinth episode and wanted to thank you
for all the interesting facts. I am actually getting married
in a labyrinth this August. My husband and I were
legally married last March, but postponed our larger ceremony and
reception as I was nine months pregnant and couldn't see
(37:29):
my feet. Now that our beautiful baby boys here, we
are renewing our vows and having an actual ceremony and reception.
Our ceremony is being held here in the center of
a labyrinth, which is set in the woods here in
Illinois where we live. We like the idea of the
ceremony being a meditative experience. I plan to have a
sign near the entrance offering a brief explanation and history
of labyrinth and inviting people to sneak away from the
(37:50):
reception to try it for themselves. I will definitely use
some of the facts you've covered in the show. Thanks
again for a great episode, and if you read this
on the show, I just want to say thanks to
my has been chat and my son's Kaden and Silas
for being the three most wonderful guys on the planet. Kelly, Yeah,
that's sweet. I think it's very cool to have a
ceremony and elabyrinths. It is, yeah and yeah interesting to
(38:12):
see to hear from two different listeners who have employed
labyrinths in their their ceremony. All right, well, if you
have something you would like to share with us, be
it about mazes and labyrinths, or be it about the
shadow self? Um, actors, I know we have some actors
out there. Uh, let us know how that works in
your mind? What's it like to take on a character? Uh?
(38:34):
And you know, do you use the method to to
any degree? Um? If we have anyone who has done
any kind of undercover work, be it like official, you know,
hard and gritty, undercover work or something a little more mundane. Uh,
you know, some sort of like even public performance kind
of thing where you're having to put on a character
to deceive people. Uh, don't tell us, don't you know.
(38:57):
But but but seriously, if you've engaged in anything like that,
we'd love to hear some more inside on how that
feels and how you feel yourself embodied in the character
that you're being, or how you feel that character affecting you.
So I'd love to hear from you about any of that.
You can find us on Tumblr and you can find
us on Facebook. We are stuff to blow your mind
on both of those, and you can also drop us
(39:18):
a 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 and I'm Julie. In this episode,
we're gonna be talking about undercover actors in the shadows self. Now.
We're following up our pro wrestling episode The Keeping Cafe,
(00:25):
which published just prior to this one, UH. And in
that episode, we talk a lot about this UH, about
the idea of layering reality with these with fiction, particularly
as it involves institutions and sports and UH and product
performance products that are given to to an audience, layering
it with fiction to improve upon it and change it.
(00:46):
And we touched a little bit about what happens when
you put these layers of fiction upon yourself. We talked
to pro wrestler Colt Cabana Quis him a little bit
about what it's like when he has to play a
villain in the ring and then when he leaves the ring, uh,
you know, how he's able to shut that off, but
how he still feels like there is a certain amount
of him that is UH, that escapes into this villainous character.
(01:09):
And likewise there's a there's an aspect of him in
the really goody were not really goody two shoes, but
the good guy version of himself that he also portrays.
So in this episode, we're going to continue the sort
of exploration, but we're gonna be looking beyond the world
of pro wrestlers and looking into the world of actors
method acting, for instance, We're gonna look at undercover cops, uh,
(01:32):
and we're also going to look at our online selves
a little bit. And before we do so, just wanted
to UM, let you know a little bit about cafe
being in case you didn't hear the other episode. Cafe
is a term that's an old Carney term that he's
uh used to indicate that someone should keep being fake.
In other words, if you are wrestling, UM, and you're
(01:56):
it's a fake wrestling match, you want to make sure
you don't break out of characters, so you want a
cave ape, right. And we talked in that other episode
about how kfaving really pervades the fabric of our culture,
and this is something that has come up, I believe
with Cold Cabana. Um it has come up and uh
Eric Weinstein's article about k fabing uh that you can
(02:17):
find it everywhere. You can find it in reality shows
because a lot of these reality shows, as we know,
are scripted, and yet the audience doesn't seem to care
much like in pro wrestling, right that they don't care
that there's k saving going on. It's about the spectacle. Yeah,
and uh, but then it can also end up sort
of warping the individual, or seeming to because we asked
Cold about this and he said that, yeah, there are
(02:38):
times where a particular wrestler lets their gimmick, let's their
their fictional self, um, kind of alter their their real self.
Like they'll they'll buy into the gimmick too much, they'll
believe the hype about the character they betray, and on
some level it becomes with confused with who they are. Yeah,
that's why Eric Weinstein in his essay alluded to that
(03:00):
and said that sometimes they believe these confabulations of their
storylines so much so, like for instance, some sort of
infidelity or adultery, that they will actually then go on
to commit adultery. Some of these pro wrestlers and some
of these various storylines that they've had to play out.
So we start thinking about that, and of course we
look at ourselves and start to wonder, okay, what about
(03:22):
our own minds and our own consciousness and sense of
self Because when we get up in the morning, we
basically have to put on our public selves right when
we go out the door. And what is this story
that we're telling ourselves? What is this script that we're
we're following for ourselves? Yeah, and ultimately, who is that guy?
Who is that girl that you are in these various
(03:43):
environments like who's that Who's that person that you are
on the subway train versus that person that you are
in the office, versus that person that you are, uh,
you know, say tucked into bed with your significant other
or you know, talking to the cat in the meddle,
And I don't know. It's like every different an environment,
every different interaction with the external world, it tends to
(04:05):
summon a different you. Yeah. And although we tend to
think that we've got this continuity director in our head
making sure that we're always the same person we we
purport ourselves to be, there are opportunities for us to
break from the script. And that's what we're gonna look
at a little bit today. And when you start thinking
about scripts, of course, we have to look at actors yes, now, yeah,
(04:29):
when you start thinking about actors, and certainly that comes up.
You know, we're talking about like pro wrestlers who are
in an angle where they have to pretend they're having
an affair, and then they end up having the affair.
I mean, you can think of various examples of actors
and and they end up meeting on a set where
they're playing significant others and then they end up being
significant others to a certain extent, you know, And and
(04:49):
certainly I even remember I was in a community play
adaptation of seventy six. I was Thomas Jefferson and uh
and I ended up dating um Mrs Jefferson after the play. Uh.
So you feel like that the groundwork was put there
and that it was just like that whole debate about
whether or not you have any free will. It was
like the suggestion was there and you followed it. Maybe
(05:12):
I don't know, it's it's possible, but but but certainly
you see this at times. You see people that that,
and you hear stories about actors really getting into their roles,
particularly as far as method acting is concerned. So method
acting uh generally combines uh, the the you know, the
actor's consideration of the character's psychological motives and personal identification,
(05:34):
like they're they're getting there trying to get their mind
inside that of the character they're portraying, Like they're they're
asking themselves, who is this person? And then what do
I need to do to connect with them? Like how
can I connect my own feelings with the feelings of
this character and and therefore create a more um believable
presentation on the screen, this versus more you know, a
(05:56):
more traditional, like non method approach, where one just simply
it gets up there and and you know, recites the
lines and does so in a way that that mimics um,
legitimate deep felt emotion and uh. And then there's of course,
there are stories plenty of stories about actors who supposedly
like don't break character, like for like an entire week
(06:18):
of fifth filming, even though they're only filming like during
the day, like they're they're they're staying in character outside
of the picture um and uh. And the and those
stories are like you people get a little um auntsie
about that, particularly people who really follow the method. Uh,
and they'll say, well, that's not really what method acting
is all about, that's not what was actually you know,
(06:40):
originally part of the method as it was conceived. And
then you also have some some stories that just simply
didn't happen, like one of the famous ones is is
supposedly and again this is has never happened. But Solrence
Olivia and Dustin Hoffman, Um, we're on the seat of
Marathon Man and and Dustin Hoffman shows up just looking
like hell, just dirty and just just strong outlooking because
(07:00):
his character is supposed to be. And he explained, and
he explains it in preparation for the scene, he stayed
up all night and he didn't bathe and all this,
and Olivier supposedly responded by saying, my good Sarah, why
don't you just try acting? Ha ha ha. And it's
supposed to know, it's supposed to be a good laugh
at the method actor has expense saying, well, why don't
you just pretend to be the thing that you are
instead of trying to embody it. But what I like
(07:22):
about that is that's cafe being the cafebe, you know,
because here's this fake story about this about fake in reality, right, um, yeah,
And I think that's really interesting. What I like about
actors is I think they're very interesting creatures because they
are dealing with this duality of nature, right, and they
(07:45):
are having to inhabit this space and try to do
so in a way that really fools us. Right um.
Actor Tandy Newton has a great ted dot com talk
and she talks about what it's like to be an
actor and what it's like to inhabit another character, and
she has some interesting thoughts on it, and we just
(08:06):
wanted to share some quotes with you. She talks about
this idea that she always felt separate from other people.
She always felt like the other, particularly because she was
someone of color in England growing up and write away
and a female and so here she is already the other.
So she talked about this idea of oneness and separateness.
(08:26):
She said, our little portion of oneness is given a name,
is told all kinds of things about itself, and these details,
opinions and ideas become facts which go towards building ourselves,
our identity. So she's talking about this idea of self
and this little bit of self we can grab in
the world and define ourselves by. And she says, and
(08:46):
that self becomes the vehicle for navigating our social world.
But the self is a projection based on other people's projections.
Is it who we really are or who we really
want to be or should be. So she says that
this whole interaction with self and identity was really difficult
for her growing up. So she said that when she
found acting it was revelatory. She said, I can hardly
(09:08):
find the words to describe the piece I felt when
I was acting, my dysfunctional self could actually plug into
another self, not my own, and it felt so good.
Because she says that while she had a degree from
cab Cambridge, a thriving career, she herself was a bit
of a car wreck because she was so invested in
(09:29):
this idea of self and she hadn't quite yet figured
out that it is just a projection, it's an illusion.
And she says that that this, this idea of self
is something that we value above all else, and we've
created an entire value system in a physical reality to
support the worth of self. Yeah, it reminds me of
the study that we ran across. And this is from
(09:51):
Ellie a contage from the University of Amsterdam. She was
curious how much how much actors are aware of their
performance when they perform it and how into what extent
they're letting a character take over. Because we've we've we've
heard we've heard that before. We heard a little of
that from Cold Cabana about you know, you're you're playing
this character and you just your your juices get flowing
(10:11):
and you just you embody the character kind of possesses you. Right. So,
um So, this study was interested in that. So she
asked Dutch actors to rate their own emotions and the
emotions of the characters they were playing across a range
of different states from disgust to anxiety, tenderness, pleasure, fear,
et cetera. And as she found that positive emotions were
(10:34):
often felt by the actors as they played those characters emotions,
but the more and more negative the emotion that they
were supposed to portray, the less likely it was that
the actor word report actually feeling that emotion. So so
so in this study they found that actors were better
able to connect and be taken over by those positive feelings. Okay,
so they were able then to manage that system of
(10:56):
not being influenced so much by by their emotions are
the emotions of the character? Um See, this is why
I think It's such an interesting mind game, this acting,
because you do, you get into some very weird territory
about who you are and what reality is. Yeah, and
we've discussed before too, like we're talking about chest opening exercises,
(11:16):
which we talked about laughter and smiling and laughter. Year
then all this and it, you know, comes out to
that kind of that fake it till you make it
kind of vibe, the idea that just on a physical level,
if we, you know, we smile and it makes us,
it makes us begin to feel the emotions that would
have made the smile. When we put the effect out there,
(11:38):
it generates the cause, even if there was no cause.
And so what Tanny Newton is saying is that when
when you think about this self and you think, okay,
well I'm happy today, and and if you are so
malleable that you allow all these different forces to act
upon you, then what you're doing is you're confusing self
(12:00):
for actual living Because what she says is that it's uh,
the self is not an actual living thing. It's projection,
which are clever brains create in order to cheat ourselves
from the reality of death. So she's saying that it's
our ability to divorce ourselves from the concept of self
and then ground ourselves in others and outside experiences. That
(12:21):
really liberates us and allows us to live fully. So
I liked what she had to say about this from
an actor's perspective, because, Um, there there is a ton
of duality going on here. So what do you mistake
for the real thing? And what is the real thing?
I think is what we're trying to get at here.
Um In Underscore you get into questions of what is
(12:43):
there a real thing? Is there is there anything at
the heart of this or is it just a bunch
of masks encircling the formless um? And then and then
to what extent are some is something? If there is
a true you, then to what extent is the fake you?
Almost as powerful there was. There's a really great episode,
I think a shorty of Radio Lab that aired recently
(13:03):
called What's Up doc Um. I recommend you guys checking
it out, And I know a lot of you are
Radio lap fans anyway, But it concerned mel Blank of course,
the classic voice actor who you know did the voice
of Bugs, Bunny and countless others and voice and uh.
In the end up they talked to his son in
(13:23):
this episode, and he talks about like when he played
these care it wasn't just like all right, I'm gonna
do Wacky Voice number one in vacky Wacky Voice number two.
I mean he was there was almost there was a
sort of method acting mentality there where he knew these characters.
He would embody them and even though he's just doing
the audio, he would act out. You know, you could
you'd see physically his he was different when he was
doing one for voice versus the other, and uh and so.
(13:46):
And in this episode they talked about how at one
point he was in this horrible crash car crash on
dead Men's Curve in Hollywood Boulevard and he nearly died,
and he was he was out for two weeks in
a coma, and he would not spond to anyone, respond
to anyone. But then how do they get him to respond?
That's the crazy part. Well, this is yeah, this is
the crazy part. His neurosurgeon, Dr Conway, Uh, just he said,
(14:12):
out of nowhere, he just decided to call him bugs
Bunny called Mel Blank, one of his character's bugs Bunny
and said, uh, something like, hey, bugs, how are you
doing today? And then Mel Blank actually responded as bugs bunny,
what's up back? And in character right, he responds, he
(14:34):
comes out of his comma, basically inhabiting this character, and
he goes through a couple of other voices, um, I think,
including Porky Daffy and fog Horn Lankhorn, until he himself
mel Blank, the person the self that that we all
think of, is sitting there saying what's going on? Where
(14:54):
am I? So, Timmy, it points to this amazing moment
where you do have this question of like, well, how
much of mel Blank is the characters? And how much
of those characters is are is mel Blank? You know? Um?
To what degree is he himself or this fictionalized character
(15:15):
that he's inhabited. Now this leads us into another area
as we discussed earlier undercover cops, undercover agents, vice operatives
and uh and you know, in the interview with Colt Cabana,
and we asked him briefly about you know, what it's
like when he's out there and he's portraying a bad guy.
He has his character, the officer, Colt Cabana is like
a you know, vile uh, you know, foul mouth the
(15:38):
policeman and uh. And then he has to go back,
you know, he has to leave the ring, go into
the backstage area. And he says he's able to shut
it off like it's not. It doesn't bleed over into
his life after the fact. And of course that brings
to mind again these these vice officers, police officers who
have to go out and pretend to be drug dealers,
(15:58):
pretend to be, um, you know what happened some sort
of criminal element in order to infiltrate it and and
you know, and and actually get the actual criminals and
get them arrested. So what happens when they're doing that?
What happens when they have to play that part? And
then is there is there the chance that the the
the the criminal element they're pretending to be becomes the
(16:22):
real them? Did they end up? You know, essentially they're
pretending to be this monster and then the monster consumes
them and it does happen. Yeah, I mean this is
a high wire act, right, and um, you have a
bit about how there have been some instances right where
that shadow self has taken over. Yeah, yeah, And this
is of course, this is important stuff. This is stuff
(16:43):
that's been that's been studied because ultimately you're talking about
law enforcement, which is important. You're talking about individuals risking
their their lives and and ultimately their their sanity to
to engage in these kind of operations. So uh. Dr
Michael or Ato a professor of psychology at the University
of Ottawa. He conducted a ten year study of undercover
(17:05):
agents and uh he he looked at seventy two undercover
cops and out of the seventy two, um, there were
there were six that ended up being disciplined for acting
inappropriately during their missions. So one for one person that
was using cocaine. For another, it was conspiracy to self
class to self classified information about ongoing investigations. For one,
(17:29):
it was actually selling classified informations. For another, it was
sexual involvement with a confidential informant. For another, excessive use
of force. And for another it was theft of money
from an evidence locker. UM. I mean and uh And
you see the varying degrees of of shadiness in these
and you can imagine, like all right, you know, like
in the cocaine, you can imagine like a guy who's
posing as a drug dealer being put in a position
(17:51):
where he has to use the drug or someone says, hey,
he's you know, not hey use that drug, but but
you know, encouraging them to sample it to prove their worth.
You kind of see that as a trope in various
undercover cop movies anyway. But then other stuff like stealing
money from an evidence locker, like that's more of I
have come back from the role I'm pretending to be
(18:11):
and now I'm actually that in the evidence locker. I'm
that at at the base, at the home um where
I'm supposed to leave this criminal fake me behind. So
his ultimate finding, uh Dr Garrotto's finding was that undercover
agents with a disciplined self image and control of their
impulses almost unwaveringly saw themselves as merely playing the part
(18:34):
of a drug dealer. So like Cold Cabana or or
any number of actors, and out there they were able
to say, all right, um no, I'm back home now,
and at home, I'm the real me. I am this
version of me, and that other thing that that the
drug dealer that I was just pretending to be for
like six hours, that's just a show. That's just a fake.
So ultimately he says that it's what you need is
(18:57):
an internal set of social standards that prevent you from
losing your sense of identity. Yeah, it makes me think
back to our episode on will power and self control,
and I wonder if living a double life creates a
heavy cognitive load. We talked about this cognitive loade and
that if you have to remember, you know, let's say
(19:21):
two or more items as opposed to ten items, and
then have to take some sort of UM test and
self control afterward, you're going to be less likely to
follow through with self control if you have a high
cognitive load. So, in other words, if you're a double agent,
or you have a double life, then you have to
keep in mind this entire other story, which might erode
(19:42):
some of that self control, uh and lead to some
of these ego depletion that we've talked about before too.
That you just have a finite amount of mental energy
to dedicate to certain tasks. So I can see how
the shadow self could kind of take over very easily
in that instance. UM wanted to mention to that. Psychologist
Dr Alan Sillarian has has talked about what it's like
(20:05):
to work with secret agents. He says, the most secret
agents I have met have two signature traits fearlessness and
a high tolerance for anxiety. Whether because of bio biological
factors such as an elevated level of the mood enhancing
neurochemical serotonin, or because of the influences of their early lives,
these people seem to be extreme risk takers who can
(20:26):
tolerate and manage worry, tension, and stress with natural ease.
So you have to wonder that what point are the
stakes so high that the tension um begins to to
erode some of that self control. All right, well, we're
gonna take a quick break and when we come back,
we are going to discuss fiction. We're going to discuss avatars.
(20:46):
And when I say avatars, not only are you going
to talk a little bit about your online avatar, but
also the the older concept of the avatar itself and
not the movie. All right, we're back, and uh, we're
gonna talk a little bit about avatars here about the
online self, because this is a you know, we've discussed
(21:08):
already this idea that that we we assume different personas
U two varying conscious degrees whenever we're interacting with the
outside world. There there's a slightly different you when you're
talking to your mother. Uh, there's a slightly different you
when you're talking to the grosser, you know it. It's
(21:29):
there's just all these different masks swirling around the the
ephemeral self, and we just put on those different masks
to interact with the world. But here's this avatar, this
opportunity to build a new you from the ground up, right,
And what they found, Now, what some researchers have found
is that it isn't always too far from the real you,
(21:53):
the flesh and blood you. Uh, this is very interesting.
It's from an article called is It a Game? Evidence
for Social Influence in the Virtual World. It was published
in the journal Social Influence. And in the study, which
was conducted by Paul W. Eastwick and Wendy L. Gardner,
one avatar tried to influence another to fulfill a request,
(22:15):
because we're talking about here is relationships. They were using
something called there dot com for this, which is kind
of like second life, this kind of limitless virtual environment
where people create little versions of themselves and then they
kind of teleport around and interact with each other. And
you know, a lot of the fun is just sort
of outfitting your character, uh, you know, giving it certain
physical characteristics, so on and so forth. But at the
(22:38):
end of the day, like I said, it really is
about communication, because you're just mirroring what you're already doing
in society, or at least this is what this paper
is saying. Um. So yeah, you've got these. You've got
one avatar trying to influence another to fulfill a request,
just like in life. Right, I asked something of you,
you asked something of me. We try to cooperate together
to get something done. Um. The experiment, or in this case,
(23:02):
an avatar, first snakes an unreasonably large request to which
the responder is expected to say no, followed by a
more moderate request. Yeah. I think it was something like
go to like twenty screenshots from a particular environment in
this in this uh this world. So it's like if
you were like playing one of these quest games like Skyrim,
and you just it was like a ridiculously, ridiculously complex
(23:25):
mission for some seemingly low payoff. So as I expected,
the avatars, which is similar to people who participated in
the same experiment in the real world, were more likely
to comply with the moderate request when it was preceded
by the large request. Then when the moderate request was
presented alone. Now that's kind of a that's a tactic
(23:46):
that I think a lot of people use, Like if
I just go in for the it's sort of like
if you asked for a raise. If I asked for
a million dollars, then it's a lot easier to get
to the maybe X amount that I want, as opposed
to if I just asked for a thousand dollar raise. Um.
So what you see is that they exhibited a psychological
tendency to reciprocate the requests concession that change from a
(24:09):
relatively unreasonable request to a more moderate request. So one
of the other more striking findings was the effect of
what they call the d I t F technique, which
it was during the face. This is the way that
they made the request was significantly reduced when the requesting
avatar was dark toned. The white avatars and the d
(24:29):
I t F experiment received about a increase in compliance
with the moderate request. The increase for the dark toned
avatars was eighty. And again, this is a virtual world,
so there's there's no telling on the other side of
a virtual character if they are black, if they're white,
if they are male or their female I mean in
second life you see people going around is like you know,
(24:49):
monkeys and cats and dogs and stuff, and you know,
and there are various other examples of people playing you know,
very inhuman characters. So on some level we know that
the person and they decide can be any thing, but
we still ended up end up buying into the vision
that is presented to us. Yeah, we're still tether to
some degree to our our prejudices and that the social
(25:12):
construction in our mind of what we think the world is. Um.
So I thought that was interesting that that still what
it boils down to is that even though you've created
this avatar and uh it's supposed to represent this duality
within yourself, you're still you're still socializing and cooperating or
not cooperating in the same sense that you would in
(25:32):
your life. And of course another thing to keep in
mind with all this is that in these video game interactions,
you're of course not making eye contact. Now. I like
to think of a of a of a future time
when our video game characters we will have our actual eyes.
I think that could be. I think that would be
really cool. Yeah, but for now, they most characters and
(25:53):
video games have just the dead soulless eyes of the
Uncanny Valley. Um. But but one of the studies we
were looking at, and this was where was this from?
This was from the University of Haifa in Israel. Yeah,
So they asked seventy one pairs of college students who
did not know one another to debate an issue over
instant mass messenger and try to come up with an
(26:15):
agreeable solution. And they did a couple of fasces of this.
But the ultimate finding was that when their eyes were hidden,
the participants were twice as likely to be hostile because
they had and some of the the the the subjects
were were you they're reasoning like a skype webcam technology
so that they can they can make eye contact during
these interactions and others not. And so when the eyes
are hidden, hostility is more likely to occur. Which is again,
(26:40):
you know you're you're outside of the social contract, right,
because the way that you know that you're in a
social contract is by witnessing the other person's reaction to you,
all the non verbal gesturing that gives you an indication
of how they're feeling. So if you can't see that,
then it makes sense that you would miss those cues
or that they just wouldn't be present and enough to
sort of get you to line up with acceptable behavior.
(27:03):
So this, of course is one of the reasons why
we see rude behavior running rampant online. Yeah, that's why
you see like these outrageous examples of trolls, you know,
where someone's just out there just being completely awful, and
you know they whenever they're eventually exposed there you know,
or not allay, they're not eventually exposed, but in the
cases where they're exposed, you see, oh well, this actually
(27:24):
seems like a fairly normal person. How are they that
awful online? And you know it's because they're they're on
some level, they're not they don't see themselves as interacting
with real people. They're just kind of interacting with automatons. Yeah,
so I think they'll be interesting to see if the
shadow self, this sense of shadow self, becomes more acceptable
(27:45):
as we continue to communicate online and that we this
this duality maybe disappears a bit, because again, we we
think of ourselves as this continuity, right this script director,
and our our brain saying you are this, You're a
good person, you have integrity, you moved throughout the day
in the following ways, but then we act another way
when nobody is looking. So how much of that will
(28:07):
you know in the future be acceptable or not acceptable? Yeah. Finally,
the world of fiction, which we've talked about this before,
the story of the power of storytelling, the power of fiction.
But there was a little study that we ran across
that that ties in nicely with what we're talking about here,
and this is from Brigamany Young University research team led
by Sarah M. Coney, and she writes up in this
(28:31):
instance for the British Journal of Social Psychology, and she
was looking at how exposure to aggressive behavior in literature
has a psychological impact on readers. So in this case
they had to the test subjects read two different versions
of a story, like some people will read a story
where the outcome is that the conflict is solved with violence,
and in the other the conflict is not solved with violence.
(28:53):
And in both the cases they found that provoked people
who were given the opportunity to engage in the pacifics
civic form of rertalatory violence were more likely to do
so if they had just read a fictional account of
similar activities. So, in other words, the individuals who just
read this thing where someone solves a problem with violence.
If they are then if they then encounter a real
(29:14):
life conflict, they're more likely to be aggressive in that
that incident, which I I hadn't stumbled upon that study
until we started doing research on this, because we, like
you said, we've done We've covered this subject quite a
bit in the ability of the reader to take on
the persona of the character and also mirror neurons, uh,
(29:38):
you know, firing at the same time that a character
is throwing a ball in a book. Right. But to
see this, this concrete manifestation of the abstract aggression is
pretty amazing. And then I think that it points to
this idea that this again, that self is a very
tenuous thing, that this consciousness, this continue a d factory
(30:00):
that we try to have in our head of turning
out this idea of who we are isn't quite as
solid as we think it is. Yeah, And then then
we had this other study. We looked at researchers from
Ohio State University and they conducted like six different experiments
on about five different participants, and they found that stories
written in the first person can temporarily transform the way
(30:22):
readers view the world, themselves and other social groups. So,
for instance, they that they were particularly interested at one
point in what would happen when individuals were reading about
a character and then that character was then revealed to
be homosexual. This particular experiment, they had like seventy heterosexual
males and that they read this story and uh, they
(30:43):
found that it depending on where in the narrative the
revelation was made, it it had a big impact on
how they, uh they felt about the protagonist being gay,
and and also how they just envisioned that character. Like
if if it was revealed early in the story, then
they brought in a lot of baggage and a lot
of conceptions about what a gay character should be. But
(31:03):
if they revealed it later, then then all that stuff
wasn't necessarily thrown into the mix because they had a
chance to try to occupy that person's Yeah right, yeah,
very cool stuff. Yeah, it really makes you think about
the power of first person narratives, Like I instantly started
thinking about um Joyce Carol Oates book Zombie, which is
(31:24):
the first person perspective and the character is based loosely
on Jeffrey Dalmer. So you have a very dark and
troubled individual and you and and then I think that's
maybe the thing that's so you know, narcotic about text
like that is that it puts you in the mindset
of this individual. It is seemingly far removed from who
(31:45):
you are. But then ultimately you have to act yourself
how far removed if I'm able to embody that person
when I read this you? Uh, that was in the
book swap right for our early holiday gathering. Yeah, Lauren
the new co host on Tech Stuff, got that one.
So so right now she is her nightmarage. She's having
nightmares in the corner Jeffrey Dahmer. I'm just I'm gonna
(32:09):
throw some subluinal things out today Jeffrey Dahmer and just
see how she reacts. Wow. So um so, like I
say I said earlier, it makes me think about avatars,
not only in the in the the online avatar sense,
but in the the the old idea of the avatar,
which is steeped in Hinduism, comes from the Sanskrit word avatar,
(32:29):
which means descent, and the idea here is that you
have a god um and that God is just immaterial
and just completely separate from the physical world, and then
to descend to the physical world, the god has to
take on a form uh that can be understood by
the physical world and that can interact with the physical world.
For instance, Vishnu has ten different avatars, and they range
(32:52):
from there's a fish, there's a tortoise as a bore,
there's a dwarf, there's a and then and then there's Krishna,
and then there's Buddha, and then there's a pen the
avatar that's uh the form of a white horse with wings,
and it's a destroyer that will come at the end
of the world. So can I really like this this uh,
this metaphor for ourselves and the various selves we present,
(33:14):
you know, think of your your your ultimate inner thoughts
and everything that's going on inside you. You're kind of
like this vision of this this formless thing. And then
to interact with the physical world. To descend to the
physical world, you have to take on these various forms,
and they need different things and they have different applications
in different environments. Right, So that the type of self
(33:34):
that we roll out really sort of depends on which
avatar we need at the moment. Uh. You know what
one of my avatars is what's a duck? So Julie
takes on the form of the duck and uh, and
how do you use that avatar? Well, it doesn't really speak,
so I don't know. Alright, Shall we bring over the robots.
Let's call the robot over here and we'll do a
(33:55):
couple of quick listener mails. All right, Well, we've heard
a lot of great comments on our episodes on mazes
and labyrinths, and we heard from Andrew. Andrew writes and
this says, Hi, guys love the podcast and especially love
the episodes dealing with mazes and labyrinths. I think it
is noteworthy that modern psychology has been applied to the
construction of malls and shopping spaces that specifically create maze
(34:17):
or labyrinth like environments. Have either of you ever been
to Ikea? Of course we have because we live in
the same city as one, so everyone has to go.
It's it's a lot of mandatory. Um. The place is
a labyrinth, no two ways about it. You walk in
and you follow a path of consumption uh and leave
next to the entrance. Uh. This psychological tool of peace
(34:39):
and religious expansion is being used to proliferate consumer culture. Uh.
And then he goes on to say, you know, it's
rather different inside of a mall environment, where it's just
it's like a maze. There are all these like how
do I get out of here? How do I get
to the store I want to go to? How do
I escape the horrors of the food court? All these
questions come up, whereas indeed, I kea is so well
(34:59):
laid out and o versed in design that there's a path,
you flow, it's it's at least for the first hour,
it's a calming experience. Um and uh. And the book
that we we discussed in in in Maps and Labyrinths
also makes that point in regard to to hospitals and
similar environments. One of the problems there, of course, is
(35:21):
that you end up with a maze like hospital because
in many cases that you build part of a hospital
and then you build another wing onto it, and there's
another wing here, so you have all these layers coming
together to form this this this thing where there's no
cohesive design in place, which heightens your anxiety, particularly if
you're at the hospital to visit someone or you yourself
checking in. So not necessarily this sort of design that
(35:43):
you want this. The book is called Healing Spaces. Healing Spaces. Yeah,
and and and we were talking about government buildings just
yesterday and how it has like this, you know, Kafka
bureaucratic layering of of as, like uh, ways to get
to where you need to go, and almost seems intentional,
(36:05):
like we're gonna make you go down this a mile
long hallway and then we're gonna give you directions that
are you know, twenty different directions on top of that.
Um so, yeah, all right, well, here here a couple
more that. This one is from Jill Jill Wrightson and
says hello, thanks for the fantastic podcast. Labyrinth have become
close to my heart over the past few years. After
(36:25):
my husband and I eloped to San Francisco, we had
a marriage blessing at Grace Cathedral where I saw my
first labyrinth. He walked it and it was beautiful to
see every step really count. I was not comfortable to
have a prayer for or meditative practice in the open,
but I did find this box and book picture below,
and she included some some very some excellent to photographs
that there of labyrinths. At Christmas this year for my
(36:48):
own practice, the tracing and breath are a good connection
for me. I completely agree with what you said about
the mazes. They're frustrating and I don't know why they
were included in this pack. She's referring to the pack
of Mazes laborage. Yet meditative maze did prove to be
an oxymoron because the flas we discovered's nothing meditative about
being lost. Thanks again for all you do. It is
(37:08):
appreciated down here in Orlando. And then we also heard
from Kelly Kelly Road and said, hello, I just finished
listening to the Labyrinth episode and wanted to thank you
for all the interesting facts. I am actually getting married
in a labyrinth this August. My husband and I were
legally married last March, but postponed our larger ceremony and
reception as I was nine months pregnant and couldn't see
(37:29):
my feet. Now that our beautiful baby boys here, we
are renewing our vows and having an actual ceremony and reception.
Our ceremony is being held here in the center of
a labyrinth, which is set in the woods here in
Illinois where we live. We like the idea of the
ceremony being a meditative experience. I plan to have a
sign near the entrance offering a brief explanation and history
of labyrinth and inviting people to sneak away from the
(37:50):
reception to try it for themselves. I will definitely use
some of the facts you've covered in the show. Thanks
again for a great episode, and if you read this
on the show, I just want to say thanks to
my has been chat and my son's Kaden and Silas
for being the three most wonderful guys on the planet. Kelly, Yeah,
that's sweet. I think it's very cool to have a
ceremony and elabyrinths. It is, yeah and yeah interesting to
(38:12):
see to hear from two different listeners who have employed
labyrinths in their their ceremony. All right, well, if you
have something you would like to share with us, be
it about mazes and labyrinths, or be it about the
shadow self? Um, actors, I know we have some actors
out there. Uh, let us know how that works in
your mind? What's it like to take on a character? Uh?
(38:34):
And you know, do you use the method to to
any degree? Um? If we have anyone who has done
any kind of undercover work, be it like official, you know,
hard and gritty, undercover work or something a little more mundane. Uh,
you know, some sort of like even public performance kind
of thing where you're having to put on a character
to deceive people. Uh, don't tell us, don't you know.
(38:57):
But but but seriously, if you've engaged in anything like that,
we'd love to hear some more inside on how that
feels and how you feel yourself embodied in the character
that you're being, or how you feel that character affecting you.
So I'd love to hear from you about any of that.
You can find us on Tumblr and you can find
us on Facebook. We are stuff to blow your mind
on both of those, and you can also drop us
(39:18):
a line at blow the Mind at discovery dot com
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