The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment

by A. J. Jacobs

  Then again, believing you have control—even if that control is an illusion—does make people happier. One study found that oldsters in a retirement home were happier when they thought they were controlling the heat, even when they weren’t. So maybe you have to balance two things: the unpleasant feeling I get from worrying about future surfing accidents versus the good feeling I get from at least trying to influence my kid’s future.

  And now I have just given myself a headache.

  SPONTANEOUS TRAIT TRANSFERENCE

  I’ve been struggling with a work dilemma. The problem is, I’ve become what is officially known as a “blurb whore.”

  Since I’ve written two books about going on unlikely quests (one about reading the encyclopedia, the other about living by the Bible), I’m now linked to the genre. So I’m getting sent a lot of manuscripts with titles like “Top Brass: One Man’s Humble Quest to Master the Flügelhorn.”

  Unless I really dislike the book, I try to say something nice about it, even if it’s to compliment the choice of typeface.

  But now I’ve been asked to endorse a bunch of books that hit shelves at the exact same time as the paperback of my Bible book. And these books are about religion. Should I really be cannibalizing my own sales?

  I think I’m going to have to be a jerk and say no. Which gives me a stomachache. Until I read about a cognitive bias called Spontaneous Trait Transference. This is a fascinating fallacy with huge implications.

  Here’s how author Gretchen Rubin, of Happiness-project .com, describes it:

  People will unintentionally associate what I say about the qualities of other people with my own qualities. So if I told Jean that Pat is arrogant, unconsciously Jean would associate that quality with me. On the other hand, if I said that Pat is brilliant or hilarious, I’d be linked to those qualities. What I say about other people sticks to me—even when I talk to someone who already knows me. So it behooves me to say only good things.

  This has got to be the most wonderful brain quirk around. It’s built-in biological karma. You trash-talk someone, it boomerangs back on you. You say kind things, you become a hero. So calling a book “ingenious” actually makes people think I’m ingenious. Being a blurb whore is good business.

  Of course, I know, rationally, I could find good reasons why blurb whoring is terrible for business. But I don’t want to. So I stop while I’m ahead.

  THE MIRROR EFFECT

  Julie and I made a trip to the grocery. Nowadays—three weeks into Project Rationality—I’m hyperaware of other people’s attempts to take advantage of my brain. For instance, I know that groceries position the high-profit items at eye level, because we lazy humans are more likely to buy the first thing we see. Not me. I’ve started to shop with my knees bent and crouched down low, like a major league catcher, waddling through the aisles, a diminutive bargain hunter.

  I know that grocery stores often pump out the artificial smell of baking bread throughout the day, because it makes customers hungrier and more likely to load up their carts. So I shop while breathing only through my mouth.

  Julie laughs at me.

  “You don’t have to do that in our grocery store.”

  I take a sniff. She’s right. Our local market smells like the penguin house at the Central Park Zoo, which doesn’t do much for the appetite.

  The point is, the human brain is easy prey for influencers. I should clarify, though: I’ve got no qualms about tricking the brain. The key is, the influence should be for the good, not to sell us more breadlike substances with high-fructose corn syrup.

  I try to trick my own brain into being better. At home, I’ve put a mirror next to my computer screen. I did this because studies show people behave more virtuously when a mirror is present. They can see themselves sinning, and they stop. I swear it’s cut down on the number of times I check media gossip websites.

  And even better than mirrors—eyes. Studies show that people behave more ethically when there are pictures of eyes on the wall. You don’t even need real eyes. Just pictures of eyes. People unconsciously think they’re being watched and judged.

  I’ve snipped out dozens of eyes from magazines—Sela Ward’s eyes from a clothing ad, John Malkovich’s from an interview—and taped them around the house. I put a stern-looking set of eyes (Lynne Cheney’s) on the cabinet where the fruit snacks are kept. I taped a dozen pairs of eyes in the kids’ room. Is it working? Hard to tell. My son Lucas hasn’t thrown a tantrum about sharing his Hot Wheels jeep in a week. But I’d need a more rigorous study to be sure.

  I do know this: Zane enjoys engaging in staring contests with the eyes. He’ll get his face up real close and stare for several minutes, trying, I suppose, to make John Malkovich blink. So that keeps him out of trouble.

  THE ENDOWMENT EFFECT

  To get inspired, I’ve been watching Spock on YouTube and reading Star Trek scripts. Like this exchange:

  Bailey: I happen to have a human thing called an adrenaline gland.

  Spock: It does sound most inconvenient. . . . Have you considered having it removed?

  It’s a joke. But I actually think it’s not a bad idea. At least for those of us who never go hiking and don’t need to flee from grizzlies. I’ve become more and more wary of emotion. Scientists talk about System 1 and System 2. System 1 is the more ancient part of the brain and roughly corresponds to the “gut.” System 2 is the more recent, evolutionarily speaking, and roughly corresponds to reason or the mind.

  System 1 is Homer. System 2 is Spock. Some commentators have compared it to a monkey controlling a wild elephant. Gary Marcus, author of the book Kluge, puts it this way: System 2 is “deliberative” and reflective. It’s not always rational, but at least it tries. System 1 isn’t always irrational, but it’s “shortsighted” and “ancestral.”

  I realize Project Rationality is my attempt to live completely under System 2 and override the unstable lizard brain that is System 1.

  This is disorienting to other people. Humans crave melodrama. Julie got upset with me today for not getting upset enough. I had done something dumb. I’d left our son’s stroller in the back of a cab. It was a cheapo stroller, but still.

  “Well, that was a mistake,” I said when we realized it. “I will try not to do that again.” (I do notice I’m using fewer contractions. Getting too into this Spock character?)

  “That’s it?” she asked.

  “What do you want?”

  “You’re so blasé.”

  “You want theatrics?”

  “I want you to say something like ’Oh no, that’s terrible. I can’t believe I did that. I feel horrible.’”

  I explained that I didn’t feel that way. I felt annoyed at myself, and I vowed to try not to do it again. But I will probably forget other things in the future, so she should be prepared. In either case, throwing a hissy fit wouldn’t get the stroller back nor help reform my behavior; it’d just create negative emotions. Plus, we overestimate the value of things we own—it’s called the Endowment Effect.

  My wife said our son needs to understand the value of objects.

  I paused. “Point taken,” I said. Our son is still a System 1 creature. “Next time, I will put on a show for our son.”

  My wife stomped out.

  LAKE WOBEGON, PART 2

  When I started this project, I thought I’d come to the conclusion that System 1 and System 2 are equally necessary. We need volcanic emotions as much as reasoned logic. But I’ve become more leery of System 1 every day. True, occasionally we need it. When we lose our balance and grab for the subway pole, that’s instinct. We short-circuit the rational brain because there’s no time for reason to get involved. But that’s the exception. If I had to guess, I’d blame System 1 for 90 percent of wars and murders.

  My ideal? A world of Spocks, but Spocks who are joyful and compassionate and life-loving. Spocks who brush with apricot toothpaste because it tastes delicious.

  But I may have overestimated my ability to control Sy
stem 1.

  A week after my even-tempered stroller reaction, as my month comes to an end, I’m at a restaurant with my son Jasper, waiting to play foosball. Two European teenagers are playing. They’re accomplished foosballers, I can tell. They spin the rods expertly, scoring quickly, zipping the game along. Until they get to the last ball.

  At which point they decide it’d be fun to draw the game out as long as possible. They pass the foosball back and forth slowly and carefully between their offensive lines.

  “When will it be our turn?” asks my son.

  “Soon.”

  Two minutes go by. Five minutes. My son has asked the above question a half-dozen times by now.

  “What’s going on here?” I ask the teens.

  “Vee are trying.” They snicker—actually snicker. Then talk in German.

  Ten minutes go by.

  I know exactly what’s happening in my brain as it’s happening, and yet I feel like I can’t stop it. My limbic system kicks in. My pulse triples.

  “You are not trying. You are stalling.”

  “No, really. Vee are trying.” More snickers.

  My emotions have hijacked my cerebral cortex.

  “You are bad people. Very bad people. What did your parents teach you?”

  They ignore me. I flash to memories of being bullied as a kid. And now they’re messing with my kid. The monkey is losing control of the elephant. The caveman is ascendant.

  “You’re nasty teenagers, and you’re going to grow up into nasty adults. And let me tell you, with its history, your country doesn’t need any more nasty people.”

  Did I just play the Nazi card? I did. And I’m not even 100 percent sure they’re German. They sounded sort of German. But maybe they’re Belgian.

  My brother-in-law, Eric, was right. I suffer from the Lake Wobegon Effect. I overestimate my ability to be rational.

  But you know what? I need it. I need the Lake Wobegon Effect. I need self-delusion. Otherwise I’d be so depressed about irrationality—and the general apocalyptic state of the world— that I couldn’t function.

  I have learned this much about myself and my deeply flawed brain: I have to believe, irrationally, against all evidence, that humans can be rational.

  CODA

  It’s been several months since this experiment ended, and I still do a lot of things differently. Tiny things and big things. I shop for air conditioners differently. I watch nature shows differently. I judge human beings differently. Not counting my year of living biblically, the Rationality Project has had the most dramatic, long-lasting effect of all my experiments.

  I’m still a highly irrational thinker. But at least I’m aware of it. And sometimes I can stop myself before my thoughts and actions spin out of control.

  Here, a small sampling of what’s changed:

  1. I make a note every time I’m in a fast-moving grocery line.

  We all are predisposed to notice and remember the bad stuff. We notice when we’re stuck bumper-to-bumper on I-95. Or when we’re on a checkout line behind an eighty-two-year-old man paying with a sack of pennies and nickels. Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert talks about this in his book Stumbling on Happiness. Many of us—me included—have this notion that we always choose the slowest line. But that’s only because the frustrating episodes are more emotionally charged and we remember them better. We don’t recall all the times we were on a fast-moving, uneventful line. But I try. I say out loud: “Julie, look at that. We chose the airport security line that moved the fastest. We should remember that next time we’re on a slow line.” I choose to interpret Julie’s silence as gratitude.

  2. I spend a few minutes each week reading Michelle Malkin’s conservative musings. I almost typed “conservative rants.” But that’s just the kind of thing I’m trying to avoid.

  My distant cousin Cass Sunstein—a frighteningly brilliant man who coauthored Nudge—tells me that he spends a lot of time reading things that he disagrees with. Even things that annoy him. It’s the best buffer against sliding into extremism. He conducted an experiment in Colorado. He gathered a group of moderate liberals from Boulder to discuss politics among themselves for a day. And he got a group of moderate conservatives from Colorado Springs to do the same. The result? The liberals became more liberal, the conservatives more conservative. Diversity was squelched. Extremism flourished. The echo chamber is a dangerous thing.

  So I willfully expose myself to the other points of view.

  3. I sometimes eat spaghetti for breakfast.

  I can’t believe just how many of our little daily habits are not based on rationality, just custom. Why is some pig meat acceptable in the morning (e.g., bacon, sausages) and other pig meat not (baby-backed ribs and pork chops). No rational reason. If you tried to explain it to Spock, he’d scratch his head. So if I feel like eating pasta for breakfast, I shall eat pasta! Societal norms be damned.

  4. I’m more leery of conspiracy theories than ever.

  I’ve never been a fan. I always accepted the idea, for instance, that a maladjusted loser with a bad haircut named Lee Harvey Oswald changed history with nothing more than his bolt-action rifle and some luck. To me, the interesting question is why the human brain finds conspiracies so attractive. I got one answer in a fascinating Scientific American article called “Patternicity.” Patternicity is the idea that humans are really talented at finding nonexistent patterns in random noise.

  Why? Because in caveman times, it was evolution-arily beneficial to find meanings in random noise. The author Michael Shermer explains: If a caveman thought the sound of rustling grass was caused by wind, he was probably right. But what about that 1 in 100 chance he was wrong? My goodness, the price was high. He became lunch for a tiger. So the safe bet was to assume the rustle of the grass was a predator—even if the chances of this being true are minuscule. The result is that our brains are predisposed to paranoia and pattern-seeking. We take all the random JFK assassination data and construct elaborate theories connecting the dots. We look for the tigers where there are none. We find faces in tortillas. We see villains behind grassy knolls.

  5. I reserve judgment as long as possible.

  First impressions are like South American dictators: overly powerful and unreliable. Thank God my wife, Julie, is compassionate enough to have ignored the first impression’s iron grip. As a single woman, Julie had the Three Date Rule. Even if the first date was a catastrophe, Julie had pledged she’d give all guys three dates. My first date with Julie was a catastrophe indeed. (For one thing, I thought I was being progressive and prowoman by suggesting we go Dutch. I’ve since learned that’s not the case. I was being cheap. I’ve offered to pay her back her twenty-five dollars for eleven years now. She won’t take it.) Anyway, thank you, Julie, for withholding judgment. I’m trying to follow your lead.

  6. I read menus from the bottom up.

  The brain places too much emphasis on the first few options in a list. Restaurateurs know this. But I’m not going to fall for their evil schemes. I’ll start at the last entrée and work my way up. (Hmm. It appears I’ve got a bit of that paranoia I was just talking about.)

  7. I’m filled with hope and despair (not necessarily in that order).

  Despair at how we’re all walking around with these defective machines inside our skulls. Hope because we can recognize that fact. And the study of decision making—or behavioral economics, as it’s known—offers one possible fix. Yes we can! Behavioral economics seems to be gaining influence daily. As author Dan Ariely points out, the year 2008—which saw the meltdown of the supposedly rational stock market—was a banner year for behavioral economics. Maybe I’m deluded, but I think it will be as powerful as Freudianism was in the 1950s. And hopefully more accurate. In fact, we’ve got an amateur behavioral economist in the White House now. Obama is a fan of this field. And some of his proposals—such as automatically enrolling people into 401(k)s to take advantage of mental inertia—reflect that.

  8. I’m skeptical of beha
vioral economics.

  And finally . . . one last thing: You know how I’m convinced that 90 percent of decisions are irrational? That’s probably an irrational notion. It’s the result of reading book after book about how flawed the brain is. I suffer from the Confirmation Bias. I’m only human.

  NIGEL PARRY

  Chapter Six

  The Truth About Nakedness

  It starts out innocently enough. My boss at Esquire tells me he’s asked the actress Mary-Louise Parker to write an article. This isn’t unusual. He often asks notable people to write for the magazine. We recently had Dan Rather write an essay on the importance of using colorful metaphors (a language device that Rather calls “as fun as Saturday night at the Stop ’n’ Fight”). So this time, our guest writer is Mary-Louise Parker, who had a role on The West Wing at the time.

  My boss tells me that I’ll be her editor on the essay. The topic? Well, that’s not clear yet. It’s my job to talk to her and figure it out.

  So I e-mail Ms. Parker (mentioning I’m a fan of her work, of course). She suggests she could write an essay about what it’s like to be an aunt. That doesn’t seem quite right for Esquire. She tosses out another couple of topics that sound like they’d put my boss into a stage 3 coma. I start to get worried.

  Well, Mary-Louise says, what about this: She could write an essay about what it feels like to pose naked. Now we’re talking. I tell my boss—who asks the natural follow-up: will she pose nude for the magazine? The article would need art, after all. I call her back. She agrees.

  I have to restrain myself from getting down on my knees and making a burnt offering to this woman. She has just guaranteed my holiday bonus.

  I’m about to hang up and tell my boss the good news. But before I can, Mary-Louise has one little—by which I mean deeply disturbing—request.

  “I was thinking,” she says, “that as the editor of the piece, it would make sense for you to appear naked as well.”