Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave

by Adam Alter

  THE PENGUIN PRESS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  Copyright © Adam Alter, 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  The credits for the illustrations on pages 31, 110, 114, and 130 respectively appear in the notes section.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Alter, Adam L., 1980-

  Drunk tank pink : and other unexpected forces that shape how we think, feel, and behave / Adam Alter.

  pages cm

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN 978-1-101-60578-3

  1. Psychology, Applied. 2. Environmental psychology. I. Title.

  BF636.A48 2012

  155.9--dc23

  2012046810

  For Mum, Dad, Dean, and Sara

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part One

  THE WORLD WITHIN US

  1. Names

  2. Labels

  3. Symbols

  Part Two

  THE WORLD BETWEEN US

  4. The Mere Presence of Other People

  5. The Characteristics of Other People

  6. Culture

  Part Three

  THE WORLD AROUND US

  7. Colors

  8. Locations

  9. Weather and Warmth

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  Index

  PROLOGUE

  The academic journal Orthomolecular Psychiatry began its final issue of 1979 with a classic paper that kindled the imaginations of prison wardens, football coaches, and exasperated parents. The paper’s author, Professor Alexander Schauss, described a simple experiment featuring 153 healthy young men, a researcher, two large pieces of colored cardboard, and a well-lit lab room. One by one the men filed into the room to participate in an unusual test of strength. The experiment began when the men stared at one of the pieces of cardboard. For half the men the cardboard was deep blue in color, while for the remaining half it was bright pink. After a full minute passed, the researcher asked the men to raise their arms in front of their bodies, while he applied just enough downward pressure to force their arms back down to their sides. While the men recovered their strength, the researcher jotted a few brief notes before repeating the experiment, first asking the men to stare at the other piece of cardboard and then repeating the strength test.

  The results were strikingly consistent. All but two of the men were dramatically weaker after staring at the pink cardboard, barely resisting the researcher’s application of downward force. In contrast, the blue cardboard left their strength intact, regardless of whether it came before the first or second strength test. The color pink appeared to leave the men temporarily depleted.

  To prove the effect wasn’t a fluke, Schauss conducted a second experiment. This time he used a more accurate measure of strength, asking the thirty-eight male participants to squeeze a measurement device known as a dynamometer. Without fail, one after another, all thirty-eight men squeezed the device more weakly after staring at the pink cardboard.

  Schauss began describing the miraculous tranquilizing power of bright pink in public lectures across the United States. At one appearance, filmed for TV, a muscle-bound Mr. California performed several effortless biceps curls but struggled to perform a single curl after staring at the pink cardboard. Given the color’s power, Schauss suggested that corrections officers should consider detaining rowdy prisoners in pink cells, and two commanding officers at the U.S. Naval Correctional Center in Seattle, Washington, repainted one of their holding cells bright pink. For seven months, Chief Warrant Officer Gene Baker and facility commander Captain Ron Miller watched as newly arrived inmates entered the pink cell angry and agitated but emerged calmer fifteen minutes later. New prisoners are traditionally aggressive, but the officers reported not a single violent incident during the seven-month trial period.

  Admirers honored the enterprising officers by calling the color Baker-Miller Pink, and other facilities around the country painted special holding cells the same bubblegum hue. At a detention center in San Jose, California, some of the younger inmates were so weakened by the pink cell that their exposure had to be limited to just a few minutes a day. When smaller county jails began tossing violent drunks into pink holding cells, the color was unofficially christened Drunk Tank Pink.

  In the early 1980s, Drunk Tank Pink became a minor popular culture sensation. Schauss discovered that frazzled psychiatrists, dentists, doctors, teachers, and parents were painting their walls bright pink. Public housing estates painted their interiors pink and reported a sharp decline in violent behavior, and bus companies quashed vandalism by installing bright pink seats. When United Way charity workers wore pink uniforms, donors reportedly gave up to two or three times as much as they usually did. Football coaches at Colorado State and the University of Iowa painted their visitors’ locker rooms pink in an attempt to pacify their opponents, until local athletics conferences decreed that the home and visitors’ locker rooms had to be identical. Tex Schramm, longtime coach of the Dallas Cowboys football team, called Schauss and asked whether his team should adopt the same strategy. Underdogs in the boxing ring began wearing pink trunks and sometimes even beat their heavily favored opponents.

  Drunk Tank Pink emerged as the unlikely solution to a host of difficult puzzles, from aggression and hyperactivity to anxiety and competitive strategy. The color attracted a frenzy of academic interest late into the 1990s, and while some researchers found weaker evidence for the original effect, scattered demonstrations persisted. Schauss still calls Drunk Tank Pink a “non-drug anesthetic,” and he continues to field dozens of inquiries each year, more than three decades since Drunk Tank Pink’s dramatic rise.

  This book is an attempt to uncover the role of Drunk Tank Pink and dozens of other hidden forces as they shape how we think, feel, and behave. Some, like Drunk Tank Pink, emerge from nowhere to become pop culture legends. Others, like sunshine and beautiful women, have long occupied a prominent place in folk wisdom, though folk wisdom often falls short when it tries to capture the complexities of human behavior. And other forces still, like the names we give children and new business ventures, hide in plain sight, guiding our thoughts as we go about the business of everyday life unaware of their influence. Understanding these forces is more than a matter of idle curiosity, as some can be harnessed for the good while others are mitigated to prevent the bad. Some of them push us toward smarter decisions and happier outcomes, and others undermine our persistent quest for health and well-being. These forces (or cues, as psychologists call them) take many forms, arising from three different worlds: the mental world made up of sm
all cues that burrow their way into our heads; the social world that connects us; and the wider physical world that surrounds us. Each of us is an ongoing product of the world within us, the world between us, and the world around us—and their hidden capacity to shape our every thought, feeling, and behavior.

  PART ONE

  THE WORLD WITHIN US

  1.

  NAMES

  The Birth of Nominative Determinism

  When Carl Jung, one of the most famous psychiatrists of the twentieth century, once wondered why he was so fixated on the concept of rebirth, the answer arrived in a flash of insight: his name meant “young,” and from birth he had been preoccupied by the concepts of youth, aging, and rebirth. Other renowned psychiatrists of the early twentieth century embarked on very different research programs, but as Jung explained, “Herr Freud (whose name means Joy in German) champions the pleasure principle, Herr Adler (Eagle) the will to power, Herr Jung (Young) the idea of rebirth.” As far as Jung was concerned, the names we’re given at birth blaze a trail that our destinies tread for years to come.

  Many years later, in 1994, a contributor to the Feedback column in the New Scientist magazine labeled the phenomenon nominative determinism, literally meaning “name-driven outcome.” The writer noted that two urology experts, Drs. A. J. Splatt and D. Weedon, had written a paper on the problem of painful urination in the British Journal of Urology. Similar so-called aptronyms abound. The current Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales is Justice Igor Judge; his colleague Lord Justice Laws is a judge in the Court of Appeal. In the realm of athletic pursuits, Anna Smashnova was a professional Israeli tennis player, Layne Beachley is a seven-time world champion surfer, Derek Kickett was an Australian Rules footballer, Stephen Rowbotham was an Olympic rower for Britain, and Usain Bolt is the fastest man in the world over the hundred-meter and two-hundred-meter distances. Some names herald less auspicious destinies: Christopher Coke is a notorious Jamaican drug dealer, and the rapper Black Rob was sentenced to seven years in prison for grand larceny. It’s tempting to dismiss these anecdotes as scattered coincidences, but researchers have shown that our names take root deep within our mental worlds, drawing us magnetically toward the concepts they embody.

  Indeed, names convey so much information that it’s easy to forget that they don’t have natural meanings as, say, numbers do. The number 10 will always have the same meaning regardless of whether you call it ten, diez, dix, or dieci, which is why scientists seeking extraterrestrial contact devise mathematical languages to communicate with alien life-forms. A single pulse of noise will always signal one, or unity, whereas two pulses will always signal two. That universal property doesn’t apply to names, which are language-bound. Jung’s witty observation that Freud’s name compelled him to “champion the pleasure principle” registers only if you know that Freud means “joy” in German. Names are powerful, then, only when they’re associated with other, more meaningful concepts. Parents from certain cultures embrace this idea when naming their children. The Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan grew into his name handsomely, and his wife, Patience, was named for a trait that first ladies sorely need as their husbands ascend the political ladder. According to one Nigerian proverb, “When a person is given a name, his gods accept it,” which explains why exhausted parents sometimes name their children Dumaka (literally, “help me with hands”) or Obiageli (“one who has come to eat”). The Mossi tribespeople of Burkina Faso have taken nominative determinism one step further, giving their children strikingly morbid names in a desperate bid to placate fate. Parents who have already lost more than one child (the Mossi infant mortality rate is tragically high) have been known to name their subsequent children Kida (“he is going to die”), Kunedi (“dead thing”), or Jinaku (“born to die”).

  Other parents do everything they can to protect their children from the tide of nominative determinism. In his native Russian tongue, Vyacheslav Voronin’s name means “slave.” As far as associations go, that’s a significant cross to bear, so Voronin and his wife, Marina Frolova, decided to save their newborn son a similar indignity. Slight and sandy-haired, the boy was born in the summer of 2002 during a spate of terrible Russian floods. True to their promise, Vyacheslav and Marina chose a generic name designed to be devoid of meaning: BOHdVF260602. Although the name seems meaningless, BOHdVF260602 stands for “Biological Object Human descendant of the Voronins and Frolovas, born on June 26, 2002.” For the sake of practicality, young BOHdVF260602 responds to the name Boch (roughly pronounced “Bawtch”). Vyacheslav claims that Boch’s name “will make his life easier, so he won’t interact with those idiots who think one’s name defines his appearance. Every person who gets a traditional name is automatically linked to his historic background. This way, my son will be devoid of his father’s legacy.”

  People name their children using all sorts of rules and approaches. Sometimes they borrow names from historical or literary heroes, sometimes they perpetuate ancestral naming traditions, and sometimes they just like how a name sounds or the fact that it reminds them of something appealing. In all cases, though, the otherwise meaningless name acquires meaning because it’s associated with other concepts that are themselves meaningful. The power of association explains why Adolf, a common boy’s name once associated with Swedish and Luxembourger kings, plummeted in popularity during and after World War II. Meanwhile, the name Donald fell from favor when Donald Duck appeared in the 1930s, and parents stopped naming their sons Ebenezer in the 1840s when Charles Dickens’s newly published book, A Christmas Carol, featured the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge. What makes Boch’s name so unusual is that his parents went to great lengths to avoid choosing a name with even minimal associations. Though Vyacheslav was determined to spare Boch the teasing that he endured as a boy, it’s hard to imagine Boch emerging from childhood without being teased about his name at least occasionally. The odds are stacked higher still, as the Russian birth registry has refused to record Boch’s full name. According to Tatyana Baturina, a representative of the registry, “You can call your child a ‘stool’ or a ‘table.’ A child has a right to such a name. But one has to use common sense. Why should one suffer from the parents’ choice? He will go to kindergarten, and then to school, and he will be mocked, all because of his name.” It’s not immediately clear that naming a boy “Stool” demonstrates more common sense than naming the boy “BOHdVF-260602,” and he’d be unlikely to escape torment with either name.

  Scattered anecdotes aside, do names really affect major life outcomes? Would Usain Bolt run more slowly with the name Usain Plod? Would urologists Splatt and Weedon have pursued different medical specialties with less “urological” names? These thought experiments are impossible to conduct in reality, so researchers have devised other clever techniques to answer the same question.

  Names Influence Life Outcomes

  Every name is associated with demographic baggage: information about the bearer’s age, gender, ethnicity, and other basic personal features. Take the name Dorothy, for example. Imagine that you’re about to open your front door to a stranger named Dorothy. What kind of person would you expect Dorothy to be? First, Dorothy is more likely to be an elderly lady than a young woman. Dorothy was the second-most-popular girl’s name in the 1920s, and fourteen of every hundred baby girls born during that decade were named Dorothy. That multitude of Dorothys is now approaching age ninety. In contrast, the name is almost nonexistent among girls born during the twenty-first century. The reverse is true of the name Ava, which was almost nonexistent before the twenty-first century but dominates the most recent U.S. Census. Apart from age, names convey ethnic, national, and socioeconomic information. Base rates suggest that Dorothy and Ava are almost certainly white, Fernanda is likely to be Hispanic, and Aaliyah is probably black. Luciennes and Adairs tend to be wealthy white children, and Angels and Mistys tend to be poorer white children. Likewise, Björn Svensson, Hiroto Suzuki, and Yosef Peretz are almost certainly m
ales of Swedish, Japanese, and Israeli descent, respectively. More narrowly, Waterlily and Tigerpaw sound like the offspring of aging hippies, while Buddy Bear and Petal Blossom Rainbow sound like names that celebrities might choose for their children. (They are; those are the names of two of celebrity chef Jamie Oliver’s four children.)

  One reason why personal names are so important, then, is that they allow people to categorize us almost automatically. In their book Freakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner describe a strong relationship between a mother’s education and the names she chooses for her children. White boys named Ricky and Bobby are less likely to have mothers who finished college than are white boys named Sander and Guillaume. Since education improves spelling, it comes as no surprise that white boys named Micheal and Tylor tend to have less educated mothers than do white boys named Michael and Tyler. Similar patterns emerge when you compare a child’s name with family household income. White girls named Alexandra and Rachel tend to be wealthier than white girls named Amber and Kayla.

  Of course, it’s important to note that the relationships between income, education, and naming preferences are not causal—just because poorer children tend to have consistently different names from wealthier children doesn’t mean that girls named Alexandra are financially better off because they’ve been named advantageously. A likely alternative is that people from different socioeconomic and educational backgrounds inhabit different cultural environments, which in turn shape their preferences for particular names. (Chapter 6 considers the relationship between culture and preferences more deeply.) For example, U.S. residents who live in the southern states tend to be poorer than residents in the northern states, and, relative to Northerners, Southerners also tend to prefer the name Bobby. The marked cultural differences between Northerners and Southerners probably explain both their distinct naming preferences and the income gap that separates the two groups. The dark side of these relationships is that over time, people meet many more poor Bobbys than wealthy Bobbys, and many more wealthy Sanders than poor Sanders, so they start to form strong associations between the name and important life outcomes. Consequently, a seasoned recruiter who considers two job application folders—one submitted by Sander Smith and the other by Bobby Smith—will presume that Sander’s parents are wealthier and better educated than Bobby’s parents, even before he opens the folders.