Invisible Influence (20 page)

Imagine every time you encountered something, you had to figure out if it was safe. Whether it is good or bad, positive or negative. Is that person in your house your spouse or someone trying to rob you? Is that thing in the fridge safe to eat or poisonous?

Simple actions we don't even code as decisions would become arduous. Eating cornflakes for breakfast wouldn't just be habit, it would be a life life-and-death decision. You'd have to pop one flake in your mouth, and then wait to see what happened before eating any more.

Humans and other animals evolved a mechanism that reduces
this effort. If we've encountered something before, particularly recently, it becomes easier to process. Whether it's a person, food, or kitchen utensil, less work is needed to figure out what it is.

This ease of processing, in turn, is coded positively. It's the warm glow of familiarity.

Importantly, this warm glow doesn't just affect things we've actually been exposed to. It also extends to things that share features with what we've seen or heard previously.

Someone who looks like someone you know seems more familiar because they have a similar haircut or facial structure.
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Keegan sounds better when you've heard the name Katrina a lot recently because they start with the same hard
K
sound. These things look or sound familiar because they share common features with what we've seen or heard before.

This liking of similar things helps us deal with the variation that permeates everyday life. People don't look exactly the same every time we see them, and neither does food. Someone may wear a different shirt or style their hair a different way.

So, for a “seen-before” decoder to be useful, it has to be able to handle that variation. Even if the person we saw this week doesn't look exactly like the best friend we saw last month, we need to be able to code both of them as familiar. Otherwise each time we saw something would be like seeing it for the first time.

Liking similar things is also useful from an inference perspective. If you've eaten a certain berry one hundred times and never gotten sick, it's likely that a similar-looking berry is safe as well. If you've interacted with someone one hundred times and they've always been nice to you, it's likely that someone who looks similar (and thus might be related) might also be friendly. Liking
similar things thus provides another shortcut to judgment that makes life easier.

Familiarity, though, is only part of the story.

Every so often, pollsters conduct surveys to rank U.S. presidents. Companies or media outlets compile data from academic historians, political scientists, and public opinion to see who had the most positive effect on the country. Just as
Consumer Reports
might rank car seats, these surveys weigh achievements and leadership qualities, as well as faults and failures, and spit out a ranking of the best and the worst presidents (or at least good and less good).

Dozens of high-profile rankings have been performed over the past fifty years, but certain names often bubble to the top. Famous presidents such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln consistently rank high on the list. Along with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt, these high-achieving leaders had a significant influence on the course of history.

John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton also often do well. These presidents did well in public opinion polls, even if they don't rank as highly among presidential scholars.

The bottom of the list often includes names like Warren G. Harding and James Buchanan. Harding appointed campaign contributors and allies to prominent political positions that they milked for personal gain. Buchanan did little to impede the spread of slavery or the growing unrest that eventually became the Confederacy.

Between the best and the worst are names that have faded
over time. Presidents that have not been completely forgotten, but had neither the positive impact of a Lincoln nor the negative scandals of a Nixon to remain at the top of public consciousness.

One such president was Calvin Coolidge.

Born in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, on July 4, 1872, Coolidge is the only president to be born on Independence Day. A lawyer by trade, he worked his way through Massachusetts state politics, becoming a state legislator and eventually governor. He was elected vice president in 1920 and became president after the sudden death of Warren G. Harding in 1923.

Known as a small-government conservative, Coolidge restored confidence in the presidency after Harding's scandals. Still, he never had the influence of some of the men that preceded or followed him. He said little—he was known as “Silent Cal”—and his legacy is divided between people who favored his reductions in government programs and opponents who thought government should play a more active role in regulating and directing the economy.

Though his term in office may not have been that memorable, Coolidge's name is forever linked to a fundamental aspect of human behavior. Legend has it that the president and his wife, Grace, once visited a government farm. As much as Calvin Coolidge was shy, Grace was outgoing, and was a popular hostess at the White House.

After arriving at the farm, the two went on separate tours of the facility. When Mrs. Coolidge passed a set of pens housing chickens, she stopped to ask the person in charge how frequently the rooster copulated. “Dozens of times a day,” the man responded.

“Please tell that to the President,” Mrs. Coolidge requested.

Later that day, Mr. Coolidge himself walked by the pens. He was informed about the roosters' behavior as well as his wife's comment.

“Same hen every time?” the president asked the keeper.

“Oh, no, Mr. President, a different one each time.”

The president thought to himself for a moment and nodded. “Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge.”
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Variety, the saying goes, is the spice of life. If we just liked what was familiar, there would be no reason not to pick the same thing again and again. Nothing should be more familiar than doing what we did before. Eating the same meal for lunch, wearing the same clothes to work, and going to the same place for vacation.

Decisions would be easy because there would often be no decisions at all. We'd just do what we've done before.

But while picking the same thing over and over would make life easy, it's easy to see that most people would hate it.

While familiarity is good, people also have a competing drive for novelty.
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Humans have an innate preference for stimulation: what's fresh, original, or unexperienced.

Sure, eating the same ham-and-cheese sandwich every day is safe and familiar, but most people relish the opportunity to occasionally try something new. To branch out and experience something different. Ham and cheese is good, but how about a little mustard? Or a different type of bread? Actually, while we're at it, the new wrap place that opened up down the block looks intriguing, why not check it out? Who knows, hummus and sprouts might be worth a try.

Trying new things allows us to acquire useful information.
You might think strawberry is your favorite flavor of ice cream, but if you've never tried anything else, it's hard to know for sure.

So, once in a while we poke our heads out of our tentative turtle shells and try something different. We get chocolate, pistachio, or even something wild like tutti-frutti or bacon-flavored ice cream.

Will we like bacon better than strawberry? Probably not. But by trying new flavors we learn something about our preferences. Bacon might not tantalize our taste buds, but we might like pistachio better than strawberry, and without trying something new we never would have known.

Novelty has a host of benefits.
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Doing new activities once in a while (say, taking a pottery class or going to a museum) boosts life satisfaction and doing novel activities with a relationship partner makes people more satisfied in their relationship. Novel news articles are more likely to garner attention, and changes to the workplace tend to increase productivity.

One of the most studied aspects of novelty, though, is the so-called Coolidge effect, named after the experience the president and his wife had at the farm.
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As anyone who has ever had hamsters can attest, the little guys love to mate. Some hamsters start reproducing as young as four to five weeks old, and can have several litters a year.

Hamsters will even mate multiple times in one sitting. Some males will mate with the same female five or even ten times in a row. Mating attempts will continue until the male is exhausted and no longer interested in mating further. The female might poke and prod the male, but he's done.

Researchers, though, wondered whether animals' drive for novelty would be enough to overcome this apparent exhaustion.
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The male hamster seems sated, uninterested in further action. But what would happen if a new female is introduced?

Sure enough, while the male seemed exhausted, a new potential sexual partner was enough to perk him back up. When a novel female appeared, the male's sexual interest was reignited.

This same pattern has been observed in a number of mammals. Rats, cattle, even voles, show the same sexual behavior. Some female animals show similar effects, albeit less strong. Just like the rooster who copulated multiple times a day when different hens were introduced, for the hamster, novelty was the spice of love.

So which is it? Do people like familiar things or do they like novel ones?

Think about the first time you experience something new. Imagine you've come home from a business trip and you walk into the living room to find that your spouse bought a new piece of furniture. “It was time for a change, honey, and this ottoman was on sale, so I snapped it up.”

Or you walk into the bathroom to find that all the old towels have been swapped out for new ones. “The old grey ones were getting so ratty, so I got us some great plush turquoise replacements. Don't they look great?”

How would you feel the moment you saw the towels? The first few milliseconds they entered your field of view?

Your first reaction would probably be a slightly aversive surprise. You liked the old towels, and while they were getting a little frayed at the edges, these new towels are so . . . well, new. They stand out like a misplayed note on the clarinet. The new towels make the bathroom feel weird and foreign, a different
place from what you are used to. Like you ended up in the neighbors' bathroom rather than your own.

Novelty, at least at first, often evokes a mildly negative reaction. Because they are new, novel things require additional processing and attention. We have to figure out whether they are okay, whether they are safe. Our curiosity is piqued, but we also get a little anxious. Novelty can be scary. Even if the new thing is just a couple of turquoise towels.

Will they work as well as the old ones? Will they be as cozy? Until we've had the chance to use them a couple of times, we're just not sure.

Through repeated exposure, however, things that were once novel start to become more familiar. We use the new towels a couple times and slowly we start to like them. They're just as comfy as the old towels and they have a nice way of brightening up the bathroom on a dreary day.

The towels are no longer alien, they've become part of our routine. After a couple weeks we don't even notice them anymore.

Too many exposures to the same thing, though, and we start to get bored. The towels start to look dull, the same recipe gets tiresome, and the movie is no longer engaging the third time we watch it. What was once positively familiar becomes humdrum and monotonous.

The more complex the stimulus, the less likely the habituation. So while we may tire of hearing the same song or eating the same cereal relatively quickly, we're less likely to get bored of our spouse or a restaurant. The latter are more varied experiences that often change each time we experience them. While the song stays relatively the same, our spouse says different things and looks different each time we see them, so it doesn't feel like
we're experiencing the same thing each time. As a result, while relatively simple things may have quick appeal but soon become boring, relatively complex things may take longer to warm to, but also have a longer-lasting appeal.

How concentrated the interactions are also matters. Hearing the same song ten times in a row gets quite tedious, but hear it once a week over ten weeks and it doesn't get as tiresome. The more time there is between interactions, the more novel the experience seems, and the more we like it.

Personal control is also important. Most things never reach the point where they become tiresome because people choose to stop consuming them before then. If we find ourselves starting to get bored of a certain recipe, we stop making it for a while. If we tire of a restaurant, we go someplace else for a few months until we feel like going again. Thus we never get to the point where our positive feelings start to turn negative.

In some ways, our emotional reactions are a bit like Goldilocks from Goldilocks and the Three Bears. In the children's tale, each of the bears has its own preference for bedding and food. One bear has a firm bed, one bear has a soft bed, and one has a bed somewhere in the middle. One bear likes its porridge hot, one likes it cold, and one likes it somewhere in between.

Goldilocks tries each, but is always turned off by the extremes. The firm bed is too firm and the soft bed too soft. The hot porridge too hot and the cold porridge too cold. But the middle bed and the middle porridge? Well, those are just right.

Affective reactions often follow a similar Goldilocks effect, or inverted-U-shape trajectory. When something is new, we initially feel slightly negatively (or neutral). Then, after repeated
exposure, things become more familiar and we start to feel more positively. But eventually, after too many exposures, boredom kicks in and liking declines.
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