Besides sitting in coffee shops, drinking latte and convincing myself I’m a writer, another one of my past times is buying things from FamilyMart.
If you don’t live in Asia, then firstly, why don’t you live in Asia? You should live in Asia. And secondly, any lack of fulfillment you Western people suffer as a consequence of your debaucherous Western lifestyles can probably be resolved if you took a trip to FamilyMart.
FamilyMart is what you Western people would describe as a “Corner Shop” or a “Convenience Store”. Except, it’s a bit more than that. It’s more like a Convenience Store that was made for heaven.
From where I sit right now, there are at least 3 FamilyMarts within a 10 minute walk. Whenever I am no more than 10 minutes away from 3 FamilyMarts, my heart is at peace.
If I were to walk to one of these FamilyMarts, I would feel an extreme sense of anticipation and purpose, the kind of feeling you get when you feed a sick puppy and see its eyes stare back at you lovingly.
As I set my eyes upon this FamilyMart, the green and blue bars send streaks of joy coursing through my brain.
As I enter, the Ding ding ding ding ding diiing ding ding ding ding ding greets me like the gates of heaven. The cashier shouts “Welcome!” in Chinese. I am important. I am an esteemed guest. I belong.
Straight ahead are row after row of delicious snacks. Crisps, cakes, chocolate bars, dried fruit, nuts, cereal bars, chocolate bars and chocolate.
Beyond the snacks are the drinks. Milk, fruit juice, sports drinks, coffee, iced coffee, bottled coffee, so many different types of coffee.
I could literally live in FamilyMart.
But every so often, FamilyMart drives me insane.
Like when it introduced its special protein bars. There’s the sea salt protein bar, which…just no. Then there’s the chocolate protein bar, which I naturally tried first, and it was alright. But there was one other that kept me up at night.
Wrapped in white and yellow packaging, the mango flavoured protein bar was something I couldn’t comprehend.
I like mango. I don’t like mango flavouring. I like protein bars, they help convince me I’m being healthy. The white and yellow packaging means it must absolutely be healthy. It looks good.
But does it taste good? Does mango flavoured protein bar work? If I bought one, would I regret not getting the chocolate flavoured one?
Maps of Joy and Pain
Every single organism’s behaviour is driven by two different mechanisms; approach and avoid. And we are no different. Our brains take in all sorts of information about the world around us, and use experience to determine what we should approach and avoid. And my brain says we should definitely approach FamilyMart.
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov is famous for making dogs salivate with bells. The experiments he conducted explain a lot about how these approach and avoid mechanisms work.
We, just like dogs, will automatically salivate about 1 second after food is put in our mouths so that we can start the digestion process. But what Pavlov discovered was that when a completely unrelated signal like a bell occurs just slightly before the food arrives, that signal can also later cause salivation.
Not only did the dogs salivate at the sound of the bell, he tried mulitple stimuli (the smell of vanilla, the sight of a rotating object) and they all caused the same “approach” response. What’s more, if he used the same stimuli shortly before giving the dogs some disgusting food, then it also caused an “avoid” response in exactly the same way.
But what was key to Pavlov’s experiment was the timing. The sound of the bell and the food could not just occur closely together in time. He found that after 347 combinations of a loud bell and food, the dogs did not salivate at the sound of the bell. And the reason was because the bell would only occur shortly AFTER the food.
BUT, if the bell occurred just BEFORE the food, then the dogs would later salivate at the sound of the bell.
What this shows is that brains use stimuli that occur just before a pleasurable or painful event to predict the future. If the dog hears a bell, then food will come.
Through experience, our brains learn what things lead to pleasure and what things lead to pain. If I go to FamilyMart, then I will find peace. If I try my wife’s Chinese snacks, then I will feel pain. Our brains can then decide what outcome we want, and what set of actions will lead us most closely to that desirable outcome.
In this way, our brains create pleasure maps of our ever changing environment.
This morning, when I went to take my son out for a walk, my pleasure map indicated that we should head to the park because that’s a fun place where he can run around and exhaust himself which means he’ll come home in an hour’s time and be ready for a long nap and then I can get a few hours to myself!
But as soon as we head out the door, we both quickly realised the weather had changed. Summer is here. Shanghai summers are the worst. The park changed from a place of pleasure, to a place of pain. Instead, we walked to the air conditioned shopping mall. The park will be a place of pain for the next few months until Autumn arrives and then it will be a place of pleasure again.
But every so often, our brains detect something in the environment that leaves us with a big question mark, like that mango protein bar. Is it pleasurable? Or is it painful?
When it comes to pleasure maps, our brains are a bit obsessive. Our brains seek completion. It’s important we know our environment, so that we can control it and predict what actions will lead to more pleasure and help us avoid pain (and help us stay alive). But when there is a gap in our map, it’s a bit like giving a person with OCD a pair of socks that don’t match.
Gaps Hurt
A gap in our map causes uncertainty. We don’t like uncertainty.
I used to fly a lot in China, but I had to stop for my mental health. Almost every flight would be delayed. Sometimes for only a short while, other times for an extremely long time. Each time I heard that announcement it would send me crazy. Would I be able to get home tonight? Should I book a hotel before everyone else does? What can I do to keep myself occupied at this airport?
Uncertainty starts up a loop of discomfort in our brains. Only when we get some certainty can we close off that loop and send it packing.
And it is this feeling of uncertainty that drives our need to close off any gaps in our map. You’re probably quite familiar with that need. It’s called curiosity.
Curiosity killed the cat. It also drives us to do some pretty crazy things. Like cross the Atlantic and accidentally discover a new continent. Or fly to the moon and back. Or staple our thumb…Yes, I did that, I was 4 years old, I wanted to see what would happen, I decided not to do it again.
So when I saw that mango protein bar, that uncertainty loop kept me awake. I couldn’t just ignore it. My instincts were telling me that this gap was something that needed closing. The only thing I could do, was venture to FamilyMart.
But Not Every Gap is Worth It
Some gaps are just too big.
Like the Chinese snack section.
I speak Chinese fluently, and I can read a lot as well. But not enough to determine if those Chinese snacks would be pleasurable or painful. I know from experience with my wife’s Chinese snacks that they were painful. The chances of these snacks being painful are quite high. And the effort involved in translating the names, asking my wife’s opinion on if I’d like them or not, and then probably trying them myself, is just too high.
My brain quickly determines that closing that gap would be too much effort. The gap turns into a grey area that my brain decides to label “Here be dragons”.
But for those mango protein bars, it wouldn’t take a lot to close off the uncertainty loop that is driving my brain crazy. Buy one and eat it. That’s all I’d have to do.
George Lowenstein wrote a famous paper about curiosity. He describes this mechanism that creates curiosity as an “Information Gap”. I read his paper so you don’t have to, but here are 3 key paragraphs that summarise exactly what those mango protein bars are doing to me:
Information gap can be defined by two quantities: What one knows and what one wants to know. Curiosity arises when what one wants to know becomes elevated above what one currently knows. But this is subjective and will vary from person to person and situation to situation.
The implication for curiosity is that an individual is likely to focus on the information that is present when most of the information from a set is missing. At this point, the informational reference set is effectively zero. As information is acquired, however, at some point a qualitative shift of attention is likely to occur from a focus on what is known to one on what is not known.
Motivation increases as an organism physically approaches a goal. Thus as information is accumulated, the information-gap perspective predicts a sudden increase in curiosity when the individual becomes focused on the missing information and then a more gradual increase as he or she approaches the goal of closing the information gap.
Loewenstein, G. (1994). The psychology of curiosity: A review and reinterpretation. Psychological Bulletin, 116(1), 75–98.
Yeah, like I said, I read it so that you don’t have to. But what he’s basically saying is that there are two main conditions that cause curiosity to arise:
- We notice a gap in our map
- Only a manageable amount of effort is required to close the gap
That second condition is important, and applies to many areas of life when it comes to motivation. The closer we are, or the closer we get to closing the gap, the more motivated we are to achieve it.
For example, if you set out to do 50 push ups, then after 5 you’ve still got 45 more to do and you are more likely to give up at that point cause that’s just too much effort. But, if you manage to keep going, then once you get to 45, even though you are in more pain, you will be a lot more motivated to continue because you are only 5 away from closing the gap.
Zap a Gap in their Map
Do you want people to be curious about things? Maybe you’re training people how to use a really boring piece of software and you want them to be more interested in it. Maybe you need to announce to your entire company a new, boring policy. Maybe you want to create a YouTube video to promote your scam Get Rich Quick online course. If so, then Zap a Gap in their Map.
First of all, you’re probably going to have to draw out a bit of a map for them in the first place before you zap a gap in it. There’s no use zapping a gap in a map that’s not there.
For that boring piece of software, show them something amazing that you created using it in only 5 minutes. Now they know what it can do, and that it only takes 5 minutes to do it, they just don’t know how to do it.
For that boring policy, tell them about the trouble people in other companies have got into for not following this policy. Tell them how if they don’t follow this within the next month, then this is the kind of trouble they’ll get into. Tell them how close they are to getting into trouble. Then tell them all they have to do is fill in one form.
For that YouTube video, please don’t do that. Most people know clickbait when they see it. Most people know a scam when they see it. When people are so used to seeing the same old gaps that have been intentionally zapped by skilled marketers, they stop caring. Sometimes, our maps can become immune to certain zaps.
That Mango Protein Bar
So the next morning after my sleepless night, I ventured to FamilyMart, paid for and ate one of those mango protein bars.
Was it good? Did I buy anymore afterwards? Would I recommend them to you? Would you be able to live the rest of your life in peace if you knew that you hadn’t tried one?
Well, only you know how to answer those questions…
References
Frith, Chris. Making up the Mind. Wiley.
Loewenstein, G. (1994). The psychology of curiosity: A review and reinterpretation. Psychological Bulletin, 116(1), 75–98.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity#Curiosity-drive_theory
