Ig Nobel Prizes 2018: Part 2

just covering all the winners across two episodes. Ultimately, it doesn't matter which order you take them in. Uh. Though, the top of the first episode has just a brief section where we talk about what the ig Nobel Prizes are, So if you're if you're not sure on that, I would recommend checking that little bit out. But have you've been listening to the show for years, you know that

we continually do this. We do this pretty much every November, sometimes in October, but generally it's a November situation where we catch back up see uh what the previous months or technically September's UH honorees were for the ignoble prizes, and we just talk about them a little bit. Sometime the past, we've done, uh, you know, two hosts talking about it. We've done three hosts talking about it. We've tried to cover them all on a single episode. We've

covered them across three episodes. This week it's just Joe and I and we are doing it in two episodes. So some of these descriptions are shorter than others. That kind of depends on what kind of meat is on the bone. Speaking of if you haven't listened to our last episode, it had some good stuff about cannibalism, so I didn't check that out all right, well, speaking speaking of meat, though, let's go ahead and jump into biology. Okay, the biology prize. I gotta start with a question, Robert.

You know some people are these what would you call it, the unbothered eaters, the the cool hand lukes of eating stuff. If you're everything bagel falls on the floor, you just pick it up and eat it. It's just a little more of everything, right, Robert? Are you like that? Or are you somebody who can't can't talk all erate getting a few hairs off the floor on your food? Who? Uh if I am not going to pick a hair

off of it. But if I dropped something and it's just there for a second and the floor looks relatively clean, especially if it's in my own house, then yes, I'll probably eat it. I do have limits, though, I mean, there have been times, especially when I've been places with my son, who, especially when he was a little younger, there was a higher probability that what he was trying

to eat might fall onto the ground. I like, I particularly remember eating these delicious fish sandwiches in Barbados to this place called Kuzzes cutters cutter being the uh the

boji and I believe slang for a sandwich. But it was just like a delicious fish and cheese sandwich with some boji and hot sauce, absolutely delightful, and we were just eating it over just this uh like it was just you know, like gravel and some bottle caps, and it was just on the brink of falling apart in my son's hands, and I just I just saw it in my mind, like that fish is going to the ground. The fish Patty's gonna jump out of the sandwich and

there's gonna just gonna be no reclaiming it. Luckily, it didn't happen, Well, thank the gods for that. That's a that's a deliverance. But if I were in my own house and that were to happen, I would say, no, we're not throwing that fish patty out. We're gonna pick that up. We're gonna brush it off, and you can finish it. Okay, Parts two and three coming. Part two. You're at a restaurant. You find a hair in your soup.

Do you just pick it out and keep eating the soup or do you eat the hair or do you abandon the bowl completely? I think I have. I have a pretty good ability to quickly remove a hair and and almost kind of delete the memory of it occurring and keep going, especially as long as it's you know, relatively good. If if the food was already offending me, I don't know, it might be different. Yeah, you like men in black pin yourself. It's just like it's wiped clean.

Didn't not seeing it? Now, didn't see it. You're just gonna keep moving. Okay, here's the last one. What if there's a fly in your glass of wine or your cocktail or whatever, do you still drink it? Or is the ruined? Has the has the fly simply landed on the glass, or is it floating dead in my drink. That's a good question. It's let's just say it's in it's in the liquid. It's in there. Well, once it's in the liquid, that is kind of gross. I mean,

you can't help, especially if you're drinking something outside. You can't help, but have fly or even like a yellow jacket or something sometimes land on your drink and there's nothing to be done. If a fly is just floating in there, I might have to send it back. Sometimes those flies can be disease vectors. Yeah, you don't know what they were landing on before this. They might have been on sewage. I mean, I think that's that's a

bridge too far from me. Even though it's gross enough if one lands on something you're eating or drinking, but there's something about the fleeting contact. As gross as it is. I can again, I can use the I can delete the memory and keep moving. But if I have to fish the body out of my drink, I don't know. Well, here's another thing. Have you ever noticed if a fly landed in your drink if you could smell it. No,

I've never noticed that. Well, maybe this is something to check out next time, because that's what this year's Biology Prize concerns. So the the paper in question here is called The Scent of the Fly by Paul Betcher, Sebastian le Breton, Erica Wallen, Eric Headenstrom, Philippe Berrero, Echo, Verry, Marie Bankson, Vulcar Jorger, Peter witzkall, oh, that's the whole list. Sorry, congrats. I would have just at all the crap out of

that one. Oh man, I probably should have. But yeah, okay, so I've got a new word for you, Robert simio chemicals. Heard that one, simio chemicals. Okay, it just means chemicals used for communication, like semiotics, signs study of science sending communications. So the authors of this study point out that all living things communicate by way of chemicals, quote, unlike sounds or sites, simio chemicals interconnect species across kingdoms and enable

information exchange between animals, plants, and microorganisms. And I think there's some indication that's true, like that they're chemical signals that allow your body to communicate with your microbiome. Yeah, all right, or maybe I'm going on on on in here, but I mean it seems like Some obvious ones would be the smell of rotting flesh or rotting organic material, right, kind of sends a signal across a species. Yes, you're communicating in a way with the bacteria that are consuming

that flesh. And also i'd imagine that the smell of something especially sweet, the smell of nectar, etcetera. Right, you might be communicating with a plant. Yeah, exactly. So a fascinating takeaway from this knowledge is that the same one biocompound maybe bioactive for different species in different ways. In other words, one semiochemical communicates something to both you and some other animals, say your dog or an insect, but

what it communicates is radically different. And anybody who has a dog, in fact, probably is familiar with this because something that smells repulsive to you smells delicious to your dog. Uh So, one example is don't you just love the clean, fresh scent of citrus? You know, it's like it's a very calming smell that makes you feel like everything is spick and span. Yes, unless it's actual spick and span.

You know, I don't know actual spickin span. Spickin span is a cleaning product, right, which is yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right, but it does this touches on one of the key differences for me. If it's legitimate citrus, yes, it's beautiful. I love the smell. But if it's something that it is, like a fake lemon smell, then there's

something unnatural about that. Well, did you know I actually came across the paper while I was reading about this that found that, like the title of it was something like, lemon fresh scent causes flies to lay eggs. It's a lemon fresh scent. It's a chemical cue that says to you, ah, this place is clean and delightful, unless maybe it's the synthetic smelling kind that you don't like. But so this one might be why the fly would be seeking out,

say my tiki drink. Yeah, it's got a lemon fresh scent. It says to the flies, lay your eggs here, this is a great place. And this is probably because the vinegar fly Drosophila melana gaster prefers to deposit its eggs in the peel of citrus fruit as long as yeast is present there. And so this particular study, the the Ignoble winning study, focuses on a compound called Z four undescinal or Z four eleven a L undicinel or dc aldehyde is an organic compound that can be found in

citrus oils. So Z four eleven a L you can associate it with with a kind of citrus peel, clear, oily liquid kind of thing, And it is one of these volatile compounds that plays a role in the life of multiple organisms. In vinegar flies, Z four or eleven a L is produced by females and it seems to play a role in the attraction of male mates. But Z four eleven a L is also bioactive in other organisms. For example, Z four eleven a L is produced in the anal glands of male rabbits such as the European

wild rabbit. And it's got a mini splendored scientific name or ricto legas coniculus. Yeah, that's like it. That should be a bond villain name. And so experts believe this volatile compound might play some role in territorial marking uh. And one reason for thinking that is that, like studies have found that when you have other male rabbits smell this compound, their heart rates shoot up, maybe like oh,

there's another dude around here. Not having a um. A related similar scent has also been found to emanate from the colonies of a c bird called the crested auklet, which is Ethia Christa tella. And this scent has been tracked to two associated alde hydes. It's not exactly the same, it's not Z four eleven a L, but it's the chain shortened analog Z four decinal as Z four ten a L and Z two decinal and researchers think that these smells function as a parasite repellent and an advertisement

of mate quality. Another another interesting link, like we've talked about before, between mating advertisements and the avoidance of parasites. Right, sometimes when you're showing off how good of a mate you are, what you want to show is I got no parasites on me. Look and see. Oh and I also just included an image of what crested auklets look like because they look really funny. Oh yeah, they're they're beautiful.

They're are some beautiful birds. And if you want to check out a picture of them again, that the spelling on that auklet is a u k l et. Yeah, they've got um so they've got crests like sort of mohawks going out of I don't know what you'd call that part of the face, the bridge of the nose over the beak, uh that like shoot out forward and then they've got really funny google there are like googly eyes those eyes. But anyway, but so back to the compound.

We're talking about Z four eleven a L. But the funny thing this study found is that apparently humans are also highly sensitive to the smell of this particular compound. So it comes out of rabbit anal glands, it comes out of auklets, but humans also find significant the smell of Z four eleven a L, even in tiny quantities. And thus humans are highly sensitive to the smell of

the female fruit flies or not fruit flies. Actually they're often called fruit flies, but technically they are vinegar flies vinegar flies that produce it. And there was an experiment that proved this. It was a wine tasting. So you've got eight members in the study. That was two women and six men who were trained wine assessors, wine experts.

You know that those people the smela types who I think they worked in the wine industry assessing wines in Germany, and each sample the aroma of multiple randomized glasses across a few tests. So across the different tests, these glasses contained either nothing in the control condition, or the scent of a female fly, which produces the compound, the scent of a male fly, which does not produce the compound.

Various amounts of synthesized like lab made Z four eleven a l uh tested against a background content of nothing, water or white wine. I believe it was a dry Pinot blanc from and the results were that tasters could strongly detect the smell of a single female fly or the presence of isolated Z four eleven a l in the glass. It was even perceptible at one nanogram that's one billionth of a gram per glass. So even at the smallest concentrations, the compound was described as unpleasant and

as an off flavor. At higher concentrations it was perceived as a loud off flavor. And so the author's right quote. This supports the observation that one fly spoils a glass of wine after falling into it. I did. It is of the female sex, so it wouldn't just be the conceptual gross out of having a fly fall in your wine. You wouldn't have to think through, Oh this could be a disease vector, or oh it's grossing me out for

this reason or another. Just if it's a female fly, just the smell of it could be repellent enough that you would detect it and you would find the glass revolting afterwards. Interesting. So that's the funny part of the study. Obviously, you've got wine wine tasters like sniffing glasses with flies in them, right, and everybody loves up. I mean, anytime there's a scientific article about wine or wine tasting, uh, people tend to read it, even if it's relatively unamusing.

But I actually would love to do another episode in the future just on wine and wine tasting, and not only the like the biological aspects, but of course the psychological aspects. We have an older episode of stuff to blow your mind that went into it a little bit, but I feel like didn't really give the the the importance of of of priming and the psychological weight of of wine tasting. You know, your expectations, the story that's told about it, etcetera. I would be more than happy

to come back to that. Uh. So that's the funny part. The funny part is them sniffing flies. The interesting question, though, is why why are humans so sensitive to Z four eleven A l It's this compound that's very relevant to the lives of these vinegar flies. Right, So, if you're a drosophila, this this compound is super important to your mating process. But why do humans find it repellent in food consumption contexts? The answer to this question is not

currently known. It's not clear that this compound is of any biological significance to humans. So the author's hypothesized, well, let's see what could be the reasons. Maybe it's reminiscent they say, of quote other food alde hides, so like our sensitivity to it could be part of a general food hunting olfactory package. But then again, why would it repel us in the context of wine? And we know that sometimes some food smells can be attractive in one

context and repellent in another, like certain smells associated with cheese. Right, Yeah, there have been some wonderful studies that have shown that if you smell the same thing, if you're told that it's a shoe, you'll be grossed out. If you're told that it's it's a cheese, then you'll run grab some crackers. Delicious, Yeah, And I suspect that same smell which would seem to be delicious on a cheese, if you smelled it on, like, I don't know, a bunch of strawberries or something, you

would probably think something was wrong with them. You'd be grossed out. But I don't know that that's just my I'm supposing. But then again, they also hypothesize. The authors do that the human sensitivity could exist in order to quote avert ingestion of fruit that is infested with vinegar flies, which, as we were talking about earlier, can of course be covered in microbes and can easily be a disease vector. But at this time we just don't know the answer.

We don't know why this smell is so salient to humans. You would think there need to be a reason for that, but we don't know what it is. Also, the authors note that Z four eleven a L is of course found in citrus essential oils. For example, it's part of the smell of clementines, and the authors point out that it could play a double role in signaling, not just as a sign of food, but as a sign of

of social significance. For example, mate location or territory marking in not just flies, but other animals as well, coming back to this theme that the same compound that's uh, that's very significant to one animal could be significant but

have a totally different meaning to a different animal. And ultimately the authors proposed at the end that they just want more research to provide a deeper understanding sort of of the the ecology of smells, the way volatile compounds connect different organisms to one another, and they write quote a future challenges to extend functional behavioral, ecological, and phylogenetic studies to include vertebrates toward an understanding of the chemical

vocabulary that interconnects us with other living things. This is a great um uh prize winner for the Igno Bells. I think because it touches on tours for for starters, it has that obvious, funny mental image of someone smelling the wine and saying, there's a fly in this. But then it does get into this, like the deeper roll of these chemical signals and and the mystery of exactly why they're setting us off like this. Uh, there there's

a mystery to it. Yeah. I liked this one a lot. Alright, on that note, we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back we will look at another two thousand eighteen Ignoble Prize winner. Than alright, we're back, al right, So I'm I want to talk about the Reproductive Medicine Prize. Okay, So this I like how they have a special category for reproductive medicine because stuff in there. Yeah, yeah, because there, it's gonna be a lot of essentially a lot of

penis jokes, I think are the typical winners. I'm gonna have to look back at some past winner is to to make sure that's the case, but it's certainly the case with with this particular winner. The title of the study that is honored is Nocturnal penile uh to me essence monitoring with stamps stamps like postage stamps, Yes, with postage stamps kind you get in the post office exactly. And this is was published in Neurology back in nineteen

eighty by authors that Barry blank In Boulou. So for this one, we're gonna have to talk a little bit about nocturnal penile too me essence or mpt is. It's also known exactly what is this this is? Of course morning would is that's kind of the colloquial term, right. Uh, this is the common sling for it. This is often

this is experienced by males, a waking and perhaps unexplained erection. Now, the interesting thing, of course, is that the stiffening of the member in question is not the work of devilish succubi or experimenting aliens. I'm sure have been blamed over the years. So yeah, I think that obviously we just

think of it. You have say, particularly if you have a pious individual, someone who is due to their particular religious thinking, you know, ab whore the temptations of the flesh and um, you know, are staving off their their primal hunger. What what does it mean when they're waking up in the night or in the morning with a full erection like fully physic physiologically aroused. Uh, and had

to be a demon. It must be a demon. And then of course in some cases there has been nocturnal emission, there has been discharge, so it seems like some sort of act has taken place, perhaps two. This is coupled with dreams, so we have all sorts of of human complexities that are layered on top of that that can lead to some confusion. But but of course it's it's none of these things. It's not the work of the devil, etcetera.

In fact, you know, a healthy male experiences up to five I've seen as high as like, I've seen three to six also as a figure, but to say five or six of these a night as part of his regular R E. M. Sleep. In fact, m pt s are so normal that doctors test for them when diagnosing erectile dysfunction because you know, think of it. If these directions occur on their own during the night, then the patient's waking problem is likely a psychological rather than physiological. Yeah,

that makes sense. Yeah, Now you might be wondering the why do they why do they happen at all? Good question. Yeah, Well, since they occur during the rim cycle, there's always the potential for sexually charged dream tie in, but it's not necessary. The main IMPT theories actually have nothing to do with

dreams at all. Rather that the body maybe oxygenating the penile tissue as a sort and of a sort of maintenance procedure, and the stimulant for this is thought to be the release of nitric oxide by nerve fibers in the penis. Oh, and then there's also the full bladder bladder ankle as well. The two often occur together and

scientists have have taken note of this as well. So, for instance, a mail will wake up in the morning uh there is an erection and at the same time they perhaps illogically it seems, need to urinate pretty badly as well. So some theories view uh impt or morning wood is the body's anti bed wedding is the one of the body's anti bed wedding measures and perhaps a

wake up call to the sleeper himself. So this particular study study with the stamps, it has to do with mpt s role in figuring out what's going on with erectile dysfunction, not with where the mail is, right, yeah, no, no, the postage is not intended for mailing purposes because but again think about it, aside from self reporting, how do you figure out if a patient's if a patient has experienced and erection during the night, Because so, I mean, I guess you could like have them come into a

clinic overnight, right, right, Yeah, you could do some sort of observation, but you know, there are a couple of problems with that as costly you're having you're asking them to sleep somewhere else, or you're I guess you could say you're think about putting somebody in their room to watch them sleep. These are just not good solutions, and you're also disrupting their life. You're sort of disrupting the like then their natural sleep cycles potentially by doing this.

So there have been a few different methods to figure out what's going on with the penis steering sleep. One MATHOD method that has been employed is ridges scan. So this is a battery powered instrument that places one loop around the base of the penis and the other at the tip, and these loops tighten every fifteen, two or thirty seconds. And the recording unit itself that is attached to these two loops that straps to the wast to the thigh, so it regularly tests to see how engorged

and rigid the member is throughout the night. Sounds cumbersome. I don't want to, you know, cast maybe that's a very useful device. Yeah, I looked at a picture of it. I mean, it doesn't look that bad. It doesn't if it sounds torturous, it does not look torturous. The other method is this popular as the penal plethysmic graph. This is a pulse volume recorder wired to a penile cuff

that measures blood flow. I know I've heard about things like this being used in studies that are trying to detect physiological signs of sexual arousal right, I believe this is This one, for instance, comes up in silence of the lambs. I believe it's like something that they would put on someone and show them films of horrible things

and see if they're sexually aroused by them. Yeah. So these methods, these two methods we discussed are are pretty accurate, uh and and are generally considered more accurate I understand than the stamps method. But back in the researchers in question uh presented the Stamp method uh quote. A Stamp technique was developed to detect complete nocturnal erections for the

evaluation of impotence. The test correctly detected complete nocturnal erections in twenty two potent men and absence of complete nocturnal erections in eleven impotent men. This is a simple, useful screening test for organic impotence. So the idea here is fairly simple. You take a ring of postage stamps, so they haven't been separated, and you know they have the

perforated edges, you know, so they pop apart easily. So you take this this ring of stamps and you fix them around the penis uh in its non erect uh nin gorged state, and then the individual goes to sleep. The subject goes to sleep. In the next morning, they check for breakage if the stamps, If that ring of stamps has broken, and again it should ideally break easily because of the perforations uh, this will be a sign that an erection has occurred. And this has some key advantages. Right,

it's a low cost. Just the cost of postage. Basically, the cost of postage goes way up. Right, it's gonna there's gonna be a regional determined and determined they're also you know, don't don't buy rare stamps just by the forever stamps. I guess somebody doing it with like the thousands of dollars of stamp collector stamps. Yeah, exactly, Yeah, don't use this, but yeah, it's low cost. You can

and also can be self administered with ease. You don't even you don't even necessarily have to have a doctor involved there, right, so that's part of the appeal. Doesn't sound too dangerous, No, yeah, it's going to break apart the stamps is so you don't have to worry about like constriction so much. The only real risk, of course, is accidentally mailing the penis. But that's a joke. Now. Some studies have backed up the effectiveness of this particular method.

Paper titled Nocturnal penal too essence Monitoring with stamps in Impotent Diabetics found that quote, the diagnostic value of this method is nearly the same as that of MPT recording with a strain gauge, and that's from diabetics research and clinical practice. However, the problem with the stamp method is that there's always the chance that shifting around in one

sleep will simply tear the perforated edges. There's a strip of tear the stamps without an erection taking place at all, and that would give you a false positive, a type one error, right, and then it's yeah, But then the problem there is is if you're trying to treat some sort of uh um, you know, impotent scenario, then you start treating as if it's psychological when it's really a

physiological ailment, So that's the risk. So why is this important, Well, because erectile dysfunction is legitimate medical concern, and it's funny because it involves a penis in mourning wood, and these are inherently funny tens and stamps like stamps and penis. Uh, it's really I mean, in retrospect, it's kind of surprising it took the ignal Bells this long to honor these researchers. Well, Robert, that one made me laugh and even sort of a little bit made me think. It's good to think about.

You know, what are the what are the maybe not as perfectly effective, but cost effective, safe things people can do to substitute for expensive medical tests. Obviously, sometimes you're going to value accuracy over you know, cost effectiveness and stuff like that. But with with some of these things, you know, it seems like it's worth doing a cheap test before you spring for the expensive test. Yeah, it

makes sense to me. I should add that I also saw a criticism of the stamp test, being that we're entering an age where there people have decreased access to traditional stamps, and so that could be a potential problem. The doctor says you need to get some stamps for your penis. And then your response is what are stamps? Couldn't the urologist to just have medical stamps? Like they could have stamps that you value at all? Or I guess it probably probably be over the counter. Would they

need to keep that behind the counter yet? But then what about the embarrassment when you accidentally try and mail um something? You start mailing your Christmas cards and the medical stamps my medical penis stamps? Do they say penis stamps on them? Like? That's totally warning? Medical penis stamp, no postage value? Oh, I think we need to go to another one. Okay, let's move on. Okay, I want to do one that we can look at pretty quick.

Uh quick question, Robert, do you read the user manual when you buy a thing and it comes with a manual? I guess it depends on the thing. It also depends on how excited about the thing I am, versus like how much just pure drudgery is the thing? Does being excited to make you more or less likely to read the manual? If I'm more excited, then I'll probably be more likely to read than the manual because I want

to know how it works. It's like, it's the thing's functionality is uh, you know, I want to be it to be a part of me. Where if it's something like a refrigerator, like I know how refrigerator works, and I really I don't want any more details. They just wanted to work, that's all I ask. Do you read the owner's manual when you get a new car, like Arnold Schwartzeningger and Twins. Did he do that? Yeah, he's like, Uh.

There's a scene where they're riding around in a car and Arnold Schwarzenegger is reading through some book and he's and Danny de Vito asked him what he's doing, and he's like, I'm learning to drive. Um, it's been a long time since I've seen that. I might not be remembering correctly, but I think that's pretty dead on. Uh No, A lot of times I don't read the manual either. I especially love it when there are manuals for things like the refrigerator that you just don't need a manual for.

It's like, if you don't automatically know how to use this thing, you're in trouble, right, And I'm not authorized to fix most things, and and it is. If it is something I can fix, then yes, maybe I'll pop up in the manual if I know where the manual is. User manuals are sometimes worth looking at just to see if there's any hilarious bad writing or bad translation. Yeah, that can be fun, you know. Actually, I will take one thing back. One item that I did read the

entire user manual for was the insta. Oh I've got one of those. That's great free plug. They did not pay us for this. Yeah, I love it. It helps me. It's as you mostly use it as like a rice and bean cooker, but it was one of these devices. When I got it, I was like, all right, I have no idea how this works. I need to know how this works. I guess I'm gonna read the user manual and uh, and then I was good to go.

I know you all don't often meet at home, but if you're ever making like a like a you know, tough pork or beef dish or something like that is just fantastic heart, human heart that you need to tenderize. Real good. It's it's great for that. It's really good for lentil dishes. It's the lentils, real nice and like they keep their their texture and and shape, but they get tender. It's great. Yeah, yeah, we've definitely used it on some lentils. Okay, okay, but we're getting distracted. Just

gushion about our pots. The Literature Prize of the lfls IS was given to THEA. Blackler, Raphael Gomez, Vestna Popovic, and m Helen Thompson quote for documenting that most people who use complicated products do not read the instruction manual. And this was a paper called Life's Too Short to r t f M. I think that's read the field manual, that not another F modifier. How users relate to documentation

and excess features in consumer products. So this study investigated people's relationship with two aspects of consumer products, number of features in an interface and product documentation the manual. So the authors did two sets of studies to look at the manuals and the excess features in common household products and they're right quote. The quantitative set was a series of questionnaires administered to a hundred and seventy people over

seven years. The qualitative set consisted of two six month longitudinal studies based on diaries and interviews, with a total of fifteen participants, and here's what they found. First of all, most people don't read the manual, and most people do not use all the features on the products they have. Quote people claim to read the manual and use all of the features of many common domestic and personal products only twenty percent of the time. I have to add

that clearly. One of the reasons that this study was was honored is that it it does something that the ignoble prizes frequently like it it it points out something that is blatantly obvious and backs it up with scientific rigor. You know, I actually like studies like that. People react on social media when there's like a study that shows to wrecked evidence of something that should seem obvious, and then people respond like, oh, why do you have to

do a study on that that's obvious? No, it's I mean all the time we have beliefs about things that seem obvious, but they're in fact not true. Tons of things that you think are obvious are false. And when a study shows you that something you think is obvious is actually backed up by evidence, that's valuable information. So anyway, rant end on that. But so, but this this one might be less less life and death than some of these things that people think are obvious. But I do

think it's kind of interesting about a relationship with our products. Okay, so here's another question. Most people don't read the manual and don't use all of the features on complicated products. But who actually does read the manual? Who's more and less likely in terms of like the demographics. Turns out women are less likely than men to read the manual

and use all the features. Uh. Young people are less likely than middle aged and older people to read the manual and use all the features, and more educated people are less likely to read the manual. Ok So, I don't know if these If these groups actually compound on top of each other, I'm not sure whether that's the case, but if they do, you would say, statistically, the person most likely to read the manual is like a lower education, older male, and statistically the person least likely to read

the manual is a higher education, younger woman. Also, people do not like excess features on a product interface. Uh So, excess features, they say, quote, are associated with negative affect, whereas core features are associated with positive affect. Again, this might be kind of obvious, but people don't really like all the bells and whistles. They like a product to be good at the main thing it's supposed to do. So I wonder how most people feel about those food

specific buttons on microwaves. Like those things well whatever the other The popcorn is the only one I've ever attempted to use, and I usually and I have only used it like once, and I burned popcorn. Yeah, so I just I just do my own thing. I could not tell you what the those buttons on my microwave say, Like there could be one that says human flesh, and there could be another one that says, like, I don't know, a bucket full of lollipops, and I wouldn't know. I

didn't looked at them. I didn't figure out how the power percentage on my microwave worked until like the last year or two. Yeah, but then I started noticing, oh wait, this actually, this particular microwave dish requires that I use power. How do I do that? And then I have to figure it out. But I never looked at the manual. I stuck to my guns on that one. So you actually follow instructions on microwavable meals. You don't just press

six six six like a lot of people do. I didn't know if people did that, and some sometimes people do that. I mean, that's as solid, solid choice, good number, steady tradition in my family. Um No, I think it usually comes out better if you follow the instructions. That's kind of like reading the manual. Also, people hate having to consult the manual to figure out how to use something. Quote reading of manuals appears to cause annoyance and negative

emotional experiences unquote. On average, people just want their products to be self explanatory. They do not want to have to read all that stuff and deal with a bunch of extra features and settings. They want stuff to be easy and intuitive, and they don't want to read manuals. So I wonder what companies should learn from this, Like is there something Is there a lesson here for the creation of manuals or the or the creation of of

alternative materials regarding the use of their products. That's a good question. Um. I mean, generally, I think it should be the case that if it's possible for you to make an interface a product interface self evident, like it should just be obvious how the product works and how you're supposed to use it. You should do that. Now, obviously you can't always do that. They're gonna be lots of kinds of features of products that are more complicated.

They can't just be totally obvious on the interface. Uh So, in that case, I don't know what you're supposed to do. Maybe you're just going to have people being frustrated. Maybe the idea is that all products should contain sort of to whatever extint possible kind of walk through features, right like they don't. You don't have to go look at the manual. It just asks you what you want to do and helps you do it. I walk through, but

who wants to do that? No, that's like, that's really annoying to I don't want to do like a robotic walk through with my new microwave. I just want to use it when I have to write, Yeah, I don't know what to do. But do you want to burn popcorn? We're doing it either way exactly. All right, Well, on that note, let's move on to our next award winning study.

Let's let's talk peace. Okay. This is theeen Ignoble Peace Prize was awarded to Francisco Alonso, Christina Esteban, Andrea Serge Maria Luisa Balistar, him Ace San Martin, Constanza Cataloud, Beatriz Alama are Oh and Beatriz Lamar for measuring the frequency, motivation, and effects of shouting and cursing while driving an automot UH and there are a couple of references here, one

of the Journal of Sociology and Anthropology from UH. Francisco Alonso attended the ceremony, but the author's right that quote. Evidence has shown that drivers who usually express aggressive behaviors more frequently tend at the same time to have higher rates of road crashes or traffic incidents. And so the situations in which aggressive behaviors arise tend to be very common, meaning that driver aggression is potentially a major traffic safety issue.

And the authors administered a number of survey questions to Spanish drivers over the age of fourteen to figure out their perceptions and attitudes about aggressive driving behaviors like shouting and insulting behind the wheel. And so I found a long form version of this. That I don't know is that it seems like the long form version I found is not the study itself, but is a summary that

was published after the prize was awarded. Because it's got some really funny uh statements in the conclusions, such as, let us also remember that people who use cars to make love as well, which is clearly better than eventually using them to get get us killed. Uh. And also, as it happens with these prizes, we need to support laughters because they are not compatible with certain negative emotional states, and for sure they will lead us to peace. Well,

that's a nice sentiment. Just to look at the data real quickly that they come up with. They say that about twenty six point four percent of people of drivers admit that they sometimes insult other drivers or shout while driving forty one point six percent, So they never do it. I don't know. I almost never do it, but sometimes they really get to you. It's a real struggle for me, especially when I'm in the car driving the boy around.

And uh, I'm really good at watching my language the rest of the time, I think, but when him in the car, it's a little harder. Luckily he mishears me. Oh yeah, um, for a while he was convinced. Hopefully he's still convinced that I sometimes refer to other drivers as funky's uh, and I should really try to do that instead of what I am saying that that's a good one. Funkies, you know it's just funky driving. Yeah.

Uh quick. Look also at the data about a reasons people self reported to initiate some shouting or insulting other drivers. Top one with twenty two point five percent was reaction to breaking a rule, So when somebody else breaks a road, that's when you will shake my finger at them. Yes. Also next at twenty one four percent, reaction to dangerous maneuvers, so when other people behave recklessly. Uh. Then below that at thirteen point six percent, the other driver puts me

in danger. Also at thirteen point six percent, just stress, you know, stress. But that's that's people being self conscious right there, they're admitting, yes, stress probably just makes me do it. Other reasons are below that. Uh. And then finally one point three percent of people say they do it because quote everybody does it. Now something that's not

reflecting this study. I just want to throw in. I recently watched The ice Cream Manes horror film starring Clint Howard, and Clint Howard apparently drove around yelling in his car in order to get his voice nice and raspy for the role so it's possible that that person you think is driving angry, it's just Clint Howard preparing for a leading role method acting. Yeah, all right, we need to take a quick break, but we will be right back

with more ignobles. Thank alright, we're back. Well, Robert, is it time for the Economics Prize? It is, which you know, the Economics Prize. It might not sound exciting, but this is a pretty good one. It's often one of the funniest ones. Yeah, because I think it's because it plays well with humor. Because you think Economics Prize, you think, uh, something dry and stuffy and uh And in most cases they'll find something that has an instant does that as in this case, the pozzas comes in the form of

voodoo dolls. Nice. Uh so the uh, the the particular paper here this honored is titled writing a wrong Retaliation on a Voodoo Doll symbolizing an abusive supervisor Restores Justice And this was by Laying at All published in the Leadership Quarterly February. Do you think this study was funded by big voodoo? No, and I'll get to that in a minute. Really, really that there's virtually no voodoo in any of this, there's a sort of a metaphorical voodoo doll.

Yeah yeah, there. There's no Afro American religion or folklore in this particular study at all, but it does a center around a reality that a lot of us have been forced to face over the years, unfortunately, and that is abusive supervisor figures. Terrible bosses, mean bosses, They exist, they do. I've been I've been lucky. I haven't had an abusive boss at least in a long time, but I I did have one briefly at one point. I remember it being pretty horrible to work under them. What

what is counting as an abusive supervisor here? Is this like like really egregious abuses or just like being a jerk? Well, it can cover a wide variety of things. Uh. It could be punching holes in walls. It could be Um, it could be just yelling at at subordinates that sort of thing. Their whole host of behaviors that fall under this umbrella. Uh. And whether you're dealing with big, big ones or supposedly little ones, I mean, it all can add up. It can all make make ones a work

life rather dismal. And then what are you gonna do? Right? Hopefully you're gonna there's gonna be a system in place

like via HR to report such individuals. But as the authors of this twenty team paper point out, there may be attempt at temptation for reprisal in other words, to get revenge in some sense at the boss or superior that is, uh, that is being horrible, but sort of by the dynamics of the workplace, you can't really do that, right, at least not in any kind of legitimate way, right, I mean, And that's something that they point out time and time again, like they're they're not saying that reprisals

are good. Reprisals are bad. Reprisals only just add more chaos to the workplace environment and cost the company money, etcetera. But here's one of the things they had to say in the study quote, when a subordinate receives abusive treatment from a supervisor, a natural response is to retaliate against

the supervisor. Although retaliation is dysfunctional and should be discouraged, we examine the potential functional role retaliation plays in terms of alleviating the negative consequences of abusive supervision or subordinate justice perceptions. So, yeah, basically, the idea is, if you're pushed down by a terrible boss, there is going to be this natural incline, a shin to push back in some way. Right, So is there some way you can

do that without making things worse for yourself and others? Right? Yeah? Because I think a lot of times it is about that, Like what would feel good right now? Like nothing would feel better than to destroy the boss's bobble head? You know. But as fun as it might look on the the office or some other television show or film, uh, it's

it's not really necessarily a good move in the long run. Still, aggression against such supervisors is common as high as seventy six according to a sited study in this paper, and this is seemingly on par with aggressions towards co workers as well, if not more prevalent. The authors point out that the prevalence of retaliation suggests that retaliation may play functional role in dealing with abuse, and there are various theories as to why an adaptive response a way of

rebalancing the relationship, etcetera. So it could be I mean, not to put thoughts in everyone's head, I guess on this matter, but it could be as simple as okay an otherwise okay, boss like raises their voice at you. You feel a little hurt. Their bubble head takes a little dive off the side of their table. You can universe is restored, you know, because you're like, all right, you yelled at me and I didn't really like that. But the bubble head is dead now and you could

see that. It's like, okay, things are equal. How are they really equal? Well, that depends on all the other aspects of the the the office dynamics. So the authors here they lay out a functional theory of retaliation, whereby engaging in retaliation reaffirms one sense of justice and supervisor abuse is the external stressor that violates one's expectations of fair treatment. So to test this out, they made use of an online voodoo doll representing an abuse of supervisor

and specifically in the wording of the paper. Uh, they use what they would call a voodoo doll task or vd T paradigm to manipulate retaliation. Get love that sterile terminology. Yeah, So, so again, there's nothing actually related to any kind of folklore, I or religious practice here, So it's not really a ritual. It's more just like the concept of enacting violence on some kind of effigy, right, yeah, such as you know

very much the bubblehead in question. So the paper argues that retaliation might be an important way in which we deal with supervisor aggression, even though it should be discouraged and only creates more problems. Quote. In particular, we have proposed and found that subordinate retaliation can directly influence subordinate

justice perceptions. These findings suggest that retaliation not only benefits individual victims, but may also benefit the organization as a whole, given that justice perception is important for employee performance and well being. So this is kind of like having the giving employees the illusion of some kind of retaliation, like that they haven't actually done anything to the boss, but if they just pretend they're retaliating, that that makes the

company a little more lubricated of things. Okay, they're not saying, hey, you need to have a dunking booth every year, and that's the only way you're gonna restore balance of your company. They say they take home is that is not that companies should encourage retaliation, but they should include instead foster quote subordinate justice perception. And one example of this is

having a zero tolerance policy against various abusive behaviors. They also wonder if companies should rethink what is referred to as deviant subordinate behavior. This would be like breaking the bubble head because the individuals here, the the the subordinates

that are acting out. They might be attempting to resolve perceived injustices, and perhaps they really should be disciplined for what they're doing, but perhaps it also points to other issues in the workplace that have yet to be resolved. So it's like you fire the guy for breaking the bubblehead, or you make the guy who broke the bubblehead, you know, take a some sort of anger management towards toys class. Uh, but then you still have whatever the existing caustic dynamic

happened to be between the boss and the employees. What do you do about that? Like that it remains unchecked. So they're saying this, this kind of behavior could just be a you know, a canary in the coal mine, I guess. So, then, was the use of the the abuse of the effigy task was so? Was that actually just to reveal some underlying attitudes or they actually suggesting something like that is useful? I think they just used it to reveal in this case, they're not saying, like,

do a voodoo doll task. You know that the voodoo doll task is merely a part of the experiment and part of any kind of solution that they are presenting. So yeah, again, putting voodoo in the title of the paper, it's it's maybe selling the voodoo elements a little too strong. Well, yeah, And I think often to refer to like any process by which like the mechanics of which are unclear. I mean I think about like the phrase like voodoo economics

and stuff like that. I mean, it would be funny to sub in any other name of any other religion. They're like calling it Christian economics or uh or Hindu economics or something. It wouldn't make much sense. I don't know. I think maybe maybe people should try to retire those

uses of the word voodoo. It's a system of beliefs. Yeah, you know that this would be a great excuse to come back at some point in the future and do a show on voodoo because we could discuss what voodoo is, slash was, how it has been represented in our culture, and how uh the terminology has been utilizable in this case in scientific studies, but elsewhere as well. Okay, time to turn to the Anthropology Prize, very different kind of subject. This is going to deal with the concepts of learning

and imitation and uh and social mimicry. So you've heard the expression obviously, monkey see monkey do uh. The funny thing is that this is almost always applied to human children rather monkeys. You know, people never say that about a monkey. They say that about a four year old, and as such, it tends to highlight the very strong

imitative tendencies of human children. You ever notice how like a child will seem to spontaneously, almost unconsciously, mimic actions that they see, Like they watch something on TV or an adult doing something, and you'll see the child doing the same thing with their hands that the adult is doing, or the person on TV is doing, or something without even seeming to realize it. Oh yeah, Like I need

the countless examples from my home child's life. But I specifically remember like watching him dance while watching Frozen when he was like super little, Like he doesn't even remember this, but during the dance scenes he would move a little bit while watching That's funny, I mean I actually have very strong specific memories about this from when I was a little kid, like of suddenly becoming embarrassed because I realized I was spontaneously unconsciously imitating an action I had

just seen an adult do. For example, I remember being very young and I was like watching a dude in my neighborhood using a jackhammer to tear up a concrete porch on the side of a house. And I realized I was like spontaneously pretending to use a jackhammer and making sounds with my mouth. And I was suddenly realized this, and I was like super embarrassed. But we do this for some reason. Obviously why One obvious answer is that imitation is an instinct related to what the clear thing

learning right? Right, You see something, you sort of do it yourself. You you imitate, and through imitation you learned right. And so the idea here is that it's adaptive to have an imitation instinct because through this you can have transgenerational transfer of of ideas and behaviors. For example, you watch the skilled adult do something throw a rock or make a hand axe, and you imitate their movements as a way of learning how to do the thing yourself.

But there appears to be another biological function of imitation, which is that it plays a social communicative role. It prolongs pro social interactions and generally promotes positive social relationships. And this latter role has been investigated in humans, but it's sort of under explored or sometimes even thought to

be absent in non human primates like chimpanzees. Uh, there's clear evidence of other other primates like chimpanzees, say, imitating behaviors of each other and of humans, especially in order to clearly learn how to do something. But what would be the evidence that there's this social communicative role in humans that's not necessarily there in chimpanzees. Well, one is this interesting fact that human children, but not apes, tend to what's called over imitate. So here here's an example

I want to give you. If an adult is demonstrating the physical actions required to accomplish a goal, human chill aldren will usually copy directly all of the adults actions, even if they're clearly irrelevant to achieve the goal. And meanwhile, chimpanzees will tend to ignore the irrelevant actions and figure out what's the important part to get the desired goal. So an example would be an adult picks up a colored block and then uses it to flip a switch on a box, and then the box opens to reveal

a toy. Human children, especially starting around two years old, will copy this exactly. They'll pick up the colored block and use it to flip the switch to get the toy, whereas the apes will just skip the block and they'll just flip the switch with their hands and get the toy. Another version I've heard is like, um, you have a food item or a toy or something inside a box, and you have an adult go through these elaborate rituals with their hands before they open the doors of the

box and get the thing out. Apparently, apes and human children will tend to copy all of the actions if the boxes ache, but if the box is clear and you can see the item inside, the human children will still copy all of the actions, but the apes will just reach in and get it. So the tay with the real Tay come here would seem to be do not bring a chimpanzee to communion, right, because that's not going to follow any of the more ritual aspects of

the thing. It's just gonna go for the juice and bread. Well, this is clear because this shows that even the presence of rituals seems to show that there's some role of imitation in human culture that goes beyond just like learning useful skills that achieve goals. There's some type of imitation that happens between humans that seems to be purely social, and it's hypothesized by some that humans are actually better learners than apes in part because of this slavish copying

of apparently pointless actions. You can imagine how this might help in like learning to perform actions that don't immediately result in a goal or reward. Right, Mimicking behaviors with no obvious benefit also helps you learn more complex multi

step skills. That's true. Plus I also can't help but think of steps in performing tasks where the the importance of some of those steps might be lost on on a novice exactly, but later I realize, oh, that's really essential if I should wear a radiation suit well while

messing around with these these rods. Yes, So the question is why do human children copy more perfectly and more pointlessly, where whereas apes don't to the same extent, And one potential answer is that the human copying appears to be for more than just learning how to achieve goals. It's also playing this social communicative role where the imitation itself is useful not just for achieving mechanical goals, but for

things like improving relationships between people. And this could be seen somewhat parallel to Robert something I know you've read about before, the unconscious process of mirroring in human psychology and behavior. If you if you've never observed this, just do a quick experiment. Watch two co workers separately, and then watch them once they begin a conversation with each other.

There's a very good chance that when they start talking to each other, you might be able to notice them beginning to show similar posture and nonverbal behaviors like gesturing, without them seeming to notice that they're doing it. And this is an unconscious form of imitation known as mirroring. It appears to be a pro social adaptation that builds feelings of closeness and rapport between people, and research shows that when other people mirror your actions, you have increased

positive feelings. You trust them more, you feel closer to them, You're more likely to believe they share your attitudes and stuff like that. But we like to. We like to mirror each other's behaviors because we like to be mirrored. It makes us feel good. Yeah, this is always something very interesting to observe when we we actually stop to observe it, because there's like it's happening at a linguistic level.

It's happening in the way we speak with our hands, and now the under person may speak with their hands as well. Um, And of course we're not running through all of this before we have a conversation. We're not saying, hey, uh, if do you wanna how much do you want to use your hands during this conversation. I'm thinking about keeping it like nd body level, but I could go wider. No, I mean, it's generally entirely unconscious. And the funny thing is,

I mean we like it when it's unconscious. But like if you pointed it out and people were doing it consciously, it would seems psychopathic, right, You would think like, oh my god, I'm being manipulated. I hate this if you

thought the person was consciously doing it. But nevertheless, we do have all of this clearly conscious imitation going on with with human children and with nonhuman primates, with the distinctions we've talked about before, but this study that won the Ignoble this year, the Ignoble Anthropology Price focused on testing for evidence of social communicative imitation in non human

primates in chimpanzees. So it's taking issue with that previous consensus that they're is no social communicative imitation and non human primates. That for the non human primates, it's just basic, you know, mechanical learning imitation. And so the prize was given to Thomas Person, Gabrielle, Elina South south Quick, Elaine Madison, Oh sorry, and Elaine Madison for quote collecting evidence in a zoo that chimpanzees imitate humans about as often and

about as well as humans imitate chimpanzees. This was published in the journal Primates in the year so earlier this year, and so basically what happened is you had these researchers from Lunda University in Sweden and they studied spontaneous interactions between chimpanzees and human visitors at the Furivic Zoo in Sweden,

and what they found was interesting. They found that humans in chimpanzees spontaneously imitated each other at roughly the same rate going both ways, about ten percent of actions that each species performed were spontaneously imitated by the other, though human is overall showed what they quote called a higher imitative precision. So like the humans, imitations of the apes were more finely tuned, you might say, a little bit more accurate. But the apes imitated the humans at the

same rate that the humans imitated the apes. Uh. There was also some congruity in the kinds of actions imitated by both humans and chimpanzees, who tended especially to copy things like clapping the hands, pressing lips against the window, like kissing the glass, knocking on the glass with the hand, and knocking on the head with the hand. I like

that one. But one thing you might notice about these imitated actions is that they're common, which means they're familiar, which means they're not new to the animal, and they're not in service of any goal. They're not getting anything. Thus, the authors think that this is evidence of social communicative imitation, what's done for the purpose of bonding, building rapport, communicating intentions, and so forth, rather than for learning how to do

new tas asks or accomplished goals. Another piece of evidence that the chimpanzees showed social communicative imitation is that interactions between humans and chimpanzees lasted longer on average when there was imitation than when there was none. So the authors conclude that there's more evidence than previously thought that apes also evolved imitation instincts for social and communication reasons, not just for learning. So maybe we could bring them to communion.

Maybe that's a good Yeah, So I wonder, I mean, this obviously is intension with some previous findings, so you gotta wonder, like what what's causing the distinction there. Maybe chimpanzees are just more goal oriented. They know what they

want and they tend to get it. I wonder how this play is into any of the Planet of the Apes movies, if this could be used to understand any character motivations there, well, like if Charlton Heston had only mirrored doctors as more, um, they might have gotten a long better all right, So there you have it. Ignoble Prizes.

We've rolled through all the winners for this year in these two episodes, and again some of them we gave more attention than others, and pretty much any of them touch on a topic that we either have discussed in the pastor could easily discuss again in the future. So if you have particular thoughts on what episodes we should do in the future, just let us know. In the meantime. Heading over to Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's the mother ship. That's where we'll find all the

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