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>> Amy Draves: Good afternoon. My name is Amy Draves. And I'm here to
introduce and welcome Winifred Gallagher, who is joining us as part of the
Microsoft Research Visiting Speakers Series. Winifred is here today to discuss
her book, "New: Understanding our Need for Novelty and Change."
Adapting to new circumstances is crucial to our survival, but in this day and age
we are assaulted with the deluge of new things daily.
Figuring out how to keep from being overwhelmed and using the new to your
advantage is the challenge. Winifred Gallagher is a science journalist for
numerous publications including Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone and the New
York Times. She's the author of "Rapt: The Power of Place." And "Just the Way
You Are," which was a New York Times notable book of the year.
Please join me in welcoming her back to Microsoft.
[applause]
>> Winifred Gallagher: Thank you so much, and thank you so much for coming
out on such a cold afternoon here. I'm from New York City a little bit of the time.
And it was 67 degrees last Saturday in New York City and I'm going tomorrow to
LA and I said Seattle is always so nice and warm I'm not going to take an
overcoat. So I've been like chattering teeth the whole time I've been here.
Also before I started I wanted to say a nice thing, because sometimes we could
all, you know, die for lack of a nice thing to think about.
As I was taking a Delta flight here and as we were waiting interminably for the
plane to start taxiing, I picked up the Delta magazine and they had a very
interesting feature on individuals who make a difference in the world.
Bill Clinton was on the cover, and it was basically wonderful people who are
solving all kinds of horrendous problems all over the world.
And the one company they mentioned, and got a whole spread, was Microsoft as
being the stellar company for past and present employees doing good things all
over the world. And they gave a lot of different examples of your colleagues and
anyway hats off to you. That's a very nice distinction.
[applause]
I decided to write this book shortly after I wrote "Rapt" and I was going around on
a book tour just like this one, and an interviewer, NPR person said is there
anything you wish you had included in "Rapt" that you didn't.
Much to my surprise I blurted out the fact that we're addicted to novelty. And I
didn't really know what that meant, and it wasn't the right use of the word
"addicted", but it actually intrigued me. Like why is it that we just find new things
and change so irresistible, that we're so involved in that?
And I started my reporting, which took me all the way back to Africa, where we
evolved. And that's how I ended up doing this book. Just a little background.
Maybe I don't need these. Maybe I do. Of all species, we are nature's novelty
specialist, who are uniquely primed, both biologically and psychologically to
engage with the new and different.
The purpose of this neophilia, this affinity for novelty and change, is to help us
adapt to learn about and create new things that matter.
To continue to survive and prosper, we must use this gift for its evolutionary
purpose, while dismissing novel trivia as distractions.
Homeosapiens evolved our genius for engaging with the new and different and
embracing change during a long period of extraordinarily volatile environmental
upheaval in our native Africa.
We basically evolved as a species between 800,000 years ago and 195,000
years ago when we emerged as homeosapiens, and during that time, Africa was
racked with there would be long periods of monsoons. Then long periods of
terrible drought.
So everything would turn into tropical forest and then into deserts and incredibly
deep lakes from the monsoon period would dry up to dry holes.
It was really cataclysmic climate change. Unlike many other species, including
many homo-groups, much like us, we -- unlike us folks -- we learn to adapt to this
unpredictable world and survive conditions that killed off many other species.
In fact, our neophilia saved us from extension 80,000 years ago during a period
of particularly catastrophic climate change, which was probably extreme aridity. I
didn't realize this, we really almost went out of business 80,000 years ago.
The estimates were from some thousands of breeding couples to as few as 600
breeding couples. And everybody on the planet today is descended from that
group.
We are all Africans. Today's tsunamis, earthquakes and hurricanes remind us
that we still live on a changing unpredictable planet. Perhaps you noticed in
public places you can't help glancing at the TV even if you don't want to, which is
really me.
You're hard wired to notice novelty and change because the risks and rewards
that impact your survival are likelier to come from something new and different in
your environment than from the same old-same old.
A swerving car. A drop in one of your stocks. A rise in your bad cholesterol.
These things are more important than just the same old-same old driving down
the highway, everything's going fine, everybody's going the same speed.
Even newborn babies will stare at a novel image for about 41 seconds, then tune
out if you keep showing them the picture. Think of these poor little tots. Only a
couple hours old and already they're scientific experiments.
At the most basic level, we react to the new with the so-called arousal adaptation
response. We get excited by something new, a new job, relationship, the latest
wonder phone. A new apartment. And then we get used to it.
The arousal adaptation response also explains why inexpensive pleasures, as
psychologists call them, things like flowers, fresh flowers or a great piece of
chocolate, are better quality of life investments than comforts.
Serious expensive things like a new microwave that you soon take for granted.
So if you wanted to invest $500 in improving your life, you would be much better
off signing up for -- have a delivery of fresh flowers every week than you would
buying a new fridge.
As HBO knows, hot entertainments today exploit the arousal adaptation
response by exciting you with a novel stimulus, the misunderstood vampire, the
emotional robot, the lovable gangster. Letting you get used to it. And then
up-ending your expectations so it excites you all over again.
So just by the time we're thinking, you know, Tony Soprano's not such a bad guy
he's just like everybody else he's just misunderstood. Then he does something
so heinous that you can't believe it. And that's a big part of the kind of
entertainments that we have today.
Like all behavior, neophilia has minuses and pluses. It spurs us to learn and do
new things. Explore space, invent technology. Make art. Create the totally
unique personal worlds in each of our heads. But novelty seeking can also be
risky. It can jeopardize your safety. Fidelity. Sobriety, all kinds of good behavior
as well as fueling a chronic restlessness and dissatisfaction, which I think is one
of the major issues for us as in terms of behavior.
I think one good guideline is your novelty seeking is apt to be worthwhile when
you use it to go deep into a subject that's important to you. Buddhism. The
Coral Reef, your elderly parents. Your sailboat, rather than when you allow it to
distract your attention in a broad shallow way.
So you go online and pretty soon you're doing Kim Kardashian and Herman
Cain's sex life, ding, ding, ding and before you know it it's an hour and you go
what have I done with this precious hour of my life?
Sometimes it's clear that a new thing is either very dangerous, like the saber
tooth tigers that our ancestors had to deal with, or a terrific resource like a
coming into a forest clearing and seeing a tree bursting with edible fruit.
Other times, though, novelty can pose both possible risks and rewards. A new
investment scheme. An off-the-grid vacation in a developing country.
Those things can plunge you into what psychologists call an approach avoidance
conflict. The uncertainty of the unknown frustrates your powerful need to know
what to do next, which creates anxiety.
Like individuals, companies and other groups also experience approach
avoidance conflicts because they must balance the need to try new things in
order to prosper and grow against the risk of failure and potentially angry
shareholders and members.
I think our country right now, no matter what your politics are, I think we're having
a massive approach avoidance conflict. You know, where some people say well
to get out of the mess we're in we need to, you know, stimulate and grow and
expand and other people are saying but wait look at the deficit. It's a classic
approach avoidance conflict.
And I think if somebody could figure out how to solve that particular one, they
would be in a very good position right now. Maybe it's not possible. But that's a
classic approach avoidance conflict.
We may be a neophylic species, but as individuals we respond to novelty in very
different ways. Nature ensures these varying reactions because to survive and
prosper a population needs a balance between adventurous individuals and
cautious ones to who alert to the risks involved..
I like to picture our ancestors back in Africa always on the move, looking for new
resources. They come up against this wild, raging white water river, and you
have the neophyliacs, the extreme novelty seekers saying, wow, look on the
other side of that river, we've never been there, there could be great resources,
maybe there's terrific food, it's really exciting, plus it would be really fun trying to
go across the white water.
Then you have the more conservative neophobic people saying what are you
crazy we'll drown if we try to cross that river. At least we know what's going on
here. We have no idea what's going to happen to us there.
Then you have the majority of the group listening being informed by both points
of view and trying to come up with a consensus. The tendency to approach or
avoid the new is the single most important stable behavioral difference among
individuals in the same species, period. Nothing reveals your personality more
clearly and immediately than your emotional reaction to new things over time and
across many situations.
It's a very good thing to know about yourself. And to know about other people
that you work with, whom you work with.
Let me have a little drink here. Your own personal level of neophilia bespeaks
your nurture in your nature including your genetically influenced brain chemical
dopamine which motivates us to anticipate and pursue new or pleasurable things
to different degrees.
Dopamine is about wanting. It's about wanting. It's like -- dopamine and
neophilia are about anticipation and pursuit. The extreme -- about 15 percent of
us are these extreme novelty seekers who I call neophiliacs. They have a
particular dopamine profile.
They sometimes live too fast and die too young. But they also explore,
experiment and otherwise push the envelope for the rest of us.
An example I use in the book is Story Musgrave, the astronaut, you might
remember, although some of you look too young to remember, the picture in the
New York Times of Story fixing the Hubble telescope in space. If you've never
seen it look it up because it's such an amazing picture.
He's just out there in his spaceman suit with like kind of a hose coming out of the
ship and he's just up there in space working on the Hubbell telescope. I mean, in
addition to being a NASA astronaut that's been to the moon I don't know how
many times, all that, he has got a degree in surgery. He's a surgical doctor from
Columbia University. He has five or six other graduate degrees in things like
statistics, you know, English literature. He can take apart an airplane and put it
back together.
He does -- he's done over 600 parachute jumps, including free falls for people
trying to study human aerodynamics without parachutes. This guy has lived ten
lifes in one lifetime. That's a neophiliac. In the best sense of the word. He'll tell
you he grew up on a big farm in England.
From the time he was -- he says three to five years old -- he was all over that
farm. By the time he was five he was building his own little boats and going
across the river. And this is a very -- this is the mountainman who pioneered the
way west. These are the explorers, the neophiliacs.
They are likelier than other people to carry variance of the DRD 4 dopamine
gene. Specifically it's 7R, 5R, and 2R alleles, which just means genetic variant.
Which are linked to this tendency to become very strongly aroused by novelty
and rewards adapt to them very quickly and want more. You have a thrill. If
somebody like Story jumps out of an airplane first time it's thrilling. By the time
he's done it a couple of times he's saying I'm over that now what can we do, and
there are all kinds of apparently terrifying things to even think about that you can
do where you have to wait a really long time before you release the chute or you
have to -- you jump from a very short, a much shorter distance so you don't have
a lot of time if something goes wrong with your parachute. There's all kinds of
things to make it what to me would be more terrifying, but to someone like him
more fun.
Whether their excitability and low boredom threshold is an advantage or not
greatly depends on their environment. It's very good for fixing the Hubble in
space, for exploring the ocean floor, for starting up a company.
It's not so great if you have to sit -- if you're a little boy like that and you have to
sit in a classroom all day staring at like a screen or a teacher, or if you have to sit
in a cubicle doing work that you don't really care for.
By no means do all carriers of these dopamine gene variants develop into
neophiliacs. Impressive Finish studies, that is from Finland, show that the
genetically predisposed children who did develop into neophiliacs were also
exposed to certain environmental influences.
Seemingly both positive and negative ones. They include being raised in
affluence. A harsh emotional atmosphere. An urban residence, a hard-drinking
father, and a highly educated mother.
I think one of the -- well, probably the most interesting thing we'll find about why
we are the way we are is going to be in these new studies that are very difficult to
do where they're looking at genes and also the environmental interactions, what
it takes to actually -- it's epi genetics. What it takes to have the gene actually
express itself. It's going to be, I think, a really very interesting area of research.
At the opposite end of the neophilia spectrum are the 15 percent of us who are
neo phobes. These individuals are innately sensitive to the risks that are
inherent in new things, which they approach with caution or avoid.
However, if there had been more of these careful, cautious sorts on Wall Street,
we might have avoided a major recession. The neophiliacs were in charge there
for a while on Wall Street.
These are sensitive, thoughtful, reflective people. John Milton and Emily
Dickinson were not party animals. Bill Clinton is not going to write "Paradise
Lost." Again. It's not like neophiliacs are great and neophobes aren't, like both
have positives and negatives, and we need all sorts.
About 70 percent of the population are moderate neophyls of different degrees
leaning maybe a little bit towards the neophiliac end or neophobic end, but
somewhere there in the very broad middle. Because they're not biologically
primed to respond knee-jerk style to new things and in extreme way, they have
more time to consider how to react and more behavioral options.
So the latest gadget comes out and I have a friend who the second a new phone
or a new whatever comes out, she's there. She has to wait in line for hours. She
has to have it right away.
That's a different -- it's like she almost doesn't have the option if I say Nadia, why
don't you just wait a minute, have you thought like if we wait three months they'll
have a second generation, it will be better, maybe the price will drop.
Like her instant reaction is: Go engage with it now. And you can see how if
you're talking about sexual partners or the second martini or any number of other
things, this tendency can get you in trouble.
The majority of people neither want to be scared stiff by too much novelty
especially in careers and close relationships, nor bored stiff by too little,
particularly in their intellectual creative and recreational pursuits. Taken together,
this roughly 1-5-1 ratio of people who generally tend to approach, weigh or avoid
things benefits the larger group.
All of us can tailor our neophilia profiles to improve our quality of life. If you sort
of tend toward the neophobic end and your life gets to feel a little boring you can
actually kind of cultivate your curiosity. Curiosity -- most people I think I don't
think realize, and I don't think I fully realize myself, curiosity is an emotion. It's
like -- it's like awe or sorrow.
It's an emotion. And we have different levels of it. And we can cultivate it. Even
in little ways, like one psychologist who studies curiosity said if it's really hard for
you to go to different restaurants, if you always want to go to the same
restaurant, at least when you go to the same restaurant order something different
from the menu.
Adopting a new interest, attending a night course instead of watching TV, very
simple ways, whatever you become as one interesting to me psychologist puts it,
whatever you become interested in becomes interesting.
Whatever you become interested in becomes interesting. And you really can
have a more interesting life by becoming more interested in more things,
because once you engage they will be become interesting to you.
This is Ellen Langer from Harvard. In fact, I heard that Jennifer Aniston is
making a movie about some of her research. She told me her illustration of this,
whatever you're interested in becomes interesting, that her husband, I guess, is a
big football fan.
And she just couldn't care-less about football. He said it really bugs me, can't
you just sit down once in a while and watch the game with me. So she said
okay. She did.
And she became fascinated by looking at the players' butts. And she said before
you knew it, she was saying, well, what about No. 62, who is he? The guy with
the big butt and the guy with the little butt, who is that.
Whatever you become interested in becomes interesting. If you lean in the
neophiliac direction, and your life can feel scattered and unfocused sometimes,
you can use your neophilia like a laser instead of a floodlight, focus it only on
new things of enduring value that really matter to you and try to identify other
things as distractions and eliminate them.
Some very exciting research by a terrific cognitive scientist, Art Kramer, shows
that all of us can benefit from taking up a challenging new mental or physical
activity.
It can be pumping iron at the gym. It can be learning a video game. These
activities -- and he measures them very precise physiologic measurements as
well as performance tests -- actually beefs up your brain and it causes
angiogenesis in your brain into old age. It's really neat research, I think.
And in one study he brought a bunch of senior citizens into his lab, and he made
them learn a video game called Rise of Nations, which I guess is one of the more
intellectually acceptable games where you actually solve problems that are real
countries around the world.
And, of course, a lot of the grandparents were like, oh, no, I can't do that. That's
my grandkids do that, it's not for me, I'll never learn that.
They learned it. And they just had -- all their tests were just so terrific after they
forced themselves to learn something really different. And then they got really
into it. Look at what's going on between England and France.
It's fascinating to me that you can actually change your physiology, your
neurophysiology by this kind of activity. Another drink. Sorry. I'm kind of
jetlagged.
Like individuals, societies differ in their approaches to the new and different and
sometimes for biological reasons, too. In our nation of immigrants, where
innovation is prized, a hefty 25 percent of Americans, at least of European
descent, carry the DRD 47 R neophiliac gene that is extremely rare in other parts
of the world, including traditionally risk-averse conservative China. Very rare
there.
They have 2 R, which is not as high level novelty seeking gene. It apparently did
exist in China at one time. But as the one theory, this is research by Robert
Moises at University of California, I think it's San Diego. His lab's theory is that
over -- as the culture changed and turned more into a rice planting culture with a
Mandarin bureaucracy, that values of like hard work and hunkering down and
sticking to the task and following the program, the 7 R people just, they weren't
adaptive in that culture anymore. And they found their way elsewhere.
Social influences also affect our response to novelty. Curiosity was very often
considered a vice by the powers that be. Popes and kings and establishment
figures, asking questions, what businesses of yours, it's God said it's that way,
it's the end of the discussion. Until 18th century enlightenment, when asking
questions suddenly became a virtue.
Today the economic downturn and high unemployment have fueled a neo phobia
epidemic on campus where many professors -- this was one of the biggest
surprises of my research. I probably talked to 40 or 50 scientists, not all of them
but most of them are also college professors because that's how the research
system often works in our country -- every single person I can think of made a
specific point of saying the kids -- as one guy said -- they just say: What do I
have to do to get an A? Will this be on the test? They won't argue with the
teacher. They won't challenge the teacher. They just want to do well.
And this is at an age, neophilia really peaks in the late teens. And by the time
you're 60, even if you're Keith Richards -- if you read Keith Richards' books you
can see it -- by the time you're 60 it's half of what it was in your teens.
So this I think is like one of the less-discussed social problems that's coming out
of this long downturn that we're in that young people are resisting the young
traditional role of arguing and fomenting and coming up with new ideas.
At the dawn of the 21st century, we human beings who are hard wired to be
interested in new things suddenly face an unprecedented deluge of them.
From consumer products to bits of information. We now crunch four times more
data, much of it electronic, than we did just 30 years ago.
This is from how much information project at University of California at San
Diego. You all probably know about it. It's very interesting research.
Boredom still doesn't even exist in much of the third world. But as we grow
accustomed to this high level of overstimulation, our boredom threshold gets
lower and lower by the day. A while ago there was -- I love this. I should have
had a poster made.
There was a cell phone company, I think it was Nokia, had an ad with a guy
holding a little miracle phone saying this is our cure for micro boredom. Micro
boredom. This is what we used to call waiting in line. Or waiting your turn. Now
it's God forbid you have to wait for a minute without entertainment.
That's micro boredom. We are constantly seeking exciting bits of novelty.
E-mails, tweets. Gadgets. Quickly get used to them and look for the next buzz.
For our novelty-seeking species, the information age is the best of times and the
worst of times.
The Internet's endless store of new data is a huge asset in that it can enhance
our neophylic capacity for learning and creativity. I love this British study. It was
an MIT researcher Von Hippell did the study in England. He found that
Web-connected individuals spent twice as much money inventing new products
and tweaking existing ones as did British corporations.
Especially scientific tools and sports equipment. I mean, that's fantastic, in terms
of like people are now empowered. I don't like the way my snowshoes work, I'm
going to kind of go online and find out if other people have a better idea for a
snowshoe. And then let's get some money together and make a better
snowshoe, without a corporation being involved until, I guess, the very end. It's
really fantastic.
On the other hand, the torent of novel trivia, much of it gushing from today's 24/7
media outlets, remember we didn't used to have these people. In order to stay in
business, they must have crap to spew out 24/7 or they can't stay in business.
It's not that the world is so much more an interesting place. It's just that they
have to make a living by coming up with something to tell you about.
That kind of stuff really distracts us from the legitimate pursuit of learning and
creating worthwhile new things. The definitive research is yet to be done but
many serious, very top-drawer scientists believe that certain individuals can get
hooked on electronic information in a way that has much in common with
gambling.
Gambling, electronic behavior has not been well studied yet. It really should be
when you consider how it's so changed our lives. But gambling has been very
well studied.
And that's where these neurologists and psychiatrists, research psychiatrists see
the connection. And not everybody, but certain people. Just the same way that
most people can drink alcohol. Some people get in trouble. Most people could
go to a horse race. Some people end up losing their house.
In a similar way they suspect that most people can control their electronic use.
Maybe they need a little discipline.
But for certain people it becomes really like a compulsion. And the example that
comes to my mind is when you read about people who can't, literally can't stop
gaming. They can't stop gaming to go to school, to eat, to sleep.
It becomes -- and I think particularly in Asia there are actually fatalities from
people who can't stop gaming. And I think another great example right here is
texting while driving.
Texting while driving is completely insane. It's insane. The state of Utah, you go
to jail for life if you're involved in an accident from texting while driving.
There was just a big accident on the East Coast right after Christmas. Some kid
sent 11 messages in something like 20 seconds and caused a pileup on the
interstate that killed two people and seriously injured 30 people.
And you say why are you doing this? And they say I can't help it. I have to do it.
And I'm sure this is not a reliable statistic, but I've read averages that up to or
perhaps more than, who knows, half of all people under 30 are texting behind the
wheel.
So that kind of behavior really does suggest addiction, I think. And away from
their gadgets, these folks show the telltale systems of anxiety, discomfort and
distraction that do accompany other compulsive behavior and addiction.
Certain groups are particularly vulnerable to other problems that can be caused
by electronic novelty seeking. Such as distractedness. School children now
spend many hours per day simultaneously juggling different media. We're talking
about five or six hours a day.
But this multi-tasking just means that they're constantly switching from one thing
to another. They're not doing two things simultaneously. They're doing this and
then they're doing that. And while they're doing this, they're missing what's going
on with that.
This chronic lack of focus totally screws up learning, because if you -- if you want
to learn something, you must pay attention to it. You must pay attention to it.
The reason you can't remember the name of the guy you met at the holiday
party, even five minutes later, is because you weren't paying attention to it in the
first place. You were like looking over here or like what's going on. You weren't
paying attention to it. If you do not pay attention to something, you will not
remember it at least not well.
The typical office worker also faces tremendous challenges. This is really sad.
This is Intel research. He or she gets three minutes to focus on a task before
interruption from a new stimulus. Three minutes. E-mail now averages between
50 and 150 per day.
That sounds like a full-time job to me. I talked to scientists who say I dread going
in in the morning and looking at my in-box, because they have not only do they
have 150 e-mails, they all have attachments. Must read attachments to stay up
in their profession. Cognitive neuroscientist said my mentor had maybe three or
four journals that he had to stay up with, monthly journals. He read three or four
a month.
I have 25 or 30, and that's not even counting the e-mail. This is a tremendous
drain on corporate efficiency and individual well-being.
Our electronic novelty generators can cause other psychological problems, too.
These gadgets supposedly allow us to be anywhere -- I have my wonder phone
so I can be anywhere -- but if I'm walking down the street like this, I'm not even
going to see Mount Rainier, I might as well be nowhere. Be anywhere often
translates be nowhere. Because if you're living in a screen you're not living in the
real world.
The capacity to be in touch 24/7 also feeds this narcissistic idea that you are
indispensable and everything is urgent. I think there are probably some people
in the room that remembered before we had cell phones. People used to believe
it or not get to the airport get on the plane and the world didn't stop spinning, they
got off the plane, it was fine went to the hotel, they got their messages, it was
okay.
But I think somebody could make a very funny little YouTube thing about the
behavior of people with their miracle phones on planes.
The pilot says we're cutting you off soon, they're like oh my God, oh my God. Do
all those people really have relatives in the ER?
Are there lives -- a lot of my e-mails -- I don't know about you, a lot of my emails
are coming from Cabella's catalog or LL Bean or my husband saying can you
pick up hamburger on the way home. I don't know where this sense of urgency -it feeds this kind of narcissism.
For most of history, also, this is a biggie, it was hard to imagine and easy to
forget. That's why we invented writing and painting and all this other kind of stuff
so we could remember important stuff because it was hard.
But our vast new capacity for cheap digital memory has reversed that very
healthy dynamic. Now I have five kids. If my kid sticks his hinny out on
Facebook, then he has to worry about getting a job and the employer's going to
see his butt. And that butt is going to go on forever. Eternally.
Remember, your mother used to say: Forgive and forget. One scientist I talked
to gave a great example of this. He had a friend who was eagerly looking
forward to a reunion with an old friend she hadn't seen in years. And for some
reason she looked up a bunch of e-mails and it reminded her of this bit the
quarrel they had had a couple of years ago that she had completely forgotten
about.
So she was enraged all over again. We are meant -- most forgetting has nothing
to do with Alzheimer. Forgetting is a very valuable healthy mental function.
Think if you never forgot and you could remember every single parking place you
ever parked in here at Microsoft. It was all there. Think of what a nightmare that
would be. There would be no room for anything else.
Much of the expert's advice on coping with 21st century's endless stores of
novelty can be boiled down to two words: Selectivity and balance. Treat novelty
like food. Esther Dyson told me this: Some is nutritious. Some is junk, think
about it like food.
If you're worried about your appetite for electronic nutrition, try a dieters trick. In
a notebook jot down each time you use a gadget and how it makes you feel.
Dieters who write down everything they eat and drink all day long with no other
plan, eat one-third less than other people.
That's pretty fabulous finding. There's a diet book -- there's the world's slimmest
diet book, one-page diet book saying write down everything you eat and you'll eat
one-third less.
I would just bet that the same thing would be true for a lot of mindless Internet
surfing. Be particularly vigilant about e-mails and texts which are cheap to write,
copy and send but very expensive to receive in terms of your time and attention.
One successful executive only responds to e-mails if he's the sole addressee.
He replies immediately if at all, and then deletes the message instantly.
And here's a really important one. Take time out for reverie a bunch of times a
day. Just staring into space and allowing yourself to just be.
Remember when you used to be able to get in taxicabs and they didn't have TVs
in them? Maybe you -- in New York taxicabs now have TVs mounted on the seat
in front of you. There's no escape. It used to be kind of pleasant to get in a
taxicab you could go, oh, what a day, kind of -- oh, gather yourself for the next
thing.
Or think like, wow, that Opera was great, what a lovely evening. Now you
have...and it's really hard they make the screen deliberately difficult.
You can find the tiny little thing you have to push. You have to practically pound
the driver through the windshield to get it off. Reveri is not just a pretty funny old
acquaint word made up by poets. It's a real state. It's like when you're just
staring into space. Okay. Just watching the clouds.
It's incredibly important for your brain. You cannot even remember and process
stuff that you want to learn unless you allow your brain to just relax and just be.
Years ago I got to interview Dr. Thomas Weir at National Institutes of Mental
Health, he was one of the pioneers in seasonal affective disorder wintertime
depression and that kind of thing. He was very familiar with the behavior of
Alaskan native peoples.
He said if you go up there in the wintertime, it's almost like kind of a
semi-hibernation. People just -- it's dark. It's freezing.
You really can't get much done. So you just ratchet the activity way down and
just sit in reverie. You just kind of sit there and the hours go by. Like your friend
comes over and sits with you. Yeah. Yeah. Think of how hard that would be for
the micro boredom culture to even do that for an hour. We call it meditation.
It used to just be life. Just rocking on the chair on the porch. These things are
really vital for your health and well-being. They are not wastes of time.
In short, the best strategy for dealing with novelty and change is to remember
neophilia's evolutionary purpose, to help us adapt to, learn about and create new
things that matter and dismiss the rest as distractions.
Thank you.
[applause]
I'd be glad to answer any questions.
>>: You mentioned that there was sort of a decrease in neophilia among
college-aged kids or recent graduates based on research, current economic
circumstances. If that's true you should be able to trace it back to the 29
depression or the depression or recessions in the late '80s or, sorry, late '70s,
early '80s, et cetera.
>> Winifred Gallagher: They haven't been as prolonged. I can't say this is based
on research. This is based, though, on just a spectacular number of college
professors that I've talked to. They just went out -- and some of them got really
very heated about it.
Their opinions were divided. Some said it's because the baby boom raised these
kids to think they're the center of the world and to feel very entitled and that they
have to have A's and they kill themselves if they don't go to Harvard, like that.
Some people think it's that.
Some people think it's real fear out there. My babies are twins who will be 23 on
Saturday. And we practically did a war dance when my son got a job. He's the
only one of his friends just out of college who got a job.
And he was kind of a dodgey student certainly until he got to high school. We
used to think, is he going to graduate from high school? Graduate from college.
He actually got a job. And this was like a big reason for celebration.
And I went to the gym and I said to the other women in the class, I said girls my
son got a job. Another woman said to me, you're a New York Times statistic. So
I don't think we realize the pressure the kids -- I mean, certainly people my age, if
you went to college, you had a job. There wasn't even a question.
There wasn't even a question. You had a job and you could own your own
home. Not anymore. Not anymore.
So I'm not trying to make that like a hard-edged scientific finding, I'm just passing
on a very strong reflection from an awful lot of professors I talked to.
>>: I was wondering if you could expand a little bit more on I guess the causal
correlation between the neophilia gene and the addiction gene. You make that
comparison -- or tendency towards addiction. You made that comparison a
number of times.
It seems to be counterintuitive, because if you're addicted to something, it means
you're doing something over and over and over. How does that balance?
>> Winifred Gallagher: This is a very tricky area. Unfortunately, the way
behavioral science research is set up in this country, the government pays for a
lot of it various levels of government.
If you've ever been to see Rockville, Maryland, a vast sea of places where
people are studying why people smoke cigarettes even though we know it's
terrible for you.
The way you get government grants is to fix something that's broken. So if
somebody wants to study novelty-seeking, they get -- no one is going to get, in
government, going to give them a grant to find out why Story Musgrave wants to
fix the Hubble telescope. They have to do research to find out why novelty
seekers engage in more and risky sex or substance abuse.
So in a way I don't really even trust those figures. But it is true that neophiliacs
would have higher levels of substance abuse, risky sex, risk taking activities.
Higher than average levels. Although, as Robert Cloninger, who is probably, I
think, the wisest and most illustrious psychiatrist in America, University of
Washington Medical School. He studied this very intently, says that neophiliac
behavior is not associated with pathology, unless the person has other character
issues going on.
Like if Story Musgrave had been raised by -- he actually came from kind of a
privileged family. Although he did drop out of prep school to join the Marines, but
if Story Musgrave are grown up in an inner city world with a single mother who
had drug problems and nobody was looking out for what was going on with little
Story and making him go to school and so forth, that same character can
become very troubled.
So psychologists who study personality often say the cop and the robber are the
same person they just had different upbringings. So this is sort of a long way of
answering your question. Yes, neophiliacs do have a higher incidence of
substance abuse, and that kind of risk-taking behavior.
But I think a lot more work needs to be done to tease apart the elements of that.
And I think we shortchange -- we shortchange what's good about these people.
One of my kids, the one who got the job actually. Had ADHD. And Robert
Moses, a terrific researcher who studied these kids, says that he can't believe the
number of, the amount of mail he gets from sort of, as he says, entrepreneurial
Silicon Valley types who say I knew there was nothing wrong with me. I just
hated school, because they made me sit still all the time. And now I'm doing
great.
These are kids who, the kids he studied, have the DRD 47 R allele. And as long
as they are in a supportive environment where they get the right kind of
education, a bunch of -- he and his colleagues call them super kids.
So it's a very tricky area. And I think we're too quick in this culture now where we
say everybody's got to sit in front of a screen all day. If you're really good at
sitting in front of a screen for 14, 15 hours, hey, but that wasn't always the way it
was.
You know, we also need people who don't want to sit in front of a screen all day
who want to go up and fix the Hubbell telescope. So I think we have to try to
figure this out in a more sophisticated way than we have.
>>: An online question. Are there some people who are neophiliacs that about
some things but neophobes in other areas?
>> Winifred Gallagher: Well, yeah, that would basically be somebody in the
middle 70 percent there with different orientations and different ways.
For example, I would say that -- just because it's a personal example, my
husband is a full-tilt neophiliac. The more hair raising the ski run, the better, you
know? Like if you can go to one club, why not go to two or three clubs. Like
whatever it is like he likes to keep it coming. He likes to keep it coming.
I am definitely not like that in the physical risk-taking category. But I have a trait
called or I would score high on a trait that contributes to this behavior called
openness to experience.
And it means I'd like to travel. I like to go to crazy places. I like to meet
interesting people. I like to do different stuff like that kind of thing. And there are
some research that suggests that women with neophiliac tendencies tend to go
more in that openness to experience direction. You don't see too many female
big game hunters and Story Musgrave. Not that you can't. Not that it's not
possible. But there seem to be different ways that different people, and maybe
even different groups of people, the kind of novelty they're attracted to.
>>: You mentioned before that there's a difference between the material of
Europeans and Chinese people or Asian people in general. But you mentioned
specifically that the Chinese culture seems to have gotten rid of that over time.
>> Winifred Gallagher: No one really knows why. They know that it's ->>: In such a short time? The Chinese culture is [inaudible] year old, not been
together for 11 years on and the novelty is gone?.
>> Winifred Gallagher: It's very rare in China. But 2R which is related is not so
rare.
>>: Are we in the states now encouraging nonrisky behavior in the schools,
which has proven with college professors?
>> Winifred Gallagher: That's a great question.
>>: Are we doing the same thing now?
>> Winifred Gallagher: It's a great question.
>>: [inaudible].
>> Winifred Gallagher: Here's the scenario I heard. In Africa, we're all in Africa,
and most people had the ancestral 4R, the DRD 4, that allele, that gene.
Then between 50 and 40,000 years ago we had huge migrations from Africa.
Again, there's a big debate why. But some scientists think that these
novelty-seeking genes arose then.
And what they can study now is that the people who stayed closest to Africa,
closest to where we evolved in Africa, still have the high percentage of the
ancestral gene. But the people who went farthest, the people who have the
highest of all incidents of the 7 R allele are the South American Indians of the
Amazon Basin who went the farthest from Africa.
So they're fascinating studies. And I don't think -- there are theories about why. I
don't think anybody really knows. But certainly different cultures, this is called bio
history, this is a new field of bio history. Different cultures are different, not just
for social reasons, is the implication.
And that can sound sort of politically incorrect, but on the other hand we might
say you know one person might say I love on vacation I love to go to
Scandinavia, I just love the whole thing there. It's so neat and progressive and
future blah, blah, blah and someone else was saying that's not for me. I want to
go to Italy where it's like the opposite of Scandinavia.
There are reasons for these things that aren't just -- we're not made of spun
glass. We are biological creatures. And I think it's to me it's kind of what makes
us so interesting, that there are so many different kinds of us.
>>: Are there any differences that you know of that, dependent on how the body
responds to stimuli, whether it's expected versus unexpected?
>> Winifred Gallagher: If it's expected, it can't be new.
>>: If you seek out the stimuli, would your body respond differently than if you
just ->> Winifred Gallagher: You wouldn't respond. The simplest of the novelty
emotions is surprise. And surprise is a very interesting emotion because the
newborn has exactly the same surprise reaction as a grown-up. It is an emotion
kind of, and there's not much we can do.
If somebody comes up behind you and pops a balloon you're going to be
surprised. You are going to elicit that reaction.
That is different from actively seeking and pursuing novelty, which is more of a
dopaminergic wanting. It would be like I want someone to come and pop the
balloon behind me.
Jerry Kagen, a wonderful researcher at Harvard, did this great groundbreaking
word on child and infant temperament for many years at Harvard. And he
studied little kids, babies and toddlers. And he would subject them to not -- you
know, not stressful forms of novelty but like a strange person or a funny, maybe a
little bitter taste or a noise or something like that.
Right from the beginning there were some kids when you popped the balloon the
kid goes wow! You know? Cool. The other kids are like waah. So this is what I
was saying earlier. Your characteristic approach to new stimuli over time in
many situations is a very deep abiding part of who you are and really worth
understanding.
>>: How did you get into this kind of writing on psychology and behavior?
>> Winifred Gallagher: It's because I worked at -- some of you remember back in
the '80s Time Incorporated started a science magazine called Discover. And I
worked on the first issues of Discover. And I just thought -- I just became
fascinated with the question of why are we the way we are and what can we do
about it?
And I couldn't believe that Time, Inc. then, although they wouldn't now, would just
let me get on an airplane and go and talk to all kinds of fascinating people about
it and come back and write what I found out and they would pay me money for it.
It seemed like a really great plan.
Nowadays -- I actually remember a Time editor saying to me don't just go reading
books and talking to people on the phone. I want you to go somewhere and do
something.
Now they would be like, oh my God, if you put in a voucher for like a $five cab
ride they'd probably have a nervous breakdown. It's so different now. We have
to do everything online.
>>: Do you think there could be a healthy state of information deluge? Some
people I know are productive and happy ->> Winifred Gallagher: Yeah, if it works for you. If -- because we have all
different levels of acceptable stimuli. For Emily Dickinson, probably not. But for
Bill Clinton, probably. I think it's a matter of figuring out your type and what works
for you. There's no good or bad.
>>: The other interesting thing is people are being forced into types they're not
used to.
>> Winifred Gallagher: Sure.
>>: The expectation to check your e-mail even when you don't want to check
your e-mail.
>> Winifred Gallagher: That's right. And some of the tension that we're under,
it's not all us driving like a kind of addiction to the stuff. We all are now forced -as soon as we got the wonder phones, goodbye to like -- remember the
distinction probably some of you don't because you're too young, there used to
be a real distinction between the office and the home.
You used to sign out for the weekend and you actually couldn't do your work at
home, because you didn't have the stuff. And computers and now technically
you could work all day long, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Where do you
draw the line? It's like a big change.
I mean, we come from a species that until 100 years ago we woke up when the
sun was up. We milled around and did whatever and when the sun went down
we went to sleep. That's what we did.
Now we can do anything all the time wherever we are. There are benefits to that,
but I suggest to you there are also costs. So it's up to us, individually, because
the culture doesn't really protect us anymore. The culture doesn't say you've got
to take Sunday off or you will go to hell. That doesn't happen anymore for most
of us.
But maybe it was better, actually, when people thought that, because then they
took Sunday off. I don't know.
Well, anyway it was really fun to be with you this afternoon. And thank you so
much for coming.
[applause]