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I Electrocute Myself, Therefore I Am

A new study claims to reveal that men would rather electrocute themselves than be alone with their thoughts. The truth is of a greater currency.
Image: Otis Historical Archives National Museum of Health and Medicine, Wikimedia

If you had the choice, would you rather sit and 'think'—or electrocute yourself? As a rational human being, one presumably capable of abstract thought and desirous of avoiding bodily harm, you'd choose to 'think', right? Wrong. Despite what you might 'think' you know about yourself, especially if you are a man, you would end up shocking yourself to escape that nagging voice in your head.

In a classic example of pop science journalism seizing on and publicizing a surprising, counterintuitive finding, this "shocking truth" has now entered the mainstream: that a majority of men would rather do something, anything, even send a painful jolt of electricity into their bodies, than be alone with their thoughts for 6-15 minutes.

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University of Virginia psychologists conducted a study designed to gauge the general satisfaction people found with the act of thinking—they shepherded people into an empty lab room and told them to "entertain themselves with their thoughts" for a period lasting between 6-15 minutes. Generally, people did not enjoy the experience, the scientists found.

Next, they had subjects try the same thing at home, by clicking a link to a website and then sitting alone for the same amount of time, with instructions not to look at their phones or the web. A third cheated. Finally, the researchers did another experiment, when they returned to the lab room, and this time, offered subjects a single stimulus in that otherwise barren room: access to painful electric shocks.

Sixty-seven percent of men opted for the shock rather than finish out the duration without any sort of external stimuli. About a quarter of women did, too. And thus, the headline finding: 'Would you rather sit and think or get shocked? You'd be surprised'. Or, as the Guardian phrased it: 'Shocking but true: students prefer jolt of pain to being made to sit and think.'

This is all presumably supposed to reflect how our distraction-addled world has drained our attention spans and sapped us of our agency; but the truth might not be so electric after all.

First, the obvious: Who is going to "enjoy" spending 6-15 minutes boarded off in a clinical test room? If you have ever participated in clinical studies, you know that it is not an experience conducive to relaxation or deep, measured thought—you're there to make a quick 10 bucks, you're a little skeptical of everything that's going on, and you're uncomfortable by default. No wonder "participants did not enjoy the experience very much"—being ushered into a foreign room that looks a doctor's office and getting told to have fun with your thoughts isn't exactly a recipe for satisfying self-reflection.

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The researchers recognized this, so they had subjects try the think test at home. But they had students begin the study by logging onto a website. On the internet. On a browser tab probably next to six other tabs; an experience that immediately stokes the embers of distraction. Every time I open up Chrome, I'm reminded of approximately 19 things I need to do; emails to send, articles to finish reading, a Facebook event I need to RSVP to—the internet is the last place I'd ever consider heading for uninterrupted thought.

As for our predilection to induce an electro-shock, to me, that's least surprising of all—and it certainly doesn't mean anybody somehow stopped thinking. If you put someone in a room that is empty except for a single source of stimulus, our curiosity, our wonder, our thoughts will immediately gravitate towards the actionable item. How could it not?

The finding of the study, then, isn't that we'd rather electrocute ourselves than think, it's likely that we become so consumed by thought about the one thing that we can actively experience that we do it to test that avalanche of half-baked hypotheses and inquiries: Will it really hurt that badly? Can I steel myself against it? Can I trigger the shock so fast that I might not even feel it? How much pain could I endure? What would it feel like twice in a row? And so on.

The researchers write that "The ability to engage in directed conscious thought is an integral part—perhaps even a defining part—of what makes us human." So, I would argue, is the ability to investigate that which makes us curious, no matter how painful.

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Evolutionary biologists argue that our curiosity—a potent neoteny—is one of the key traits that separated us from our primate ancestors.

"Curiosity is nature's built-in exploration bonus," Tom Stafford, a professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at the University of Sheffield, wrote for the BBC. "We're evolved to leave the beaten track, to try things out, to get distracted and generally look like we're wasting time. Maybe we are wasting time today, but the learning algorithms in our brain know that something we learnt by chance today will come in useful tomorrow."

So while it seems odd that people would willingly subject themselves to pain, it also seems hasty to conclude, as the researchers do, that the "untutored mind does not like to be alone with itself."

I don't know how well tutored my mind is, but it does like to be alone from time to time—it just has to be properly primed. Personally, I have to perform a ritual catered to my own brain's needs—not to a crew of clinical psychologists'—to prepare for some quality solitary mindspace. I might turn off my phone, go for a walk, and head for the local park. Or I might opt for a longer subway route just because I know it will be less crowded, and I can stare off and lose myself in my frontal lobe. And I might as well go ahead and admit that I do some of my best thinking on the toilet; there's no better place to leisurely contemplate the machinations of the universe than in the fluorescent isolation of a well-ventilated bathroom.

Maybe our best thinking rituals tend to involve some form of travel or action for a reason—Archimedes was soaking in a bathtub when his brain produced that Eureka moment. Direct thinking is clearly such an enormous part of what makes us human that it's how we know we're human in the first place; cogito ergo sum, and all that. But incessant exploration is just as crucial to our humanness—it's how Decartes stumbled upon that gem in the first place. And I wouldn't go about blaming smartphones and Twitter and cable TV for eroding our inner lives; we're just enormously curious creatures, and our thoughts are prone to distraction, some productive, some pointless.

I'll admit it; I probably would've shocked myself. And I would have thought long and hard about how and why I did so. I might even conclude: I electrocute myself, therefore I am.