Researchers have long known that lab animals\u2019 behavior can be manipulated by artificially stimulating their natural instincts. Over-stimulating animals can provoke such extreme responses that they end up preferring artificial objects to the natural ones for which the instincts were designed.<\/p>\n
Humans living in modern society are something like those lab animals, a Harvard psychology professor says. Like them, our innate instincts are overstimulated by unnatural products, as well as by advertising and images. And, like them, we respond almost unconsciously: reaching for more food, Web-surfing for porn, dumping time and money on \u201ccute\u201d toys, sitting for hours in front of televisions, and sending troops to fight a dehumanized \u201cthem.\u201d<\/p>\n
The difference between lab animals and us, however, is that overstimulation for animals isn\u2019t present in nature. It can really only be found in the laboratory. If an animal escapes to its natural environment, it will return to natural stimuli and responses. For people, however, because we live in an artificial world of our own making, escaping those stimuli is not so easy.<\/p>\n
But Deirdre Barrett, assistant clinical professor of psychology in Harvard Medical School<\/a>\u2019s Psychiatry Department<\/a>, says that doesn\u2019t mean there\u2019s no hope for us.<\/p>\n Barrett, author of the new book \u201cSupernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose,\u201d says the first step is to understand what\u2019s happening to us. Instincts and urges honed for hundreds of thousands of years to keep us alive in a world of scarcity are being subverted in the modern era of plenty. People are bombarded by food that they crave, tempted by seductive images, and urged to buy products designed to appeal to specific wants, regardless of need.<\/p>\n In her book, Barrett examines the history of research into supernormal stimuli, describing early behavioral experiments on birds and fish. In one, birds whose eggs were lightly speckled fell off as they tried to incubate ridiculously large, boldly polka-dotted fakes. In another, red-bellied male fish fought off artificial red-painted lures even when they didn\u2019t look much like fish.<\/p>\n These outsized prods to normal instincts are called \u201csupernormal stimuli,\u201d and Barrett believes they\u2019re present in our world today, sometimes quite intentionally, prodding us to buy and consume and do. It\u2019s an easy sell, in many cases, because the stimuli give us a push to do things we\u2019re already inclined toward.<\/p>\n Pornography, she said, subverts instincts intended for mating with people. Stuffed animals, dolls, and cartoon characters manipulate people\u2019s preprogrammed affinity for childlike \u201ccuteness.\u201d She also looks at obesity, war, business, television, and even intellectual pursuits.<\/p>\n Though supernormal stimuli are not universally related to problems, Barrett said many of the episodes in her book do fall into that category. Understanding ourselves and the reasons we feel as we do, Barrett said, is the first step in overriding our instincts, in our being able to resist the siren song of the Big Mac.<\/p>\n She also recommended new government regulation to help limit supernormal stimuli, particularly in areas where public health may be at risk, and to \u201cput normal back into our lives.\u201d It might be easier to eat healthier foods, she said, if we lived in a food environment where we weren\u2019t blasted by ads for \u201csupernormal foods.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Researchers have long known that lab animals\u2019 behavior can be manipulated by artificially stimulating their natural instincts. Over-stimulating animals can provoke such extreme responses that they end up preferring artificial objects to the natural ones for which the instincts were designed. Humans living in modern society are something like those lab animals, a Harvard psychology […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4175,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-442583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442583\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}