The Idiot Brain

by Dean Burnett

  Believe in yourself, and you can do anything … within reason

  (How different people find and use motivation)

  ‘The harder the journey, the better the arrival.’

  ‘Effort is just the foundation of a house that is you.’

  These days you can’t enter a gym or coffee shop or workplace canteen without being exposed to several insipid motivational posters featuring quotes like this. The previous section on anger discussed how that emotion can motivate someone to respond to a threat in a specific way via dedicated brain pathways, but we’re talking here about more long-term motivation, the kind that’s more a ‘drive’ than a reaction.

  What is motivation? We know when we aren’t motivated – many assignments have been scuppered by the person responsible procrastinating. Procrastination is motivation to do the wrong thing (I should know, I had to disconnect my wifi to finish this book). Broadly, motivation can be described as the ‘energy’ required for a person to remain interested and/or working towards a project, goal or outcome. An early theory of motivation comes from Sigmund Freud himself. Freud’s hedonic principle, sometimes called the ‘pleasure principle’, argues that living beings are compelled to seek out and pursue things that give pleasure, and avoid things that cause pain and discomfort.14 That this happens is hard to deny, as studies into animal learning have shown. Put a rat in a box and give it a button, it’ll press it eventually out of sheer curiosity. If pressing the button results in a tasty food being supplied, the rat will quickly start pressing the button often because it’s associated doing this with a tasty reward. It’s not a stretch to say it’s suddenly very motivated to press the lever.

  This very reliable process is known as operant condition, meaning a certain type of reward increases or decreases the specific behaviour associated with it. This occurs in humans too. If a child is given a new toy when they clean their room, they’re far more likely to want to do it again. It also works with adults, too; you just need to vary the reward. As a result, the unpleasant task of cleaning a room is now associated with a positive outcome, so there’s motivation to do it.

  This may all seem to support Freud’s hedonic principle, but when have humans and their irksome brains ever been so simple? There are plenty of everyday examples to demonstrate there’s more to motivation than simple pleasure-seeking or displeasure-avoiding. People are constantly doing things that provide no immediate or obvious physical pleasure.

  Take going to the gym. While it is true that intense physical activity can produce euphoria or feelings of well-being,§ this doesn’t happen every time, and it still takes gruelling effort to get to that point, so there’s no obvious physical pleasure to be had from exercise (I say this as someone who’s yet to experience so much as a satisfying sneeze from going to the gym). And yet, people still do it. Whatever their motivation, it is clearly something beyond immediate physical pleasure.

  There are other examples. People who regularly give to charity, surrendering their own money for the benefit of strangers they’ll never encounter. People who constantly suck up to a deeply unpleasant boss in the vague hope of getting a promotion. People reading books they don’t really enjoy but persevering regardless because they want to learn something. None of these things involve immediate pleasure; some actually involve unpleasant experiences, so according to Freud they would be avoided. But they aren’t.

  This suggests Freud’s ideas are too simplistic,¶ so a more complex approach is needed. You could substitute ‘immediate pleasure’ with ‘needs’. In 1943, Abraham Maslow devised his ‘hierarchy of needs’, arguing that there were certain things that all humans needed in order to function, and so are motivated to obtain them.15

  Maslow’s hierarchy is often presented as a stepped pyramid. At the lowest level are biological requirements such as food, drink, air (someone without air is undeniably very motivated to find some). Then there’s safety, including shelter, personal security, financial security, things that stop you from coming to physical harm. Next is ‘belonging’; humans are social creatures and need approval, support and affection (or at least interaction) from others. Solitary confinement in prisons is considered a serious punishment for a reason.

  Then there’s ‘esteem’, the need to be not just acknowledged or liked but actually respected by others, and by yourself. People have morals that they value and stick to, and hope others will respect them for. Behaviour and actions that can lead to this are therefore a source of motivation. Finally, there’s ‘self-actualisation’, the desire (and therefore motivation) to reach one’s potential. You feel you could be the best painter in the world? Then you will be motivated to become the best painter in the world. Although, since art is subjective, you technically may already be the best painter in the world. Well done, if so.

  The idea is that a person would be motivated to meet all the needs of the first level, then the second level, then the third and so on, in order to satisfy all needs and drives and be the best possible person. It’s a nice idea, but the brain isn’t that neat and organised. Many people don’t follow Maslow’s hierarchy; some are motivated to give the last of their money to help strangers in need, or actively put themselves in harm’s way to save an animal in danger (unless it’s a wasp), despite the fact that an animal has no means of respecting or rewarding them for their heroics (especially if it’s a wasp, which will probably sting them and do an evil wasp laugh).

  There’s also sex. Sex is a very powerful motivator. For proof of this, see anything ever. Maslow states that sex is at the bottom of the hierarchy of needs, as it’s a primitive, powerful biological drive. But people can live without any sex at all. They might resent doing so, but it’s entirely possible. Also, why do people want sex? A primitive urge for pleasure and/or reproduction, or the desire to be close and intimate with someone? Or maybe it’s because others view sexual prowess as an achievement and deserving of respect? Sex is all over the hierarchy.

  Recent research into the workings of the brain provide another approach to understanding motivation. Many scientists draw distinctions between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Are we being motivated by external factors, or internal ones? External motivations are derived from others. Someone pays you to help them move house; that’s an external motivation. You won’t enjoy it, it’s tedious and involves heavy lifting, but you get rewarded financially and so you do it. It could also be more subtle. Say everyone starts wearing yellow cowboy hats for ‘fashion’, and you want to be trendy, so you buy and wear a yellow cowboy hat. You may have no fondness for yellow cowboy hats, you may think they look stupid, but others have decided otherwise, and so you want one. This is an extrinsic motivation.

  Intrinsic motivations are where we’re driven to do things because of decisions or desires that we come up with ourselves. We decide, based on what we’ve experienced and learned, that helping sick people is a noble and rewarding thing to do, so we’re motivated to study medicine and become a doctor. This is an intrinsic motivation. If we are motivated to study medicine because people pay doctors a lot of money, this is more an extrinsic motivation.

  Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations exist in a delicate balance. Not with each other, but within themselves as well. In 1988, Deci and Ryan came up with the self-determination theory, which describes what motivates people in the absence of any external influence, so is 100 per cent intrinsic.16 It argues that people are motivated to achieve autonomy (control of things), competency (to be good at things) and relatedness (be recognised for what they do). All of these explain why micromanagers are so infuriating; someone hovering over your shoulder telling you precisely how to do the simplest task robs you of all control, undermines all notion of competence and is often impossible to relate to, given how most micromanagers seem sociopathic (if you’re at the mercy of one).

  In 1973, Lepper, Greene and Nisbet pointed out the over-justification effect.17 Groups of children were given colourful art supplies to play with. Some of were told they’d be rewarded f
or using of them; others were left to their own devices. A week later, the children who weren’t rewarded were far more motivated to use the art supplies again. Those who decided that the creative activity was enjoyable and satisfying on their own experienced greater motivation than those who received rewards from other people.

  It seems if we associate a positive outcome with our own actions, this carries more weight than if the positive outcome came from someone else. Who’s to say they won’t reward us next time? As a result, motivation is diminished.

  The obvious conclusion is that rewarding people for a task can actually reduce motivation for doing it, whereas giving them more control or authority increases motivation. This idea has been picked up (with great enthusiasm) by the business world, largely because it lends scientific credibility to the idea that it’s better to give employees greater autonomy and responsibility than actually paying them for their labour. While some researchers suggest that this is accurate, there’s ample data against it. If paying someone to work reduces motivation, then top executives who get paid millions actually do nothing. Nobody is saying that though; even if billionaires aren’t motivated to do anything, they can afford lawyers who are.

  The brain’s tendency towards ego can also be a factor. In 1987, Edward Tory Higgins devised the self-discrepancy theory.18 This argued that the brain has a number of ‘selves’. There’s the ‘ideal’ self, which is what you want to be, derived from your goals, biases and priorities. You may be a stocky computer programmer from Inverness, but your ideal self is a bronzed volleyball player living on a Caribbean island. This is your ultimate goal, the person you want to be.

  Then there’s the ‘ought’ self, which is how you feel you should be behaving in order to achieve the ideal self. Your ‘ought’ self is someone who avoids fatty foods and wasting money, learns volleyball and keeps an eye on Barbados property prices. Both selves provide motivation; the ideal self provides a positive kind of motivation, encouraging us to do things that bring us closer to our ideal. ‘Ought’ self provides more negative, avoidance motivation, to keep us from doing things that take us away from our ideal; you want to order pizza for dinner? That’s not what you ought to do. Back to the salads for you.

  Personality also plays a part. When it comes to motivation, someone’s locus of control can be crucial. This is the extent to which someone feels they are in control of events. They might be an egotistical sort who feels the very planet revolves around them, because why wouldn’t it? Or they may be far more passive, feeling they’re always at the mercy of circumstance. Such things may be cultural; people raised in a Western capitalist society, constantly told they can have anything they want, will feel more in control of their own lives, whereas someone living in a totalitarian regime probably won’t.

  Feeling like a passive victim of events can be damaging; it can reduce the brain to a state of learned helplessness. People don’t feel they can change their situation, so lack the motivation to try. They don’t attempt to do anything as a result, and things get worse for them due to their inaction. This lowers their optimism and motivation further, so the cycle continues and they end up an ineffectual mess, paralysed by pessimism and zero motivation. Anyone who’s ever been through a bad break-up can probably relate to this.

  Exactly where motivation originates in the brain is unclear. The reward pathway in the midbrain is implicated, along with the amygdala due to the emotional component involved in things that motivate us. Connections to the frontal cortex and other executive areas are also associated as a lot of motivation is based on planning and anticipation of reward. Some even argue that there are two separate motivation systems, the advanced cognitive kind that gives us life goals and ambitions, and the more basic reactive kind that says, ‘Scary thing, run!’ Or, ‘Look! Cake! Eat it!’

  But the brain also has other quirks that produce motivation. In the 1920s, Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik noticed, while sitting in a restaurant, that the waiting staff seemed to be able to remember only the orders they were in the process of dealing with.19 Once the order was completed, they seemed to lose all memory of it. This occurrence was later tested in the lab. Subjects were given simple tasks to do, but some were interrupted before they could complete them. Later assessment revealed that those who were interrupted could remember the tests much better, and even wanted to complete them despite the test being over and there being no reward for doing so.

  This all gave rise to what is now known as the Zeigarnik effect, where the brain really doesn’t like things being incomplete. This explains why TV shows use cliff-hangers so often; the unresolved storyline compels people to tune into the conclusion, just to end the uncertainty.

  It seems as if the second best way to motivate a person to do something is to leave it incomplete and restrict their options for resolving it. There is an even more effective way to motivate people, but that will be revealed in my next book.

  Is this meant to be funny?

  (The weird and unpredictable workings of humour)

  ‘Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process’ – E. L. White. Unfortunately, science is largely about rigorous analysis and explaining things, so this may be why science and humour are often seen as mutually exclusive. Despite this, scientific attempts have been made to investigate the brain’s role in humour. Numerous psychological experiments have been detailed throughout this book: IQ tests, word-recitation tests, elaborate food preparations for appetite/taste, and so on. One of the common properties of these experiments, and countless others used in psychology, is that they all adhere to certain types of manipulations, or ‘variables’ to use the technical term.

  Psychology experiments incorporate two types of variables: independent and dependent variables. Independent variables are what the experimenter controls (IQ test for intelligence, word lists for memory analysis, all designed and/or supplied by the researcher); dependent variables are what the experimenter measures, based on how the subjects respond (score on IQ test, number of things remembered, bits of brain that light up and so on).

  Independent variables need to be reliable in invoking the desired response, for example, the completion of a test. And here’s where a problem arises; in order to study effectively how humour works in the brain, your subjects need to experience humour. So ideally, you’d need something that everyone, no matter who they are, is guaranteed to find funny. Anyone who can come up with such a thing probably won’t be a scientist for very long, as they’d soon be getting vast sums from television companies desperate to exploit this skill. Professional comedians work for years to achieve this, but there’s never been a comedian that everyone likes.

  It gets worse, because surprise is a big element of comedy and humour. People will laugh when they first hear a joke they like, but not so much the second, third, fourth or more times they hear it, because now they know it. So any attempt to repeat the experiment|| will need yet another 100 per cent reliable way to make people laugh.

  There’s also the setting to consider. Most laboratories are very sterile, regulated environments, designed to minimise risks and prevent anything from interfering with experiments. This is great for science, but not for encouraging a state of merriment. And if you’re scanning the brain, it’s even harder; MRI scans, for example, involve being confined in a tight chilly tube while a massive magnet makes very weird noises all around you. This isn’t the best way to put someone in the mood for knock-knock jokes.

  But still, a number of scientists haven’t let these fairly considerable obstacles stop them investigating the workings of humour, although they’ve had to adopt some odd strategies. Take Professor Sam Shuster, who looked into the workings of humour and how it differs between groups of people.20 He did this by riding a unicycle in busy public areas of Newcastle and recording the types of reactions this provoked. While an innovative form of research, on a list of potential candidates for things everybody finds amusing, ‘unicycles’
is unlikely to be in the top ten.

  There’s also a study by Professor Nancy Bell of Washington State University,21 whereby a deliberately bad joke was regularly dropped into casual conversations, in order to determine the nature of people’s reactions to poor attempts at humour. The joke used was: ‘What did the big chimney say to the little chimney? Nothing. Chimneys can’t talk.’

  The responses ranged from awkward to outright hostile. Overall though, it seems nobody actually liked the joke, so whether this even counts as a study into humour is debatable.

  These tests technically look at humour indirectly, via reactions and behaviour towards people attempting it. Why do we find things funny? What’s going on in the brain to make us respond to certain occurrences with involuntary laughter? Scientists to philosophers have chewed this over. Nietzsche argued that laughter is a reaction to the sense of existential loneliness and mortality that humans feel, although judging by much of his output Nietzsche wasn’t that familiar with laughter. Sigmund Freud theorised that laughter is caused by the release of ‘psychic energy’, or tension. This approach has developed and been labelled the ‘relief’ theory of humour.22 The underlying argument is that the brain senses some form of danger or risk (to ourselves or others), and once it is resolved harmlessly, laughter occurs to release the pent-up tension and reinforce the positive outcome. The ‘danger’ can be physical in nature, or something inexplicable or unpredictable like the twisted logic of a joke scenario, or suppression of responses or desires due to social constraints (offensive or taboo jokes often get a potent laugh, possibly because of this). This theory seems particularly relevant when applied to slapstick; someone slipping on a banana skin and ending up dazed is humorous, whereas someone slipping on a banana skin, cracking their skull and dying is certainly not, because the danger is ‘real’.