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SEPTEMBER /OCTOBER 2020 | MIND.SCIENTIFICAMERICAN.COM
PLUS
WHY SOME
MEN REFUSE
TO WEAR
MASKS
REPRIORITIZE
YOUR GOALS
TO UP
PRODUCTIVITY
PSYCHEDELIC
USE ON
THE RISE
Enhance
Your
Personal
Growth
How to shed debilitating
thoughts and see yourself
and the world more clearly
WITH COVERAGE FROM
FROM
THE
EDITOR
Your Opinion Matters!
Help shape the future
of this digital magazine.
Let us know what you
think of the stories within
these pages by emailing us:
editors@sciam.com.
New Views of our Mesmerizing, Maddening Minds
It’s one of my favorite events in the science world: the annual Art of Neuroscience contest held by the Netherlands
Institute for Neuroscience. Now in its 10th year, the competition looks a lot different than it did even five years ago.
Yes, many entries still show off the vivid and fantastical microscopic images of the brain stained in rainbow colors.
But thanks to more sophisticated technology, more submissions each year use interactive digital features to create
immersive experiences for the viewer. When these types of installations first began appearing in the contest, I
bristled a bit (though I am not now proud to admit it). I love the mesmerizing effect of using fluorescent protein tags
that illuminate neural cells, for example, or the cilia of the inner ear, which made up the bulk of entries years ago.
These images are quite like modern art you’d see in a museum. But just as the brain is more than a corporeal lump
of flesh, so the art of neurology is more than a static image. The new generation of brain science art engages the
viewers’ own brains as part of the experience—and sometimes in a full sensory immersion, as you can see in some
of the entries we’ve featured in this issue (see “The Beautiful Things Inside Your Head: Winners of the 10th Annual
Art of Neuroscience Contest”).
In this issue’s cover story, social psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman examines some of the debilitating tenden-
cies of those with a victim mindset, and he offers a powerful new paradigm for how to shift into a personal growth
mode and get the most out of your life (see “Unraveling the Mindset of Victimhood”). Our heads are filled with
beautiful and strange things, whether one or the other depends on how you look at them.
Andrea Gawrylewski
Senior Editor, Collections
editors@sciam.com
LIZ TORMES
Focusing on grievances can
be debilititating; social science
points to a better way
GETTY IMAGES
On the Cover
2
WHAT’S
INSIDE
GETTY IMAGES
ELENA VECINO CORDERO UNIVERSITY OF THE BASQUE COUNTRY AND LUIS LÓPEZ VECINO
September-October
2020
Volume 31• No. 5
OPINION
NEWS
4.
Why Do People
Avoid Facts That
Could Help Them?
Several studies suggest
that individuals widely
prefer to remain
ignorant about
information that would
benefit them when
it’s painful—and
sometimes when
it’s pleasurable
6.
How Human Brains
Are Different: It Has
a Lot to Do with
the Connections
Different mammals
demonstrate common
patterns in brain
connections. But our
own species has a few
twists of its own
8.
Music Synchronizes
the Brains of
Performers and
Their Audience
The more people enjoy
music, the more similar
their brain activity is
to that of the musicians
FEATURES
10.
Americans Increase
LSD Use—and a Bleak
Outlook for the World
May Be to Blame
Millennials and older
adults lead the surge
while Gen Z stays
on the sidelines
12.
The Brain
Interprets Smell like
the Notes of a Song
The sequence in which
clusters of olfactory
neurons switch on can
evoke the smell of an
apple instead of a pear
14.
Unraveling the Mindset of Victimhood
Focusing on grievances can be debilitating;
social science points to a better way
19.
The 10th Annual Art of Neuroscience Contest
The top works—and our favorites—range from
interactive pieces to a pen-and-paper drawing
33.
Why Feeling Close to the Finish Line
Makes You Push Harder
Behavioral scientist Oleg Urminsky explains
why you work harder when you get close to
achieving a goal
36.
The
Condoms of the
Face: Why Some Men
Refuse to Wear Masks
It’s not the first time
masculine ideology has
driven resistance to
a public health initiative
38.
What
Social
Distancing Reveals
about East-West
Differences
The pandemic could spur
psychological changes
in both the U.S. and China
40.
Building
Kids’
Resilience through
Play Is More Crucial
Than Ever
It helps with social,
emotional, physical and
cognitive skills—and
with schools closed, it’s
more important than ever
43.
Mental
Health
after COVID-19
In the wake of the
pandemic, there will be
an even greater need
for help in the face of
loss, isolation and trauma
ILLUSIONS
GETTY IMAGES
46.
Unveiling
the Illusion
How Giovanni Strazza
rejected reality
to make marble lifelike
3
3-6-1-6-6-7-5-1-3
NEWS
Why Do People
Avoid Facts That
Could Help Them?
Several studies suggest that
individuals widely prefer to remain
ignorant about information
that would benefit them
when it’s painful—and sometimes
when it’s pleasurable
In our information age, an unprece-
dented amount of data are right at
our fingertips. We run genetic tests
on our unborn children to prepare
for the worst. We get regular cancer
screenings and monitor our health
on our wrists and our phones. And
we can learn about our ancestral ties
and genetic predispositions with
a simple swab of saliva.
Yet there is some information that
many of us do not want to know.
A study of more than 2,000 people
in Germany and Spain by Gerd
Gigerenzer of the Max Planck
Institute for Human Development in
Berlin and Rocio Garcia-Retamero
of the University of Granada found
4
GETTY IMAGES
NEWS
that 90 percent of them would not
want to find out, if they could, when
their partner would die or what the
cause would be. And 87 percent also
reported not wanting to be aware
of the date of their own death. When
asked if they would want to know if,
and when, they’d get divorced, more
than 86 percent said no.
Related research points to a similar
conclusion: we often prefer to avoid
learning information that could cause
us pain. Investors are less likely to
log on to check their stock portfolios
on days when the market is down.
And one laboratory experiment found
that subjects who were informed
that they were rated as less attractive
than other participants were willing
to pay money not to find out their
exact rank.
More consequentially, people avoid
learning certain information related
to their health even if having such
knowledge would allow them to
identify therapies to manage their
symptoms or treatment. As one study
found, only 7 percent of people at
high risk for Huntington’s disease
elect to find out whether they have
the condition, despite the availability
of a genetic test that is generally paid
for by health insurance plans and the
clear usefulness of the information
for alleviating the chronic disease’s
symptoms. Similarly, participants in
a laboratory experiment chose to
forgo part of their earnings to avoid
learning the outcome of a test for
a treatable sexually transmitted
disease. Such avoidance was even
greater when the disease symptoms
were more severe.
Emily Ho, now at Northwestern
University, and her colleagues recently
developed a scale to measure peo-
ple’s relative aversion to potentially
unpleasant but also potentially useful
information. (You can learn about
your own tendency to avoid informa-
tion here.) The researchers presented
380 participants with various scenari-
os designed to test their desire to
know across three domains (personal
health, finances and other people’s
perceptions of them), with each
scenario presenting the possibility
of a favorable or unfavorable out-
come for the participant. Scenarios
included subjects learning their risk
for a particular medical condition,
finding out the performance of an
investment opportunity they missed
and knowing the truth about how
well a speech they gave went.
The seriously information averse
education, subjects who were more
extroverted, conscientious and open
to new experiences were more
prone to seek out such information.
Meanwhile those with high neuroti-
cism scores showed the opposite
tendency. (Among those who were
more open to such information, there
was often at least one domain in
which they opted to remain unin-
were a minority, though a substantial formed.) In a second study, partici-
one: On average, participants
pants rated the same series of
reported that they would definitely
scenarios twice, four weeks apart.
or probably not want to receive such Their responses remained stable
information 32 percent of the time.
over time.
About 45 percent would avoid
Not surprisingly, Ho and her team
finding out how much they would
found, the motivation to avoid infor-
have gained by choosing a more
mation impacts our behavior. In one
profitable investment fund in the
of their experiments, participants
past; 33 percent would prefer not
completed the initial survey on
to know what someone meant when knowledge avoidance. Two weeks
describing them as quirky; and
later they had the option to visit a
24 percent would not want to be
Web site with potentially valuable
aware of whether a friend liked a
information that they might find
book they had given that person as
painful to learn. For instance, one site
a birthday gift.
compared the average salaries of
The researchers also documented men and women across occupations.
personal characteristics of the
Another contained health data about
participants, some of which proved
people’s individual risk of burnout.
to be significant variables. Although Participants’ tendency to avoid
the degree to which people wanted information, as measured by the
to avoid information was not associ- initial survey, correlated with their
ated with gender, income, age or
avoidance of such Web sites.
5
Information avoidance
can be a problem,
of course, if it keeps us
from learning things
that would help us
make smarter choices.
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