"[The researchers] then asked, “Would they rather do an unpleasant activity than no activity at all?” ... Participants were given the same circumstances as most of the previous studies, with the added option of also administering a mild electric shock to themselves by pressing a button.
Twelve of 18 men in the study gave themselves at least one electric shock during the study’s 15-minute “thinking” period. By comparison, six of 24 females shocked themselves. All of these participants had received a sample of the shock and reported that they would pay to avoid being shocked again."
Even more amusing to me: the number of shocks men chose to give themselves had a mean value of 1.47 and a standard deviation of 1.46. This is after excluding one outlier who shocked himself 190 times [1].
Growing up in the boonies... lots of electric fences and lots of pre-teen and teenage boys thinking it is hilarious to grab the fence then grab your friends. I'd still do it once - wouldn't be entertaining for too long but another post mentioning the novelty of it resonates with me.
The face slapping world championships is also a thing so really no surprises here hah.
As I read this, I was thinking how much I would enjoy participating in such a study and seeing how many times I could shock myself before I couldn’t take it anymore. My very first thought was how much I would like to have the ability to test myself.
Another thing this misses is that experiencing pain when you have complete control over it is totally different than experiencing pain when you have no control over it.
In one book I read about childhood trauma, it related an experiment they did where they put two rats in side-by-side cages, but they couldn't see each other. One rat had a lever; when they pushed the lever, both rats would get an electric shock, and both rats would receive a pellet of food. The rat with the lever quickly figured out the deal: Whenever I push the lever, I get shocked, but I get food: painful, but predictable and under its control. It adapted to the situation completely fine.
The other rat's physical sensations were exactly the same: it was shocked at exactly the same painfulness and degree as the rat with the lever, and received the same amount of food. But its psychological sensations were very different: It had no control over when the shocks would happen, nor any way to predict them. It basically withdrew and became a nervous wreck.
The point was: We can actually endure an awful lot of suffering if we can predict when it's going to happen, and particularly if we have some control over when it happens.
The author described the experiment to explain the behavior of one of the children in the book. A girl's mother started dating a man who began, occasionally, to get very drunk and then sexually molest the girl; after which he would be very apologetic and remoreseful, until the next time he got drunk. In response, the girl started getting the boyfriend drunk on purpose. The idea (surmised the psychologist author) was: I can't stop it from happening, but at least this way I can control when it happens, which makes it much more tolerable.
If they'd given people the option to either sit in a chair and be randomly shocked without warning, or to stand, I'm willing to bet that far fewer of the men would have sat in the chair.
It's really fascinating to me as well that a lot of men would be that way. I understand "why" but for myself personally I can entertain my own thoughts alone for an extended period time. I've always been that way since I was young so the thought of shocking yourself because you're bored with your own thoughts still is an odd concept to me. How can you despise your own inner monologue that much? Is introspection really that unmasculine of a task to some men? Many people to me seem so focused on the present and engaging without considering possible outcomes before acting. It's one facet of humanity I still don't understand outside of justifying that it's another irrational thing humans do for the sake of irrationality.
Novelty. How often are you part of a study where you get to shock yourself? It makes a good story, and this kind of makes the study less useful. The "shock value" of shocking oneself is its own entertainment. Would not be surprised if some of the people who didn't shock themselves were spending the time trying to amp themselves up to take the shock, but just never did.
- "didn't like" was based on paying some part of an imaginary $5, not their money and not big money. I couldn't find how much of the imaginary money people would spend. $1 or $5, seems both were counted as "negative", despite a potential gradient in just how much someone disliked it.
- There could be peer pressure to have a negative opinion of the shock because people would assume you would want to avoid being shocked, that's what a "normal" person would do.
- People have different levels of pain tolerance. Those with higher tolerance may find the shock more interesting than painful.
- The recollection of an event can diminish quickly, especially when being questioned about other things, while being left in a room with only the shock button would expectedly narrow their focus back to the shock they had received earlier, likely triggering further curiosity about their shock tolerance.
- While being shocked as prep for the "test" is part of the story, the other half of the story is being left in a room with the shock button, and people are going to want to know if you shocked yourself or not.
I would also be really interested in a repeat of the experiment but with differing age groups. My hypothesis is that younger men would perhaps find it "manly" to suffer electric shocks (perhaps even if just as a bar story for later) while older people would not feel the need for such activities anymore.
Also, erotic electro-stimulation (e-stim) is a thing. It doesn't surprise me at all that some people just be curious about shocks in general, considering there are people out there that do it for fun/pleasure.
"[The researchers] then asked, “Would they rather do an unpleasant activity than no activity at all?” ... Participants were given the same circumstances as most of the previous studies, with the added option of also administering a mild electric shock to themselves by pressing a button.
Twelve of 18 men in the study gave themselves at least one electric shock during the study’s 15-minute “thinking” period. By comparison, six of 24 females shocked themselves. All of these participants had received a sample of the shock and reported that they would pay to avoid being shocked again."