Our Fascination With Pushing Buttons & How Games Have Shaped Our World-SYSK Choice

Most people think of romantic music as background noise for dates, movies, or weddings. But researchers have found that music can actually influence romantic behavior and attraction in measurable ways. Listen to discover how love songs may be doing more than simply setting the mood. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100618112139.htm Take a look around you and notice how many buttons surround you. Elevator buttons. Crosswalk buttons. Remote controls. Keyboards. Car dashboards. Humans push buttons all day long—and often repeatedly, even when pushing again does absolutely nothing. There’s something deeply satisfying and psychologically powerful about pressing a button and getting an immediate response. But buttons are a surprisingly recent invention, and they fundamentally changed how humans interact with machines, technology, and even each other. Rachel Plotnick, associate professor of Cinema and Media Studies at Indiana University, explores the strange history and psychology of buttons, why people are so drawn to them, and how “push-button culture” transformed modern life. She is author of Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing (https://amzn.to/3xvIj5j). Humans don’t just enjoy games—we seem to need them. From sports and gambling to video games, puzzles, and board games, people everywhere devote enormous amounts of time and energy to play. But games may be doing far more than entertaining us. Neuroscientist and physicist Kelly Clancy explains how games shape human behavior, influence culture, teach strategy, reward risk-taking, and even help societies evolve. In our conversation, she reveals why games are woven so deeply into human nature and why understanding games may help explain the way humans learn, compete, cooperate, and make decisions. Kelly is author of Playing with Reality: How Games Have Shaped Our World (https://amzn.to/3W02BNR). Online product reviews have become incredibly influential. A surprisingly large number of people now trust reviews from strangers almost as much as recommendations from friends. We discuss how those reviews can dramatically affect what consumers buy, avoid, or return. https://www.cardrates.com/news/consumers-rely-on-online-reviews-study/ PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS POCKET HOSE: For a limited time, when you purchase a new Pocket Hose Ballistic, you'll get a FREE 360 degree rotating pocket pivot and a FREE thumb drive nozzle! Just text SYSK to 64000 AQUA TRU: Take the guesswork out of pure, great-tasting water. Head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://AquaTru.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ now and get 20% off your purifier using promo code SYSK. AquaTru even comes with a 30-day best-tasting water guarantee or your money back. RULA: This Mental Health Awareness Month, don’t just think about your mental health - actually take the step to take care of it. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Rula.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get started. QUINCE: Refresh your everyday with luxury you will actual use! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! DELL: With the Dell Pro laptop powered by Intel Core Ultra with vPro, no matter how many interruptions you have, your laptop won’t be one of them. With battery that’s optimized for the way you work, and built-in intelligence that quiets distractions the moment you’re trying to focus, your tech won’t slow you down. Find out more at ⁠⁠⁠https://Dell.com/Dell-Pro⁠⁠⁠ SHOPIFY: It's time to turn those "what ifs" into CHA CHING with Shopify Today! Sign up for your $1 per month trail and start selling today at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Shopify.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know. Can romantic music really make you be romantic? Then, pushing buttons. There's a button for everything, and we love to push them.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  We often are very invested in placebo buttons, which is a button that doesn't actually do anything, but it remains in place because people like the idea of pushing a button. Two quintessential examples of this might be the crosswalk button in a city or the door close button on an elevator.

• 0:29Mike Carruthers?

  Also, how much do product reviews influence what people buy? And games. People love to play games. Maybe we need to play games.

• 0:39Speaker 02

  Turns out that uncertainty is really, really compelling to the brain, and games are all about uncertainty. Games are in what ads were served, how we're paired on dating apps, how we're matched with jobs. It's really important to understand how this impacts us because games kind of play us as well.

• 0:55Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know.

• 1:01Mike Carruthers?

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• 1:46Mike Carruthers?

  and track your orders, all in one place. Clothes, electronics, gifts, things for the house, all kinds of stuff. And whether you win or not, it's worth knowing. But with 1,000 chances to win $1,000, I'd certainly take a look. Enter to win the $1 million Shop Cash giveaway from now until November 1st. Just go to shop.com. There are so many ways to win. That's shop.com. Shopping designed around you. No purchase necessary. Restrictions apply. Official rules available at shop.com.

• 2:26Speaker 03

  Something You Should Know, fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life today. Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

• 2:40Mike Carruthers?

  Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. And I want to start this episode by helping you get a date, if that's your goal. There's research out of France that shows that the right kind of music can really help you get a date. A group of women were put in one of two waiting rooms prior to an unrelated focus group discussion on food products. In one waiting room, a very popular romantic French love song played on the speakers. In the other waiting room, a very neutral, unemotional song was played. After the focus group was over, the leader of the focus group, whose name was Antoine,

• 3:20Mike Carruthers?

  met with each woman alone and asked each of them for their phone number, saying he would like to give them a call to get together for a drink. Fifty-two percent of the women who had heard the love song gave Antoine their phone number. Only 28% of the ones who heard the neutral song gave out their phone number. The conclusion, according to the researchers, is that music can have a powerful impact on our emotions, and a romantic song seems to make people more romantic. And that is something you should know.

• 3:58Mike Carruthers?

  With just the push of a button, you can do almost anything. There is a button for everything, and there is no shortage of people who love to push those buttons. I mean, watch a kid in an elevator. He wants to push the buttons for every floor. Or watch that impatient guy at the crosswalk who keeps pushing that button in hopes that it will change the light faster. There's just something about a button that makes you want to push it. It didn't used to be this way, but we now live in a push-button world. And here to take a look at the interesting implications of that is Rachel Plotnick. She's an assistant professor of cinema and media studies at Indiana University in Bloomington

• 4:40Mike Carruthers?

  and author of the book, Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing.

• 4:48Mike Carruthers?

  Hi Rachel, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  Thanks so much for having me.

• 4:52Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I didn't know that this was a thing, that this was a topic to talk about, pushing buttons. But then I started to think about, you know, all the buttons that I push every day in the studio, or in my car, or in the kitchen. I push a lot of buttons, and so does everybody else, but, but why are we talking about it?

• 5:13Speaker 01

  I think exactly what you alluded to is that there's this kind of ubiquity of push buttons, they truly are everywhere, and because of that, they're part of the experience of everyday life, but they're also extremely invisible. And I think when something is stitched into the fabric of everyday life that much, we want to kind of stop and pause and think about, what is this doing to our interactions, to the experiences that we have every day, and how we kind of function as a society?

• 5:38Mike Carruthers?

  Is there any sense of like, when somebody first came up with this idea of, you know, we could have this thing, where you just push it, and the thing turns on? Any idea where that began?

• 5:52Speaker 01

  I spent a really long time trying to answer that question. It sent me down all these funny wormholes, trying to learn about belly buttons, and clothing buttons, and, you know, when did that idea of really pushing a button come to be? And I can't say that I ever found the exact first instance of pushing a button, but I think it came from a few different locations. One, in terms of thinking about keys, and pushing a key on a keyboard, or a musical instrument, or a telegraph in the late 1800s. That started to be something that was thought of as pushing that thing to activate something. And also, the French word bouton means to push, or something that pushes out, or thrust forward. So the very idea of the button is kind of that thing that sort of thrusts or pushes forward.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  But it really was the late 1800s around industrialization and electrification, particularly in the US and the UK, where we began to see this idea of pushing a button becoming commonplace.

• 6:46Mike Carruthers?

  Well, it's interesting that we have that word, button, but it has multiple meanings. I mean, there's a button on my shirt, which I, I can push it all day long, it doesn't do anything. But then there's the button that you push, and that does something, but it wouldn't look good on my shirt.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. There are these multiple senses of the meaning. And I think that that also points to the ways that a button, while it seems very simplistic, is also kind of this versatile technology. So I don't know, you know, what came first, the clothing button, the belly button, the push button. I think in some ways, the push button was later in that sort of history, even though now it's hard to imagine ever not pushing a button.

• 7:24Mike Carruthers?

  Well, there's something very powerful, it seems, about pushing a button. I mean, pushing buttons can do anything. It can probably launch a missile. It can call an elevator. I mean, watch a kid get in an elevator without his parents. He'll push every button that's in there because there's something about every button that isn't being pushed is begging to be pushed.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  I love that about buttons, and I think children are the best case study for this because they do have this fascination and this kind of feeling of magic around button pushing. What will happen if I push this thing? And one of the most interesting things to me was that even children in the early 1900s were bothering their parents by pushing buttons that they shouldn't have. They were ringing elevator buttons and running away and honking horns and doing all the kinds of things that we tell our kids not to do today. So I think there's been that persistent fascination with buttons for as long as there have been buttons.

• 8:15Mike Carruthers?

  And is there a sense of when buttons like really became, like the first doorbell and the first, you know, elevator button, like when they really became a thing? And was it a thing or was it just, well, how are we going to make this thing ring? Oh, I know. Let's put a button in there. How does that all work?

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, what I began to find out was that, you know, around the late 1800s, 1870s, 1880s, there were other ways to activate things. You know, there were levers and various switches and pulls. Bells were one of the most common things that people wanted to activate, especially if you had a servant in your home and you were kind of well to do and you could call to activate a person, right, rather than just a thing. So people would pull these really heavy bells using ropes or strings or various ties. And it was very exhausting to do that. So people started to think about, okay, what's an easier way that we can activate this bell as a form of communication? One of the early uses of push buttons. Around that time also fires were a big issue in communicating if there was a fire.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  So fire alarms were another instance where the idea of pushing a button to call one someone for help became appealing. And then a little bit later toward the 1870s, 1880s into the 1890s, automatic elevators, cameras, some of these other technologies became more prominent. And then light switches as well, which actually originally were buttons. So all these technologies were kind of coalescing around this moment, particularly around electrification and thinking about what is sort of the right activator or switch to make the use of electricity as easy as possible.

• 9:50Mike Carruthers?

  You know, what you just said reminded me. I remember when I was very young, going to my grandmother's house. And there were light buttons. There weren't. She didn't have switches. So what, what happened there? Why, why did we move from buttons to switches and like, why did, well, yeah, why that?

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, it's very funny to me that they were buttons. And now that seems a strange thing that we just sort of expect it to be a switch. And the way those early light buttons would work is that there was a white button for light or on, and then a black button for off. And I'm not exactly sure what made the kind of metaphorical switch from buttons to switches. I think that they were able to then, you know, reduce two interfaces, two buttons down to one, which was just the switch of the up or down. And that became kind of an easier, more natural way of doing things. But it is interesting to think about, you know, why did this very commonplace interface sort of fall out of favor in this one situation, but become more commonplace in other situations?

• 10:52Mike Carruthers?

  But as I recall, the buttons weren't easy to push. The light buttons were not like pushing a button on your phone kind of thing. It was more effortful and the switch, you can just flick your finger and switch it.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  That's right. I mean, I think the whole history of interfaces has been how can we make everything as frictionless and as easy as possible and the least amount of effort? And a lot of those buttons were kind of more triggers where you really had to push something in and there was effort associated with it. And as you say, you know, the switch does become this kind of, oh, you can flick it with any part of your body pretty much. And it's going to turn on the lights on or off, but that button might've been a little bit more onerous.

• 11:32Mike Carruthers?

  Is button technology like just as simple as you would like to think it is? Or are there multiple types of technologies for buttons? And or is a button a button?

• 11:46Speaker 01

  I think buttons are actually tremendously complicated. And over the years, I've had a lot of conversations with people who tell me about the challenging button interactions they've had, or they expected a button to do one thing and then it did another. There are button manufacturers who spend all their time just trying to think about how can we make this an easier technology to use. And especially as we've moved toward a digital world and toward touchscreens, I think we put more of a cognitive load and higher expectation on buttons to do more things for us. So if you think of your phone button, oftentimes you're holding that button down and it activates a menu where you can choose different things, or buttons have these various options associated with them. So what seems like a very simplistic technology has a lot going on for it when you start to unpack those layers.

• 12:30Mike Carruthers?

  And are there like button designers, like people really put a lot of thought in this? Or we just hook up some wires to a little button and we're done?

• 12:39Speaker 01

  It's actually quite complicated. In fact, I did just a tiny bit of consulting with a company and they were manufacturing buttons for things like x-ray machines and CT scanners for people using them in medical situations. A lot of people think about buttons on airplanes or in military contexts. Pretty much any situation where you can think about there being a button, there's going to be a whole bunch of designers and user experience specialists and engineers who are trying to pay attention to just how this button should work. And what's fascinating to me is that the easier the button works, I think, suggests to us that there were a lot of people behind the scenes who are really trying to figure out how to make that experience as friction free as possible.

• 13:20Mike Carruthers?

  One interesting characteristic of buttons that I don't think many people think about, but I do, is the noise they make. And having, you know, worked in podcasting and before that in radio, particularly in the old radio studios, when you had your microphone on and you were talking on the air and maybe you needed to start a turntable or a tape machine, if the button you pushed made a big click or thunk, people, it would be picked up by the microphone and people would hear it. So they designed buttons that were silent or close to being silent. And yet, other buttons are designed, I imagine, to make a noise specifically to confirm, "Yes, you turned it on," or "Yes, you turned it off."

• 14:04Mike Carruthers?

  And I wonder, like, do people work on that?

• 14:07Speaker 01

  That's a great question, and I think that that's one of the subtleties about buttons, is thinking about the various kinds of feedback that they give us when we push them. You could have visual feedback in an elevator, for example, where it lights up when you push it. Some buttons, I think the fact that it makes a sound is a way to tell us, "Hey, you actually pushed that button, it's going to do something." And that gives you not only satisfaction, but that feeling of confirmation that the button is working. On the other hand, as you said, sometimes there is an advantage to quiet, and that's a desirable thing, because you're in a situation where we want the interface to be as invisible as possible, because that kind of maintains this idea of magic, that the machine is working without us really knowing that it's working. So I think it's very context-specific.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  And this then relates not only to usability, but also accessibility, and thinking about how people get different kinds of information. If you're deaf, for example, you're really going to want a light on that button to give you that cue.

• 15:02Mike Carruthers?

  We're talking about buttons and why we like to push them. My guest is Rachel Plotnick. She's author of the book, "Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing." So Rachel, I have no idea, but I would imagine that there are people, for whatever reason, who don't like buttons, that buttons, they're button-phobic or something.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  I'm sure that's definitely the case, and probably for different reasons. There might be some people who are germaphobes. Even 100 years ago, you know, people were worried about contact with public buttons and didn't want to touch a button that other people had touched. And other people, I think, just have kind of interface preferences, what they would prefer to use.

• 15:45Mike Carruthers?

  Well, what about that germ thing? Because I think that's still a concern people have. If you touch that same up button on the elevator in the lobby that 50 million other people have touched over the last 24 hours, might not it just be covered in gross germs?

• 16:06Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And obviously, the COVID pandemic really drew attention to touching, I think, in a way that many of us took for granted, that all of a sudden these surfaces became very fraught. We had to think a little bit more about what should we touch, what shouldn't we touch? And I've been fascinated to see the ways in which a lot of companies have moved toward touch-free, contactless, touchless, all these various kinds of interfaces and gestures to move away from touching. And I think there are multiple reasons for that that aren't strictly about germs. Often, there are business reasons as well. But there is, I think, more sensitization around what should I touch and what shouldn't I?

• 16:41Mike Carruthers?

  Isn't there? Why do I remember reading something about that you can make a button out of some material that that at least doesn't encourage like bacterial growth and maybe kills it? Is that a thing?

• 16:54Speaker 01

  I think that is a thing. There are increasingly these surfaces, and especially in hospitals, they tend to use surfaces like that that will resist bacteria. There's also various kinds of coating, oleophobic coatings are things that are used quite often on glass and touchscreens. And they've been playing around this for with this for a number of years, just trying to figure out how can they make surfaces, you know, safer and less bacteria inducing, if you will.

• 17:18Mike Carruthers?

  And so when you researched this, what are some of the other things that you found really interesting that nobody would really think about or know or have any idea?

• 17:28Speaker 01

  I've been really interested by the fact that we often are very invested in placebo buttons, what people would call a placebo button, which is a button that doesn't actually do anything, but it remains in place because people like the idea of pushing a button. And two quintessential examples of this might be the crosswalk button in a city or the door close button on an elevator. And quite oftentimes, those buttons are controlled by computer, and they're set on timers. So when you press that button, it doesn't make a bit of difference. But when you remove those buttons, a lot of people got upset because they want that feeling of agency that they did something, they controlled the machine, and not that they were at the mercy of the machine. So I've always found that just really interesting to think about, that we would rather have this possible feeling

• 18:13Speaker 01

  of control rather than, you know, let's just let the computer take over. And I think, especially in the moment that we're in, when we're deliberating about AI and automation and all these other things, we've been having this conversation for a long time about how much do we want to delegate to the machine? And how much do we want to feel like we're in control as humans?

• 18:30Mike Carruthers?

  Well, what's really interesting about that, and I hadn't really thought very deeply about it before, but when you're waiting for an elevator, or you're waiting for the crosswalk, you see those people that keep going up to the button and pushing it multiple times, multiple times after it's already lit. And if you were to ask those people, "Do you think that does anything?" I think most people, "No, it doesn't do anything." To continually push the button is not going to bring the elevator any quicker, but people can't not do it.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Exactly. I think that's a really fascinating human experiment. And even some of these newer elevators in bigger cities, that they've experimented with total automation, where there are no buttons in the elevator, and you're just going up inside of a steel box. People tend to freak out. They get really uncomfortable. It's very claustrophobic. So whether or not that button does anything, it really becomes this kind of marker of saying, "You control the machine and not the other way around." So I think you're right, that probably if we probed it, a lot of people would say, "Well, it probably doesn't do anything, but I'm gonna try anyway."

• 19:33Mike Carruthers?

  What's the future of the button? It seems like we can't really get enough of them. I mean, for most of us, anyway. I mean, as I look around the room that I'm sitting in, I, and look for buttons, there are so many buttons in this room that I could go push. And it just seems like we all like buttons. They kind of simplify things.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  You know, I think it's so fascinating to think about what the future is gonna look like. And when I started thinking about buttons, probably about 2009, a lot of people were saying we were witnessing a death of the button. That's when iPhones and smartphones were becoming popular, and things were moving increasingly toward touchscreens. And many, many companies have really tried to think about, "How can we do away with button pushing?" It seems like there has been a vendetta against buttons for a long time, taking physical buttons off of our phones, switching from physical buttons in cars to touchscreens. Now we have voice activation for so many things, like Alexa or Siri. Video game systems, people have experimented with, trying to get rid of those controllers with buttons.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  I think everyone thinks that button pushing is unnatural, or it's clunky, or we could do better if we just didn't have them anymore. And yet, time and time again, people seem to come back to them, and there's a sort of nostalgia for the past, or people desire to push the button. And my sense is that much as we may try to kill them and develop fancier and fancier technologies, I think there is often something very intuitive and desirable about that kind of simple button pushing experience.

• 21:06Mike Carruthers?

  Just watch a kid with a bunch of buttons in an elevator and you'll see that. I mean, it's just, they can't not push them unless they think they'll get in trouble for pushing them.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  And, you know, it seems fun to create these newer technologies that are trying to reinvent the way we interact with each other and with our devices. And I don't think that's a bad thing on its face, but we do want to be careful not to sort of treat one technology as more natural than another. They all come with kind of their own politics and their own positives and negatives. And a button is just one tool of many, but I wouldn't say that it's, you know, more organically useful or on the other hand, that it's the problem in the way that we interact with technology either.

• 21:46Mike Carruthers?

  We have in our house, I don't know where it is, but I saw it within the last year, we have one of those staples, "that was easy" button.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:57Mike Carruthers?

  I don't know why we have it or where it came from, but that's an example of what you were talking about before, a placebo button that doesn't do anything other than makes the guy say, "that was easy." But, but when, when you put it in front of people, they can't not push it. They just can't.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  There does seem to be a psychology to that, you know, and I think that that's the, the interesting thing about the, the big red button or put a red button in front of someone that looks really dangerous and they don't know what it's going to do. This is often a kind of social experiment. Will the person push the button? And there does seem to be this kind of itch inside of people that they just want to know what it's going to do. And the less they know about it, the more it's hidden in this kind of mystique, the more they want to push it. And I think that gets to a very essential kind of human quality of just curiosity about what machines are going to do, what effects will they have?

• 22:49Mike Carruthers?

  Well, and think about, um, think about advertising for things over the years, how often the phrase, "and with just the push of a button." I mean, it's like, "oh, God, that's easy. Look at that. I could have that and all I have to do is push that button." Like people reduce it down to, "and with just the push of a button, you too can do whatever this thing is."

• 23:15Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, and the Eastman Kodak company, long time ago, their phrase was you press the button, we do the rest. They were one of the first companies to really kind of embrace that logic of consumption and capitalism. Look how easy button pressing is. Anyone can do it. You don't need any skill. You don't need any experience. And I think, as you said, you know, over the last 100, 120 years, people have tried to sell buttons over and over again as a way to consume because of that pleasurable quality, that simplicity.

• 23:42Mike Carruthers?

  Well, you use the word buttonize, and I love that word because we really have, we have buttonized the world. Pretty much anything you want to do, you can do by pushing a button.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And I do think there's probably something very uniquely American about that as well, right? Other cultures might not be quite as dependent on this, but we're very much this kind of self-service gratification culture. And it's very integrated into American society that push for this, push for that. All you have to do is push and you get what you want.

• 24:13Mike Carruthers?

  Well, it is so much fun, and it happens every once in a while, to be able to tackle a topic that I never knew was a topic, the subject of buttons and pushing them. And it's so much fun to dig under the surface on this and see what's there. I've been speaking with Rachel Plotnick. She is an assistant professor of cinema and media studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, and she's author of a book called Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Appreciate you coming on today. Thank you so much, Rachel.

• 24:54Mike Carruthers?

  Who doesn't like to play a good game? Seems like we're drawn to games, board games, card games, sports, puzzles, computer games, any kind of game. So what is it about games? Sure, they're fun, but there must be more to it than that. Here to explain why we like games and what playing games does for us is Kelly Clancy. She is a neuroscientist and physicist who has held research positions at MIT, Berkeley, and United College London, and she's author of a book called Playing with Reality: How Games Have Shaped Our World. Hi, Kelly. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 25:32Speaker 02

  Hi, thanks so much for having me.

• 25:34Mike Carruthers?

  So what is it about games? I mean, games by nature are play. We like to play games, which kind of implies that they're not that important. But yet they are important. So why? Why? Why do we like games?

• 25:47Speaker 02

  We can learn a lot about people by studying what fascinates them. And for thousands of years, people have been fascinated by games. We have games in the archaeological record back, dating back 7,000 years, making it older than written language. So what is so compelling about games? It turns out that uncertainty is really, really compelling to the brain and and games are all about uncertainty. Once we started studying games, we learned a lot about how we make decisions, especially in uncertain situations. So the study of games led to a lot of our economic and technological systems today. Games are in what ads were served, how we're paired on dating apps, how we're matched with jobs. So it's really important to understand how this impacts us,

• 26:30Speaker 02

  because games kind of play us as well. So when you play Monopoly, you have to act like a cutthroat capitalist, even if you're actually a hippie at heart.

• 26:39Mike Carruthers?

  So what's what makes a game a game? What defines it? Because there's games and then there's puzzles and that's kind of like a game, but it's more of a puzzle. And so what's a game to you?

• 26:50Speaker 02

  Games are a system with rules and like furnished with a goal. And so the idea is that you have to achieve this goal, but you're kind of restricted in how you can do it. So for example, golf, you want to bring a ball to a hole, but you can't just like pick up the ball and walk it over to the hole and plop it in. You have to hit it with a funny stick and follow all these little rituals. So a game is kind of just a self-contained system with a goal.

• 27:17Mike Carruthers?

  But also fun, right? I mean, what separates a task from a game is a task may not be so fun, but a game is enjoyable.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, definitely. It's something undertaken out of your own volition. Like it's something you want to do, you enjoy doing. And I think part of what makes it fun is that you're it's it's a kind of form of learning. It's like what your brain wants to do. Your brain really wants to explore things and learn things. And through games, we're kind of exploring new situations in a very safe environment. So like when cadence are playing, they're often kind of practicing things they'll need as adults. So they're like wrestling or, you know, practicing hunting by like whatever wrestling around with yarn. So it's kind of like a safe environment to practice things.

• 28:08Speaker 02

  One of the kind of more compelling theories about what play is about is that it's about social learning. So, uh, so it turns out rats have kind of like a laughter. They have this like vocalization that they make when they want to play. And so one rat makes this vocalization and then the other rats all stop what they're doing and they all play together. If a rat is born and it can't hear, if it's a deaf rat, it doesn't hear that laughter as much. So it ends up not playing as much growing up. And those rats as adults, they are socially awkward, they are aggressive, they can't read their peers' social cues. They can't really mate. So one idea of what play is about is more that it's really teaching us how to play along together.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  And even Plato kind of intuited this. He thought games were this really important part of civic education because people like children playing games learn to follow rules. And then as adults, they learn to follow laws.

• 29:07Mike Carruthers?

  So people like to play, they like to play games and follow the rules of the game. But we don't all like the same games. Some people like tennis, some people like golf, some people, you know, hate other games. So what determines that? Is it just personal preference or, or is there something there?

• 29:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think the best I can say is that it's probably personal preference. There's a AI researcher, Julian Tagellus, who says games are like a cast of the mind. They're kind of like a glove fitting a hand. So they're all kind of custom made to work in different ways with like things our brains want to do. Cause ultimately. Our brains invented games and they're something that the brain wants to do, right? Like they invented something fun to do for itself. So it's kind of like they're just like pure joy. And so each game kind of has a different aspect of what kind of mental function it's fitting. So you can think of like Pokemon fits our desire to kind of collect things like people.

• 30:09Speaker 02

  Some people collect little baubles and some people want to collect Pokemon. Tetris maybe fits our desire for order and cleanliness. You're kind of like organizing the lines and cleaning things up.

• 30:21Mike Carruthers?

  A big part of the appeal of a game, it would seem, and the difference between a game and just playing is the competition, the possibility that you could lose or you could win. You hope to win, but you could lose. It's that competition that is what makes a game so appealing.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  And games are, yeah, games are such a kind of broad thing. You can talk about something completely strategic like chess or something completely chance ruled like dice. And ultimately, the maybe unifying aspect of all of those things is some aspect of uncertainty. Like with dice, you don't know what's going to show up. It's just random. When you're playing chess, you can maybe, if you know your opponent, you might kind of guess some of their plays, but you're really not sure how it's going to end up. So there's all these aspects of uncertainty in games.

• 31:13Mike Carruthers?

  So you study games and I get that and it is, it's interesting. But you know, when I play a game, once the game's over, the game's over. It's, it's not like a big part of my life. It doesn't carry on, it doesn't seem to carry on into other aspects.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, but so the problem is that we're now in games that don't end, right? We're in social media where it's highly gamified. People are, the, the technology is kind of incentivizing people to become addicted to it, to endlessly scroll, to give all their attention. You know, even games are being gamified in a way. So like a lot, there's a lot of like mobile games that are intentionally consciously addicting people, trying to get whatever money they can. This is called dark design, where it's kind of designed in ways to capture attention and money. So yes, with a normal game, we could just walk away, but we're seeing this kind of gamification of reality where.

• 32:13Speaker 02

  These systems are increasingly everywhere in our life and we can't necessarily easily walk away from them.

• 32:20Mike Carruthers?

  So I know people who love to play games. They have every, you know, board game. They have card games. They've got, you know, their own poker chips and they, I mean, and I'm less of that guy. I mean, I'm not a big game player. I'm, I'll play, but I don't wake up in the morning going, God, I can't wait to get the monopoly board out. And, and I wonder like, well, it doesn't it seem like there are some people who love games and other people who don't? Or, or, or is it just me?

• 32:49Speaker 02

  I've actually kind of gone between both worlds. Sometimes I love them and sometimes I can take them or leave them. But, uh, I think part of it is, again, it's, it's sort of like, what, what sort of things does your brain enjoy? And maybe, you know, you're taking enjoyment, obviously you're taking enjoyment out of other things in, in life. But one of the reasons games are so compelling is that because they're, they deal with uncertainty and uncertainty is actually really, really crucial to the brain, important to the brain. And if you think about it, it kind of makes sense. So our brain's MO, it's like whole purpose for existing is kind of to like predict things, to anticipate things. It wants to know what's going to happen in advance so that it can like make the best choices as

• 33:32Speaker 02

  quickly as possible. And so when it encounters something it doesn't understand, it doesn't know, it cannot predict, that's really, really interesting to it. It's sort of like a flag to say, you don't have a model of the world here. You don't quite understand what's going on in this little corner of the world. So the, you know, the brain will sort of hone in on that and be interested and, and want to learn it. And so this is when you get, you know, chess prodigies, it's like endlessly playing chess or people getting addicted to gambling and just endlessly gambling. And one really interesting thing about gamblers is we think of them as like, or, you know, maybe gambling addicts. We think of them

• 34:15Speaker 02

  as maybe hoping for a, a big payout. And often when they do win, they just put that money back into playing more. So it's not necessarily that they're like looking for money. It's actually this kind of interesting. Like they just get pure pleasure out of playing, out of trying to understand the game. And a lot of people who are really, really heavy gamblers will say things like, "Oh, I'm really close to cracking the system or understanding how this works." Or there's this sense, like the brain is giving off this sense of like, "I'm learning something." And of course, we know in dice, we can't really learn much. We kind of know what we know about dice. Like, you know, the chances of getting a six or one out of six and yada, yada.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  In some games like chess, you really can kind of learn and improve your skills. And in others, you, you can't, but you still get this illusion of learning because, because of that uncertainty. And this is actually, this is sort of even neurologically verified. So you can take a monkey, train it to press a lever to get a reward, and look at the firing of their dopamine neurons. So dopamine neurons are, they're often called like a reward, like dopamine is often thought of as a reward molecule, but it's really a sort of motivation and wanting molecule. And it's involved in addiction as well. The monkey sees a cue, it does its behavior, it presses a lever, and then it gets a reward.

• 35:41Speaker 02

  And the dopamine neurons kind of start firing in advance of the reward. But if you, if you make that reward uncertain, so for example, you give the monkey a 50/50 chance of getting reward, the dopamine neurons actually fire a lot, a lot more. It turns out that they're really motivated by this randomness, by uncertainty. So it's actually a, like a deep neurological principle, why we're so fascinated by uncertainty.

• 36:08Mike Carruthers?

  Well, that explains a lot. I mean, if, if that uncertainty is such a drive for people, because I've always wondered, like, it's no secret that. You're likely, if you go to Las Vegas and gamble, that you're not going to win. And statistically, over time, the house always wins. And yet, people still try, lots and lots of people go, and it must be that uncertainty that drives them there.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's, you know, this is one kind of cool thing about humans is we've been doing the same things for ages. So there's a almost 4,000-year-old Hindu poem where they describe dice as being like a drug, it's like addictive. And a lot of the, you know, Greek and Roman emperors were huge gamblers. Gambling was really huge in Renaissance Venice, that's where the casino was born. And the casino was so powerful that, and so kind of addicting, that the aristocracy, the people in charge, all almost collapsed because they all lost their money in the casino. So the casino kind of took over Europe and became super popular.

• 37:17Speaker 02

  And that kind of incentivized mathematicians to start looking at dice and say, okay, what's happening here? What can we know about dice throws? There must be some, something noble here. And so then, we got probability theory, which was, has been incredibly successful scientifically.

• 37:34Mike Carruthers?

  So when people play games, there are some people that play games really well, and then there are some people that we kind of call bad sports. You know, they play golf and they, and they take it so seriously and they throw their clubs and they, you know, that kind of, or they break their tennis racket. What's going on there?

• 37:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's another really kind of cool thing about games is, it's a nice window into other people. And that's kind of what they were brought for from the beginning. Like, you know, when we think about those rats who don't play as children, and then they grow up and they're not very well socialized. Play is all about learning how to kind of interact with other people. And... There are people who maybe didn't play enough as kids. I know, I know someone who, when she's hiring people, she makes them play Jenga with her team beforehand so that she can kind of get a sense of like, are they a good sport? Do they play along? Do they get super, hyper competitive? So it's a really cool way of seeing into another person.

• 38:35Speaker 02

  I had this really lovely experience when, actually as I was writing the book, I met my now husband and we played puzzle games together. And it was this really beautiful experience of like getting to know someone else's mind through, through games and seeing how we solved problems together. And he solved things I couldn't solve and I solved things he couldn't solve. So it's a, it's a really beautiful insight into other people. And, and this is something that thinkers have known for a long time. Like, you know, Plato thought of games as being important for socializing people. And this famous, famous psychologist, Jean Piaget, used to study how children play games

• 39:17Speaker 02

  and the way that they work together to maybe improve the rules or enforce the rules, he thought of as also a very important foundation for democratic principles. How do we, how do we all work together to find rules that work for everybody?

• 39:35Mike Carruthers?

  Have you ever played a game with someone? And you saw a side of them you've never seen before? Like the game brings something out in some people that go, geez, I don't think I want to play with him again.

• 39:48Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And that's something that's really kind of beautiful about games too, is that you get to kind of try on different personas and different personalities and, you know, make choices that you might not make in life. I started playing Dungeons and Dragons with some friends about a year ago. And it was all, all of our first time playing it, except for one of us. And we all picked characters that we realized a couple sessions in were just kind of ourselves. And so we had to like make a lot of changes because it wasn't as fun to just be yourself in a whatever. Adventure you're in, it's much more fun to like pretend to be somebody else. And this has been true for a really long time. Like I was talking about Renaissance Venice.

• 40:30Speaker 02

  They had this six month long carnival season, which is when people could like gamble and dance and drink and go crazy and they were all wearing masks. So it was kind of like the original anonymous internet users in a way. So everyone was wearing a mask. So like the poor could socialize with the rich and everyone could just be who they wanted to be.

• 40:52Mike Carruthers?

  Some games, you know, come and go, others, you know, like chess and golf and tennis. I mean, they, they never seem to go away. They, maybe they go in and out of popularity. But, you know, I remember years ago, Trivial Pursuit was like all the rage. And now, I mean, nobody plays that anymore. Like, and I wonder, just games typically have a life cycle. But if they do, then why is golf and chess still here?

• 41:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's something really fascinating too. Like the fact that we're still playing chess, like we could go back a thousand years and think the rules might be slightly different, but we could still play with somebody from a thousand years ago or go, you know, you could play with somebody many thousands of years ago. And it really goes to show how instinctual, what, how deep in the brain these, these games are kind of hitting us. The fact that we are still playing chess is really a testament to how complex and brilliant that game is. So for example, like tic tac toe, kids play it, but no adult plays it because by the time you're like, I don't know, eight or nine, you've played through enough times that

• 41:59Speaker 02

  you know, as long as you get the center square, it's going to be a draw. Like there's pretty much no way of winning tic tac toe. It's always, if you're playing right and you're playing with somebody who also plays right, it's always a draw. So it stops being interesting because it stops having uncertainty. It stops being like something unknown. And chess, you could kind of explore, even checkers, you could explore for years and years and still learn new things about it.

• 42:25Mike Carruthers?

  Anyone can think of games that are pretty social, sports, any sport. I mean, usually playing it with other people and card games, you're playing with other people. But it's interesting that the term gamer, you know, like the hardcore gamer is the, the image is a kid sitting alone in his dark room, playing games.

• 42:46Speaker 02

  And yeah, I think that's something that's maybe often mischaracterized is we often have this characterization of gamers as lonely in their rooms, not talking to people. But many games are social and they're maybe playing, you know, some kind of with a team online and they're talking on their headsets and they're chatting and, you know, actually I think during COVID, teenage boys apparently fared mentally, like mental health wise, they fared a bit better because they were playing games online with their friends. So games are really inherently very social, even though they often have the stigma of being maybe more of a loner thing.

• 43:29Mike Carruthers?

  Well, one of the concerns is, you know, very few people, it seems that I know, get addicted to checkers or trouble or tic-tac-toe, but people get addicted, it seems, to computer games.

• 43:46Speaker 02

  Right. And so this is, this is one of the kind of, you know, big dangers of games is they can be very addictive and companies in some cases are intentionally designing them to be that way. I think the, it's hard to really get numbers on this, but in terms of the global population, there's something like one to three percent are considered problematic gamers. So like they have a problem or they're addicted to gaming and it's about the same for gamblers. Like I think it's something like one to three percent of the global population are addicted to gambling. And then you compare that to like alcoholism, that's like maybe 1.5% of the population. So these are problems just as big as alcoholism. And they actually

• 44:28Speaker 02

  have a lot more stigma because people have more trouble talking about it, going to seek help for it. Some, I think the highest rate of suicide attempts for, you know, among different addicted populations is for gambling addicts. So it's actually pretty troubling in some ways as well. Absolutely.

• 44:47Mike Carruthers?

  You know, I think of that phrase people often say, "It's just a game," implying that it's not that important. And yet, as we've just been discussing for the last 20 minutes, games are really important to people. I mean, it's hard to imagine life without games. We need games. And what an interesting topic. Kelly Clancy has been my guest. She is a neuroscientist and physicist who has held research positions at MIT, Berkeley, University College of London, and she is author of the book, "Playing with Reality: How Games Have Shaped Our World." And there is a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Well done, Kelly. Thanks for coming on.

• 45:25Speaker 02

  Great. Thank you so much.

• 45:30Mike Carruthers?

  When it comes to consumer purchases, do you pay attention to online reviews? I know I do. And according to a new survey, so do a lot of people. In fact, and this survey was conducted by CardRates.com, they said that 99% of people, 99% of people, look at reviews before they make a purchase. To the question, "How often do you read reviews before making a purchase?" 36% of people said "always," 54% said "frequently" or "most of the time," 9% said "occasionally," and 1% said "rarely." And to the question, "How

• 46:10Mike Carruthers?

  influential are reviews when you're buying something?" 19% said "extremely influential," 44% said "very influential," 32% said "moderately influential," and 4% said "slightly influential." And 86% of people are willing to pay more for an expensive product that has better reviews over a cheaper alternative with mixed reviews. This was interesting. 97% of people say that a negative review impacts a decision to buy something. And 96% of people say they have changed their minds about buying something after reading a negative review.

• 46:53Mike Carruthers?

  To the question, "What are the most helpful types of online reviews?" 54% of people said, "Reviews that mention specific pros and cons." 26% said, "Reviews with a detailed description of the product." And 19% said, "Reviews with a photo or video." And that is something you should know. And now that you know just how important ratings and reviews can be, please leave a rating and review of this podcast. Every podcast platform makes it very easy to leave a rating and review, including the one you're listening on right now. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.