Learn about why bystanders help would-be victims more often than we thought; how you should think about past failures to avoid future failures; and how crows passed an ancient test from Aesop’s Fables. In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: A New Surveillance Footage Study Shows That Bystanders Help More Often Than We Thought — https://curiosity.im/2KiEx3y Dwelling on Your Failure Might Help You Succeed — https://curiosity.im/2LARHLg Crows Can Pass This Ancient Test from Aesop's Fables — https://curiosity.im/2LAp2Gg Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Learn about why bystanders help would-be victims more often than we thought; how you should think about past failures to avoid future failures; and how crows passed an ancient test from Aesop’s Fables.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/bystanders-help-more-often-than-you-thought-avoiding-failure-and-cause-and-effect-crows
CODY: Hi! We’re here from curiosity-dot-com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about why bystanders help would-be victims more often than we thought; how you should think about past failures to avoid future failures; and how crows passed an ancient test from Aesop’s Fables.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
A New Surveillance Footage Study Shows That Bystanders Help More Often Than We Thought — https://curiosity.im/2KiEx3y (Ashley)
A new surveillance footage study shows that bystanders help more often than we thought. And the results of this research should bring comfort to any would-be victim. This flies in the face of a story from 1964 that you may have heard if you've ever taken a basic psychology class. It goes like this: in New York City’s Queens borough, a 28-year-old woman named Kitty Genovese was attacked in front of a large apartment building. Reportedly, 38 witnesses stood by and did nothing. Her story led to a flurry of studies that came to establish what's known as the bystander effect, which says that the more witnesses there are to an incident, the less likely it is that any one of them will step in and help. There were a lot of factual errors with this story, like the fact that many bystanders actually did call the police. But after the incident, study after study looked into how likely a person from a crowd of witnesses would be to step in and help. And as a 1981 review of that research state, quote, “It is concluded that, despite the diversity of styles, settings, and techniques among the studies, the social inhibition of helping is a remarkably consistent phenomenon ... victims are more likely to receive assistance when only a single individual witnesses the emergency,” unquote.
For this new study published in June 2019, a team of European researchers took issue with some of this previous research. Their biggest problem was this: If you were being attacked in a crowd of people, would you care about the probability of any given person stepping in to help, or would you care about the probability that someone -- that ANYONE -- would help? Chances are, it's the latter. While the first situation focuses on a bystander’s chances of helping, the second focuses on the victim’s chances of getting help. To fill this gap in the research, the team used 219 video clips of real-world footage from security cameras, from three urban areas: Amsterdam in the Netherlands; Lancaster in the U.K.; and Cape Town in South Africa. They counted the number of incidents where bystanders actually stepped in to help, and found that at least one bystander intervened in more than 90 percent of all situations, with an average of about 4 intervening bystanders per video clip. They found that the more bystanders there were at the scene, the more likely the victim was to get help. And this was true for every location. To be clear, this doesn't necessarily debunk the bystander effect, since this study wasn’t looking at the chances of bystanders helping in situations where they’re alone versus when they’re in a crowd. But for a victim, the more important question is: If I'm attacked, will I get help? According to this research, the answer is yes — and the more people around you, the more likely that is.
Dwelling on Your Failure Might Help You Succeed — https://curiosity.im/2LARHLg (Cody)
A 2017 study from The Ohio State University confirms that they key to avoiding future failure may be to dwell on a past failure — no matter how unpleasant. What a great way to turn losses into wins.
For the study, they had participants go shopping online for the cheapest blender with all the requested features. Successful participants would win a cash prize. Before they found out how they did, half of the participants were told to write about their emotional response to their win or loss, while the other half was told to write about their thoughts. But it was all a set-up. No matter how cheap the blenders were, the scientists always "found" another one that cost less.
After that, half the subjects were tasked with finding the best deal on textbooks. This was to remind them of the deal-hunting task they had so recently failed. And apparently, the sting of an emotional memory had an impact. The subjects who focused on their emotions after their previous failure ended up spending 25 percent more time on average looking for low-priced textbooks than those who only reflected on their thoughts.
According to the researchers, this shows that it’s important not just to dwell intellectually on what went wrong, but to go back emotionally to that feeling of failure. It seems feelings are the key to a deeper commitment not to fail again. They may also help inoculate you against the fear of failure by facing it head-on.
So, when things don't go exactly the way you planned, try hanging on to that feeling for a while. It could make all the difference the next time.
Crows Can Pass This Ancient Test from Aesop's Fables — https://curiosity.im/2LAp2Gg (Ashley)
Scientists have used a fable from ancient Greece to test the abilities of animals — and they’ve found that crows can pass the test. Aesop's Fables are stories from ancient Greece famous for their lessons in morality. And it turns out that the ancient tales aren't just good life advice — they're also handy cognitive tests. Researchers have used one particular fable to test whether animals have a sense of cause and effect. And appropriately, the first subjects tested by scientists also happened to be the character in the fable itself.
In the “Crow and the Pitcher,” a thirsty crow finds a water pitcher, but the water level is too low down for the crow to reach. The clever crow starts dropping small pebbles into the pitcher until the water level rises high enough for it to drink. The moral of the story? Little by little does the trick.
Apart from that lesson, this fable is a great illustration of cause and effect, and it demonstrates causal understanding. And scientists actually tried this test on rooks, which are from the same family as crows. A 2009 study looked at whether rooks could actually achieve what Aesop's crow did. They gave each of four rooks a clear plastic tube that had a worm floating near the bottom, next to a pile of stones. Two of the rooks solved the problem on their first try, and the other two eventually got the worm.
Since then, scientists have used this test in different ways and over and over, and members of the crow family proved that they could pass this essential test of cause and effect.
In 2017, University of Wyoming researchers decided to use another wily animal: the raccoon. Raccoons didn't quite measure up to the crows, but two of seven raccoons figured out that they could pick up stones and drop them in the water to get a treat. And a third raccoon surprised the researchers, by rocking back and forth to overturn the apparatus and retrieve the reward.
Which just goes to show that animals can be innovative as well as intelligent.
CODY: And now, let’s recap what we learned today. Today we learned that bystanders help more often than we thought.
ASHLEY: And that dwelling on your past failures might help you avoid future failures.
CODY: And that animals can be both innovative and intelligent. Like they say: a rolling stone gathers no moss.
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Stay curious!