Learn about the Battle of Puebla, the real reason why we celebrate Cinco de Mayo; how placebos of psychedelics can have psychedelic effects; and how early career choices may influence your personality.
Learn about the Battle of Puebla, the real reason why we celebrate Cinco de Mayo; how placebos of psychedelics can have psychedelic effects; and how early career choices may influence your personality.
What You Think You Know About Cinco De Mayo Is Wrong by Reuben Westmaas
Placebos of psychedelics can have psychedelic effects by Grant Currin
Early career choices appear to influence personality by Kelsey Donk
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/early-career-choices-influence-your-personality-why-we-celebrate-cinco-de-mayo-and-psychedelic-effects-from-placebos
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about the real reason why we celebrate Cinco de Mayo; how placebos of psychedelics can have psychedelic effects; and how early career choices may influence your personality.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
ASHLEY: Today is the fifth of May — also known as Cinco de Mayo! [HOST 2], do you know why we celebrate Cinco de Mayo?
CODY: Isn’t it Mexican Independence Day?
ASHLEY: Nope! Guess again.
CODY: Well I know it’s some sort of major holiday in Mexico.
ASHLEY: Wrong again! Cinco de Mayo isn’t even as big of a deal in Mexico as it is in other countries.
CODY: So, what exactly are we all celebrating?
ASHLEY: I’m glad you asked.
Cinco de Mayo commemorates the Battle of Puebla, which happened in 1862. That’s about 50 years after Mexican independence. While the American Civil War was unfolding in the north, Mexico wasn’t doing so well itself. It was having financial troubles, and ended up defaulting on its debts to European governments — including France. And French Emperor Napoleon III responded. No, not THE Napoleon; this was his nephew. Napoleon III dispatched what was then the world’s largest army to Mexico so they’d start to pay up.
But as the French marched from the coast to the capital, their plan for domination ran into a snag. On May fifth in the city of Puebla, the French found themselves outmatched by an underdog force of citizen-soldiers. The battle lasted from dawn until dusk, but the decimated French army eventually withdrew and left Mexico victorious. The French did launch a successful invasion later on, but they never held onto Mexico for long.
But here's the thing — without the Battle of Puebla, world history might have been very different. In the 1860s, countries in the Americas weren’t happy about intervention from European powers, so Mexico had an ally — of sorts — in the United States. But while Abraham Lincoln and U.S. politicians decried the French invasion, they couldn’t help. They were dealing with a Civil War, after all, and if they helped Mexico, the French might retaliate by supporting the slave-holding states. France would likely have done that anyway after dealing with Mexico, but because Puebla sent the French army packing, they weren’t able to give the Union army much trouble.
So perhaps it makes sense that Cinco de Mayo is celebrated around the world. After all, that one battle may have changed the course of world history.
Researchers at McGill University in Canada recently threw a psychedelic party at the Montreal Neurological Institute. A DJ played ambient music, the walls were decorated with tapestries and trippy art, and dim light bathed the space in warmth. And the attendees were seriously tripping. It was such a convincing setting that most of them didn’t realize what they were tripping on: a placebo. That’s right — scientists demonstrated that people can feel psychedelic effects from nothing but a sugar pill.
Medical researchers are optimistic that psychedelics can be used to treat conditions like depression and anxiety. But when it comes to drugs like LSD and psilocybin [SIGH-luh-SIGH-bin], (which is the active compound in so-called “magic mushrooms”)? The effects can change dramatically based on the mindset of the person taking them and the setting in which they’re consumed.
So the researchers at McGill recruited 33 Canadian college students for an experiment they said centered on the effects of psychedelics on creativity. Even though, in reality, the study was an elaborate setup to induce a placebo effect.
They met on a weekend evening in the lobby of a university research building, where researchers checked their IDs to make it seem official. Then they waited for 20 minutes while undercover research assistants said things like, “My friend did this study last week and had a blast.” Then they walked through the building, passing other researchers who were around to make it seem legitimate. The researchers added to the effect by hiring a security guard to stand outside the room where the experiment was about to take place.
Once in the room, the participants were given a pill and told it would change their consciousness for the next four hours. It was a placebo, but a full 61 percent of the participants said it had some effect. Some told researchers they saw paintings on the walls move or reshape. Another said they felt like gravity was pulling harder than usual.
Another said she felt the effect of the drug subside before another wave hit her.
This is one of the first times researchers have succeeded in inducing the placebo effect in people who think they’ve taken psychedelics. The researchers say their findings help explain why some people feel they’ve taken drugs when they’re around people who have. The findings also might influence the growing use of psychedelics as medicine, maybe by helping people develop safer, lose-dose therapies. But I like to think that this proves once and for all that you really can be high on life.
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What if you could go back to age 16 and make a different choice for your life? Would you be a different person today? According to a recent study, making a different career choice early on can have a significant impact on someone’s personality.
This new research adds to mounting evidence that we aren’t born with fixed personalities. Instead, choices we make in the course of our lives change our personalities in subtle but significant ways. Past studies have suggested that important life events like starting a job, getting married, and retiring are linked with changes in people’s personality traits, but it’s been hard to figure out whether those events caused the changes or something else was going on. You can’t exactly assign volunteers to make big life changes for a study, so scientists have had to get creative.
In this case, German researchers homed in on one important milestone for many German 16-year-olds as they finish grade 10: choosing to get vocational training and join the workforce, or staying in school to pursue higher education. By stacking these groups with students that had relatively similar personalities at the start, the scientists could figure out whether their choices influenced the kind of person they were six years later, when everyone was in the workforce.
Turns out, they did! The scientists measured changes in both the students’ so-called Big Five personality traits and their interests and motivations. Students who had chosen to enter the workforce early on ended up more conscientious than the ones who’d continued their schooling, probably because the clear demands and higher-stakes punishments in the real world tend to motivate students to straighten up and fly right. Those who joined the workforce were also less interested in scientific or business activities than their academic counterparts, which makes sense — higher education tends to reward students for their interests in those subjects.
But surprisingly, vocational students were also less interested in social activities. The study authors figure that’s because you’re freer to choose your college friends than your work friends, leaving those in the workforce more likely to face challenging social situations. That can make social activities a lot less appealing.
Choosing work over academics didn’t change the students’ personalities entirely. But the main takeaway is that our choices in early adulthood do impact who we become later on.
Let’s recap today’s takeaways
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CODY: Today’s stories were written by Reuben Westmaas, Grant Currin, and Kelsey Donk, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Scriptwriting was by Cody Gough and Sonja Hodgen. Curiosity Daily is produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!