Captains Keith Colburn and Sig Hansen from the award-winning documentary series “Deadliest Catch” share some surprising science lessons from the fishing world. Plus: learn about the psychology behind “sour grapes.”
Captains Keith Colburn and Sig Hansen from the award-winning documentary series “Deadliest Catch” share some surprising science lessons from the fishing world. Plus: learn about the psychology behind “sour grapes.”
When people can't get something they want, they decide it's not worthy of desire by Kelsey Donk
Learn more about Deadliest Catch, Tuesdays at 8 PM ET/PT on Discovery
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/fishing-science-w-deadliest-catch-captains-sig-keith-and-the-psychology-of-sour-grapes
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, Captains Keith Colburn and Sig Hansen from the award-winning documentary series “Deadliest Catch” will share some surprising science lessons from the fishing world. But first, you’ll learn about the psychology behind “sour grapes.”
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
You’ve heard the term “sour grapes,” right? It basically means that when people can't get something they want, they tend to decide it's not worth wanting at all. The term originally came from Aesop’s fables, and thousands of years later, researchers looked into the idea. They found that it’s a tendency we still have today — a tendency they call the “sour-grape effect.”
The story was about a fox who tried to eat grapes from a vine, but couldn’t reach them. Rather than admit he just couldn’t jump high enough, the fox said he didn’t want the grapes anyway since they were unripe and sour. That’s where we get the phrase “sour grapes.”
Aesop’s fables taught human morals, so it makes sense that the people in this recent study basically did the same thing. Across six experiments, scientists gave people either good or bad feedback on a test. They found that people who were randomly selected to get bad feedback predicted they’d feel less happy about a good test result in the future.
Relatable, right? I mean, who hasn’t failed at something and tried to hide their shock and disappointment? Scientists think we do this as a self-protective strategy. We don’t want our bad results to say something about who we are or who we’ll become in the future, so we pretend to never have wanted it at all. We don’t need those sour grapes!
But when scientists told the participants that they’d gotten top scores on a subsequent test, the participants were all equally happy. Basically, people who’d failed just underestimated how good it would feel to succeed.
The tests showed just one exception to the rule, and that’s people who were high in what’s called “achievement motivation.” People who value success and are motivated by future success were undeterred by failure. Unlike everyone else, these people were able to correctly predict that future success would make them happy.
The “sour-grape effect” seems to be relatively universal. Scientists found the same results in both the United States and Norway, and in the lab, the field, and online. These results suggest that our desires are pretty limited. It seems that what we want is limited by what we think we can get.
Today we’re gonna take a deep dive into the science of fishing, with a couple very special guests who know a thing or two about the subject: Captains Keith Colburn and Sig Hansen. You may know them from the Emmy-award winning documentary series “Deadliest Catch,” which just returned for its SIXTEENTH season. And these guys aren’t your average fishing boat captains, because they do the deadliest job on earth: crab fishing off the Alaskan coast on the icy Bering Sea. Ashley and I were pretty pumped to ask them about the science of fishing, and how their job has changed over the last several years. To start off, here’s what Sig told us about sustainability.
[CLIP 1:27]
Turns out the crews on fishing boats are doing their part to help keep ecosystems in tact. Pretty cool, right? Well, you can’t talk about ecosystems without also talking about climate change. So we followed up with this question: has climate change had a big impact on what you guys do? Here’s Keith.
[CLIP 4:50]
There’s a whole lot more you can learn from Captains Keith Colburn and Sig Hansen on DEADLIEST CATCH, which returned for its landmark 16th season just last week. You wanna learn a lot AND see some extreme stuff on TV? Of course you do. So tune into Deadliest Catch Tuesdays at 8 PM Eastern on Discovery.
Let’s recap today’s takeaways
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CODY: Today’s first story was written by Kelsey Donk, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Today’s episode was 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!