Learn about saving something for an occasion that never comes; and how much you’ve changed in the past vs. the future. Plus: Cody and Ashley celebrate Curiosity Daily’s 1,000th episode! Join Cody and Ashley for a special live stream celebrating Curiosity Daily’s 1,000th episode on Wednesday, November 3! Register for free here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/curiosity-dailys-1000th-episode-celebration-tickets-191163133077 "Specialness spirals" could explain why we save some items for a special occasion that never comes by Steffie Drucker Rifkin, J. (2021, September 22). Psychological “specialness spirals” can make ordinary items feel like treasures – and may explain how clutter accumulates. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/psychological-specialness-spirals-can-make-ordinary-items-feel-like-treasures-and-may-explain-how-clutter-accumulates-165863 How Nonconsumption Can Turn Ordinary Items into Perceived Treasures | Journal of the Association for Consumer Research: Vol 6, No 3. (2021). Journal of the Association for Consumer Research. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/714363 You probably think you've changed more in the past than you will in the future, but, well… by Steffie Drucker We Think We’ve Changed More In The Past Than We Will Change In The Future — And Americans Seem Particularly Susceptible To This Illusion. (2021, September 21). Research Digest. Haas, B. W., & Omura, K. (2021). Cultural Differences in Susceptibility to the End of History Illusion. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 014616722110368. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672211036873 Why You Won’t Be the Person You Expect to Be (Published 2013). (2021). The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/04/science/study-in-science-shows-end-of-history-illusion.html Bence Nanay. (2018). The “End of History” Illusion. Ted.com; TED Talks. https://www.ted.com/talks/bence_nanay_the_end_of_history_illusion Gilbert, D. (2012). The psychology of your future self. Ted.com; TED Talks. https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_the_psychology_of_your_future_self Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Learn about saving something for an occasion that never comes; and how much you’ve changed in the past vs. the future. Plus: Cody and Ashley celebrate Curiosity Daily’s 1,000th episode!
Join Cody and Ashley for a special live stream celebrating Curiosity Daily’s 1,000th episode on Wednesday, November 3! Register for free here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/curiosity-dailys-1000th-episode-celebration-tickets-191163133077
"Specialness spirals" could explain why we save some items for a special occasion that never comes by Steffie Drucker
You probably think you've changed more in the past than you will in the future, but, well… by Steffie Drucker
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/specialness-spirals-and-how-much-you-will-and-have-changed-1000th-episode
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 why you save some things for a special occasion, but never end up using it at all; why you might want to re-think that belief you probably have that you’ve changed more in the past than you will in the future; and, how Cody and I feel about the fact that this is Curiosity Daily’s ONE THOUSANDTH EPISODE!
CODY: Yes! So many feels! And thoughts! And… stuff! So stick around. But first, let’s satisfy some curiosity.
If you’ve ever had an item you refused to use until a special occasion that never comes, this one’s for you. A new study has gotten to the bottom of why we do this to ourselves.
Marketing researchers Jaqueline Rifkin and Jonah Berger invited 121 students to their lab to solve word puzzles and gave them each a blank notebook. Half the group could use either their new notebook or some scrap paper to solve the puzzles by hand, while the other half didn’t get the option — instead, they used a computer. In the second round, everyone had to solve the second set of puzzles by hand, again using scrap paper or the notebooks. Those who had consciously chosen to not use their notebooks in round one were far less likely to use them in round two.
Later experiments zeroed in on why people decide to hold off. In these tests, participants imagined they’d bought a $12 bottle of pinot noir. Then, some people were told to imagine they’d almost drank it at dinner with a friend but decided not to. Finally, everyone indicated how soon they’d drink the wine, what the ideal occasion to open it might be, and how special it was.
Participants who imagined waiting to open the wine rated it as much more special than those who didn’t. Their ideal occasion was also a lot fancier than those who hadn’t imagined waiting. Suddenly that 12 buck Chuck became fit for celebrating a promotion or proposal.
Scientists named this phenomenon the “specialness spiral.” Here’s how it works: Making decisions is tough when your options are presented one at a time, like they are when you have multiple opportunities to open a bottle of wine. So, you decide to hold off on the decision. But that’s not what you tell yourself: instead, you find some other reason for why you’re holding off. The wine must be special! And it only grows more special as it sits unused — and therefore, the ideal occasion you’re saving it for becomes more special too. Eventually the wine is so sacred that there’s not an event to match.
We do this with other items too, like clothes, candles, or custom stationery — and that’s how we end up with clutter. So how do you stop it? Experts suggest being more mindful when you buy things. Have a specific purpose in mind when you make the purchase rather than buying the item for a special occasion that may never come. Life is too short to save things for a special occasion.
Think about who you were 10 years ago. Past You probably looked completely different and had different friends, interests, and priorities. Now imagine who you’ll be in 10 years. Do you think you’ll have the same friends or like the same things you do now?
According to research, you probably think so. Studies suggest that we tend to think we’ve changed more in the past than we will in the future, which affects our decision making. And a new study shows Americans are especially likely to make this mistake.
This psychological concept is known as the “end of history illusion.” It’s the idea that we see ourselves as finished products at any given moment. But in reality, we’re works in progress that will probably change.
Psychologists confirmed this phenomenon by surveying 19,000 people between the ages of 18 and 68 about how much they’ve changed in the last 10 years and how much they think they’ll change in the next 10. Then, they compared the older participants’ reflections on the last decade to the younger group’s predictions. Every age group reported changing more drastically in the last decade than those 10 years younger forecasted for themselves.
We also tend to feel that we experience more change earlier in our lives. Think of how quickly a baby grows into a walking, talking toddler or how much you changed from the beginning to the end of college. Researchers say that change does slow down a little as we age, but not as much as we think. People at every age underestimated how much they’d evolve in the upcoming decade. Scientists blame our lack of imagination. It’s hard to imagine who we’ll be 10 years from now, so we mistakenly think we’ll be mostly the same.
And new research shows that this fallacy is especially American. Scientists asked 5,000 participants from the U.S. and Japan to rate their life satisfaction, personality, and self-esteem now and 10 years in the past and future. Americans reported more past change and viewed their former selves more negatively than the Japanese. The team says these results are related to the American Dream and its intense focus on self-improvement. Americans are tougher critics on their past selves because it helps us feel that we’ve achieved greater personal growth. Americans also felt more strongly that they knew themselves, so predicting that our future selves would stay the same maintains that sense of self-confidence.
Life and the future can feel uncertain – especially since the pandemic. But it’s good to remember that change is the one constant in our life.
ASHLEY: Let’s recap the main things we learned today, and then talk about our thousandth episode. Which is this one.
CODY: And speaking of our podcast and changing things and other stuff… yeah! A thousand episodes! By the way, when we originally launched a podcast for Curiosity, we did about 40 episodes of a weekly show called the Curiosity Podcast. You can find those ancient episodes from 2017 and 2018 in our RSS feed, so that’s why you might see Apple Podcasts list our show as having one thousand forty episodes.
ASHLEY: Yeah! If you want to hear a lot of fun behind-the-scenes stories from the early days of our podcast, then you can join Cody and me for a special livestream tonight. You can sign up to check it out for free using the Eventbrite link in today’s show notes and on curiositydaily.com, or register for the event on Curiosity’s Facebook page. In case you can’t join us, though, we thought we’d give you a little treat right now.
CODY: Yeah! A lot happens that you DON’T hear on the show. And as much as I want the show to sound perfect, we are far from that behind the scenes. For example, sometimes we have a hard time pronouncing things. Like this time.
[210305 honorificabilitudinitatibus]
CODY: The word doesn’t have to be hard, though.
ASHLEY: Yeah, sometimes it’s the easy ones. Like these...
[210816 Cody NOTH America]
[211011 Cody puberty]
[210331 Sea Anemone]
ASHLEY: And sometimes it’s a turn of phrase we don’t quite get right. Like…
[210504 all the more harder]
ASHLEY: You’d think that with all the times we repeat the same phrases on the show, we’d have them down. Buuuuut no. Here are a few fun mishaps.
[210729 Satisfy some curiosity high]
[210326 Curiosity Daily-ah]
[210602 Ashley Recap]
CODY: And sometimes bad jokes just go kinda, well… bad?
[210505 Bad Egg ending]
ASHLEY: But give us a little credit! Sometimes we say things that ARE funny, just… they don’t quite make it to the show. Like this time we wanted to do a little homage to the popular podcast Science Vs and I attempted an Australian accent.
[210401 Wendy Zukerman Impression]
CODY: Or this time something awesome just kinda happened.
[210416 illustrate paradox]
Join us for a livestream tonight!
[ad lib optional]
ASHLEY: The writer for today’s stories was Steffie Drucker.
CODY: Our managing editor is Ashley Hamer. who was also a writer on today’s episode
ASHLEY: Our producer and audio editor is Cody Gough.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow for the first of another THOUSAND EPISODES of Curiosity Daily… to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!