Learn about a bias in your brain that makes you ignore security warnings; why people who fall in love feel like they’ve known each other for years; and a crew of prehistoric monkeys that crossed the Atlantic Ocean on rafts.
Learn about a bias in your brain that makes you ignore security warnings; why people who fall in love feel like they’ve known each other for years; and a crew of prehistoric monkeys that crossed the Atlantic Ocean on rafts.
You ignore more than just your browser security warnings because of "warning fatigue" by Grant Currin
Why do people in love feel like they've known each other for years? by Ashley Hamer (Listener question from Jonathan)
Crew of prehistoric monkeys rafted across the Atlantic to South America by Grant Currin
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/why-we-get-warning-fatigue-prehistoric-monkeys-crossed-the-atlantic-on-rafts-and-why-new-lovebirds-feel-so-familiar
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 a bias in your brain that makes you ignore security warnings; and we’ll answer a listener question about why people who fall in love feel like they’ve known each other for years. You’ll also learn about a crew of prehistoric monkeys that crossed the Atlantic Ocean on rafts.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Computers flash security warnings...all the time. New security patches, suspicious websites, potential phishing attempts, et cetera. You’ve definitely seen them and probably ignored almost all of them. But don’t feel bad--a lot of people do. Researchers blame it on a phenomenon called “warning fatigue,” and they’re still figuring out how to deal with it.
In 2013, Google funded a study to figure out how they could design security warnings so people would actually avoid clicking risky links. They looked at 25 million instances of people seeing a warning, and found that users ignored them between ten and seventy-five percent of the time. Usually, they ignored warnings they’d seen before. To cut down on that warning fatigue, the recommendation was simple: limit the number of warnings a user sees.
But you don’t have to spend a lot of time in front of a computer to feel the effects of this bias. Because warning fatigue affects how people behave in a lot of contexts. In a 2017 study, researchers analyzed clinicians’ decisions to ignore automated warnings about patient safety. For instance, some systems alert hospital workers when a patient may be allergic to a drug that’s about to be administered. There are legitimate reasons for overriding the alerts, but they often provide life-saving information. The researchers looked at three years of medical records to see when nurses, doctors, and other health care professionals tended to ignore these alerts. And just like with the security warnings, clinicians were more likely to ignore messages the more they saw. On average, the likelihood of heeding a warning dropped by 30 percent with each additional alert someone received. Clinicians were also more likely to ignore an alert when it popped up during a complex task.
In 2014, a researcher in New Zealand named Brenda Mackie developed a broader theory of warning fatigue. She used several types of data and identified five factors that influenced how Australians responded to warnings about wildfires. Unsurprisingly, over-warning and false alarms tended to make people less responsive. Other important factors were the credibility of the source, skepticism in the seriousness of the warning, and feeling helpless to do anything in response.
We’re not saying you should heed every warning you see, but remember this: your brain has a bias against taking repeated warnings seriously. Just because you’ve seen a warning before doesn’t mean it’s any less important! Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
We got a listener question from Jonathan [not that Jonathan], who writes, “You know how on reality love TV shows like the Bachelor and Love is Blind, people always say something like ‘I feel like I've known you for years’ when they've only known each other for a few days, weeks, or barely a month? I'm curious why that is such a ubiquitous feeling.” I love this question.
It’s likely that there are two elements at play here — one decidedly less romantic than the other. Let’s start with that one. To paraphrase the reality show, love really is blind. People in romantic relationships have what researchers call “positive illusions” of their partners — they perceive them as more attractive, intelligent, and charming than a stranger probably would. People tend to magnify their partners’ good qualities and minimize their faults, or even twist those faults into good qualities. That might sound like kind of a downer, but there’s good news: studies show that the more a couple idealizes each other, the happier they were in their relationships.
That’s all to say that what might be going on here is one big positive illusion. When you’re attracted to someone, you look for all the good things about that connection, including the ways you both understand and relate to one another. Plus, the people on these shows have extra incentives to see their potential beau in a positive light, since a match gets them more screen time and other perks of reality show success.
But there’s also a more romantic explanation. After all, it does feel like you just click with some people, and neuroscience may back this up. There’s evidence that people with deep connections actually sync their brain activity — and it’s possible that they made that connection because of the syncing, not the other way around. A 2018 study mapped social connections between a bunch of people, then scanned their brains while they watched video clips. Brain activity was super similar among friends, and less similar the weaker the connection between people. As one of the researchers told Mindful Magazine, quote, “You click more with friends than with non-friends, which fits with our intuition that we resonate with some people more than others. There seem to be neurobiological reasons for that.” endquote.
Basically, there are some people who see the world a lot like you do. And if you’re lucky enough to meet them on a first date — or on a reality show — embrace it! Thanks for your question, Jonathan. If you have a question, email it to podcast at curiosity dot com or leave us a voicemail at 312-596-5208.
I’m about to blow your mind: scientists think that a band of ancient monkeys once crossed the Atlantic Ocean by raft. Seriously. The evidence comes in the form of four fossilized teeth discovered deep in the Amazon. Here’s why scientists think this journey actually happened.
So, monkeys come in two categories. You’ve got your “Old World” monkeys in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, everywhere Europeans once considered “the old world.” Then you’ve got your “New World” monkeys in South and Central America. There’s a lot of primate diversity in the Old World, but the New World primates all belong to just one group: the platyrrhine [PLAT-er-ryne] monkeys.
So in 2016, researchers in South America — the New World — were pretty surprised when they found some fossilized molars. Because those molars closely resembled those of an extinct family of primates called parapithecids [PAIR-uh-PITH-uh-kids] from North Africa — the Old World. They say the fossilized teeth belong to a distinct species of small monkey, about the size of a marmoset. They’ve named it Ucayalipithecus perdita [OO-cah-YALL-ee PITH-uh-kiss pair-DEE-tah].
Africa and South America used be connected as part of one big supercontinent, so if these monkeys existed back then, you might expect to find them in both places. But the two continents parted ways to form the Atlantic Ocean at least 120 million years ago, and evidence from fossils and DNA shows that Old World and New World primates parted ways much more recently. It looks like perdita’s ancestors made the voyage about 34 million years ago, when the expanding Antarctic ice sheet caused sea levels across the globe to drop.
That begs the incredibly obvious question: how’d they make this journey? We don’t know for sure, but researchers think a powerful storm may have torn a chunk out of a forest on the African coast to form a natural raft. Wind patterns and ocean currents could have guided the raft and its primate crew across the Atlantic to the shores of South America.
If you think animals making a trans-Atlantic voyage by raft tens of millions of years ago sounds far-fetched, get ready for this: scientists think it happened at least two other times. A group of rodents that includes the chinchilla, guinea pig, and capybara probably took a similar ride to South America. The same goes for the ancestors of the other New World primates, including the white-faced capuchin and the mischievous spider monkey.
Even though it wasn’t unprecedented, the journey that took perdita’s ancestors from North Africa, across the Atlantic, and deep into the Peruvian rainforest was certainly unlikely. It’s a story of extreme weather, a changing climate — and a whole lot of luck.
CODY: Before we recap what we learned today, here’s a sneak peek at what you’ll hear next week on Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Next week, you’ll learn about why coffee tastes bad when you reheat it;
An online game you can play to speed up Alzheimer’s research;
How astronauts may use their own urine to help build the first moon base;
Why what you think you know about Cinco De Mayo is wrong;
And more! Okay, so now, let’s recap what we learned today.
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Today’s stories were written by Ashley Hamer and Grant Currin, 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: Have a great weekend, and join us again Monday to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!