Humans Evolved to Fear Snakes, Not High-Risk Mortgages or Risks at Traffic Lights
by Karin Kloosterman, Jerusalem, Israel on 08.18.08
(Screenshot from the film Snakes on a Plane)
Is technology, made to better our lives, killing us? Kids have stopped playing on trees, and this isn’t healthy, reported TreeHugger’s Lloyd last week, citing a UK study that found more and more kids staying inside (playing on computers and video games) are avoiding risky play.
According to the study, kids need the adventure of “risky” play: “Risk-taking increases the resilience of children,” said one researcher. “It helps them make judgments,” said another. They list examples of risky play that should be encouraged including fire-building, den-making, watersports, paintballing, boxing and climbing trees.
That story fits in nicely with new research reported by Israeli researchers, and may give us some insight into why pedestrians and cyclists are getting hit by cars when hooked into their iPods; and why so many people are still dying from car accidents. Apparently, explains Arnon Lotem a researcher at Tel Aviv University, our ancient instincts don't meet the decision-making needs of a modern world.
Take for example driving. The traffic light ahead of you has turned yellow. Do you gun it and speed through the intersection, trusting that others will wait for their green, or are you the type who will slow down and wait your turn? The answer depends more on experience than personality, according to Lotem, a behavioral ecologist who reported his research in Nature.
Lotem found that modern people have adopted risk-taking behaviors similar to those of animals like rats and bees. And this behavior, Prof. Lotem says might not prepare humankind for the types modern dangers we face every day -- like crossing the street, accepting a high-risk mortgage, driving on the freeway, or flying a plane.
While our risk-taking behavior had its advantages when we were living as cave-dwellers, it poses new and potentially dangerous challenges in our modern technology-driven world: "People want to know how people make decisions, whether it's how you drive your car, or whether to invest in a mortgage. It's important to understand when and how we make those decisions, to understand the type of errors people are prone to make," he says.
"What we have found is that people make decisions based on what option 'appears' to be better most of the time. Under conditions in the natural world this would be the best strategy, but in modern life it has nothing do with the real inherent risks," he adds, citing our individual responses to yellow lights.
A Calculated Risk, You Do the Math
People are aware of the actual risks when driving through a light at an intersection, but unless they've already had a brush-with-death, says Lotem, or a brush-with-a-traffic-cop, the perceived risk remains low. This is because in most cases nothing happens to the risk-taker. "You save one minute, but you can lose everything. People don't do the math," he says.
Lotem's study found that, presented with simple decision-making stimuli, people are not analyzing the complete situation based on logical rationales or statistics. Instead, they appear to be making decisions based on simple strategies for coping in nature, based mainly on personal experience.
This tactic might have worked fine for surviving the jungle or desert, but did not evolve to survive the modern world. "We've evolved to be afraid of snakes, but not traffic lights," he says.
The results of Lotem's research may also be used by economists, politicians and psychologists who need to know when people will take risks. A wider understanding of this phenomenon can affect business decisions, the economy – and hopefully the number of road accidents in America each year.
The study's participants also included a team of scientists from the Technion Israel Institute of Technology and The Faculty of Agriculture of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
More on risk-taking in the modern environment, greening your iPod
Risk Taking Increases Resilience of Children
Green Your iPod in 3 Steps
Dangers of iPods on Cyclists and Pedestrians
Margaret Wente on Understanding Risks
::AFTAU
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When I was a kid we were outside always,our mom would give us a sandwitch through the mail slot in the front door at lunchtime!Now as a father I force my kids to play outside and have banned video games.I know I am cruel but it must be done.
My inlaws claim we are "careless" with our kids letting the play outside and getting bumps and bruises, Kids should sit quietly in the living room in front of the TV. they are the same inlaws who are sick of hearing about "organic crap".
Okay, maybe this is just me, but the article you lead in with actually indicates a positive trend in adapting our risk-taking analysis. Without getting into the content debates (my position: moderating exposure to content is a parent's responsibility, in video games as much as television, movies, books, or other entertainment) I would like to try demonstrating some positive implications of the digital generation's electronic fixations.
Video games are increasingly simulating real-life situations with accuracy that actually makes them applicable to real-world situations. More importantly to the subject matter in question here, they often simulate urban settings or at the very least employ interfaces that train you to monitor several indicators at once (vis a vis your dashboard or, ideally, HUD, in a car).
Additionally, risks taken in abstract arenas like investment can become more accessible to those familiar with gaming when proper parallels are made. For example, the game World of Warcraft has 10 million different active accounts, representing in all likelihood at least 7 million actual people playing. In this game, players have to make frequent choices concerning applying effects that are large benefits versus periodic benefits with varying tradeoffs of time and resource investment associated with each; without getting into it in more detail, I think it is evident that properly equating these principles can actually lead to increased ability to handle (or at least understand) some abstract risks encountered in today's life.
I'm not trying to say kids shouldn't play outside and learn those risk-assessment skills and partake in the many lessons nature has to teach (don't eat the yellow snow). However, it's naive to say that those skills exclusively can serve the future generation well. When employed with a modicrum of sense, restraint and guidance (you might not initially see a link between an MMORPG and a 401k), video games and television (without even being retailored for education purposes as some groups are beginning to attempt) can be a very useful tool for new generations.
No, children of this multi-faceted approach won't have the same risk-assessment training as their parents, but as you mentioned, the former generations' approach to modern risk is completely out of phase with the risks we encounter every day, and part of the reason we continue to fail when facing these chances.
I guess my point is that I wouldn't be so quick to apply a causal link between video games and poor modern decision skills. And I would especially not then claim that having kids play outside will make them better-equipped to face our modern issues; it seems more logical to me that it would attune them more to the archaic risk-assessment skills this article asserts as less useful in today's world.
Brandon,
I think you fail to see an important aspect. I agree certain new technology may help teach, but it must be the right thing. But nothing teaches better than hands-on bump-on-the-head teaching, even if it's not directly applicable to the situation. Video and computer simulations have no real world consequences, and thus kids are learning that they can always start over, or an action has no repurcussions. Every video game can be restarted, but life cannot. A real world video game would have the player die once shot, and then the game could never be played again. No one playing that game would take the crazy risks to jump ledges or run into a warfield if that was the end of their game forever. Also a kid whose mom tells them to not climb so high on the tree, but falls and breaks their arm, might be more apt to listen to mom next time. Pain hurts and broken arm takes weeks/months to heal.
Money and finances are abstract but kids don't learn abstract. Give them an allowance, let them spend it, and make them not buy things if they don't have cash. Then they learn good financial responsibility. Even a video game can't do that, kids need that cash in hand to realize they trade it for the item they want, and no cheat code can increase their account.
You're right Chris, video games often are very poor simulations of consequence. Now, every video game isn't about getting shot, and consequences don't always have to be a part of the gameplay, per se. MMOs like WoW and other games where you pay to play can be in very small extents, because failure to perform will cost you time to retry events, often hours of it (which can cost money), and in-game money (which is in increasingly frequently becoming equivalent to real money). This concept is not going to matter to a kid whose parent is footing the bill with all day to kill, but the failure and letting down of your group can be as serious of a consequence as letting down the rest of your team in a sporting event (and more or less serious for some).
Overall though, you're right, consequences are important for teaching proper risk association. Obviously, video games can't single-handedly equip a child for the real world; I did not mean to imply anything of the sort. I simply didn't care for the way the opening of this piece seemed to insinuate that the video games were an outdated or poorly adapted risk-assessing mechanism more than...being outside, the very source of our ingrained survival mechanics.
That said, I still maintain that games and other interactive media today can and do teach skills (if not risk-assessing ones) with serious application to common real-world situations (driving, computing, doing taxes).
Of course, "Everything in moderation." I think an ideal environment would allow the kids to learn skills and develop their critical thinking from playing in all areas; games, outside, scrabble, whatever they can. Never underestimate the power of kids' ability to learn in all the things they do. I know I did, and I wish my experience had been more rounded and diversified.
The only snakes I'm afraid of wear suits and ties.
Brandon and Chris both make good points. My conclusion is that we need video games to cause physical pain in children. So when they die in the game, they get punched in the stomach or something. I'm sure a big brother would be willing to sign on to that duty free of charge...
Obviously I'm kidding... Or am I?