Supernormal Stimuli in the Media
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REF= Barrett D. L. Supernormal Stimuli in the Media, Chapter in Barkow, J H, (Editor) Internet, film, news, gossip: an evolutionary psychology perspective on the media, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, in press for 2015. Supernormal Stimuli in the Media Deirdre Barrett, PhD “What if you turned on Seinfeld, only to see Jerry and the gang locked in their separate apartments, watching television. Would that be a good show?“ White Dot challenged viewers in 1996, “Think about it: that's how you are living now. You are alone in the dark, staring at a plastic box. This is like a science fiction horror story.. Jerry and Elaine, Kramer, none of them know you. They don't care whether you live or die. Why don't you get yourself some real friends? (Whitedot.org, 1996) This is a great example of what WIlliam James termed “making the natural seem strange,”i which he suggested was the only way we could notice and reflect on human instinctual behavior. Entertainment media feels good; people don’t question it. But why do we choose to sit in front of a plastic box? Evolutionary psychology has brought many insights from Darwin and ethological researchers to bear on examining such behavior. There is one concept which has been overlooked, however, which I believe has the very most to contribute explaining why entertainment and news media enthrall: the supernormal stimulus. In this chapter, I will summarize the concept and then discuss how it can inform our thinking about modern human behavior in general and especially in terms of how media operate. Niko Tinbergen won the 1973 Nobel Prize in Biology for his research on instinctive behavior in animals. One major cluster of these studies used dummies to elicit nurturing, mating and fighting responses. Tinbergen constructed fake eggs which birds sat on, artificial female butterflies which male butterflies courted, and models of male fish which other males attacked. Some of the impostors were ingeniously unrealistic to elucidate exactly what characteristics triggered the behaviors. Territorial male stickleback fish wouldn’t attack a fish- shaped model if its belly wasn’t red, but they violently pursued crude rectangular forms when the underside was red. The most intriguing of Tinbergen’s discoveries was that some dummies surpassed the power of any natural stimuli. A male silver washed fritillary butterfly was more sexually aroused by a butterfly-sized rotating cylinder with horizontal brown stripes than it is by a real, live female if the cylinder’s stripes were more pronounced than the butterfly’s. Mother birds preferred feeding a fake baby bird beak on a stick if the dummy beak was wider and redder than a chick’s. Tinbergen coined the phrase “supernormal stimuli” for these dummies that elicit stronger responses than occur naturally. The supernormal stimuli which he studied in the most detail were decorated plaster eggs. Tinbergen found that most birds preferred eggs that were larger than their own and those with exaggerated colors or markings. The oystercatcher, which lays small brown specked eggs, will ignore them in favor of a giant brown plaster egg the size of the bird itself. Song birds abandon their pale blue eggs dappled with gray to hop on a black polka-dotted Day-Glo blue dummy so large that the valiant incubators repeatedly slide off and have to climb back on. Ground-nesting birds will retrieve eggs dislodged from the nest, rolling them back into place. The the greylag goose will ignore its own egg as it struggles to retrieve a volleyball. Animals encounter supernormal stimuli mostly when experimenters build them. We humans can produce our own: candy sweeter than any fruit, stuffed animals with eyes wider than any baby, pornography, propaganda about menacing enemies. In my book Supernormal Stimuli (2010)ii, I argued that this concept helps explain phenomena from junk food to modern warfare. In this chapter, I will focus on how media co-opts key instincts to manufacture more and more intense supernormal stimuli. I’ll start with television and film as prototypes for modern media and then address how video games, social websites and other emerging media resemble these older forms and how they differ from them. Before examining the content of television and films, there are ways in which supernormal stimuli are relevant to the medium itself. Humans have a basic instinct to pay attention to any sudden or novel stimulus such as a movement or sound. In 1927, the neurologist Ivan Pavlov named this reflex the “orienting response.”iii Shared with other animals, the orienting response is part of human evolutionary heritage. It evolved to help people spot and assess potential predators, prey, enemies, and mates. The orienting person or animal turns eyes and ears in the direction of the stimulus and then freezes while parts of the brain associated with new learning become more active. Blood vessels to the brain dilate, those to muscles constrict, the heart slows and alpha waves are blocked for a few seconds. By the age of six months, babies orient when a television is turned on. Adults continue to do so. The visual techniques of television--cuts, zooms, pans, switches from one camera angle to another within the same visual scene, and sudden noises—all activate the response.iv The effect persists for four to six seconds after each stimulus. Producers of educational television for children have found that judicious orchestration of these formal features can increase learning—presumably by keeping children focused on the screen. After a certain level of intensity, however, the orienting response is overworked and effects on learning and attention begin to reverse. This is what we see with advertisements, action sequences and music videos, where formal features provoke orienting at the rapid-fire rate of one per second. Following prolonged bombardment with these stimuli, the viewer develops a mix of physiological signs of both high and low attention rarely seen in natural settings. Eyes remained focused, the body is still and directed toward the set, but learning and memory drop to lower levels than when not orienting.v Measurements of metabolism, including calorie-burning, average 14.5 percent lower when watching TV than when simply lying in bed. EEG studies similarly find less mental stimulation, as measured by alpha brain-waves, during television viewing than during reading or other quiet activities. This odd hybrid of attention and fatigue in response to supernormal orienting stimulation makes for a state in which viewers are disinclined to turn off their set. Movie theaters, which make their money off tickets and concessions upon entering, have a different agenda-- they terminate once you’ve plausibly gotten your money’s worth and welcome the next audience. Television, operating off advertising revenue, and having no real- estate expenses, never wants anyone to leave their network. Sherazade’s Strategy Beyond these attentional characteristics, supernormal stimuli play an equally prominent role in what we usually notice about television and film--their content. Enthusiasm for a dramatic story--more eventful than daily life, with a hero/heroine involved in a romantic or survival challenge, climax, resolution--may in ancestral settings, have been adaptive to vicarious learning. Traditional tales are more efficient than each individual encountering survival challenges or social dilemmas anew. Classic fiction and drama raised questions about how an intriguing character would deal with an important situation--and then modeled an answer. This can easily be co-opted with the strategy of Scherazade--the crafty princess who survived “1001 Nights” not by completing a tale, making the point, imparting a lesson, but by constantly setting up new, unfulfilled questions and anticipations. A broadcast or cable network uses orienting to keep viewers watching right now. A given show needs to persuade them to tune in next week. Soap operas parallel Scherazade the most obviously, but other shows close with “scenes from next week,” raising rather than answering questions. Films are the most covert as they must work as a whole, but increasingly blockbuster wanna- be’s leave enough plot lines hanging so that if box receipts meet expectations, “Blockbuster: Part II & III” are givens. The plots—and even names--of popular TV shows tell us which instincts they’re tugging at. Friends introduced the person in front of the plastic box to a group of lively roommates, whose smiles, quips and laughter caught them up in their camaraderie without our having to exercise any social effort. Sex and the City gave fans more vicarious romantic adventures than they’d encounter in a lifetime. Girls invites viewers to hang out with delightful group of young women. Innumerable hits from the 1950’s Leave it to Beaver and through the 70’s Brady Bunch provided idealized wise parents and adorable, agreeable youngsters. Currently, Modern Family varies race and sexual orientation in directions which would have been scandalous in Beaver’s day, but otherwise sticks to the formula. The list of basic desires goes on: Good Times, Mad About You, Homeland, How I Met Your Mother. Sexuality is probably the single most catered-to drive as actors are selected for physical attractiveness and most shows feature at least subplots of sex and romance pull even when the main plot revolves around adventure or crime. Many shows are sustained entirely by dating dramas and sexual tension. For depiction of what that attraction leads to, however, there is the separate world of pornography. Maryanne Fisher and Catherine Salmon deal with porn in much more detail in another chapter of this volume, so I wish only to underline the medium’s supernormal characteristics--hardly a big stretch from Tinbergen’s animal research. While sexual stimuli in mainstream film and television overlap general social ones and tend to appeal to both genders, hard core porn is designed largely for males.