Author: Maneesh Sethi

Tough love via electric jolts helps smokers kick habit

“It’s easy to quit smoking. I’ve done it hundreds of times.”

Whoever came up with that gag may have said it in jest, but there’s truth in it. Millions of people quit smoking every day using a variety of methods. The majority though, pick it right up in less than 24 hours.

Smoking is a tough nut to crack, and behavioral scientists have been trying to come up with a solution for a long time.

One particular clinical study (Chapman, Smith, Layden, 1971) focused on the use of punishment and self-management training to help smokers quit their habit.

Clinical study: Just 5 sessions of small electric jolts help smokers break habit

In the study, 23 adults who had been smoking from 4 to 48 years, and from 14 to 60 cigarettes a day, were treated with small electric jolts for a number of sessions.

During the sessions, participants were asked to look at cigarette advertisements and to smoke their favorite brand of cigarettes. While performing these activities, they would receive unpleasant electric jolts.

However, they were not given a jolt when putting out a cigarette.

Additionally, participants were trained in routines and techniques for self-control.

Results: 21 out of 23 participants quit smoking and still clear of habit 2 weeks after treatment

Electric Jolts Stop Smoking

Out of the 23 participants, 21 managed to quit their habit completely in as little as 5 sessions, and stick to zero cigarettes up to two weeks later.

Considering the dismal success rate for other smoking-cessation methods out there, the results of this experiment are very encouraging. There are also numerous other studies where treatment via electric jolts has successfully helped people kick a long-standing smoking habit.

Additionally, over the past 80+ years, scientists have been using this approach to treat a variety of other habits such as chronic marijuana use, heroin addiction, alcoholism, overeating, and gambling.

Bibliography

Chapman, R. F., Smith, J. W., & Layden, T. A. (1971). Elimination of cigarette smoking by punishment and self-management training. Behaviour Research And Therapy, 9(3), 255–264. https://doi.org/10.1016/0005-7967(71)90011-8

Mild electric jolts cure 14-year-old boy from distressing chronic cough

Nowadays, modern science understands most of the workings of the body. However, there are still odd challenges that require unorthodox or unusual solutions, as in the case of a 14-year-old boy suffering from a chronic cough.

Boy suffers from mysterious, persistent cough, causing him to be expelled from school

The cough started normally enough as a result of a cold. But once the cold had been cured, the cough persisted. A series of tests, medication, and eventually psychological help failed to produce any results.

Soon, the boy became a target for derision by both school mates and teachers. He was eventually expelled from school for disturbing class, and not allowed to return until he had his cough under control.

Finally, he was admitted to CARIH, the Children’s Asthma Research Institute and Hospital. Further tests proved definitively that the boy was not asthmatic.

So, doctors suggested the use of aversion therapy, which involves giving the patient mild electric jolts to stop compulsive behavior. It is a technique that has been used successfully for over 80 years.

In fact, it’s not uncommon for the unwanted behavior to disappear completely within just 5 sessions of treatment, with no relapse whatsoever.

In this boy’s case however, the results were nothing short of astonishing.

Treatment has immediate effect — cough is gone after a single mild electric jolt

The boy was first monitored to assess the frequency of his cough, which was found to occur 22 times in one hour.

Next, it was intended for the boy to receive an electric jolt to the wrist after every cough. Surprisingly though, following the first cough and single electric jolt, the boy’s coughing disappeared completely.

The boy did not cough for the rest of the day, nor the next. In fact, he was sent home and returned to school and resumed his studies normally.

Electric Jolts stop Coughing

More importantly, a follow-up assessment 21/2 years later found the boy still symptom-free and doing well at school, having just made the Dean’s list for the first time in his academic career.

Besides curing compulsive behaviors, electric jolts have also been found incredibly effective in breaking habits such smoking, alcoholism, overeating, and gambling.

Bibliography

Creer, T. L., Chai, H., & Hoffman, A. (1977). A single application of an aversive stimulus to eliminate chronic cough. Journal Of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 8(1), 107–109. https://doi.org/10.1016/0005-7916(77)90116-1

Save money on everything by shopping on a full stomach

If you’ve ever been guilty of over-buying stuff you don’t need, or irrationally splurging out on anything only to regret it later, you’re about to find out why.

In a recent study (Xu, Schwartz, Wyer, 2015), a group of researchers set out to discover how hunger affects our desire to buy things. Here’s what they discovered.

Hunger increases our desire to buy food, and makes us like those food choices more. Well, no surprise there.

But there’s a twist.

I’m starving… give me more binder clips!

The researchers found that even for non-food items, hunger will still condition us to buy more. And they tested this hypothesis with one of the most boring, unexciting items ever — a binder clip.

In this experiment, volunteers were shown common binder clips and asked:

  1. How many they wanted
  2. How much they liked or disliked the clips
  3. How hungry they were feeling

The result — hungry volunteers didn’t necessarily like the binder clips any more than their peers did, but they wanted more of them.

So, from this point onwards, whether you’re shopping for tacos or tweezers, make sure you do it on a full stomach!

Bibliography

Xu, A. J., Schwarz, N., & Wyer, R. S. (2015). Hunger promotes acquisition of nonfood objects: Table 1. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA Proceedings Of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(9), 2688–2692. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1417712112

Make better decisions by mastering the Solomon Paradox

King Solomon was said to be wiser than all the men of the east and all the sages of Egypt.

What most people don’t know, is that while Solomon was great at dishing out advice to others, he was notoriously bad at dealing with his own life issues, ultimately bringing ruin upon the kingdom.

But let’s not be too hard on old Solomon.

If we’re completely honest with ourselves, we’ll find we’re all guilty of this same flaw. This behavior is so common in human beings, it even has a name — “The Solomon Paradox”.

The Solomon Paradox — Why we’re smart about other people’s problems but not our own

Igor Grossmann, the psychological scientist who coined this term, has been trying to understand why we tend to be smarter about other people’s problems than our own, and what we can do about it.

According to his research (Grossmann, Kross, 2014), when we distance ourselves from the problem at hand, we can judge it more clearly.

To confirm this, he recruited a group of volunteers who had been in a long-term romantic relationship. He asked some of them to imagine a scenario where their partner cheated on them. The others were asked to imagine a scenario where their best friend was being cheated upon.

The volunteers were then asked to fill in a questionnaire to test their wisdom in judging the situation.

As expected, those who “were being cheated upon” demonstrated less wisdom about their situation than their peers in the other group.

Then he tried a second experiment, using the same setup and procedure, with volunteers being split up in the same way.

This time however, those “being cheated upon” were asked to psychologically distance themselves from the situation by taking a third-person perspective. So, instead of asking themselves, “Why do I feel this way?”, they asked themselves, “Why does he/she feel this way?”

What Grossmann and his colleagues found, was that the psychological distancing allowed the participants to assess their relationship conflict with more wisdom. In fact, the two groups were indistinguishable in their judgement.

So, next time you’re in a rough situation, try judging it from an outsider’s perspective. Rather than asking yourself, “Why am I behaving this way?” ask, “Why is he/she behaving this way? What should he/she do?”

You might find it gives you Solomon-esque clarity in judgment, and possibly save you some needless heartache.

Bibliography

Grossmann, I., & Kross, E. (2014). Exploring Solomon’s Paradox: Self-Distancing Eliminates the Self-Other Asymmetry in Wise Reasoning About Close Relationships in Younger and Older Adults. Psychological Science, 25(8), 1571–1580. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614535400

Science busts age-old myth about alcoholism

It is an established belief that those who have suffered from alcoholism can never go back to drinking socially in moderation.

Someone who has broken free of alcoholism knows it takes tremendous effort, will-power and support to do so, and that one drink is all it takes to go spiralling back into the habit.

A study (Lovibond, Caddy, 1970) from the University of New South Wales set out to dispel this belief, and succeeded beyond expectations.

Electric jolts give alcoholics an “inbuilt stop mechanism” allowing them to drink socially in moderation without giving up alcohol completely

In 1970, two researchers designed a program aimed at training alcoholics to drink socially and in moderation.

The purpose of the treatment was to provide alcoholics with “an inbuilt stop mechanism which will assist [their] own efforts at self-control” (Lovibond, Caddy, 1970).

In the first phase, the 31 volunteers were trained to recognize their own blood alcohol level (BAC) according to their state and symptoms. This skill would help them determine a “limit” beyond which it would not be acceptable to continue drinking.

In the second phase, the participants were instructed to drink their favorite alcoholic beverage. Once their BAC passed the “limit” determined in phase 1, they would randomly start to receive unpleasant electric jolts every time they drank.

75% of patients lose their desire to drink past 3 glasses in as little as 6 sessions — Results maintained up to 50 weeks later

Shock vs Alcoholism
Within 6 – 12 sessions, 75% of the patients gained the ability to drink in a controlled fashion and only rarely exceeding their “limit”.

Additionally, 11% experienced considerable improvement in their control of alcohol consumption, while another 10% improved moderately.

Some of the participants were contacted up to 50 weeks after treatment and were found to have maintained their control on moderate drinking.

Most importantly, the successful participants experienced a “dramatic improvement in [their] general health, well-being and self-respect” (Lovibond, Caddy, 1970) and lost their desire to continue drinking beyond three or four glasses.

80+ years of data show how electric jolts can help break alcoholism and other persistent habits

Media and society constantly bombard us with messages about how drinking is a social norm. This social conditioning, together with the instant gratification of alcohol and its withdrawal symptoms, makes Alcoholism one of the hardest addictions to break.

Considering all this, a 75% success rate is staggering. However, this figure is neither surprising nor unheard of in the field of “aversion therapy” — the method used in the research quoted earlier.

Over the past 80+ years, many other studies have found electric jolts effective against alcoholism.

These electric jolts have also helped chronic marijuana users, heroin addicts as well as many people with habits such as smoking, alcoholism, overeating, and gambling.

 

Bibliography

Lovibond, S., & Caddy, G. (1970). Discriminated aversive control in the moderation of alcoholics’ drinking behavior. Behavior Therapy, 1(4), 437–444. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0005-7894(70)80069-7

Quit any habit by leveraging your brain’s desire for self-preservation

Would you touch a hot stove? Not willingly. The moment your fingers got close, your mind would be screaming hysterically, “STOP! DON’T DO IT! IT’S GONNA HURT!”

Your mind reacts that way because at some point in your life, you probably touched something that was a little too hot for your tastes. Being geared towards self-preservation, your mind decided to associate the idea of “hot”, with the feeling of “pain” that it delivered. That pain served as “aversive conditioning” to teach you that you shouldn’t touch hot things without adequate protection.

Around 80 years ago, scientists started experimenting with using aversive conditioning to break habits, addictions, and compulsive behavior. One such study focused on nail biting.

Habitual nail biters quit habit using “aversion”

A study from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (Vargas, Adesso, 1976) compared the effectiveness of three alternative approaches on treating chronic nail biting: electric jolt, negative practice, and bitter substance.

A number of volunteers who had been biting their nails for an average of 12 years, were randomly and evenly distributed into 4 groups.

The first group received “electric jolt conditioning”. During the sessions, these participants were to bite their nails on command, upon which they would receive an unpleasant jolt from a device connected to their fingers using electrodes.

The second group received “negative practice”. Negative practice involves repeatedly practicing the wrong behavior (in this case nail biting) with the full knowledge of it being wrong. This is done with the premise that “repetition of a wrong response knowingly, may increase the probability of occurrence of the right response” (Peak, 1941).

The third group received “bitter substance conditioning”, which involved applying a bitter-tasting substance to their nails and then biting them.

The 4th group was given no treatment whatsoever. In scientific research, this is called a “control group”. It helps researchers understand whether the changes happening in the test groups are due to the experiment, or to external factors.

The members of every group had their nails measured before treatment and at the end of the treatment. Additionally, half of the participants in each group were asked to regularly measure their own nail growth.

Participants in “bitter taste” and “electric jolt” groups register much higher nail growth at the end of the treatment

After six sessions of treatment, participants in the groups receiving electric jolts and bitter taste treatment experienced a much greater nail growth than those within the “control” group. The negative practice group also achieved good results.

shock vs nailbiting

Interestingly, those participants who were regularly monitoring their own nail growth were even more successful than those who weren’t.

Awareness + Aversion = Habit Breaking Bomb

The study above shows that when an aversive stimulus (such as an electric jolts or bitter taste) is linked in some way to a behavior, the mind starts to reprogram itself to stop that behavior. This is similar to the example of the hot stove mentioned earlier in the article.

More importantly, awareness of the behavior considerably enhances the effectiveness of this approach.

Strictly speaking, awareness rarely is enough. Most of us are very aware of our bad habits, but it doesn’t help us quit.

That’s why we need both awareness and an “aversive stimulus” to succeed.

 

Bibliography

Coleman, James C., and Jean Elizabeth Mccalley. “Nail-Biting among College Students.” The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 43.4 (1948): 517–525. Web.

Vargas, John M., and Vincent J. Adesso. “A Comparison of Aversion Therapies for Nailbiting Behavior.” Behavior Therapy 7.3 (1976): 322–329. Web.