Modern Life Numbs You. Here’s The Neuroscience Of Waking Up | Tali Sharot

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Sep 9, 2024

Tali Sharot, a cognitive neuroscience professor at University College London and MIT, dives into the phenomenon of habituation and its effects on our joy and relationships. She discusses the brain's response to constant stimuli and how breaking routines can rekindle excitement in life. Sharot emphasizes the relationship between creativity and slower habituation while warning against emotional numbing in societal issues like dishonesty. She offers strategies to disrupt this trend, advocating for varied experiences and mindful interactions to enhance emotional awareness.

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INSIGHT

Habituation Explained

Habituation is the tendency to respond less to frequent or constant stimuli.
This affects our emotional and physiological responses to both positive and negative experiences.

INSIGHT

The Two Sides of Habituation

Hedonic adaptation makes initial joy fade quickly, like with a new car.
The "boiling frog" metaphor illustrates how we can become numb to slowly escalating negative situations.

ANECDOTE

Vacation Happiness Peak

A tourism study revealed peak vacation happiness occurs at 43 hours.
"Firsts" were most memorable, highlighting the novelty factor in joy.

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It’s so easy, especially these days, to numb out. To get bored. To move through life on autopilot. There is even a scientific term for this: habituation.

Today we’re talking to a researcher who co-authored a new book about the neuroscience of habit and how to wake up again. To make things exciting. Or as she says, to “re-sparkle”.

Tali Sharot is a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London and MIT. She’s written several books including The Optimism Bias and The Influential Mind. Her latest, co-written with Cass Sunstein, is called Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There.

In this episode we talk about:

What habituation is and what’s going on in the brain when it happens
How it negatively impacts the joy we feel in life – and inversely – how it can make us stop noticing the bad stuff
Key strategies for disrupting habituation and introducing change and variety into your life
The interesting relationship between creativity and people who habituate slowly
How habituation impacts our relationships
Why it’s important to break up the good experiences, but swallow the bad whole.
How to wake up from a “technologically induced coma”
How people emotionally habituate to dishonesty and lying
And lastly, we talk about the dangers of habituating to a slow, incremental rise in tyranny – and how dis-habituation entrepreneurs can help

Related Episodes:

#345 How to Change Your Habits | Katy Milkman

How Turning Habits Into Rituals Can Help You At Home, At Work, And When You’re Anxious | Michael Norton