3BI: Hypernormalization, Awe, and ChatGPT Brain
Welcome to my 3BI newsletter, where I share three insights from the world of behavioral science on psychology, decision-making, and behavioral change.
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Hypernormalization
Imagine someone describing the current events of today to you ten years ago. Just in the past two weeks, we’ve had the military deployed in an American city, assassinations of politicians, multiple arrests of elected officials, a very public feud between the President and the richest person in the world, the largest day of protest in US history, and war breaking out in the Middle East.
How would you envision day to day life with all of that going on? Personally, I’d probably assume that it was pretty chaotic and terrifying, and may not even believe it.
All of those are happening now, though, and while the news does feel chaotic and scary, day to day life feels…pretty normal? It’s a strange dissonance where routines feel normal but the underlying systems of the world seem to be completely unstable.
In 2005, scholar Alexei Yurchak coined the term hypernormalization to describe the civilian experience in Soviet Russia. Hypernormalization describes life in a society where two things are happening:
People see the governing systems and institutions around them as broken.
They carry on with their lives as normal despite that dysfunction, though they may feel a heavy load of anxiety or fear.
Hypernormalization captures this juxtaposition of the dysfunctional and mundane. Watching systems and institutions seemingly unravel in real time feels surreal and frightening, but we go to work, run errands, and wind down with TV shows as we normally do anyway. As MJ Lenderman says, “it falls apart, but we’ve all got work to do.”
It’s a form of hedonic adaptation, the psychological phenomenon where people tend to recalibrate to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative life events or changes. When our quality of life goes up, like getting a raise at work, our happiness increases, but often only temporarily as we begin to take it for granted over time. Likewise, when bad things happen, like losing a job, our happiness may decrease initially, but recovers over time.
Of course, such disruption is not new to humanity. Objectively, we’re still in an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity compared to history. That doesn’t make big changes to the status quo less jarring, and modern media and technology exacerbate the effect. From Kyla Scanlon:
The contradiction isn't new. What's new is how smoothly we scroll between the real work and the performance of work, between the welder's focused attention and the algorithm's demand for distraction.
…
We are in a system that is designed to blind, distract, and blur - the infinite scroll. Nothing is too urgent and everything is equally urgent at the same time. Nothing lands.
If you’re nodding your head while reading this, know that there’s value in simply labeling the feeling and knowing you aren’t alone in it:
Naming an experience can be a form of psychological relief. “The worst thing in the world is to feel that you’re the only one who feels this way and that you are going quietly mad and everyone else is in denial,” says Caroline Hickman, a psychotherapist and instructor at the University of Bath specializing in climate anxiety. “That terrifies people. It traumatizes people.”
If you’re looking for relief from the uncertainty and overwhelm, action is the best prescription. Of course, it’s always helpful to focus on what you control and take care of yourself first, like improving nutrition or exercise. Finding any way to contribute to helping causes you care about or engage with a community is even more helpful, no matter how small.
The Psychology of Awe and War
Awe is an emotional response to perceptually vast stimuli that transcend our frames of reference. When we encounter something vast, overwhelming, or beyond our current understanding, we feel a sense of awe driven by high physiological arousal.
Psychologically, awe leads to self-diminishment and subsequently humility. When we encounter something that feels vast and challenging to our worldview, our personal concerns shrink while a sense of connection to something greater expands. Awe often inspires reflection, prosocial behavior, humility, and a search for meaning.
Awe is most often associated with beauty or grandeur, like nature or space, but can also be triggered by negative or threatening stimuli. One such example is war. As the conflict between Israel and Iran escalated in the last week, I found myself captivated by some imagery of the missile attacks.
It’s a strange contradiction to have a sense of awe when viewing something so horrible and tragic, but it isn’t uncommon.
Such imagery are perceptually vast and signal both immense power and significance. They can trigger cognitive accommodation, the mental process of adjusting existing beliefs, concepts, or mental frameworks in response to new information or experiences that don’t fit within our current understanding.
As such, awe isn't limited to beauty. It arises whenever experiences are both vast and challenging to our mental schemas. Images of missiles, explosions, and destruction provoke reflection and emotional engagement alongside fear and disquiet.
Your Brain on ChatGPT
Last week, researchers at MIT released a pre-print of a study examining the impact of LLM’s like ChatGPT on our critical thinking skills. From Time:
The study divided 54 subjects—18 to 39 year-olds from the Boston area—into three groups, and asked them to write several SAT essays using OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s search engine, and nothing at all, respectively. Researchers used an EEG to record the writers’ brain activity across 32 regions, and found that of the three groups, ChatGPT users had the lowest brain engagement and “consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.” Over the course of several months, ChatGPT users got lazier with each subsequent essay, often resorting to copy-and-paste by the end of the study.
The paper suggests that the usage of LLMs could actually harm learning, especially for younger users. The paper has not yet been peer reviewed, and its sample size is relatively small. But its paper’s main author Nataliya Kosmyna felt it was important to release the findings to elevate concerns that as society increasingly relies upon LLMs for immediate convenience, long-term brain development may be sacrificed in the process.
I’ve written previously on the risk I see of AI hurting our cognitive capacities, and this paper finds some early evidence of that.
That said, I would take these results with a grain of salt. It’s a pre-print that hasn’t been peer reviewed by other researchers yet. The sample size is small and not representative and it’s probably measuring too many different things. The conclusions are also somewhat obvious given how the participants used it, as you probably aren’t going to learn much by just copying and pasting information.
I’m glad such research is happening, though, and think this is a topic we should all take very seriously as AI becomes a bigger part of our life. There are trade-offs for efficiency and convenience!
Other Stuff
For more on Hypernormalization, check out Adam Curtis’ documentary of the same name. Curtis is a very talented filmaker that uses the BBC’s vast archives to explore the sociology of the world in an attempt to explain current events. He certainly adds some flourishes to his stories and conclusions, but is a fascinating researcher and historian who’s influenced my thinking.
I’ve been using mid-year best of lists to catch up on new music I’ve missed. Here are some good ones from Steve Hyden, Josh Terry, and Stereogum. Some of my favorite albums so far are by Fust, Hotline TNT, Horsegirl, Friendship, and Darkside.