As I’ve recently mused, financial independence won’t solve life’s problems. We will never “arrive.” We will never achieve perfection. An impactful 2018 study, nicknamed the Blue Dot Effect (a stand-in for the more lumbering “prevalence-induced concept change” title), helps us to understand the mind’s tendency toward finding problems, even where none exist. The results have broad implications for individuals and members of a progressing society.
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The Study: The Blue Dot Effect
Mark Manson’s book, Everything is F*cked, introduced me to an essential concept of the human condition: the Blue Dot Effect.
In the 2018 study, a group of Harvard-led researchers asked (non-color-blind) participants to identify blue dots amongst thousands ranging from very blue to very purple. In the experiment, dots flashed on a computer screen, one after the other; blue, purple, and shades in between.
During the first 200 trials, participants accurately identified the roughly equal proportion of blue and purple dots. As the experiment progressed, researchers reduced the number of blue dots, replacing them with various shades of purple. Interestingly, participants began to select the more prevalent purple dots as blue. Even when researchers warned participants that the ratio of colors would change, participants identified purple dots as blue anyway. Their concept of blue expanded to include shades of purple.
Researchers even offered cold-hard cash to keep interpretations consistent. It didn’t matter. Participants still incorrectly identified the color of the dots, seeing blue dots where only purple dots existed.
Expanding the Study
If we are just talking about colors, who cares? If I stared at a screen with a thousand colored dots, my eyes would play games from sheer boredom. To address this issue, researchers added complexity to the experiment by asking participants to judge images of human faces and fictional research proposals. The results were more troubling.
Researchers replaced threatening faces with non-threatening faces and swapped ethical proposals for unethical proposals–just the way purple dots replaced blue. Consequently, when benign faces popped up on the screen, participants were more likely to interpret a threatening face. When presented with ethical research proposals, participants interpreted them as unethical. Researchers, therefore, concluded that we perhaps think that a condition persists even when it has become less frequent.
…We look for threats and issues regardless of the safety or comfort of our environment.
Implications: The Paradox of Progress and the Blue Dot Effect
The Blue Dot Effect suggests that we look for threats and issues regardless of the safety or comfort of our environment. Researchers termed this phenomenon as “prevalence-induced concept change.” This study helps us understand our complex relationship with progress.
Much of human history involved great pain and suffering: war, famine, disease, violence, and destruction from unpredicted and poorly understood weather and geologic events. Pessimism became a default cognitive state. Good times were suspect; the next calamity was always near. People holding these views survived and passed on their genes.
Societal Progress
In Enlightenment Now, psychologist Steven Pinker makes the convincing case that human progress has undeniably improved the human condition across the globe: Scientific advancements spurred by the Age of Enlightenment dramatically reduced human suffering over the last 200-300+ years. People die far less often from disease, starvation, or armed conflict. The pursuits of reason, science, and humanism generated abundant wealth, reduced global poverty, spread ideals of democracy, and even markedly reduced our environmental impact in recent decades.
Unfortunately, objective measurements of happiness and mental health have stagnated, and that’s being generous. Marty Seligman, the grandfather of positive psychology, says only those blinded by ideology can’t see how progress has impacted humanity across the globe. That said, I want to be clear: significant problems still exist. Millions of people still experience traumatic pain and suffering. Wars are waging as I type these words. But, generally speaking, the magnitude and breadth of pain and suffering have diminished, while conditions for human flourishing have proliferated.
The Blue Dot Effect suggests that we are hard-wired for pessimism. We tend to overlook continual progress for the latest negative news, forgetting that we’ll almost certainly have better tools and ideas tomorrow than we do today.
When we alleviate significant problems, minor problems become significant. In other words, the better our lives get, the pettier our grievances become. We maintain default expectations of pain and suffering. Where no pain or violence exists, we seek weaker signals of pain and suffering. That’s why suddenly everyone is “toxic.”
Even in the presence of incredible advancements for everyone everywhere, strongly pessimistic narratives of degradation, instability, and suffering still dominate our collective psyche—on both sides of the ideological spectrum. The purple dots of progress become blue dots of struggle.
…When we alleviate significant problems, minor problems become significant.
Individual Progress
Those with professional or material success don’t generally report marked increases in well-being. One of my favorite episodes of the Happiness Lab Podcast with Laurie Santos is the puzzling reality of the Unhappy Millionaire.
The more wealth we generate, the more likely we will hold on to the same old feelings of scarcity.
If a webpage doesn’t load in two seconds, I’m out of there. In the late 90s, I waited with great joy for AOL to bark and squawk for several minutes, just to connect to the internet. For that matter, some say that being without a phone feels like losing an appendage. Amputees would likely disagree.
The higher we climb on the status ladder, the more we wish we had a taller ladder.
Speaking of climbing, if we send a 5.13a, we will at least start thinking about 5.13b. Former stretch goals become ingrained expectations. The 5.11a we dreamed of redpointing years ago becomes a letdown if we fall in our warm-ups.
Beauty can be found anywhere when you are open to receiving it.
Moving Forward: The Blue Dot Effect
Acknowledge the tendency toward pessimism. After all, pessimism provides the necessary building blocks to address real problems. Pessimism in small doses is a healthy and vital component to progress. That said, a deep sense of pessimism masquerading as forced positivity can result in missed opportunities for change.
For example, well-intentioned equity language can dull us to the problems we still face. Changing the language to feel better doesn’t improve the underlying conditions. Calling a felon a justice-involved person doesn’t add empathy to that person. Linguistics alienate them, putting greater distance between us and the problem. The afflicted gain no solace; progress is stunted. As George Packer notes, these are symptoms of deep pessimism.
No matter how good things get, we will find problems. The Blue Dot Effect is an evolutionary response that once kept us alive in a world of pain and suffering. But defeatism is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The practice of gratitude provides a framework for examining goodness. Take the time to appreciate how your life is better, or how much better it is than it was for those who came before us. Beauty can be found anywhere when you are open to receiving it.
A well-lived life isn’t about eliminating problems but creating better problems. Today I’m taking time to appreciate new and better problems.
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Well said Chad, keep up the insights….
“…you must give up the illusion that you’ll ever finish solving problems. Once you give up that illusion, you’ll be able to relax now and then and let the problems take care of themselves. People who can solve problems do lead better lives. But people who can ignore problems, when they choose to, live the best lives.”
Gerald M. Weinberg, The Secrets of Consulting,
Nice, insightful essay!