Hidden Brain - Ouch! That Feels Great

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

We generally think of pain as something to be avoided. But psychologist Paul Bloom says that as much as we're wired to avoid suffering, we also seek it out. This week, we begin a two-part mini series about the curious pleasure we take in certain forms of pain.Hidden Brain is about to go on tour! Join Shankar in a city near you as he shares key insights from the first decade of the show. For more info and tickets, go to https://hiddenbrain.org/tour/. 

Hey there, Shankar here. I'm crisscrossing the country for a series of live shows this summer. I'll be sharing seven key insights from the first decade of Hidden Brain. These ideas have made my life better. I think they'll do the same for you. Stops on what I'm calling the Perceptions Tour include Clearwater and Fort Lauderdale in Florida, Portland and Denver, Minneapolis and Chicago, Austin and Dallas, Boston, Toronto, Phoenix and more. To see if I'm coming to a city near you, please visit hiddenbrain.org slash tour. If you've heard my voice for years, it's going to

be fun to come see me in person. Again, that's hiddenbrain.org slash T-O-U-R. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantan. Some years ago, psychologists at the University of Virginia and Harvard put people in an empty room. They gave the volunteers a simple task. Sit quietly for a few minutes without distractions. No phone, no books, nothing to do but think. Before the session, the study participants were also given a device. It could deliver a mild electric shock. Using it was not necessary, it was completely optional. The results were, well, shocking. The majority of men, and a quarter of the women,

chose to shock themselves rather than sit in silence. This held true even after they rated the shock as painful. We are led to believe in everything we hear and read, that suffering is unpleasant, something to be avoided. Every ounce of common sense tells us we should avoid something as unpleasant as an electric shock. So what would compel people to voluntarily hurt themselves? Today, we begin a two-part mini-series about the upside of discomfort and the curious pleasure human beings take in seeking out some forms of suffering. When pain becomes pleasure,

this week on Hidden Brain. The year was 1974. Chinatown and Blazing Saddles were in movie theaters around the country. Queen and David Bowie on the radio. James was a high school senior in Toledo, Ohio. He requested that we not use his full name. I was one of those 18-year-old, impulsive, adrenaline-filled guys who just love being social, ran track, but also was on the high school newspaper,

and lots of good close friends, but just kind of bouncing off the wall kind of guys. There was an unusual fad making its way across the United States at the time. Streaking. Streaking was basically people would run without any clothes through populated areas, which is tennis shoes on typically. And it was sporting events.

There was even a song called, they called me the streak. It was a country song and it was like a number one song. ["The Streak"] The song was catchy. James couldn't get it out of his head. Inspired by the growing trend, the 18-year-old gathered up a few friends.

Together, they came up with a plan. I think a couple of the guys at my church, I think we talked to them initially, and then I think we had another guy from another high school, actually, I remember, and then a third guy was from my school. So I think we started just talking about it. And you know, this small group gathered and we said, let's do this. And so we're

going to go to this local mall, very large mall in Toledo and just run through the center part of the mall, which is a very big area. So the center part of the mall, we're going to enter at one specific entrance and exit at another exit. So we knew where the getaway car needed to be, where he needed to drop us off and where he needed to pick us up. James and his friends planned the whole thing

like a bank robbery. But as their excitement grew, they let their plan slip out. Very quickly, word got around. On the big day, James and his friends bundled into the car with a getaway driver. And we arrived at the mall and we all went in fully clothed just to case the joint. When we came into the mall, it was extremely busy, crowded. We actually recognized some people from our school, from our church, and we noticed a

lot of security guards. So when you walk through the mall initially and you see people whom you know, and you see people from your church, and you see people who are security guards, did a thought cross your mind that perhaps this was not the best idea? You'd think. You would think that would happen, but no, it did not. I think it was more of a challenge. Okay, let's do this. We've got an audience here. You know, let's hit this. James and his four fellow Strikers had what they felt was a foolproof plan to protect their anonymity.

They would wear masks. We definitely wanted to cover our faces. So we come out of the mall, get into the car, we get into our sneakers and our masks, that was it. And we go in and the entrance was kind of like a fire exit, I believe. So we got in that way. I can't remember how we actually got into that door. And we were going down this long hallway. And I remember thinking, this hallway is really long. We really wanna just get this done.

At this point, you are all completely naked. Yes, sir. You're good. Sneakers and the mask. And we got up to the double doors. I still remember this, the double doors that has the push bar on it, and we all kind of looked at each other and said, okay, one, two, three, and we just burst out.

Just burst out of those doors into the crowd, running pell-mell into the crowd. The next moments were sheer adrenaline and pandemonium. Total panic. Just wanting to get out of there as fast as I can. And I knew which direction we had to run because we had walked through it earlier. And so we're running very fast and security guards are trying to get through the crowd.

So having a large crowd actually helped us keep the security guards away. But there was one point where I was running and a security guard was coming toward me and I had to use a couple of innocent bystanders as kind of a basketball pick. So they kind of caught the security guard and I was able to run around and keep going. And I have no idea if those poor people,

I just don't know what happened. But that actually saved me. And I was able to keep going and get out of there as fast as we could. But in any group of antelopes being chased by lions, there is always the slow one who gets caught. The guards captured one of the naked runners. I still remember the one gentleman who got tackled

and caught was yelling at us. And I remember kept saying, come back here, come back and help me. And we were like, sorry, our friend, we're out of here. He was marched back through the crowd to the security office, which was up some stairs. So he was kind of the quintessential walk of shame. Totally naked, I mean, just sneakers, his mask. So he was kind of the quintessential walk of shame. Totally naked, I mean, just sneakers, his mask. But I think he actually had his mask, they took his mask off by then too. So everyone knew who he was.

What was your feeling as you were running through the mall, James? Was it a sense of just panic, embarrassment? What was going through your head? I think just more panic and just focused on the goal of getting out of there. Just wanting to not get caught. That was it. Don't get caught.

Get out of there. Try to find your way as best you can. That was really it. I wasn't thinking about any repercussions or consequences, of course. Just pure adrenaline, you know, go, go, go, don't get caught, don't get tackled, et cetera. And so the three of you, now, who are remaining,

sort of burst through the mall doors on the other side. Was the getaway car waiting for you? Yes, exact, thank goodness. There he was and we literally dove into the backseat and just told him to hit it. What I remember is he then ended up taking us back to our own homes while we were getting dressed in the car. So our clothes were still in the car. So we're getting our clothes on in the car and just,

yak and high adrenaline, just very verbal with each other. So we're getting our clothes on in the car and just, you know, yakking, you know, high adrenaline, just very verbal with each other. Can't believe we did this. Oh my gosh, did you see how many people were in there? And so and so he got tackled and all, you know, and just go and just, you know, that kind of kind of vibe in the car. Were there any consequences that came from this? Yeah, I guess we could say that.

So when I got home, I was pretty adrenaline was up and just kind of thinking, wow, what have I done? But it was crazy, it was interesting and went to bed. And the next day, I was in the kitchen, getting ready for school and my mother came into the room and she was very angry because I thought I had kind of gotten away with this, that my parents wouldn't know about it. Well, she had gotten a call from one of her, from the women that she went to church with

who had actually had been there the night before and witnessed this, witnessed everyone running through, including me. So she, yeah, she saw me, all of me. And my mom just could not believe it. Let me take you back for a second. You said you were wearing a mask. So how did anyone spot you? I think several of the other guys had gotten the word out a little bit.

So that's why I think we had a lot of people there who knew us, including this woman, because I think her daughter went to one of the high schools, and I think the daughter heard it, so she passed it on to this woman from the church, and somehow identified me. I think she, it's a good question, how she identified me. She probably knew how tall I was, let's put it that way. We'll leave it at that. And did you try and deny it when your mom brought it up at the table? No, she obviously had a witness, an impeccable witness.

And you know, so I just, I had to admit it. I apologize profusely and I don't remember any consequences necessarily. I don't know if I was grounded or anything like that, but yeah. What happened when you got to school? Because, of course, if word of this had gotten out and more, lots of people actually had gone to the mall, essentially not to go to the mall, but to basically see this, see the spectacle, they must have known that it was you who was running through the mall.

What did your friends think? Yeah, I think there was some buzz in high school, if I don't remember it afterwards, and I got a couple of high fives, and maybe a couple of, you're an idiot. It was a mix of that kind of thing. So yeah, the word had gotten out a little bit in the school. When you look back on the incident now, James,

do you look back at it fondly? Do you look back at it with regret? Do you look back at it with embarrassment? Maybe a little bit of both, all of those. I think it was, again, the mindset of the 18-year-old at the time who wanted just to take a chance. Maybe it's just the allure of, I gotta try this. It's way out of my comfort zone. It's unknowable actually, until it's a testing of oneself to see if this really could get away with it. How would that feel? All those kind of things went into this as well. And probably, I don't know, I won't speak for everybody, How would that feel? All those kind of things went into this as well.

And probably, I don't know, I won't speak for everybody, but probably not thinking less of consequences and more of what's this experience going to be like? What could this possibly be like? What compels us to do embarrassing things, like run naked through a crowded mall of people we know? And what does streaking have in common with horror movies, spicy food, and mild electric shocks? The answers when we come back. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. We generally think of pain and suffering as something to be avoided.

See a sharp thorn on a bush? Don't touch it. Scary movie on TV? Change the channel. A menu item with five peppers in front of it? No thank you. At the University of Toronto, psychologist Paul Bloom says that as much as we are wired to avoid these experiences, we may also be wired to seek them out. Paul Bloom, welcome to Hidden Brain. It's great to be here, Shankar. Looking forward to talking. Paul, we just heard from a man named James, who against all better judgment decided to run naked through a mall with his buddies when he was in high school. Now, I'm assuming

you've never gone streaking yourself, but you have engaged sometimes in doing things that were unpleasant. Like what, Paul? I have, and I bet you have too. I eat spicy food, I eat food so hot it makes me sweat and makes me uncomfortable. I go on social media, I think this is going to make me upset. I read it, it makes me upset but I do it and then I do it over and over again. I watch movies that frighten me, I look at things that repel me. Even in little examples, like a lot of people, I don't like the feeling of velvet. I just, it makes people, it's a scrunch up. People could see me, they'd see me, I'm all scrunched.

And yet, when I see velvet furniture, I can't resist running my hand over it and going, oh man, well, my wife looks at me and laughs. And so I find this fascinating. You know a very simple story of human nature is that we seek out pleasure and avoid pain and I'm interested in counter examples where we sometimes avoid pleasure and seek out pain. You know some time ago one of my friends was growing some peppers in their backyard

and it turned out these were called ghost peppers. These are one of the spiciest peppers that have ever been grown on the planet. And I just couldn't resist, you know, cooking something with it and trying it out. And in fact, just cooking it was so difficult and so unpleasant because I was in these intense coughing spasms. You know, I could barely breathe. It was so spicy. Was so difficult and so unpleasant because I was in these intense coughing Spasms, you know, I could barely breathe it was so spicy and yet there was a part of me that said I have to try this We're drawn to that sort of thing. So so there are limits some people won't go near spicy foods Even somebody like you who will try ghost peppers. You probably have a limit and to what you'll try So we we like some degree control. And I think the control is really important to keep in mind

when we talk about these things. We like to know what we're doing. But with this control in place, we then seek out experiences that push us to the limits. They push our tolerance for pain, as in the ghost pepper. They push our tolerance for embarrassment and shame, as in your streaker. And in some cases, they push us in moral directions

to doing things that trouble us morally. They push us with regard to sort of psychological pain. You listen to a song, like I listen to Adele, love Adele, but it makes me sad. And if I'm sad anyway, they tear up a little bit. So it's such a neat puzzle why we do these things. So when you start to look, you see versions of this phenomenon everywhere.

You know, traffic slows down when there's a car crash because people want a rubber neck and get a glimpse of something awful. Here's a clip of the mixed martial arts fighter, Keri Stellar, interviewing another MMA fighter, Josh Rosenblatt. It definitely takes a special kind of human being to punch people in the face and to enjoy being punched in the face because at the end of the day, not that you like love it, but

I mean there has to be some kind of enjoyment factor out of it to be able to get there, get in there. I mean if you take a beating, you take a beating. Yeah, no, you got to kind of like it.. You have to kinda like getting punched in the face. Do you think he's exaggerating when he says you have to kind of like getting punched in the face, Paul? I don't. I think it's complicated. So he'd be a very, very bad MMA fighter

if he liked it too much. He presumably, he really should get in the habit of liking punching other people in the face. But there's something to it. I read a passage which he in another interview where he talks about, you know, when you start off, getting punched in the face is the worst thing. And then you sort of start to feed off of it.

And here's one thing which is really important, which this interview you just played really illustrates, which is for a lot of these things, I think for just about all of the suffering that I'm interested in, we're gonna talk about, it has to be voluntary. I don't doubt that when he's in a ring and gets hit in the face, he says,

this is the real thing, this is what I'm here for. And it fuels him. But if he's standing in line at the movies and somebody runs up to him and pops him in the face, there's nothing like that at all. If you're cooking the ghost peppers and you're eating them, you're tearing up, you're sweating and everything, but you put that in there, that's one thing. And that's a source of pleasure and challenge and anticipation.

On the other hand, if you wanted to sit down for your morning oatmeal and somebody stuck some ghost peppers in there as a joke, you're not going to be very happy. I've written about this and I've talked about this and some people get angry and they say, look, I live a life of chronic pain or this terrible thing happened to me. Who are you to tell me this is fantastic? And my answer is I'm not telling you it's fantastic. If you don't choose it, suffering that's unchosen is typically terrible. We're interested now in the chosen stuff.

So on the surface these different things might seem like they have nothing in common with each other, you know, streaking or touching a velvet sofa, doom scrolling, rubbernecking, getting punched in the face. But you say they all illustrate the idea of benign masochism. We've talked about this on the show before when we featured the great psychologist Paul Rosin, but can you explain what benign masochism is, Paul? Yeah, so this term comes from Paul, who's a brilliant psychologist. And benign masochism is when we seek out pain and suffering in limited controlled extents.

So, Rosen is not talking about people who seriously damaged their body or set themselves on fire. He's talking about everyday stuff. So, he gives examples of spicy foods, really hot baths. So hot, you're just kind of cringing as you get in, saunas, cold baths, various things like that. Exertion, running until you could barely run anymore. Your heart's pounding out of your chest,

you're breathing in gasps. That's benign masochism, seeking low levels of pain in ways that don't damage your body permanently, but ways that shake you up. And Rosin is interested, and so am I, in why we do this and what it tells us about human motivation. So I want to understand how our brains are wired to seek out things like this. And to answer that question, you say we might first have to look at why we might be wired to seek out unpleasant experiences. You once knew a grad student who told you about an

unusual game that people play in Mexico City. It's called Toquez. What is Toquez, Paul? So Toquez, he wrote to me and told me about, is people go out and they're partying, they're with their friends, they're with their family, and these are these tubes. And you put your hands in the tubes and you get an electric shock. And I gather you could turn a dial to determine what kind of electric shocks you get and people compete into how much they could take it. And this to me is a super interesting case of benign masochism.

It has some features that not all benign masochism has. It's public, it's social, it's fun. And I think in this case, not all cases, but in this case, we see the social effects of benign masochism in different ways. So one way is, it's a way to show off. You know, my son, I talk about my son Zachary when he was a teenager, and he would have,

he would get together with his friends and they'd be arguing, he'd be trying to stick wasabi up their noses, he would get the most wasabi there. They'd have slapping competitions. They would, as a way to sort of in a friendly, social way, and they'd be arguing, they'd be trying to stick wasabi up their nose and see who can get the most wasabi there. They'd have slapping competitions. As a way to sort of, in a friendly, social way, see who's the toughest? Who can take the most? But another thing which is super interesting is that sometimes

when you and I experience a painful event together, we're both in a sauna together. We both dive into the ice cold water. We both zap ourselves. It brings us together. And there's actually a lot of studies suggesting, doing this in a laboratory, looking at it out in the world, that shared pain, more than shared pleasure,

shared pain brings people together. Every pain brings people together. I'm thinking about a time when a friend and I went swimming in the ocean in New England and it was still winter and the water was very, very, very cold. I could barely stand there and it was so painful. But yet I remember that so vividly now as you're talking, Paul, because the memory of standing there with my friend was in fact a bonding moment. I tell this story in my book of this friend of mine

who was hiking in England with a friend and they got lost. And they got lost and it was getting dark and they were cold and he didn't have any food, he didn't have any water, he was getting really worried. And then they ended up pumping right in the middle of a small town, of a pub. And like an hour later, sitting outside in a pub, they're drinking beer, eating fish and chips,

they're laughing. And this is an experience, she told me this, this happened like 20 years ago, she told me this. Man, that was a great experience. Well, if they just had a normal afternoon, had a lot of fun, saw some sights, and then went to the pub, It wouldn't have this force. Shared suffering just really connects us.

I'm wondering if this might also be connected to the story that James told us about streaking through the mall. Not only was he doing it for the edification, I suppose, of the people in the mall, but he was doing this with four other buddies. They were running through the mall together. This was a bonding experience for them.

I think streaking alone is probably no fun at all. You want to streak with your buddies. And this sort of thing shows up in other ways. It shows up in religious rituals. So my friend, Dimitri Igilatas, talks about studies, rituals that involve pain. He talks about this Hindu festival they have in Mauritius, where people walk over hot coals

and they have skewers plunge through their cheek and their tongues. They have hooks dug into their body and then the hooks are attached to chariots. And the men will spend hours in the afternoon dragging these chariots up to the top of a hill. And this all sounds, it sounds, you know, barely, somebody like me could barely listen to it.

But it has all of these effects. It brings people together. For the young men who do it, it increases their standing in the community. It increases how attractive they are to the women. And he has done research finding that if you watch this, with a community, you see people suffer for your religion, for your community,

you become more willing to give money to the community, you care more about it, it brings people together. We had Dimitris on Hidden Brain some months ago, and I remember him telling me toward the end of our conversation that at one point, I don't think this was in the Mauritius, I think it was in another location, but he had spent a lot of time in this place and gotten to know the people and they also had a fire-walking ritual. And on the big night, you know, someone turned to him and basically said, okay, it's now

your turn. And he had to actually walk across these schools. And of course, there was a voice inside him that said, you know, this is not a smart thing for, you know, an anthropologist to be doing, but there was also all of the social pressure around him and he says that once he did it, it transformed the way he felt and his connections with the people around him. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's the difference between an anthropologist and a psychologist.

I'll sit in my office and I'll read about it and I think I'm very brave for reading this heavy duty stuff. And Demetri goes and he does it. So one reason to do painful or embarrassing things is they make us look tough or they connect us to others. Another reason might have to do with the idea of contrast. Tell me about your experience shoveling snow as a child in Quebec. Oh, this is a, this is this fond childhood memory.

And it's actually very simple. I bet everybody listening has done something like this. But I'd go out and we would get snow. I'll tell you the stories, really. And I'd shovel the walk and I'd shovel the driveway. And I'd get nice and cold. And then I'd come in and my mom would make me some hot cocoa and she'd make me a bath.

And I'd sit in the bath mom would make me some hot cocoa and she'd make me a bath and I said no bad and I would be so happy and There's a logic to this Which is that sometimes we suffer and this might sound really strange But sometimes we suffer because the end of suffering the contrast where we get out of the cold and into the bath It feels so good. It's this dumb joke my father, dumb joke he tells about the guy who's banging his head against a lamppost. And when asked why he does it,

he says, it feels so good when I stop. And I'm glad you like it, or you're being nice and pretending to like it. You shouldn't humor my father of these dumb jokes. But in some way, I think we often seek out unpleasantness because the release from unpleasantness feels so good. There's nothing like a hot bath after you, a hot shower after you've been hiking

or camping for three days. There's nothing like jumping into the cool finish lake after you've been roasting in a hot sauna. And so some of it is contrast. And there's laboratory studies finding that you could feel a neutral experience, I mean, which normally be neutral, feels good if it was preceded by a painful experience. That our minds work on contrast. Everything we experience is sort of relative, whether or not a bath, water feels hot or cold,

depends on how it felt before, and so too for pain and pleasure. You know, I've sometimes heard people who go to a chiropractor or a massage therapist who subjects them to really intense pain, but when you talk to them afterwards, they'll tell you that the experience may have been painful, but afterwards they felt bliss.

I mean, that's the same contrast theory here. That's right. That's right. And a lot of now you have to be willing to go through the pain and you have to in some way do the math. And I think we do this unconsciously figure is the pain worth the relief at the end? You know, my daughter recently started her freshman year at college and right before the term started, they went on this hiking trip, which was really in fairly primitive circumstances. They went very few showers, they were sleeping outdoors, it was uncomfortable, and they spent three days.

And of course, they went through this period of suffering. They bonded with each other tremendously. But then they show up back on campus now as soon as the semester starts and they're moving into their dorms, which are really not that great. But compared to what they had just dealt with the previous three days, the dorms felt like the four seasons. And so they all move in and they say, my God, these dorms are the best things ever. And I thought this was kind of genius on the part of the school to basically put the kids

through a period of suffering before introducing them to campus housing. It is fairly clever. Probably the cafeteria food tastes better too if you were living off the food you had to kill in the woods or something. There's a study related to this idea that looked at how people spend their time over the course of a month, often trying to balance out their feelings, depending on whether they're feeling good or feeling bad. Can you talk about this work that's being done?

It's very interesting research. It was tens of thousands of people and use a smartphone app to record people's activities and how happy they were when they were doing these things. And what they found was that people tended to work on a principle of hedonic balance Which is that once they did something that was fun? They would then do something that was less fun. They would then choose well now it's time to to you know Clean the bathroom or you know work on my taxes and when he did something unpleasant They would then that would be the time to go you know to go for a nice walk or have a whiskey, watch a fun TV show

or something like that. They would hold their life in balance. And I think this sort of hedonic contrast is really interesting. It says that we often seek out these contrasting experiences. It might be that after a difficult experience, a pleasurable experience is all the more pleasurable. And that might push them in that direction.

But isn't it interesting, Paul, that it's not just that we do something difficult and then we seek a reward or we seek a treat, but sometimes if we've had a lot of treats and a lot of rewards, we actually might be interested in saying, okay, let me try my hand at doing something difficult. So the scales balance in both directions. I think so and I think there's a few different things going on here one is

What psychologists call the hedonic treadmill? Which is after a while having a good time you get bored with it You know you habituate is the term we use and so you need to switch off and do something else now one thing you could Do is find a different pleasurable activity that scratches a different itch, but it might be time then to recognize I'm getting diminishing returns from my pleasurable experiences. There are taxes to be done. Now is the time to do them. When we come back, how we sometimes seek out unpleasant things in order to punish ourselves. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

Psychologist Paul Bloom is the author of The Sweet Spot, The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning. He says there are many reasons we seek out perverse pleasures. We seek attention, we wish to experience the contrast between pain and pleasure, and sometimes we just like the challenge of it. Paul, you told me about your son Zachary when he was a teenager, but when he was four years old, he was watching a cartoon one day and it had a violent chase scene in it. How did he respond to this? So he began, and I should tell you, I have his consent to use these stories.

He's in his 20s now and he still, he rolls his eyes a bit but I could tell these stories. He was, there was different cartoon characters chasing each other, the sort of thing you and I would watch and be fine, but he was a kid and he got scared. He started to cry a little bit and he'd shake a little bit, getting really upset.

And I said, hey, Zach, don't worry, man. I'll turn it off. So I reached to shut it off, and he yells at me. He said, don't turn it off. Leave it on. And then he stares at me, and he's kind of crying and being upset. And I think there's something very human in that,

where if you and I were watching a horror movie together or a thriller, and we're just like, oh, this is extremely heart pounding, very stra, and then somebody said, oh, don't worry guys, I'm gonna shut it off. We'd say, I mean, why are you doing that? What are you doing? We're enjoying this.

And maybe we paid to see it. And that's a sort of paradox. Why are experiences that are normally negative, like being afraid, become pleasurable in the context of fiction? If you're sitting in your house alone, and it's the middle of the night, and you think you're alone,

and all of a sudden you hear footsteps, that would be the worst thing you could imagine. Your heart would be pounding out of your chest, and that would not be fun. But you'll watch a movie where that happens to another character and maybe your heart's pounding a bit. Anyway, but this is fantastic. This is great.

What's gonna happen next? And I think fiction is an extremely clever invention. There's a lot of reasons why we like stories. But one of the reasons, which is what we're zooming in now, it connects to our theme, is that it offers us tension and fear, but it's entirely safe. I'm wondering if there's also an element of predictability about it. There are some forms of fiction and some movies that have sequels to them that in fact are very predictable. If you watch the Die Hard movie sequence, for example, what happens in Die Hard and Die Hard 2 and Die Hard 3,

fundamentally the plot is not changing. What does that do for us as we are watching things that are very dramatic and perhaps even stressful or thrilling, but we kind of know where it's all going to end up? That's right. And you know, you've had kids. You know, one of the agonies of having kids is reading Go Dog Go for the 10,000th time. Because at first, kids are sensitive creatures. And at first, they hear a story. And it's often going to be too tense for them to sort of cope with.

So they say, read it again. Read it again. Read it again. Tell me the part again. And there's a tremendous safety. and know what's going to happen. And the bad parts of the excitement fade away and the good parts are intact. I mean, in some ways, it's almost as you're describing this, it's almost like a form of, you know, exposure therapy. I mean, kids are not quite psychiatrists, but that's kind of what they're doing, right?

When they're basically saying, expose me to this scary thing over and over and over again, and after some time, it starts to just become a thing I can enjoy rather than something that terrifies me. You know, I never thought of it that way, but I think that's a deep point. I've always been interested in the idea that, for adults at least, our Love of fiction is motivated by desire to experience worst-case scenarios, which is why we don't just

Appreciate happy fiction. We we appreciate fiction where everything goes to hell zombie movies and war movies and movies of relationships that end up, you know in pieces and You wonder why why don't we just watch happy things? And one answer is because we wanna prepare ourselves for bad things. And one way to do so is to go over it in our head as a sort of simulation,

just like you might use a flight simulator to simulate what's gonna happen if you're flying and one of your engines fails. The idea of that exposure could be part of this process is a good one. Maybe there are things in your life which you're gonna experience sooner or later and fiction toughens you up.

It gives you a little taste of what it is so that when it really happens, you're in a better position to deal with it. Do you think the same thing is at work when it comes to the fantasies we have? Many of us of course have pleasurable and pleasant fantasies, but lots of us also report having unpleasant fantasies. Now when it comes to a fantasy, we're the scriptwriter, we're the director, it's a

movie that we're making in our own heads. Why do you think we come up with fantasies that are unpleasant or scary? Yeah I think that's exactly is exactly the same sort of process. So you might be going for a walk and instead of filling your head with happy thoughts or fantasies about awards and great riches and true love, you say, what if my wife left me? What if I got fired? What if something happened to my kids? There are studies which sample what people think about day to day. so you're walking around

and a beeper goes off on your phone. You write down what you're thinking about. And to a surprising extent, over half the time, when you're free to think about anything you want in the world, people's minds go negative. And we think about bad things. And I think that this in some way makes our life less pleasurable,

but it makes adaptive sense. There's no value in you imagining what you're going to do if you win a great prize. Because you stand up and accept a great prize. Good things typically are really easy to deal with. But what happens if your relationship is destroyed, if your government falls apart, if people attack you, that's the sort of thing where it really pays to think about, even if it makes our life quite a bit less pleasant. The psychotherapist and podcaster Esther Perel

talks about the idea that sometimes the fantasies we have, including the sexual fantasies we have, are often at odds with our own values and proclivities. So in other words, we have fantasies about things that in fact are at odds with what we actually want to happen to us in real life. And I'm wondering if that's actually a manifestation of what you just talked about, which is when you're going for the walk and you imagine your child being kidnapped, you're not actually asking for your child to be kidnapped. You're just exploring what that would be like and trying to figure out what you

would do in that circumstance. I think that's exactly right. There are studies on what people seek out in pornography and what they do with the fantasies that they have. And to a surprising extent, people and more often women have fantasies about violence and bad treatment but what's really important to keep in mind is in some sense are fantasies and that you're thinking about them but it's not what they want in fact

they're they're having these things run through head exactly because it's what they don't want but they have to worry about more than men have to worry about so our mind will often reenact things that are our own worst-case scenarios. Can you talk about the idea that some of our interest in in in playing with unpleasant experiences has to do with play that you know when kids for example use their imaginations to come up with games they often involve you know horrific scenarios being chased by a monster being eaten by a lion they also include the possibility of injury, for example, kids play fight, for example. Talk about how games can sometimes be

unpleasant and painful, Paul. It gets at the theory we've been talking about from a different direction. So evolutionary biologists have long asked the question, why do animals, including humans, play? Like, it seems like, you know, you spend your time learning about the world and establishing social relationships and, you know, accumulating resources, but instead, we chase each other with toy guns or we go watch football.

So what's the purpose of play? And I think there's an answer. I think there's actually a really good answer, which is play is a form of safe practice the reason why young animals including young humans play fight is because fighting is a useful skill and one way to get good at any useful skill is to is to practice at it and play is a very clever trick where you go through the practice of what you're trying to do, but in a safe way. And so it's not just talking about people, but like dogs. Dogs play fight.

They have a sort of signal, what they call a play bow, where they communicate to each other, we're going to fight, but it's going to be for fun. We're not going to really hurt each other. And then they proceed with fighting. What makes humans unique, unique then isn't play. A lot of animals play. It's that we play in our heads. And I think everything from video games to horror movies to rumination is a form of safe play.

We reenact these things that we wanna get good at, like combat or planning or fighting, that sort of thing. I want to play you a clip from the TV show, Fear Factor. You guys are each going to have to stick your head inside this box with these 50 tarantulas for three minutes. And if you don't think that you can remain absolutely motionless for three minutes I want you guys to back out now because besides their eight legs each one of these tarantulas has two huge fangs and all of their venom so this task involves covering yourself in tarantulas now the participants are trying to win a prize Paul but as viewers we are not trying to

win anything so what's the appeal? Fear Factor had millions of viewers. There must be some of the satisfaction to think, thank God it's not me, it's other people. But I think we have a vicarious interest in saying people push themselves to the limits. Just like we sometimes do it ourselves, both in the real world and in imagination.

There's a fascination in watching other people do it. There's a fascination watching other people compete in sports, compete in games, and also put themselves at risk in interesting ways. And maybe it's a kind of vicarious satisfaction that I'm not them, look what they're doing, or maybe even a sense of superiority. But I think the most important cause is just this fascination in seeing worst-case scenarios, what happens when people are put to the limits.

So in a more serious context, some people take the idea of pain and unpleasant experiences to an extreme and actively subject themselves to self-harm. Some people cut themselves, others subject themselves to intense pain. Some of these things can be extremely dangerous, even life-threatening, and they become medical problems, they become disorders. Can you talk about how this kind of self-harm might also be related to feelings of powerlessness but also feelings of control Paul? So I know less about this. I know less about this sort of pathologies of math not the mani-masochism anymore but the heavy-duty masochism where people will

seriously harm themselves. Sometimes it's a byproduct of some form of mental illness like schizophrenia and falls very much outside the normal phenomena we're talking about. But there is a connection between these forms of self-harm and the sort of more benign forms of self-harm. One of the connections is they both may be forms of signaling. In some way an adolescent, say cutting herself or harming herself in some other way could be a signal to people, I need help. I need help and my need is so serious. You're not listening to my words and I get that.

The words could be fake. The words could be dishonest, but I'm going to damage my body to persuade you that this is serious business. And so one explanation for cutting and other things like that is that it's a cry for help. Another explanation is that there is, almost paradoxically, a sort of anesthesia effect for certain sorts of self-harm. That it takes you out of your body,

that the infliction of pain under the right circumstances makes other pains go away. We should note that there are resources and support available for people struggling with cutting and other forms of self-harm. To access those resources you can call or text 988 in the United States at any time of the day or night. in the United States at any time of the day or night. So, Paul, researchers have examined people's propensity to punish themselves after they've done something that violated their own values. Can you describe these studies and what they found? So, it's an old observation that sometimes people hurt themselves

because they believe they did something wrong and want to punish themselves. There's a story about Galen, the second century physician. He had a friend of his who beat up severely a slave, and he felt horrible about it. So he went to Galen, went to his house, stripped himself naked, handed him a whip, and said, you have to flog me for my crime. And Galen tried to laugh it off and said,

oh yeah, you're gonna have to do this. No, you have to flog me. And it might seem like a strange example, but I think we see this impulse in ourselves where when we do something wrong, we're moralizing creatures. This is what I'm very interested in. I studied this in children, I studied this in adults,

our desire to punish wrongdoers. And the most obvious cases are when the wrongdoers are other people, but sometimes the wrongdoers and the most obvious cases are when the wrongdoers are other people but sometimes the wrongdoers are ourselves. So there's now several studies of the form where since you give people some opportunity to hurt themselves in a mild way, give themselves painful shocks, stick their hand in freezing water which is very unpleasant after a while and what these studies find over and over again is that if you tell people ahead of time,

I want you to think about something you did that was wrong. I want you to think of a time when you hurt somebody. People will then inflict more pain on themselves. So the role of morality, the role of a desire to punish wrongness is I think one force that could explain something that goes on in masochistic pleasures. I'm wondering Paul if the same thing might happen on the sports field as well. We've all seen you know athletes who mess up or someone who plays a bad shot in tennis and they get so angry with themselves they want to punch themselves or actively hit themselves. You know again you're

inflicting pain on yourself but it's the same kind of thing. How could you have made this mistake? I'm punishing you for making this terrible mistake. It's exactly the same process. I've seen it many times, and once or twice, you know, I've kind of smacked myself and I say, dummy, how did you do that? And I think it's almost a mystery

why it doesn't happen more often. I mean, think about how we wanna punish people who mess up, are cruel or indifferent in real life. Doesn't it make sense that when we see that we ourselves are lazy or cruel or indifferent, we want to punish ourselves? We want to sort of treat ourselves badly the way we think we should be treated. Now, as I'm saying this, it doesn't sound like the most healthy thing in the world. I think in small doses, I think it's fine. I don't think much badly about a tennis player who hits himself on the head with a racket after missing an easy

shot. I think if it gets taken too far and you start thinking that you're worthless and you want to sort of destroy your own life, that could be awful. But in small, like a lot of things we're talking about, in small doses, I think, is part of a full life. In our companion story on Hidden Brain Plus, we examine how pain and pleasure can intertwine during sex and how, at the extremes, pain and pleasure can start to resemble one another. People who are in intense pleasure, intense happiness,

they are hard to tell apart from people whose faces are in intense pain. If you're already a subscriber, that episode should be available in this podcast feed right now. It's titled, The Zen of Pain. If you're not yet a subscriber, please go to support.hiddenbrain.org to sign up. If you're using an Apple device, you can go to apple.co slash hiddenbrain. Your subscription gives you access to exclusive episodes. It also helps us build the show.

Again, those links are support.hiddenbrain.org or apple.cohiddenbrain.org or apple.co. slash hiddenbrain. Paul Bloom is a psychologist at the University of Toronto. He is the author of The Sweet Spot, The Pleasures of Suffering and The Search for Meaning. Paul, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain. Thank you. This was terrific. If you have follow-up questions for Paul Bloom, and you'd be willing to share those questions

with a Hidden Brain audience, please record a voice memo on your phone and email it to us at ideas at hiddenbrain.org. Use the subject line, pain. That email address again is ideas at hiddenbrain.org. Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Quirell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm

Hidden Brains executive editor. Next week in our two-part mini series about the pain pleasure continuum, why we fantasize about living a life of leisure and why this might be an error. So definitely people, you know, when they think about a future that's desirable, that's fun, enjoyable, it's about relaxation. It's about being lazy. It's about being at the beach and just kind of sitting. So we see this all the time. That's next week on the show. I hope you'll join us.

I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.