10 min
Ep 5. The Framing of Madness The Delusional Podcast with Kevin Blake Ferguson
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- Society & Culture
I. Madness
Many years before you or I were born, during the late Middle Ages and throughout the Renaissance in Europe, people danced. Sometimes it was a sole soul doing the boogie-woogie, sometimes it was thousands upon thousands all writhing and convulsing together. Although I tend to avoid the clurb, I can get down, so normally I’d find any story of dancing to be a happy thing, and it certainly would be in this case if not for the fact that these revelers seemed to have no control over themselves, and could not stop dancing, being as they were: in the throes of madness.
Outbreaks of 'dancing mania' were well-documented in Europe over a period of hundreds of years, where people of all ages were found dancing erratically for days, accompanied only by music in their own minds, often stopping only after collapsing from exhaustion. Although scholars and historians don't agree on the cause of the dancing mania, one likely explanation is that it was a form of mass psychogenic illness, better known as mass hysteria.
Defined as any group experiencing some sort of 'collective nervous system disturbance' with no understood underlying biological cause, reports of mass psychogenic illness are widespread throughout history, often found in high-stress environments, perhaps (and I'm spitballing here) as some sort of unconscious desire to escape from them. In Renaissance Europe, there were countless outbreaks among young women and girls in strict religious convents. They were often thought to be possessed by demons; some were found using blasphemous language and exposing themselves, others were found collectively bleating like sheeps, yelping like dogs, or meowing like cats. In the 18th century there were outbreaks of convulsions among schoolchildren in Germany, Switzerland, and France. In the 20th century, there was laughing in Tanzania, shaking and jerking in upstate NY, feinting and 'overbreathing' in England, and many more.
What is exceptionally fascinating about episodes of mass psychogenic illness and its resulting symptoms is how different the symptoms are. From dancing to yelping to laughing to convulsing to cursing. The symptoms change throughout the millennia. Why?
II. Framing
It is a fundamental principle of our perceptual systems that what we see is determined by the context in which we see it. When we look at the checker shadow illusion, we see two squares as being different shades of grey depending on their context.
Consider also gold/blue dress controversy. But it’s not just vision, see (ahem, listen to): the Yanny vs Laurel debate or, for an even more mind-bending one, considering the syllable difference, listen to Brainstorm vs Green Needle.
Perception, and therefore meaning, is determined by framing. Consider the matte of a framed photograph, the size of a plate carrying a tiny and delicate 5-star nibble, the placement of a punchline in a joke, or the timing of the reveal in a magic trick.
Change the frame, change the experience. Reading a book recommended by someone you aspire to be like will resonate very differently than when that same book is recommended by a social villain. Same with a song, a joke, a play, advice, or anything.
Framing is also the foundation of the psychology of choice. Tversky and Kahneman, 1981 found that a question framed in two different ways can result in two different answers. Related to this is the idea at the heart of the book Nudge, written by Nobel Prize winning economist Richard Thaler and equally impressive Cass Sunstein, of ‘Libertarian Paternalism,’ the act of designing contexts in which people can more easily make the decisions they want to make. (e.g. Google HQ has free candy, but it’s placed in opaque containers, on the lowest shelf; if you have to put more effort to get at the candy than the apple, more often you won’t reach for it.) Framing ultimately comes down to attention, see: the basketball awareness test.
Understanding that we act differently based on the
I. Madness
Many years before you or I were born, during the late Middle Ages and throughout the Renaissance in Europe, people danced. Sometimes it was a sole soul doing the boogie-woogie, sometimes it was thousands upon thousands all writhing and convulsing together. Although I tend to avoid the clurb, I can get down, so normally I’d find any story of dancing to be a happy thing, and it certainly would be in this case if not for the fact that these revelers seemed to have no control over themselves, and could not stop dancing, being as they were: in the throes of madness.
Outbreaks of 'dancing mania' were well-documented in Europe over a period of hundreds of years, where people of all ages were found dancing erratically for days, accompanied only by music in their own minds, often stopping only after collapsing from exhaustion. Although scholars and historians don't agree on the cause of the dancing mania, one likely explanation is that it was a form of mass psychogenic illness, better known as mass hysteria.
Defined as any group experiencing some sort of 'collective nervous system disturbance' with no understood underlying biological cause, reports of mass psychogenic illness are widespread throughout history, often found in high-stress environments, perhaps (and I'm spitballing here) as some sort of unconscious desire to escape from them. In Renaissance Europe, there were countless outbreaks among young women and girls in strict religious convents. They were often thought to be possessed by demons; some were found using blasphemous language and exposing themselves, others were found collectively bleating like sheeps, yelping like dogs, or meowing like cats. In the 18th century there were outbreaks of convulsions among schoolchildren in Germany, Switzerland, and France. In the 20th century, there was laughing in Tanzania, shaking and jerking in upstate NY, feinting and 'overbreathing' in England, and many more.
What is exceptionally fascinating about episodes of mass psychogenic illness and its resulting symptoms is how different the symptoms are. From dancing to yelping to laughing to convulsing to cursing. The symptoms change throughout the millennia. Why?
II. Framing
It is a fundamental principle of our perceptual systems that what we see is determined by the context in which we see it. When we look at the checker shadow illusion, we see two squares as being different shades of grey depending on their context.
Consider also gold/blue dress controversy. But it’s not just vision, see (ahem, listen to): the Yanny vs Laurel debate or, for an even more mind-bending one, considering the syllable difference, listen to Brainstorm vs Green Needle.
Perception, and therefore meaning, is determined by framing. Consider the matte of a framed photograph, the size of a plate carrying a tiny and delicate 5-star nibble, the placement of a punchline in a joke, or the timing of the reveal in a magic trick.
Change the frame, change the experience. Reading a book recommended by someone you aspire to be like will resonate very differently than when that same book is recommended by a social villain. Same with a song, a joke, a play, advice, or anything.
Framing is also the foundation of the psychology of choice. Tversky and Kahneman, 1981 found that a question framed in two different ways can result in two different answers. Related to this is the idea at the heart of the book Nudge, written by Nobel Prize winning economist Richard Thaler and equally impressive Cass Sunstein, of ‘Libertarian Paternalism,’ the act of designing contexts in which people can more easily make the decisions they want to make. (e.g. Google HQ has free candy, but it’s placed in opaque containers, on the lowest shelf; if you have to put more effort to get at the candy than the apple, more often you won’t reach for it.) Framing ultimately comes down to attention, see: the basketball awareness test.
Understanding that we act differently based on the
10 min