THE ELEMENT OF SURPRISE
Co-author of Surprise: Embrace the Unpredictable and Engineer the Unexpected
It would be nice to be able to simply wake up one day and decide: “I’m going to eat less meat.” But as my fellow humans know, things rarely work out that easily. Scientists suspect that one of the reasons we have a tough time changing our habits, even when we know they’re bad for us, is that willpower—our internal voice of reason—is not unlimited. Just like any other resource, it can become depleted.
In an experiment by Roy Baumeister, participants waited in a room that smelled like freshly baked cookies. They were shown two types of foods: chocolates and radishes. Half of the participants were given chocolates and the other half got radishes. Next, researchers asked both groups to do a puzzle, and they timed how long it took participants to finish the task. The chocolate eaters kept trying for over eighteen minutes; the radish eaters quit after just eight.1 Plenty of subsequent studies have since revealed the same concept: When we have to expend effort to regulate our impulses, we eventually run out of self-control.
But why does it take so much willpower to change how we eat? Part of the answer lies in habit. Habit is the enemy of change. Luckily for us, surprise is the enemy of habit. Most of our actions are patterns: We go home, sit on the couch, turn on the TV, think about food, get up to check the fridge, consider making a salad, feel tired and cranky—and end up grabbing the cold cuts.
It doesn’t take a fortune-teller to predict the outcome of habitual actions because they contain no surprise. It’s also an efficient way to live. Habits require less neural activity than new behaviors. But who wants efficiency when you can have excitement and fulfillment? (Okay, maybe you prefer efficiency, but it has its limits.) Surprise disrupts the pattern of habit, opening the door just a crack for new behaviors to slip in. Here are four tips for anyone attempting to disrupt their meat-eating habits.
Willpower is a fickle friend, but there is one exception: People who have strong beliefs can override even the coziest habits. How do you shake up your food feelings? Neuroscientist Wolfram Schultz found that surprise can intensify our emotions by about 400 percent,2 creating just the kind of colorful memory that can act as your mouth’s bouncer—keeping meat out when you don’t want it in. So what might surprise you about food? Well, you can always Google “factory farming.” A visit to a factory farm or slaughterhouse is another way to shock your system.
But there are also less emotionally scarring ways to surprise yourself. My husband, Brian, is from a part of Texas where vegetarian means “one of those people who’s not from around here.” Brian loves dogs, and intellectually, he knew that cows weren’t much different, but it wasn’t until he met a calf face to face for the first time recently that his perspective shifted. Rory the Calf had long, black lashes and a fuzzy nose; when she licked him, Brian fell in love. At the time we were traveling in Ireland, where burgers are served with nearly every meal, like napkins. After meeting Rory, however, Brian didn’t want burgers. He’s not a vegetarian, but now he doesn’t eat beef. You could argue that he should be able to transfer his experience over to other animals. But that’s just not how our brains always work. We need an emotional experience for that shift to happen.
Let’s say you’ve shifted your thinking. That’s step one. But how do you disrupt your old meat-eating habit even further? When willpower runs out, we’ve got to use our environment for help. The first place to mix in surprise is shopping. The more routine your trips to the supermarket are, the less room for change. So here are some very small ways to incorporate sparks of the unexpected into your list:
Yes, our brains love efficiency, but even more than that, they love novelty. New experiences release dopamine in our brains—the neurochemical that triggers excitement and pleasure. The more hits of dopamine you give your brain, the more motivated you’ll be to keep up your surprising new approach to shopping.
Research shows that we make better food choices when we eat at home, but how can we get the most out of our home-cooked meals? As it turns out, a sprinkle of surprise works here too. Introduce novelty into your kitchen, and you’ll be more likely to introduce novelty in your eating habits. The most effective changes are those that make eating meat a little harder and eating other foods a little easier (and more fun). Google used this technique when it realized employees were binging on M&Ms. First, managers placed the M&Ms in closed, opaque containers. Second, healthy snacks were placed in easy-to-reach areas. The result? In just seven weeks, Googlers consumed 3.1 million fewer calories (an average reduction of nine packages per employee).3 Again, these aren’t revolutionary switches, but they do cause us to pause. And within that pause, new behaviors have the opportunity to come alive. Here are a few other small surprise tweaks you can make this week:
Last but not least, when eating out of the house, think about making the experience less about convenience and more about discovery. To really increase your dopamine levels, invite someone to join you. That way, you’ll deepen your relationship as you collect surprising experiences together. A few tips for eating out:
In short, take a look at your lifestyle. Where is there room for surprising, emotionally stirring experiences? Next, examine your eating habits. What’s predictable? Make one small change per week and take note of which you enjoyed the most. Novelty boosts mood, and a positive mood increases willpower (making you even more capable of changing your habits). Plus surprise is fun, and who doesn’t like fun? Now go on and surprise yourself.