Time Bandits' Assault on Health

In all cultures familiar to me, robbery has been a crime.  Accordingly, all such societies have imposed penalties upon robbers.  That of course presumes that the robbery was reported and the perpetrator was convicted. On the other hand, failure to report or failure to apprehend robbers renders robbery both a lucrative and comfortable profession that requires no formal education or training.

History documents that the targets and frequencies of robberies has varied from age to age.  Since ancient Romans allegedly were paid in salt, salt presumably was stolen then. When coal was the home heating fuel of choice in the early 20th century, it too was stolen.

In the 21st century, our precious time is stolen.  Contemporary time bandits, many of whom are multi-millionaires and billionaires are organized into a variety of cartels.  A few of these thieving conglomerates are tech hardware manufacturers, internet providers, and entertainment producers.  A mafia of others - marketers and similar influence purveyors - assist those who traffic in time theft.

Today we primarily will address a favorite instrument of time crooks: personal electronic devices, such as cellphones and computer tablets.  These so-called mobile devices have an addictive allure and permit unprecedented intrusive manipulation by persons seeking to exploit us.   Virtually all tech hardware manufacturers, internet providers, and entertainment producers create and disseminate methods and memes to keep us perennially focused on whatever they are selling.  The more they can do so, the more they earn.  Compulsively attached to their items and agendas, we have little time for personal activities that occupied us in the 20th century.  To cite one well-publicized and obvious example: We rarely talk at length on the telephone anymore, and we tend to keep our face-to-face meetings to a minimum.  When we must be in the presence of another flesh and blood person, we often interpose an electronic device between them and us at every opportunity.  Our electronic hardware, software, and internet are specifically structured to continually present a never-ending array of enticing stimuli to capture and monopolize our attention.

If you believe that the time robbers are satisfied with their success, think again.  Consider the research of Nicholas H. Lurie and his colleagues (2016).  Their paper, Everywhere and at All Times: Mobility, Consumer Decision Making, and Choice explicitly targets electronic mobile devices and consumer decision making.  They seek to advise on ways to advance strategies to steal our time through mobile electronics by better understanding mobile ecosystems, their contexts, and the interactions between the ecosystems, contexts, and the minds of the consumers.  To directly quote three of the many questions that they seek to answer and exploit:

"How does mobility affect cognitive capacity and the influence of incidental information?"

"Are mobile decision-makers more myopic?"

"How do mobile ecosystem capabilities and pervasivity affect socially undesirable and personal  choices?"

If Lurie and his group succeed in their quest, electronic hardware, software, and the internet will be all the more effective in monopolizing your time.  Please note that I am not condemning all electronic devices and the persons who make, distribute, or use them.  The devices of course can and do save us time, if used with discretion.  My point is that the "system" promulgates indiscriminate, continuous, compulsive use. 

Every minute of indiscriminate, continuous, compulsive electronic device use is a minute not spent on anything else.  Only you can determine the physical- and mental-health consequences of your personal, unique electronic device usage.  Do your devices keep you in your chair rather than moving about?  Do the devices interpose a barrier between you and authentic, in vivo human experiences?  On the other hand, do you use devices sparingly and prudently - think FitBit - in ways that can enhance your health?  The choice is yours to make.

Reference:

Nicholas H. L., et al. (2016).  Everywhere and at All Times: Mobility, Consumer Decision Making, and Choice.  Invitational Choice Symposium, Lake Louise, Canada, May, 2016.

Seeking and Acting Upon Health-Relevant Messages

What health-relevant information do you seek?  What health-relevant information do you avoid?  What health-relevant information do you act upon?  What health-relevant information do you not act upon?

The answers depend on factors contained in your personality, in messages, and in the interactions between your personality and the messages.  Let's discuss some of the more important of these.

The first is a dimension that underscores the role of personality that I discussed in a previous post:  promotion versus prevention.  Persons with a promotion orientation mostly look for, attend to, and act upon information that emphasizes health advantages contained within messages. Conversely, those with a prevention orientation mostly look for, attend to, and act upon information that emphasizes health dangers contained within messages.  For example, an article or video that extensively details the many benefits of adopting a stress management program would be particularly appealing to a promotion oriented person, whereas one that extensively details the many dangers of failing to adopt a stress management program would be particularly appealing to a prevention oriented person.  

Moreover, since perceived advantages mostly are subjective, how one frames an event is determinative.  The advantage that you perceive reveals your personality.  If you chose a promotion reason, you are “eager’ about the outcome that you expect to derive from your healthful change.  And if you chose a prevention reason, you are “vigilant’ about the outcome that you fear from not making the healthful change.  Eager anticipation suggests that you have a more hopeful orientation and vigilant anticipation, that you have a more fearful orientation.

The second is a dimension that underscores the role of messages.  Specifically, Matthias R. Hastall and Anna J. M.Wagner (2017) have introduced the notion of high-susceptibility and low-susceptibility messages.  Some health messages – such as printed material or videos  - are framed to emphasize gain whereas others emphasize loss.  Since gain messages directly or implicitly elaborate practices that benefit our physical or mental selves, they are more likely to attract the attention of persons with a promotion orientation, who are very susceptible to gain messages.  Conversely, loss messages that directly or implicitly elaborate practices that undermine our physical or mental selves are most likely to attract the attention of persons with a prevention orientation who are very susceptible to loss messages.

The third dimension concerns responses to threatening messages.  Some individuals are called "sensitizers" because they direct their attention toward potential threats in order to confront them head-on.  Others are "repressors" who turn their attention away from potential threats, essentially denying danger.  

So, when thinking about yourself, you might want to consider how you stand on the three dimensions: 1) promotion vs prevention, 2) susceptibility to gain vs susceptibility to loss, and 3) sensitizing vs repressing.  Equally important is how the three interact among themselves and with other features of your personality.  There is no straightforward equation that will enable you to use your understanding of the dimensions.  Since we all are unique, the possibilities are limitless.  Let's consider a simplified situation merely for illustration.

Imagine that I primarily am a promoter with a strong inclination toward gain and that I have a sensitizing orientation.  I see a health video about a recent study emphasizing that direct sun exposure between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. increases skin cancer risk. Taken at face value, given my promoter-gain status, one might presume that I would be less inclined to attend to this than to a message that emphasized health-enhancing sun exposure practices. On the other hand, since I am a sensitizer, taken at face value, I might be inclined to attend to the skin cancer risk message in order to combat the implied danger. There is, then, a kind of intrapersonal struggle that will determine how the three dimensions interact with my overall personality. As important, perhaps even more important, are contextual factors specific to me.  For instance, if my sibling developed a melanoma, that quite likely would trump everything else in directing my behavior. Conversely, if I am a top-flight inveterate golfer, that fact quite likely would be pivotal in determining my decision about accepting sun exposure.

Since only you can answer the health-relevant questions about information that you seek, avoid, act upon, and not act upon, by considering the three aforementioned dimensions, their interactions, and your unique contexts, you will be better equipped to validly decide health-critical questions.

References

Hastall, M. & Wagner, A. (2017).  Enhancing Selective Exposure to Health Messages and Health Intentions: Effects of Susceptibility Cues and Gain–Loss Framing.  Journal of Media Psychology: Theories, Methods, and Applications, January 18, No Pagination Specified.  doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1027/1864-1105/a000197