Jim Munroe is on to something...

[elfs]

Just hours after finishing Everyone in Silico, I was led (thanks to Zoe Pollock) to an article in Scientific American, in which researchers performed three tests with statistically large groups of people, giving them free sunglasses while informing half the recipients that their glasses were expensive designer models, and the other half that the glasses were cheap knockoffs of expensive designer models. Both groups, in fact, had received the real thing.

In three seperate tests, the two groups were asked to perform tasks that allowed for some cheating. 30% of the group told their glasses were real cheated. 70% of those who believed they were wearing counterfeits cheated.

In a follow-on test with another group, those told they were wearing counterfeits were more likely to assess their peers as less truthful and trustworthy than those wearing the original thing.

The researchers concluded:

Wearing counterfeit goods not only fails to bolster our ego and self-image the way we hope, it actually undermines our internal sense of authenticity. "Faking it" makes us feel like phonies and cheaters on the inside, and this alienated, counterfeit "self" leads to cheating and cynicism in the real world.

Video games may get away with phony reality because they're not phony of and by themselves; you're have an authentic gaming experience, and you don't expect it to be real life.

This is why kids can, and do, play violent video games without as much scarring on their souls as the anxious morality mavens of our culture would have us believe.

Porn isn't inauthentic-- most of the time you're watching people have a genuine good time, even if it's a professional good time. What is inauthentic is having only porn to go on when you try and adapt what you know to real, human partners. What's inauthentic is acting like you know how to push the other person's buttons when you truly have no clue.

There's a megaton of inauthenticity in our lives. It took us forever to show Yamaraashi-chan the disconnect between the inauthenticity of television and her own experiences in real life. Munroe wrote a book about how different people make that distinction. And now research shows that knowingly putting up an inauthentic front corrodes your own soul and your sense of self-worth.

Omaha makes an interesting point: what if the researchers had brought the women back the next day, and told them they'd made a mistake and given them the other set of glasses? And then run through the tests again? I'd like to see those results.

Comments

[drhoz.livejournal.com]

but what about the porn where the protagonists - usually the women - *aren't* having a good time?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

That's a good question. I think I can usually tell when the bottom is having a good time; I recall one film I like where only in the third scene did the actress genuinely seem to be enjoying herself. And it's usually easy to tell when cocaine or meth is on the set of a gay porn film, you can see it in the bewildered, desperate eyes of the bottom. I tend to press "Next" on the remote.

But that just lowers the bar for the audience to recognize that there's a problem with the authenticity of the scene. Maybe young people (by that, I mean college age) don't have the experience necessary to distinguish between inauthentic and authentic pleasure onscreen; porn ought not to be different from any other circus act in our distinguishing between what we can achieve with our own bodies, and what needs to be left to trained professionals. (There's a reason porn stars are called "performers" and not "actors.") I would hope that they develop it-- my generation did, and every generation has learned (so far) to distinguish between real and fake experiences-- and not leave too many broken hearts in their wake.

[laplor.livejournal.com]

Omaha's suggestion is definitely the logical next step in that path of research. My experience as an undergrad doing research in Psychology suggests that there's good chance that some grad student somewhere is planning that experiment already.

[woggie.livejournal.com]

They don't really get into the motives behind ownership. They seem to assume everyone wants originals and don't want knockoffs, and that informs their entire interpretation of the results.

Me, I get knockoffs because I don't want to worry about what I do to them. If I have an original, I would worry about it more, and that would cut into the enjoyment I would get from other things.

But the researchers seem to assume people like me don't exist.

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

I think that depends on your interpretation of "knock-off". Elf said the study's definition was that the term described an item that was labelled the same as the original and was intended to deceive regarding the fact that it wasn't an original.

Omaha and I think of the term as being simply a cheaper copy and does no harm as those who are buying for the brand will still buy the brand. Sounds like this latter is the way you're defining it.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

Video games may get away with phony reality because they're not phony of and by themselves; you're have an authentic gaming experience, and you don't expect it to be real life.

Well duh. That's because video games are not virtual reality.

Video games are storytelling.

Interactive, immersive storytelling. But storytelling nonetheless.