Emotionally Numb: Expertise Dulls Consumer Experience (2021) (opens in new tab)

That's also true in other domains - the more I learn about a sport the more interesting it is to watch because there is more to see and understand.

I can see the opportunity though for analysis to overcome emotion. You want to respond instinctively to something, but learning to be an expert in something sometime requires nurturing a dispassionate, analytical response. I can completely see how learning about wine might take away some of the joy that you might experience trying something new, because you're just cataloguing it.

Semi-related: my wife has a friend who became a "serious" coffee person over the pandemic. He firmly warns everyone that it's the worst decision he's ever made - he's become too much of a snob and now can't drink any coffee apart from that made at home. He can't even get it from a high street vendor and enjoy it.

> Once I know the name of a new fly, fish, or flower,

Does knowing the name of something make you an expert? I am not sure, I think perhaps the definition of "expertise" at use in this paper is more precise and demands more. I am not familiar with this area of research, it appears to me that this paper draws on a well-understood meaning of "expertise", probably one that is established in one or several of the citations (or, perhaps, it is a contested definition even today).

That said - I think your intuition is a useful one - knowing something can enhance your enjoyment more than knowing nothing. I think this paper asks, can you know too much?

I feel the same way. Since the subject of this interest is alive, and endlessly diverse, the more I learn about nature, the more wonder I feel. Definitely not numb.

Maybe what needs to be a focus of this study is measuring "numbness" across different subjects of interest.

Nature? Bah! How do you market nature? People can just get it for free! Get with the program, we need to exploit hedonism-seeking for the widest possible range of consumers to keep our numbers up! Keep them lusting after the next big thing, keep them confused and incompetent for as long as possible so they keep buying new versions of it. From us.

I only read the abstract but it seems like the dislike comes with a recognition of the buzzwords and an understanding that a good product isn't the goal, my money is. With nature, it's not trying to impress me. It's not trying to take my money. So there's no loss of wonder when I learn something. I don't pull back the curtain to find a cynical exec trying to get me to pay for something. There is no curtain, there is no sales pitche, nature just is.

It's proved that kids that name their chicken, pig, lamb, rabbit, fish, dog or horse cannot accept them to be killed and cannot eat them. thus numbers on farm cattle.

I can see the truth in what you say; but I have also found that increased ecological literacy has sapped much of the joy I used to feel in nature, because it comes mixed with grief.

Agreed. Having admittedly only read the abstract, I find it odd that it's framed around "consumers" and not just "people."

I suspect that another reason might be that the mechanics of competitive gaming focus on maximizing players' control over whether they win rather than on maximizing joy.

It's like the difference between backyard football and professional football. In backyard football most people play with house rules that make the game more fun but less competitive. On the other hand, in professional football the rules are designed to help ensure that the better team wins.

>win

>feel nothing

>lose

>day ruined

Often the game mechanics themselves aren't actually fun (at least after the novelty wears off) but players keep playing because they enjoy the sensation of winning. The player can't have fun unless they win because the game is not intrinsically fun.

You know it's a good game when you can reflect back on a match you lost and think "yeah that was worth it, I had fun."

They're joyless because they become increasingly toxic the higher you get. At least in mainstream games. Do something outside of meta and you're enemy number one.

Or because all of those popular games are manipulative and their goal is not to make you happy or fulfilled, but to frustrate you so you play more.

Those games are frustrating on purpose.

I work in tech and the arts and my experience is that some of the most emotionally disengaged people are in STEM, not everyone of course, but comparing the two, it’s not even close. It’s actually pretty rare to find anyone serious in the arts emotionally dimmed, a large part of the job there is dialing into emotion. That said, seems people at the top in STEM (shaping the field) and on the fringes (doing experimental, cutting edge work) are usually experts and highly emotionally engaged. Take it all with a grain of salt, I guess.

Dabbling in gamedev as a teenager definitely numbed my enjoyment of video games as an adult.

And I'm really thankful for that, because I spent way too much time on video games growing up, before I saw behind the curtain.

That's not exactly what the paper says:

(From Study 5 discussion) These results are consistent with the idea that, while those with low expertise engage with the domain hedonically as a default approach, this is not experts’ default. Second, rather than experts being inevitably numb, these results suggest that it is not the acquisition of knowledge that leads to numbness, but the application of that knowledge. Indeed, when expert’s attention is redirected toward the hedonic aspects of a stimulus they can regain their feelings.

So, as I understand it: beginners focus on enjoying the experience by default, and experts engage intellectually by default. And experts who were told to just relax and enjoy the experience had the same emotional experience as beginners.

Is it novelty or truly understanding how something works?

Or take writing classes. In every writing class that I've taken, part of the curriculum is to dissect the writing of great authors.

You quickly learn to never dissect books that you love, because after you do, you'll never be able to enjoy reading that book again.

Taking up photography as a hobby made me notice and appreciate good shots and colours in films much more. So the opposite effect.

And yet, you could have told me the exact opposite was true - that increasing knowledge and experience created increased joy in experiences like wine instead of less, and a large segment of people would have also said it was obvious.

spoken by an expert on consumer reports