Supernormal Stimuli: How Culture Hijacks Our Natural Instincts in Unhealthy Ways

Humans are unique compared to the rest of the animal kingdom because not only do we adapt to fit our environment, but we can also change our environment to better fit ourselves.

Technology especially has given us the ability to change our environment in many ways…increasing food supply, traveling faster and greater distances, expanded communication with people from all over the world, air conditioning, plumbing, garbage disposal, and mass-produced consumer products.

In many ways, standards of living have increased all over the world, and we are much richer and prosperous thanks to all of these advancements in human civilization.

Our modern world is very different than the one we evolved in for thousands of years. And due to this mismatch, many of our natural instincts that once served a useful purpose are now amplified and hijacked in unhealthy ways.

Supernormal Stimuli is an excellent book by Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett that breaks down the many ways our natural instincts have been hijacked by modern culture and society.

The term “supernormal stimuli” was first coined by Dutch biologist Niko Tinbergen in 1953 when he observed that you could create an exaggerated version of a natural stimuli that would create a heightened response in the animal being observed.

Animals will often choose the exaggerated stimuli over the real thing. For example, stickleback fish try to mate with a fake round-bellied model over a real egg-bearing female. Song birds will abandon their real eggs to sit on enlarged, fake blue eggs (even so big that they will continue to fall off). And male butterflies ignore a live female to try to mate with cardboard cylinders (that don’t even have wings!).

As long as the trait being amplified plays a key role in the animals’ primal urges, the animal will consistently choose the “supernormal stimuli” over the normal one. And humans are the same way…

In Dierdre Barrett’s book, she explores some of the central ways that “supernormal stimuli” have hijacked our habits and behaviors in unhealthy ways. Here are a few key takeaways.

Supernormal food and eating habits

One of the biggest changes in our lifestyle is our diet and eating habits.

To start, we simply have way more food available to us than ever before. This abundance has helped fight global hunger, but has also led to global obesity. In fact, in most countries today, more people suffer from eating too much rather than eating too little.

This abundance of food is coupled with supernormal tastes.

Many of today’s foods are abnormally high in sugar, carbs, and calories. When our evolutionary ancestors discovered fruit, the sugar would be perceived as a natural reward. But today we can get the same sugar content and reward simply by taking a sip of Coca Cola.

Deirdre Barrett explains further:

“The most dangerous aspect of our modern diet arises from our ability to refine food. This is the link to drug, alcohol, and tobacco addictions. Coca doesn’t give South American Indians health problems when they brew or chew it. No one’s ruined his life eating poppy seeds. When grapes and grains were fermented lightly and occasionally, they presented a healthy pleasure, not a hazard. Salt, fat, sugar, and starch are not harmful in their natural contexts. It’s our modern ability to concentrate things like cocaine, heroine, alcohol – and food components – that turns them into a menace that our body is hardwired to crave.”

This new form of consumption has led to a mismatch between what our body’s have adapted to consume from an evolutionary perspective vs. what our modern eating habits are.

The availability of food is another thing to be mindful of. While hunter-gatherers may have to search for days (or even weeks) before they find a nice meal, today we can just drive through our local fast food down the block and pick up a 1,500 calorie meal. No effort or exercise required, we just get to stuff our faces!

While we are certainly blessed to have these material luxuries, we have to be mindful of the ways they are influencing our current diet and eating habits.

Moderating what you eat by changing your habit loops, behavioral nudges, or simply “counting calories” are all powerful tools to add more awareness and control over your daily eating habits.

Don’t think you can survive without sweets everyday? You can! You just have to give your tastes time to adapt.

“In a world increasingly designed to stimulate hunger, ‘listening to what your body wants’ is a losing strategy. It’s not anti-hedonistic to rein in, or redirect, instincts. Our pleasure system is robust and very flexible. Our brainpower can direct it – indeed that’s what it evolved to do…

The pleasure mechanism can be shaped as to what it respond to – it doesn’t have to be the other way. When you begin to eat healthfully, within days, glucose and hunger-regulating hormones shift, diminishing cravings. Within weeks, a positive conditioned response becomes associated with fish or spinach and extinguishes to french fries or mousse.”

This phenomenon is known as the hedonic treadmill. The basic idea is that our “happiness baseline” often adapts to our changing environment.When you eat healthier, you begin to enjoy eating healthier foods more.

Give your body and mind time to naturally adapt to the new and healthier diet.

Supernormal attraction, body image, and sex

Another aspect of our lives that is influenced by supernormal stimuli is our sense of physical attraction and body image.

Many people have a distorted view of their bodies (and other people’s bodies) based on comparisons with what they see in the media, movies, TV, and the internet.

And because our society is so interconnected now, everyone is in competition with everyone else. What used to just be a physical “competition” among members of a small tribe of 150-200 people is now a “competition” with the entire world.

Psychologist Dierdre Barrett goes on to say:

“What is different now is that the pool of people for potential comparisons has grown phenomenally – only the unusually attractive are conveyed by media around the world. If a Stone Age girl wasn’t the prettiest in her small tribe, the difference wasn’t likely to be dramatic. Everyone had opportunities to see others looking their worst – tired, bedraggled, sick – as well as on their best days. Now society culls from millions of young women to select the best faces and bodies, and then perfects these with Adobe Photoshop. The difference between the resulting magazine cover and our average modern girl is staggering.”

For these reasons, many people today struggle with their body image and self-esteem.

This view can also be extended to how we view sex in our relationships.

Pornography is one of the biggest examples of “supernormal stimuli” – highly unrealistic situations and body shapes that nevertheless trigger our natural instincts and pleasure response.

Obviously, we enjoy it for a reason. However, for many people, too much consumption of porn can distort their views of sex and lead to unhealthy beliefs and habits that spillover their real-world relationships.

We have to be cautious of the types of media we consume and how it is influencing our perception.

Supernormal fear and threat perception

Our ability to sense potential threats and danger is natural and important for survival, but it’s also become manipulated by our current culture and environment.

In today’s world, every threat is magnified by media, television, and the internet. One may watch the news all day and think the entire world is burning to the ground, especially if they never take the time to step outside and take a breath of fresh air.

This has created a type of mean world syndrome, where people have a heightened and exaggerated sense of just how bad everything in the world is.

Of course, I’m not saying bad things don’t happen in the world. There are a lot of pressing issues today that need our attention and focus if we want to build a better world for tomorrow.

At the same time, we have to be mindful of the information we are consuming on a daily basis and how it is changing our perception of the world.

Many media outlets purposely push our “emotional buttons” to create feelings of fear and anger, because those emotions grab our attention and generate clicks and revenue.

One thing I recommend to combat this supernormal sense of fear and danger is to build a more positive digital environment – and focus more on consuming and sharing good news.

Because for every negative story, there is a positive one. We just don’t see them reported as often or turned into national sensations.

Supernormal relationships and socializing

Our relationships and social interactions are also influenced by the power of supernormal stimuli.

For many people, technology such as TV, video games, and the internet provide ways to fulfill our natural instinct for social interaction without ever leaving our homes or conversing face-to-face.

Dierdre Barret argues that television especially can lead to misleading feelings of socializing and “illusory friends.”

“The plots – and even the names – of popular TV shows tells us which instincts they’re tugging at. ‘Friends’ brought into our living room a group of lively roommates, whose smiles, quips, and laughter caught us up in their camaraderie without our having to exercise any social effort. ‘Sex and the City’ gave us more vicarious romantic adventures than we’d encounter in a lifetime…’Cheers’ took us to the ideal neighborhood gathering place where again we were guaranteed friendliness and humor no matter how lumpen our own behavior.”

I can definitely relate to the feeling of being personally connected with a character from a TV show; and then, when a long-running TV show ends, you almost get the feeling that you “lost a friend.” That’s the power of supernormal stimuli.

“One number-one effort should be to get back to more social interactions. The relative merits of the new technologies are proportional to how compatible they are with this. Television interferes with all types of interactions. Couples with a set in their bedroom have half the sex and report less conversational intimacy than other couples. Family conversation correlates inversely with amount of television watched.”

This research aligns with sociologist Robert Putnam’s work on the disintegration of the community, which attributes a lot of our current feelings of loneliness and isolation to the rise of television and mass media.

Video games can have a similar effect, although at least in multiplayer games you are actually connecting with other real people.

The important thing to remember is that none of these technologies are necessarily harmful – and many of them can even improve our ability to connect with people, stay in touch, and socialize. However, the big caveat is when these technologies start replacing social interactions rather than enhancing them.

Dating apps are one popular example of this. The goal of a dating app should be to eventually meet someone in the real world and develop a genuine connection with them. But unfortunately, many people just use them as a way to get attention, “shop around,” or kill some time.

Texting, emails, and social media are all fantastic tools for communication as well. I use them every single day. But if you’re always looking at your phone while talking to someone or eating a meal with family, then you may need to reprioritize your relationship with technology.

While the instant feedback we get through these devices is an easy high, the relationships we can build in the real world – face to face – are often much more rewarding in the long-term.

Supernormal cuteness

One of the most famous examples of supernormal stimuli is “cuteness.”

What we find “cute” is often universal across cultures (and even other animals). We typically see “cuteness” as a disproportionately large head, big eyes, small nose, chubby limbs, and clumsy coordination.

Evolutionary biologists claim that cuteness often triggers our nurturing instincts. And our culture has definitely evolved to trigger these instincts on a supernormal level.

Biologist Konrad Lorenz was one of the first to make note of the changes in facial features from infancy to adulthood across species, and how that influences our “nurture”-response.

Physical changes from infancy to adulthood across species:

This understanding of cuteness has been amplified within many aspects of our culture.

The evolution of the Teddy Bear is one early example of our culture refining cuteness. And Mickey Mouse is another. Walt Disney used to write “keep it cute” above animator’s desks at one point in the Disney studio.

The book also mentions how Kawaii culture in Japan is a huge exaggeration of these cute features, such as in Pikachu or Hello Kitty.

Another popular example is how many dogs are now selectively bred to keep their “infant-like” / cute features into adulthood, such as toy breeds.

While this supernormal cuteness influences some of our commercial purchases and what we find aesthetically pleasing, it’s not as harmful compared to the other supernormal stimuli in our environment.

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