Jewels and Smiths

En route to the office this morning, I happened to catch a little piece from RadioLab that was presented on NPR’s Morning Edition. The piece, itself derived from a recent RadioLab episode on the topic of choice, was about the impact that memory load has on one’s ability to make decisions. They highlighted an experiment conducted at Stanford in which students were given either a 2 digit number or a 7 digit number to memorize. They were then asked to go to a neighboring room to report the number, and, while walking from one room to the next, were interrupted by a researcher who offered them a choice of snacks–a slice of chocolate cake, or a bowl of fruit. Unbeknownst to the students, this was the part of the experiment that the researchers really were interested in. On average, students who were still attempting to remember a 7 digit number chose cake twice as often as students who were only holding a two-digit number in memory. The researchers’ explanation? Keeping all of that information in memory imposes a significant tax on the students’ rational reasoning capabilities, and, as a result, it is the more emotionally driven, evolutionarily older part of your brain that ends up with responsibility for making that decision. Add that reasoning to some unfortunate archaic terminology you find in old psychology textbooks, and the whole thing boils down to the following:

LIZARD WANTS CAKE.

…and it’s just waiting for its chance.

“So Julia,” you say, “what the heck does this have to do with anything anyway?”

Well.

Notwithstanding the bit where it’s actually kind of interesting in its own right, I’ve been dealing with a bit of a paradox related to my personal pregnancy experience. Specifically, I’d had a rough time resolving these two facts: from a hormonal perspective, right now I should actually be amiable and level-headed, primarily due to the ridiculously high levels of progesterone that my body is producing in order to sustain the growth of the fetus (it’s true–all of that PMS stuff happens when hormone levels suddenly drop, not when they peak). However, emotionally, this experience has been a bit of a roller coaster. So, given that my physiological state is all about me being mellow, why am I instead moody, anxious, and prone to fits of insomnia rivaling my non-pregnant sleep cycle? Well, maybe it’s just that I have a lot on my mind.

Pregnancy is a tremendous memory sink–when is my next doctor’s appointment, how far along am I, how many hours do I need to fast before the glucose tolerance test? How many servings of tuna am I allowed before I risk rotting my kid’s brain with mercury poisoning? Did I take my vitamin? Where will the baby sleep? What forms do I need to fill out to have my maternity leave approved? Add all of that to a normal (where normal here means, “crazy workaholic”) mental load, and it’s no wonder that all I want to do is yell at other drivers, eat a Boston cream doughnut, and then curl into a little puddle on the couch, cat-style, and nap until I give birth. All of my rational processes have been co-opted by deciding on things like cloth versus disposable.

Thus, in summary: I apologize if I seem a bit of a mess these days, but, as it turns out LIZARD WANTS CAKE, and I don’t have it in me to deny lizard anymore.