To react to this, we need an intervention that does not rely on the premise that teenagers will remember how they wanted to behave while in a cold state (or how their parents wanted them to behave) and follow these guidelines even when they are in a hot state. Why not build into cars precautionary devices to foil teenagers’ behavior? Such cars might be equipped with a modified OnStar system that the teenager and the parents configure in a cold state. If a car exceeds 65 miles per hour on the highway, or more than 40 miles per hour in a residential zone, for example, there will be consequences. If the car exceeds the speed limit or begins to make erratic turns, the radio might switch from 2Pac to Schumann’s Second Symphony (this would slow most teenagers). Or the car might blast the air conditioning in winter, switch on the heat in summer, or automatically call Mom (a real downer if the driver’s friends are present). With these substantial and immediate consequences in mind, then, the driver and his or her friends would realize that it’s time for Mr. Hyde to move over and let Dr. Jekyll drive.
This is not at all far-fetched. Modern cars are already full of computers that control the fuel injection, the climate system, and the sound system. Cars equipped with OnStar are already linked to a wireless network. With today’s technology, it would be a simple matter for a car to automatically call Mom.
Better Life Decisions
Not uncommonly, women who are pregnant for the first time tell their doctors, before the onset of labor, that they will refuse any kind of painkiller. The decision made in their cold state is admirable, but they make this decision when they can’t imagine the pain that can come with childbirth (let alone the challenges of child rearing). After all is said and done, they may wish they’d gone for the epidural.
With this in mind, Sumi (my lovely wife) and I, readying ourselves for the birth of our first child, Amit, decided to test our mettle before making any decisions about using an epidural. To do this, Sumi plunged her hands into a bucket of ice for two minutes (we did this on the advice of our birth coach, who swore to us that the resulting pain would be similar to the pain of childbirth), while I coached her breathing. If Sumi was unable to bear the pain of this experience, we figured, she’d probably want painkillers when she was going through the actual birth. After two minutes of holding her hands in the ice bucket, Sumi clearly understood the appeal of an epidural. During the birth itself, any ounce of love Sumi ever had for her husband was completely transferred to the anesthesiologist, who produced the epidural at the critical point. (With our second child, we made it to the hospital about two minutes before Neta was born, so Sumi did end up experiencing an analgesic-free birth after all.)
LOOKING FROM ONE emotional state to another is difficult. It’s not always possible; and as Sumi learned it can be painful. But to make informed decisions we need to somehow experience and understand the emotional state we will be in at the other side of the experience. Learning how to bridge this gap is essential to making some of the important decisions of our lives.
It is unlikely that we would move to a different city without asking friends who live there how they like it, or even choose to see a film without reading some reviews. Isn’t it strange that we invest so little in learning about both sides of ourselves? Why should we reserve this subject for psychology classes when failure to understand it can bring about repeated failures in so many aspects of our lives? We need to explore the two sides of ourselves; we need to understand the cold state and the hot state; we need to see how the gap between the hot and cold states benefits our lives, and where it leads us astray.
What did our experiments suggest? It may be that our models of human behavior need to be rethought. Perhaps there is no such thing as a fully integrated human being. We may, in fact, be an agglomeration of multiple selves. Although there is nothing much we can do to get our Dr. Jekyll to fully appreciate the strength of our Mr. Hyde, perhaps just being aware that we are prone to making the wrong decisions when gripped by intense emotion may help us, in some way, to apply our knowledge of our “Hyde” selves to our daily activities.
How can we try to force our “Hyde” self to behave better? This is what Chapter 7 is about.
APPENDIX: CHAPTER 5
A complete list of the questions we asked, with the mean response and percentage differences. Each question was presented on a visual-analog scale that stretched between “no” on the left (zero) to “possibly” in the middle (50) to “yes” on the right (100).
TABLE 1
RATE THE ATTRACTIVENESS OF DIFFERENT ACTIVITIES
| Question | Nonaroused | Aroused | Difference, percent |
| Are women’s shoes erotic? | 42 | 65 | 55 |
| Can you imagine being attracted to a 12-year-old girl? | 23 | 46 | 100 |
| Can you imagine having sex with a 40-year-old woman? | 58 | 77 | 33 |
| Can you imagine having sex with a 50-year-old woman? | 28 | 55 | 96 |
| Can you imagine having sex with a 60-year-old woman? | 7 | 23 | 229 |
| Can you imagine having sex with a man? | 8 | 14 | 75 |
| Could it be fun to have sex with someone who was extremely fat? | 13 | 24 | 85 |
| Could you enjoy having sex with someone you hated? | 53 | 77 | 45 |
| If you were attracted to a woman and she proposed a threesome with a man, would you do it? | 19 | 34 | 79 |
| Is a woman sexy when she’s sweating? | 56 | 72 | 29 |
| Is the smell of cigarette smoke arousing? | 13 | 22 | 69 |
| Would it be fun to get tied up by your sexual partner? | 63 | 81 | 29 |
| Would it be fun to tie up your sexual partner? | 47 | 75 | 60 |
| Would it be fun to watch an attractive woman urinating? | 25 | 32 | 28 |
| Would you find it exciting to spank your sexual partner? | 61 | 72 | 18 |
| Would you find it exciting to get spanked by an attractive woman? | 50 | 68 | 36 |
| Would you find it exciting to have anal sex? | 46 | 77 |
67
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