Researchers have found that people found new enjoyment in popcorn, videos - even water - when they consumed them in unconventional ways. Photo / 123RF
If you are not enjoying your favorite things as much as you used to, new research suggests a way to break through the boredom: try the same old things in new ways.
Researchers have found that people found new enjoyment in popcorn, videos - even water - when they consumed them in unconventional ways.
Findings suggested that using unconventional consumption methods helped people focus on what they enjoyed about the product in the first place, said Ohio University's Assistant Professor Robert Smith.
"When you eat popcorn with chopsticks, you pay more attention and you are more immersed in the experience," Smith said.
"It's like eating popcorn for the first time."
This phenomenon may explain such things as the popularity of "pitch black" restaurants that serve diners in the dark.
"It may not be anything special about darkness that makes us enjoy food more. It may be the mere fact that dining in the dark is unusual."
Smith explored the phenomenon in a new study with Ed O'Brien of the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business.
The researchers conducted four experiments.
In one study, 68 people came to a laboratory supposedly for an experiment about "helping people eat more slowly."
Half the people ate 10 kernels of popcorn using their hands, one at a time.
The other half ate the kernels one at a time with chopsticks.
Afterward, participants rated the experience on a variety of measures, including how much they enjoyed the popcorn, how flavourful it was and how much fun it was to eat it.
Results showed that people who ate the popcorn using chopsticks reported enjoying it more than those who used their hands, Smith said.
Another finding suggested why that might be.
Those who used chopsticks - compared with those who ate with their hands - reported that they felt more immersed in the experience, that it helped intensify the taste and helped them focus on the food.
But the researchers then had the participants repeat the experiment. In this second trial, everyone enjoyed the popcorn equally and felt equally immersed, regardless of how they ate it.
"This suggests chopsticks boost enjoyment because they provide an unusual first-time experience, not because they are a better way to eat popcorn," Smith said.
A second study of 300 participants recruited online found that even drinking water was rated as more enjoyable when it was done in novel ways.
In this study, participants came up with their own "fresh, new and fun" ways to drink water - everything from drinking out of a martini glass to drinking out of a shipping envelope to lapping at the water with their tongue like a cat.
Those who drank water in these novel ways enjoyed it more than those who drank it normally.
In the final two studies - one conducted in a lab and one done online - participants watched a one-minute video three times in a row.
The video showed an exciting motorcycle ride filmed with a GoPro camera from the driver's perspective.
All participants watched it twice normally, rating how much they enjoyed it after each viewing.
But the third viewing was different for some participants.
One-third were asked to watch the videos using "hand-goggles" - forming circles with their thumbs and index fingers around their eyes, and using them to track the ride by bobbing their head back and forth to follow the cyclist.
For another third of the participants, the video was flipped upside down.
The final third watched the video in the conventional way.
As expected, those who watched the video in the conventional way showed less enjoyment by the third viewing.
Those who watched the video upside down didn't enjoy it very much because, even though the viewing was unconventional, it was also disruptive.
However, those who watched the video for the third time with hand-goggles enjoyed it more than the other groups.
But did participants really enjoy the video more - or did they just like the strange experience of using hand-goggles?
Results suggest the unconventional way of watching really did make the video itself more enjoyable.
After the study, the researchers offered to let all participants download the video to keep - and three times more people who watched with hand-goggles asked to download the video than those in the other conditions.
"They actually thought the video was better because the hand-goggles got them to pay more attention to what they were watching than they would have otherwise," Smith said.
"They were more immersed in the video."
Smith said these findings apply in a variety of ways to everyday life.
For example, when you're eating pizza, after eating one slice normally, you could try eating one slice with a knife and fork and then folding the next slice.
And if you're sick of your sofa, try putting it in another room rather than getting rid of it.
"It may be easier to make it feel new than you might think," he said.
"It is also a lot less wasteful to find new ways to enjoy the things we have rather than buying new things."
If you shivered through this week's chilly temperatures, then have a think about the freakish readings of nearly minus 100C that scientists have picked up in Antarctica.
The temperatures, recorded in tiny valleys near the top of Antarctica's ice sheet, could change scientists' understanding of just how low temperatures can get at Earth's surface, and how it happens.
After sifting through data from several Earth-observing satellites, scientists announced in 2013 that they found surface temperatures of minus 93C in several spots on the East Antarctic Plateau, a high snowy plateau in central Antarctica that encompasses the South Pole.
That preliminary study has been revised with new data showing that the coldest sites actually reach minus 98C.
The temperatures are observed during the southern polar night, mostly during July and August.
When the researchers first announced they had found the coldest temperatures on Earth five years ago, they determined that persistent clear skies and light winds were required for temperatures to dip this low.
But the new study added a twist to the story.
Not only are clear skies necessary, but the air must also be extremely dry, because water vapour blocks the loss of heat from the snow surface.
The researchers observed the ultra-low temperatures in small dips or shallow hollows in the Antarctic Ice Sheet where cold, dense, descending air pools above the surface and can remain for several days.
This allowed the surface, and the air above it, to cool still further, until the clear, calm, and dry conditions break down and the air mixes with warmer air higher in the atmosphere.
"In this area, we see periods of incredibly dry air, and this allows the heat from the snow surface to radiate into space more easily," said Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder.
The record of -98C was about as cold as it is possible to get at Earth's surface, according to the researchers.
For the temperature to drop that low, clear skies and dry air need to persist for several days.
Temperatures could drop a little lower if the conditions lasted for several weeks, but that was extremely unlikely to happen, Scambos said.
It was the high elevation of the East Antarctic Plateau and its proximity to the South Pole that gave it the coldest climate of any region on Earth.
The lowest air temperature ever measured by a weather station, minus 89C, was recorded there at Russia's Vostok Station in July 1983.
But weather stations can't measure temperatures everywhere.
So in 2013, Scambos and his colleagues decided to analyse data from several Earth-observing satellites to see if they could find temperatures on the plateau even lower than those recorded at Vostok.
In the new study, they analysed satellite data collected during the Southern Hemisphere's winter between 2004 and 2016.
The researchers observed snow surface temperatures regularly dropping below minus 90C almost every winter in a broad region of the plateau, more than 3500 metres above sea level.
Within this broad region, they found dozens of sites had much colder temperatures.
Nearly 100 locations reached surface temperatures of minus 98C.
The atmosphere in this region can sometimes have less than 0.2 mm total precipitable water above the surface.
But even when it is that dry and cold, the air traps some of the heat and sends it back to the surface.
This meant that the cooling rates are very slow as the surface temperatures approach the record values.
Conditions do not persist long enough - it could take weeks - for the temperatures to dip below the observed records.
However, the temperature measured from satellites is the temperature of the snow surface, not the air above it.
So the study also estimated the air temperatures by using nearby automatic weather stations and the satellite data.
Interestingly, even though the coldest sites were spread out over hundreds of kilometres, the lowest temperatures were all nearly the same.
That got them wondering: Is there a limit to how cold it can get on the plateau?
Using the difference between the satellite measurements of the lowest surface snow temperatures at Vostok and three automated stations, and the air temperatures at the same place and time, the researchers inferred that the air temperatures at the very coldest sites were probably around minus 94C.
The research team has also developed a set of instruments designed to survive and operate at the very coldest places through the winter and measure both snow and air temperatures.
They are now planning to deploy the instruments in the next year or two, during the Antarctic summer when the temperatures are a comparatively mild minus 30C.
A live cook-off featured ox heart, wapiti, wild boar and plenty of edible wildlife.