The new pleasure seekers
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1374175,00.html
Ian Sample talks to the scientists teasing out why we strive so much
for pleasurable experiences - and why, when we have it all, we risk
everything for more excitement
Thursday December 16, 2004
The Guardian
For as long as they have existed, students have embraced the role of
obliging guinea-pigs, on hand to take part in all manner of intrusive,
humiliating and bizarre experiments dreamed up by their supervisors.
Nonetheless, one of Michel Cabanac's experiments must have raised
eyebrows. "I offered them money to feel pain," says the physiologist at
Laval University in Qu=E9bec. "It can be quite dangerous, because what
if a student has just destroyed his parents' car? He's going to need
money really badly."
Undeterred, Cabanac lined his students up against a wall. It was going
to be bad, but not as bad as they might have thought. He got them to
sit, as if perched on an imaginary stool, a position which forced their
weight onto their knees. "Try it," he says. "The pain soon becomes
unsufferable." Cabanac then promised the students increasingly large
lumps of cash to endure the pain. The more he offered, the longer they
suffered. The longest lasted for eight minutes 20 seconds.
Life
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/
Ian Sample
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=3Den&lr=3D&selm=3D18510aff.0411180358.66=
9f901d@posting.google.com
.
|
