That annoying ShamWow pitchman may actually be making your life more fun. Television ads - even bad ones - make watching a program more enjoyable, new research suggests.
Leif Nelson, a psychologist and assistant professor of marketing at the University of California in San Diego asked 87 student volunteers to watch an episode of the show Taxi. One group saw the show with commercials, exactly as it had aired in syndication in 2005, while other watched a tape of it with no advertisements.
The students who viewed the ads reported that they didn't like them. But they rated the show as more enjoyable than their counterparts who saw the uninterrupted version.
Dr. Nelson suspected it wasn't the content of the ads that made the show more appealing, but rather the fact that there were breaks in viewing. A follow-up experiment involving 256 volunteers who watched nature videos found that short interruptions seem to help people get more out of watching TV.
We adapt quickly to pleasurable experiences, says Dr. Nelson, and our enjoyment quickly tapers off.
"Each successive minute is slightly less enjoyable than the previous one," he says. So a break - even it involves a strange man hawking a yellow cloth - makes the experience novel again.
In his paper, which has been accepted for publication by the Journal of Consumer Research, he notes that this effect is not universal. Commercials shown in fast-paced shows with complicated plots may not enhance the viewing experience. Too many commercials in a row - especially if they are tedious - might also have a negative impact.
ROBOT SAVIOURS
The world's first urban search-and-rescue robots were sent into action on Sept. 11, 2001, when the twin towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan collapsed after a terrorist attack. But the machines got stuck, says Goldie Nejat, an engineer at the University of Toronto. She is working on an intelligent robotic system that will work better. Her six-wheeled robot is designed to go over rubble, and can pivot, so it doesn't need a large amount of space to turn around. It is called MARP, for Mobile Assistive Robotic Platform, and is equipped with a series of sensors that will provide a three-dimensional map of the area being searched to rescuers operating the machine from a safe location. The robot will peer into dark or smoky spaces where someone might be trapped after an earthquake, mudslide or other disaster. It could even rescue someone, says Dr. Nejat, provided they are able to crawl over and sit on the robot, which is about the size of a case of beer. She and her colleagues are testing a prototype in a simulated disaster zone in their lab.
"It has rubble in it. It has wood, some concrete blocks, plastic pipe, chairs that have been broken, whatever garbage we can find."
GROOVING BRAINS
When guitarists playing together get into a groove, so do their brains. Ulman Lindenberger at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin and his colleagues asked eight pairs of musicians to play a short jazz-fusion duet while they used electroencephalography to measure the electrical activity of their brains. Brain waves in several regions were synchronized while the two guitarists played, including areas of the brain that regulate movement, the researchers reported in the journal BMC Neuroscience. They say that the same kind of thing may happen when two people dance together.
STUCK ON MUSSELS
The glue that helps mussels hold fast to rocks could one day be used to help stick people back together after surgery. The proteins found in mussel glue are non-toxic and biodegradable, North Carolina State University's Roger Narayan and his colleagues report in the Journal of Biomedical Materials Research Part B. The adhesive can be put in a solution, and applied with an inkjet printer, which would allow doctors to carefully place it on a post-surgery wound.
Anne McIlroy is The Globe and Mail's science writer.