5 hours ago
Picture a bridge made of Legos. One side has three support pieces, the other two. How would you stabilize the bridge?
Most people would add a piece so that there are three supports on each side, a new study suggests. But why not remove a piece so that each side has two supports instead? It turns out that getting people to subtract whether a Lego block, ingredients in a recipe or words in an essay requires reminders and rewards, researchers report April 7 in
Nature.
This default to addition isn’t limited to assembling blocks, cooking and writing. Rather, thinking in pluses instead of minuses could well contribute to modern-day excesses such as cluttered homes, institutional red tape and even an overburdened planet, says behavioral scientist Benjamin Converse of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. “We’re missing an entire class of solutions.”