Unbelievable! "Einstein's Brain" sold online for over 70,000. Who is buying it?

The world is so big that nothing is impossible. Einstein probably never imagined that one day his “brain” would be sold hotly on an e-commerce platform.

A brain costs from 1 cent to 50 cents. "After you take a picture, it will grow on your brain automatically, and you can give it to your relatives and friends." There are also enhanced versions - brains in subdivided fields such as "pass every exam", "have a job in your destiny", and "pass the postgraduate entrance examination". There are no physical goods, and the main product is receiving with thoughts. The sales volume is still very high. Some stores have even placed more than 70,000 orders.

Swipe left to see more Source: Internet screenshot

Why is "Einstein's brain" so popular? Is it a tax on IQ? What are people buying?

This is a consumption of emotional value

In the order comments, I saw a lot of people criticizing that "only fools would buy it", but I don't think it's a waste of money because it's too cheap.

I asked the kid who came over to watch the fun: "Would you buy Einstein's brain?"

The child said: "I will buy it for 1 cent, I will buy it for 10 cents, but I won't buy it for 1 dollar."

I asked, “Why?”

The kid said, "1 cent and 1 dime can't buy anything anyway, so I might as well buy some hope, because we Chinese believe in miracles! But if it's 1 dollar, I might as well buy an old popsicle. Compared to the impossible miracle, I'd rather grab the old popsicle in front of me."

I see. If it’s more than one dollar, it’s superstition. If it’s less than 50 cents, it’s called emotional value.

Emotional value refers to the difference between our emotional benefits and emotional costs . In the purchase of "Einstein's Brain", emotional value is the happy laughter when receiving blessings from friends when you are anxious before the exam, or the confidence when you cheer yourself up and say "you will pass every exam"; while emotional cost is almost 0, because a few cents will not have any negative impact on our emotions. Only when this cost reaches a certain value - for example, for my child, when it is as high as 1 yuan, his negative emotions may arise, because this means giving up an old popsicle!

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In addition to the emotional value

This is also a sense of control.

Then I discovered that there are actually many things like "Einstein's brain" in life. For example, one day, my lover, Teacher Lu, came back and excitedly held my hand and said, "Guess who I met while queuing at the Yanyuan barber shop today? I met Wei Shen (Wei Dongyi, a researcher at the School of Mathematical Sciences of Peking University)! And he said a long sentence to me!"

I asked, "Awesome! What did Wei Shen tell you?"

Lu replied: "Wei Shen said: 'Why are there so many people in the barber shop today! There weren't so many people when I came last time!' Look, he said so many words to me, it must be able to bring me an IQ blessing! Come, hold my hand tightly, let me add some intelligence to you, and bless you to publish more papers."

I said, "I see. It's the same as 'Einstein's brain'."

Lu said: "No, no, no! It's not the same thing. Einstein doesn't speak Chinese, he can't help us with the Greater China region, only Wei Shen's brain is really useful!"

I discovered that this seems to be the same mentality as those of my classmates who usually post “get good luck”, “get happiness”, “get wealth” in the major comment sections, and those who leave messages in my backstage saying “please ask Daodao Xin to bless me to pass the final exams”.

We believe that good luck, wisdom, and wealth, which are invisible and intangible, will be attached to some physical medium (this medium may be a network connection, a sentence, or a personal item) to be transmitted - in my opinion, this is the concretization of good luck .

The concept of concretization was first proposed by psychologist Moreno and was previously used in the field of psychotherapy. It can help individuals better express their emotions and have a better understanding of themselves. Its core is to transform abstract ideas and emotions into more concrete external representations.

One of the benefits of visualization is that it increases the sense of control and reduces uncertainty. People often seek some way to reduce anxiety when faced with uncertainty and lack of control. Through this tangible operation (buying "Einstein's brain"), some uncontrollable expectations are transformed into controllable actual actions, from virtual to real, and anxiety is reduced by strengthening the sense of control.

After all, we are under so much pressure in real life and there are so many uncontrollable things... There are some results that cannot be influenced by any effort and we can only resort to prayer.

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The power of psychological suggestion

In addition to increasing the sense of control, visualization can also increase self-efficacy and self-confidence to a certain extent: some people enhance their self-efficacy and self-confidence by visualizing good luck, and they believe that this practice can help them get more positive results. It is like this behavior of "receiving good luck" and "receiving IQ" may not be completely absurd, and there may be a role of "psychological suggestion" behind it.

Psychological suggestion is a hypothesis affirmed by subjective will. Since we subjectively affirm its existence (I can get good grades), we will psychologically tend to make this happen (I really get good grades).

Because we do not passively accept the influence of the external environment and the arrangements of fate, but we will exert subjective initiative according to our own expectations and make the expected things happen.

Sometimes, "self-hypnosis" becomes very important - for example, saying "I am beautiful" to the mirror, saying "Give me your brain" to Wei Shen - this is to constantly emphasize a certain cognition in the subconscious mind, so that the subconscious mind accepts this "brainwashing" and thus exerts a certain influence on one's own subconscious mind.

Therefore, receiving some blessing messages before completing a certain goal or task, or performing some rituals/actions to increase our luck, will often really improve our performance.

Some psychological activities can even cause corresponding physiological changes (for example, in product reviews, some people felt that they performed better on the test after taking a photo of "Einstein's brain"). This is called "psychosomatic reaction" in psychology. For example, in some successful cases of healing diseases through faith and qigong, it is the psychological suggestion that leads to real physiological changes.

Then again, is “Einstein’s brain” a waste of money?

Many times, people perform superstitious rituals, actions, and treatments just to seek psychological comfort. As long as the behavior is not excessive, does not harm others or themselves, does not cost money or cause anger, there is nothing wrong with spending a little change for good luck.

But be careful. If someone uses the name of "healing" to defraud you of money, sex, brainwash you, keep you sick and instigate you to hurt yourself or others, then you should hand it over to the police!

Planning and production

Author: Zhang Xin, Associate Professor, School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Peking University

Review丨He Lingfeng Professor of School of Psychology, Shanghai University of Sport

Fan Chunlei, Associate Researcher, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Planning丨Zhong Yanping

Editor: Zhong Yanping

Proofread by Xu Lailinlin