Erin Westgate used to be an optimist.

When I was in graduate school, we were working on this question of how we could develop well-being interventions to actually make people's lives happier.

And we had this idea that if we just put people in an empty room by themselves and just gave them a few minutes

to be alone with their own thoughts that they'd really enjoy it.

You know, people always say, oh my goodness, I'm so busy. I wish I just had a few minutes to

sit down and think. So Erin recruited a whole bunch of people, and she had them each spend

15 minutes in an empty room in total silence.

And most people didn't enjoy it very much.

They said things like brushing their teeth was better.

They hated it.

So she decided to flip the whole study on its head.

Instead of trying to help people feel better, she was going to try and see how bad she could make them feel

by giving them the option to listen to horrible sounds instead.

So like someone throwing up, nails on a chalkboard, glass breaking,

and sure enough, yeah, people would rather listen to sounds of people vomiting,

nails on a chalkboard, etc. rather than simply sit in silence.

At this point, Erin was just morbidly curious. Did people hate silence so much that they'd actually prefer pain? Like,

what if she put people in an ankle cuff and gave them the option to shock themselves?

It is not pleasant. It hurts a little bit. I always liken it to the feeling of like a cat sort of

jumping out and scratching you. It's sort of like, ah ah, you know, shocking, but it's not actually harmful.

And so we set this hall up and we just sort of waited.

And the first few participants, we just sort of were like, are they going to do it?

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