What Happens When You Put on a Costume?

DUCKWORTH: One star. I don’t believe it, and it’s boring.

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DUCKWORTH: I’m Angela Duckworth.

MAUGHAN: I’m Mike Maughan.

DUCKWORTH + MAUGHAN: And you’re listening to No Stupid Questions.

Today on the show: what happens when you put on a costume?

MAUGHAN: “This is my night of debauchery.”

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MAUGHAN: Angela, we are in the season of ghosts and witches, costumes and masquerades. So, today’s question is, I think, especially interesting. “What is the history of why people dress up at certain times? And what happens when you put on a disguise? Are there upsides where some people feel more free to be themselves? And what are the downsides of the anonymity of a disguise? Signed, Spencer.” Before we dive into this —

DUCKWORTH: Halloween. Boo.

MAUGHAN: “Halloween. Boo.” Before we dive into this, let me start by asking you a question. Did you dress up for Halloween as a kid? And if so, what was your favorite costume? And do you dress up for Halloween as an adult? 

DUCKWORTH: Oh, I have actually thought about this question and remarked on its significance in my psychological development. So, when I was growing up in Southern New Jersey as the daughter of two Chinese immigrants who thought ice cream sandwiches were made on Wonder Bread, right? Like, they didn’t really fully get all these American traditions. They partially got them. So, my mom and dad didn’t, you know, put out jack-o-lanterns. We didn’t decorate the house. I was always the one who said, at some point, “We have to buy candy.” It was also outside of my parents’ possible cognition that I would go to the store and buy a costume and then it would be only worn once. Like, how wasteful? So, they refused to do what kids of my generation really wanted to do, which is you would go to, like, the drugstore at that point, and there would be these little boxes, you know, like, Wonder Woman, or a ghost, or a witch, a cat. And it would have this really cheap plastic mask with this elastic across the back that only lasted for about — right? — 10 minutes. And then it would have this, like, printed plastic sheet that was supposed to turn you into whatever you were. And that’s all I wanted. I wanted to be normal. I wanted to be like all the American kids. And I never got that, but my parents did say you could do whatever else you want to do. So, they didn’t forbid me from dressing up. And here was my solution, which I executed for all the Halloweens I can remember from my childhood and adolescence: I would take a  Glad trash bag, like the really big ones, you know, for leaves and stuff, like the dark green ones, really thick, and I would cut two holes in the bottom for my legs, and then I would fill it with balled up newspaper, and I would then tie the top loosely around my neck. So, I’d be wearing a trash bag. And I would go around, “trick or treat,” and people would ask me, like, “what are you?” And without thinking too deeply, I was like, “I’m trash.” And they were like, “Oh, how clever.” They would try to say something positive. So, that was my childhood. That may have something to do with the fact that as an adult, Mike, to your second question: typically, I do not dress up for Halloween.

MAUGHAN: I will say this. I traditionally do not dress up as an adult either, but in recent years Halloween has become among my favorite holidays, because I think it is so cute to see everybody’s pictures — all my friends and family posting pictures of their little kids, you know, dressed up on their Halloween costume tour at school or whatever. And I’ve recently decided that I want to be much more festive and into Halloween. So, go to the Home Depot and buy the — 

DUCKWORTH: You want to be in the parade!

MAUGHAN: Well, or just buy —  I don’t want to be in the parade, but I want to buy the 10-foot skeleton at Home Depot to put in the front yard to, like, have some Halloween spirit and make it a little bit more fun. “This can be such an exciting, fun holiday. Why not get into it a little bit?” 

DUCKWORTH: You don’t want to be, like, the Halloween Grinch. So, wait, what was your kid Halloween experience? Did you get dressed up?

MAUGHAN: Yeah, so we did get dressed up. We thankfully had a neighbor down the road, Sally Wiseman, who had an entire chest full of so many costumes. And I don’t remember — I think her family had been engaged in theater. And so, it was just like: go down to the Wisemans’s and pick out a Halloween costume. And that’s kind of how we often got dressed.

DUCKWORTH: So, what the heck is this Halloween holiday about anyway, right? It’s not celebrating love, like Valentine’s Day, or gratitude, like Thanksgiving. It’s got to be American, right? Like, Halloween isn’t from another country?

MAUGHAN: So, its origins actually date back about 2,000 years. There was a Celtic pagan festival called Samhain, and it was to mark the end of summer and kind of the beginning of the year’s, quote, “darker half” in the British Isles. So, during the festival, it was believed that the gods became visible. This all comes from an article by journalist Maryanne Cerini, who wrote about the history of Halloween. And so, this tradition emerged during this Celtic pagan festival where people would offer treats and food to the gods or they would put on disguises, like animal skins or an animal head, so that the spirits would pass them by and therefore miss them. Fast forward and Christianity is coming in and, sort of, adopting a bunch of these pagan holidays and trying to reform them a bit. November 1st was celebrated as All Saints Day. And so, All Hallows Eve turned into Halloween on October 31st. What’s interesting though is: in the first half of the, the 20th century people’s costumes are traditionally terrifying. People are still opting for this very morbid and serious costume. Because the idea is still: ward off evil spirits and reconcile with death, but what do Americans do better than anyone? We commercialize things.

DUCKWORTH: I was going to say we eat candy, but okay, that’s not entirely unrelated. Yeah.

MAUGHAN: Yeah, so as soon as Halloween begins to really permeate American culture, and this is starting in kind of the 1920s and ‘30s, then you get this company known as Halpern Company, better known as Halco in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who starts licensing characters to make costumes. So, think back then, you’ve got Popeye, and Olive Oyl, and Little Orphan Annie, and Mickey Mouse. Right?

DUCKWORTH: This is now sounding like an American holiday. There are trademarks involved. 

MAUGHAN: Exactly. So, we moved from, like, “I’m really scary, and we’re warding off evil.” Here’s the real kicker though. Halloween became such a violent time, especially, like — this is culminating in the 1940s. The press starts referring to it as a night of anarchy, because there’s vandalism, rioting, broken fences, broken windows. It’s widely assumed that costumes in their current form were put together partly to ward off this bad behavior and change and recast the holiday as this activity for younger kids. So, instead of adults dressing horrifically in terrifying ways, it was like, why don’t we turn this into a cute thing for kids and just kind of make this a fun holiday? And so, this is where we come back, I think, to Spencer’s questions. Part of the issue was that people were so dressed up and they used it almost as this excuse to act differently than they would otherwise, right? The thought was costumes are a big part of the problem as to why there’s this rioting, and smashed windows, and broken fences, and all these things — because people are doing things they would never do if they were representing themselves. But when they’re in a costume or a disguise, it’s like, “Well, this is my night of debauchery.”

DUCKWORTH: You know, there’s this, um, amazing study that was published just about 50 years ago, a little less than that. It’s a study that was led by Ed Diener, who is truly one of the greatest psychologists ever, and I think now he’s known as somebody who created the science of happiness research.   But back in the day, Ed Diener was really interested in what’s called “deindividuation” — blending into the group. So, it’s not Mike Maughan. It’s, you know, this group. It’s not Angela Duckworth. It’s the group. So, he does this study, like, what is the effect of masking yourself on deindividuation, and then what you do morally? The whole thing was so clever because he knew kids were going to go trick-or-treating. So, he knew if he prepared in the month of October for this experiment, that on October 31st, he could vary, for example, when they knocked on the door, you know, what the adult would say. And the houses were set up. And this is the experimental part. So there was this unobtrusive observer who would watch kids and, you know record things, like, was the kid alone? Were they in a group?

MAUGHAN: Also something hard to do today. Some “unobtrusive observer” taking notes on kids trick-or-treating.

DUCKWORTH: I think you probably could, actually. Like, I think legally you are allowed to record public behavior even if it’s a child. I’m not 100 percent sure. 

MAUGHAN: I just meant it seems creepy.

DUCKWORTH: Oh, yes, it’s definitely creepier today, I think, than it was in 1976. But in the non-anonymous condition, right, this is the condition where you walk up to the house and this house is set up so that you are supposed to be “individuated.” So, here’s what the article says. “After the experimenter” — meaning the adult who answers the door, “trick or treat” — “After the experimenter greeted the children and commented on their costumes,”  which all conditions the adult was like, “Oh, I love your costume. So glad you dressed up as trash.” But, “after the experimenter greeted the children and commented on their costumes, she would explicitly ask each child in the non-anonymous condition what his or her name was and where he or she lived.” Okay, by the way, so not happening today. “The experimenter carefully repeated each child’s name and address to make it salient that she knew this information about each of them. She then continued with the rest of the basic procedure.” And the basic procedure I also find ingenious. It’s this moral test that I remember taking when I was a trick-or-treater. You remember those bowls of candy that would have the sign, “Please take one”? You know, like, people were out of town?

MAUGHAN: Yes, yes.

DUCKWORTH: And you can take one, but nobody’s looking, so you can take more than one. That is the test in this experiment. The adult who answers the door, comments on your costume, and then either asks you questions about yourself or not — she then excuses herself to work in another room and the instructions to the kids are, “Oh, you know, please take one, but I have to go into the other room.” And the question is, what do you do? 

MAUGHAN: So, just so I understand, the kids are coming up, they’re trick-or-treating, in one group, the person who’s home they’re trick-or-treating at says, “Tell me your name and your address” in a friendly way, and then leaves the room, and in the other condition the person just welcomes them in and then walks away, but doesn’t try to individualize them.

DUCKWORTH: Yeah, doesn’t ask them those questions — which again, can you imagine doing that? Like I think kids would, like, run off screaming. Plus, their parents are usually behind them these days.

MAUGHAN: My guess would be that those who had to identify themselves are much more likely to just take one, to follow the instructions of the person — whereas if I experience some level of anonymity still, I don’t think everyone’s suddenly going to take armfuls of candy, but you’re more likely to see that in the second condition where I’ve not identified who I am and where I live. Is that accurate?

DUCKWORTH: That is correct. So, the conclusion was that significantly more stealing was observed under conditions of anonymity. If you are deindividuated because, you know, nobody knows who you are — like, that’s Halloween — that is going to incline you to steal more. I do want to also tell you about another classic study, which probably also couldn’t be done today. There’s, you know, this psychologist we’ve talked about before named Phil Zimbardo. And Mike, you remember we talked about the Stanford prison experiment when we were recently discussing evil and what evil is. He had prior done these experiments where students would put on either a plain lab coat with a hood that, like, kind of concealed their identity — that was one condition in this experiment. And in another condition, you’re also donning a lab coat, but now there’s a name tag to say who you are, and there’s no hood. So, this is very similar to the Halloween experiment, right? It’s like, do I know who you are or do I not know who you are? And he instructs the volunteers to give an electric shock to a person who they think is actually receiving it. This is very similar to the Milgram experiment. But the finding is that when you are hooded and when you are nameless, you’re twice as likely to comply with these instructions to administer painful electric shock. I think that evidence, you know, it’s very old and you can’t really replicate it today — I mean, it rings true to me when I do look at the contemporary environment. Like, there was a time where I would read my Amazon reviews. I’m no longer in that time, not just because, you know, my book came out a million years ago, but also because I have found it to not be a healthy exercise to read Amazon reviews, good or bad. But during this era when I would scroll through and look, it’s like, “One star, I don’t believe it, and it’s boring.” Would that person look at me in the face and say, “I give you one star”? I mean, maybe they would. Maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe it’s a good thing that they can make these comments anonymously. But I have felt in the contemporary online environment that the ability to say and do things where you are effectively “masked,” I’m going to go with it’s net negative.

MAUGAN: So, I think for a long time, there has been this idea that if everyone had to stand behind every comment they made online, that we would all behave much better. And I think that is, in many senses, largely true, but there’s also what’s been called the real-name fallacy. And there was an assistant professor of communications at Cornell University named Nathan Matias who worked on something called the Coral Project, and they bring journalists and communities together through open-source tools and strategies. And what they actually found was that forcing real names in online communities actually sometimes had a reverse impact of increasing discrimination and worsening harassment.

DUCKWORTH: Wait, why would that be?

MAUGHAN: If you think about it, when you reveal personal information, it sometimes can expose people, for example, to sexism or to racism.

DUCKWORTH: If you say who you are, you’ve revealed a vulnerability, and then people can take advantage of it. I think this is an interesting question. There is this questionnaire. called the Online Anonymity Questionnaire. And it was developed by psychologists who really, I think, did want to know about the modern equivalent of wearing a mask, so seeking anonymity in these online forums. And they developed questions that really fall into two buckets, and they identify these as two primary motivations for wanting to be anonymous online. The two buckets are anonymous self-expression — that’s the upside that I’ll talk about a little bit — and then anonymous toxicity, so that’s downside. So, the toxicity items are, for example, “I am more likely to do things that are unlawful or illegal when I am anonymous online.” “When I am anonymous online, I do things that are normally unacceptable in society.” “Being anonymous online is fun because I don’t get in trouble for what I say.”

MAUGHAN: Okay these are all fascinating, because I don’t even think like this.

DUCKWORTH: I know, you’re like, “Who are these people?” Like, it’s terrifying.

MAUGHAN: I have better things to do with my time than just be like, “I want to go make people mad online just for the sake of riling people up.” I’m not saying I’m some pure, perfect person by any means —

DUCKWORTH: But you would say “not at all like me,” right?

MAUGHAN: Not only “not at all like me”; I’ve literally never contemplated the idea of engaging this way. It’s not crossed my mind.

DUCKWORTH: Okay, same. Here are some items from the anonymous self-expression subscale. “I feel more comfortable disclosing information about my ideas, thoughts, and feelings when I am anonymous online.” “Being anonymous online allows me to share thoughts and feelings I otherwise would not share with people who know me.” “Being anonymous online allows me to experiment with new ideas.”  Et cetera. Et cetera. And I think they find that the motivation to seek anonymity in order to express yourself, in this sense more truthfully — really may come from a sense of anxiety or, you know, insecurity that, you know, now when I’m veiled I can say what I really think.

MAUGHAN: Exactly. And I think Angela and I would love to hear your thoughts on how putting on a mask or a disguise affects your or other people’s behavior. So record a voice memo in a quiet place with your mouth close to the phone and email it to us at NSQ@freakonomics.com and maybe we’ll play it on a future episode of the show.

Still to come on No Stupid Questions: In what way does your everyday clothing act as a mask?

DUCKWORTH: Very Steve Jobs, very Mark Zuckerberg, and very Barack Obama.

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Now, back to Mike and Angela’s conversation about disguise.

MAUGHAN: So, Angela, my mind as you were talking about this immediately went to the workplace where I think there are some of these same upsides and downsides of anonymity. Of course, in the workplace there are always opportunities to, to give feedback anonymously. Some of the virtues of that are if I have a toxic boss, or I’m in a situation that’s somewhat untenable, I may not feel comfortable giving that feedback publicly, but I am willing to do it anonymously. And so, it’s this, like, virtuous way to allow people to say things they might not otherwise say. On the flip side, there are downsides as well. There’s a business professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School that talked about some of the downsides of anonymity at work. He mentions that if you tell people that in the workplace we want to encourage you to be able to comment anonymously, it sends kind of the subliminal message that it’s not safe to speak up here. Like, that we have a culture where you can’t tell the truth, and that’s why we have to provide an anonymous thing. The second thing he points out — and I’m going to use terminology we use, but it can lead to “who hunting.” Like, “Who said that?” So, even if it was anonymous, people love to go “who hunting.”

DUCKWORTH: Ooh, I’ve never heard that. It sounds like from Dr. Seuss. Although you probably wouldn’t want to hunt whos if you were in Dr. Seuss. That would be a little grim.

MAUGHAN: But I’ve got a co-worker, Julie, who always talks about when there’s feedback that’s coming in, we don’t go “who hunting.” That’s not the point. And then the third and maybe most important thing that this professor brings up is the idea that if it’s anonymous, I don’t know how to go fix it. If someone’s saying, “Hey, there’s this issue,” but I can’t come talk to you more about it, I can’t get context from you, it makes us less capable of correction.

DUCKWORTH: Well, let me ask you this: you teach a class at B.Y.U. I teach classes to undergraduates and have for, oh my gosh, nearly two decades. That’s a lot of anonymous commenting. Because I am sure you have ratings, right? And so, the ratings are numeric, but also there’s that open comment box that, at least at our university, you can fill with whatever you want. And, you know, in a large enough class, nobody is going to know. What do you think about that? What have your experiences been of positive and negative comments that are anonymous as a teacher?

MAUGHAN: I mean, what I try to do is calibrate them all. We have 350 students, and they have an opportunity after every single class period to provide feedback via survey, to tell us what went well, what they liked, what they didn’t like, and what they might suggest we do differently.

DUCKWORTH: Which is unusual, right? Did you guys make that up? I’m, I’m sure your university didn’t make you ask people every class.

MAUGHAN: Yeah, we just made that up and said that we wanted to get that level of feedback.

DUCKWORTH: I do the same thing, by the way.

MAUGHAN: You do every class period?

DUCKWORTH: Every class, I have them rate me. Well, I have them rate their own engagement, because that’s the only thing they know. But effectively, it’s a consumer rating of the class. I think I use a zero to ten scale. And then, they have an open comment box for questions, things that they still don’t understand, they could really actually say whatever they want. I don’t think most classes are run this way, but go on.

MAUGHAN: I would just say, we try to calibrate it, and obviously if there’s a one-off comment that is not reflective, either on the positive or negative, of sort of the experience of the rest of the class, then you might do less with it. But as you calibrate and there’s some signal coming out of the noise saying, “Hey, these are things that consistently, or among many people, that need change — ”

DUCKWORTH: So, do you think you would get more information or less information if students had to tell you who they were?

MAUGHAN: Given the type of information we’re getting, I don’t know that it would be wildly different, to be completely honest. Because none of it is so vitriolic on the one side or so celebratory on the other. It’s more tactical and things that we could change, or we don’t resonate with that guest speaker or this topic. My gut instinct says, though, that it would be more milquetoast, more neutral if you had to put your name to everything. What is your gut? What’s your experience with this as well?

DUCKWORTH: First of all, I can remember almost every negative comment I’ve gotten over two decades. So, I’m not as good at calibrating, looking for the center of gravity. You’re doing what you should do, which is to say, look, if one person says something, you know, you might take notice, but really if, like, two people, or now three people, then there’s really evidence that this isn’t about this person, but there’s a problem. I don’t do that. I just, like, obsess about every negative comment.

MAUGHAN: Sad. I feel like that’s not healthy.

DUCKWORTH: So true. But I think it’s a really good question. I mean, most surveys are anonymous. Most polls, like, “Who are you going to vote for in the next presidential election?” are anonymous. You know, ratings of teachers are anonymous, I don’t think anybody is saying, like, “Let’s try a poll where you’re not anonymous.” I think there is the assumption that anonymity is that veil that enables you to be more truthful. You know, the Halloween study that I told you about with Ed Diener was like, “Oh, when you’re anonymous, you’re more deceitful.” But my gut is that I would certainly not receive as many negative comments. I mean, I don’t receive a lot, but I would receive fewer if it were identified. I think probably it is net better to be anonymous. And I have to say, much as I hate negative reviews, and much as I think there is this, kind of, like, non-accountability, I think, in this case, I’m arguing myself into a position I did not think I would take, which is that perhaps anonymity in certain contexts is for the best. 

MAUGHAN I mean, I definitely think it has its place.  

DUCKWORTH: Yeah, well, you know, if you’re thinking about costumes, not just insofar as they mask your identity — which they don’t all do, by the way. It doesn’t seem to me like Halloween trick-or-treaters are walking around with full face or head masks where you, you really don’t know who they are. They tend to, in my personal experience, be choosing costumes where you can mostly see them.

MAUGHAN: In fact, there are statistics actually where we used to try to cover ourselves up completely and hide, and maybe now we’re moving as society to even more risqué costumes where we cover as little as possible sometimes. Not in children. But yeah.

DUCKWORTH: Yeah, there was this temporary Halloween store that would regularly take over this empty retail space near where Jason and I lived. They would only rent it for, I guess, the month of October. They would have this big sign, you know, “Halloween costumes.” I remember taking Amanda and Lucy when they were little because I was like, “Oh, there’s a pop-up Halloween store. Amazing.” They couldn’t be more excited. And there was, like, nothing appropriate in the entire, you know, 2,000 square foot space for anybody below the age of 21, I would say. But when you think about other aspects of costuming Isaac Bashevis Singer, who is a, you know, writer and thinker from a long time ago, said, “What a strange power there is in clothing.” And so, I wasn’t reading an Isaac Bashevis Singer short story or anything when I read this. I was reading the work of a great psychologist named Adam Galinsky. Yeah. Do you know Adam?

MAUGHAN: He was my professor.

DUCKWORTH: I was going to say, at the time, he was at Northwestern!

MAUGHAN: He taught my very first ever business school class.

DUCKWORTH: Okay, well, there you go. And this article that he published in 2012. Were you there then?

MAUGHAN: Yes!  

DUCKWORTH: So this article was called “Enclothed Cognition.” The co-authors are Adam Galinsky and Hajo Adam. And it begins with the Isaac Bashevis Singer quote, “What a strange power there is in clothing.” And the definition of “enclothed cognition,” a term that they invented I think, is quote, “To describe the systematic influence that clothes have on the wearer’s psychological processes.” You know, the idea is that it’s not only, like, you are what you eat, but maybe you are what you wear.

MAUGHAN: Which, by the way, I buy this 100 percent.

DUCKWORTH: You’re like, “I don’t need data.”

MAUGHAN: Well, I mean, what I’m wearing, right? Sometimes —

DUCKWORTH: Yeah, what are you wearing right now, by the way? I can’t see behind the microphone.

MAUGHAN: I’m wearing a black t — I wear a black t-shirt every day. I own a whole bunch of the exact same black t-shirt and that’s what I wear.

DUCKWORTH: Very Steve Jobs, very Mark Zuckerberg, and very Barack Obama.

MAUGHAN: Yes, and I am not putting myself in the category of any of them, except in that I wear the same thing every day.

DUCKWORTH: Wait, a black t-shirt and what?

MAUGHAN: And then I wear — uh, they’re called Bylt. It’s a brand. I wear Bylt pants and a black t-shirt every day. But if I’m wearing a suit versus I’m sweaty from a workout, or dirty from working in the yard, or something, it absolutely changes both in maybe my own self-conscious, you know, approach to, uh, “how am I fitting in here?” but also how I feel about myself in that moment. So, I buy this completely sans data, but I’d still love to hear the data.

DUCKWORTH: Yeah, well, I, like you, resonate with it completely. So, in this experiment, the first experiment that introduced this idea of enclothed cognition, you are asked to wear a lab coat, like a white lab coat, or you are not asked to wear a lab coat, and that’s the only manipulation. And then you basically have to do this task in the lab that requires selective attention, so it’s a high-cognitive-load task. And the question is: does it make a difference whether you put on a white coat to do it or not? And the finding is, yeah, it does. If you wear a white lab coat, you are better at this basic but high-load cognitive-attention task. So that’s experiment one. And then as follow-ups, they probe a little deeper. And they say, well, what if you interpret that white lab coat as, like, oh, scientist, right? And all the associations of, like, you know, I’m now stepping into the role of somebody who, you know, pays attention, is really careful, et cetera. What if you instead give the frame, “Oh, please put on this coat but, you know, it’s a painter’s smock”? Well then you get very different experiments. So, in the follow-up experiments where you are thinking that it’s a painter’s — you don’t get this boost in selective attention.

MAUGHAN: So, in the first condition, I’m putting on a lab coat. In the second experiment, is it the exact same coat? I’m just told it’s a painter’s smock that time, but there’s no difference in the coat itself?

DUCKWORTH: Yeah. There’s no difference in the coat. It’s just that, in the second experiment, they vary it between being called and, you know, framed as a “doctor’s coat” versus a “painter’s coat.”

MAUGHAN: And if I’m wearing what I think is a painter’s coat, I don’t perform better, but if I’m wearing what I think is a doctor’s coat, even though it’s the same coat, I perform much better. That’s fascinating. 

DUCKWORTH: So, their idea is that there’s something that happens when we put on a “costume,” or even — like, if we think about our own closet, there are certain things in it that, like, you know, bring out different selves. But I think the point of the follow-up studies is that there has to be the, the symbolism that goes along with the physicality. You know, when we dress up in black for a funeral, it’s not just that there’s a physical act of putting on something black, but it’s also you know you’re dressing up in black for a funeral. By the way, there was a lot of interest in the study. Then there were a lot of skeptics of the study, then there was a lot of question about whether this was a real finding or a fluke. Just last year, there was a meta-analysis, meaning, like, all the studies that have been published, let’s average the effects together. And Adam Golinski and Hajo Adam were co-authors on this and the first author was a graduate student at the time at Columbia. Basically the findings hold up. But I guess the point is that when we don a costume — I mean, just like Isaac Bishevis Singer intimated — you know, when we step into a role, and we know what that role is —  this is the symbolic part, right? It’s not just the physicality of the costume, but, sort of knowing everything that goes on with it, that it changes us. And I think it’s profound, and I don’t know that Isaac Bashevis Singer would have anticipated the changes in norms for dressing, but I find it really interesting that I can wear sneakers to teach these days, even at Wharton, and not really raise an eyebrow. Or you could be in a board meeting and you could be wearing, like, a tracksuit. Like, the norms for the costumes that we’re wearing have become decidedly less formal. And I have wondered what effect that might have on how we behave.

MAUGHAN: I think it’s a fascinating question. And I think, Angela, I would love to wrap up this conversation in a bit of a different way and just take us to something that’s also somewhat timely with masks and the political world. It’s not totally related to Spencer’s question, but I think it’s interesting. So, you’ve talked about these pop-up Halloween shops. There’s  a, a company called Spirit Halloween and you often see them in, in these, kind of, empty box stores, as you’ve mentioned. They claim to have predicted the winner of every presidential election since 1996 based on which candidate’s mask is selling better. ALD^Woah.]  Now, I couldn’t find any Spirit Halloween data for 2020, but halloweencostumes.com in 2020 said the Biden masks outsold Trump masks 58 percent Biden, 42 percent Trump, and Biden won.

DUCKWORTH: Now what’s going on this year? I want to know who’s going to win.

MAUGHAN: For the 2024 race Spirit Halloween is not actually selling any Kamala Harris masks. I don’t know why. I wonder if maybe she became the candidate too late.

DUCKWORTH: Wait, they are selling Trump masks, but no Harris masks? 

MAUGHAN: Correct. And again, I don’t know why, but she became the candidate fairly late in the cycle and maybe manufacturing and distribution couldn’t catch up quick enough. Like, with our hockey jerseys, for example, we have a new hockey team that had their first game recently, and we won’t have any jerseys to sell for months because they were only able to make enough for the players. 

DUCKWORTH: Hmm. See, I was going all conspiracy theory on you.   But maybe you’re right, because it’s an unexpected turn of events that Kamala Harris is the Democratic, you know, candidate. So, there are no data that you know of that can predict the outcome of this election —

MAUGHAN: Not based on masks. But interesting that in the past that’s what’s happened. 

DUCKWORTH: Ugh, I really wish there were. I think what this says to me about masks is not only do they sometimes allow you to be more truthful, they sometimes allow you to be more deceitful, but maybe the mask you choose says more about you than we think. 

MAUGHAN: So choose carefully.

Coming up after the break: a fact-check of today’s episode and stories from our NSQ listeners

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And now, here’s a fact-check of today’s conversation:

The journalist who wrote the CNN article on the history of Halloween that Mike references is named Marianna Cerini, and the Pittsburgh company that began licensing characters for costumes in the early twentieth century was called the J. Halpern Company. They actually produced the sort of drug-store boxed costumes that Angela would later covet as a young trick-or-treater.

Mike’s framing of the history of Halloween makes it sound as if its shift to a holiday for young children was a result of adults committing Halloween violence and vandalism. According to author and “Halloween expert” Lisa Morton, this kind of behavior was usually attributed to adolescent boys; during the 1930s, community organizations began to throw costume parades and house-to-house parties to keep kids out of trouble — which Morton says ultimately evolved into trick-or-treating as we know it today.

Finally, Angela says that the students who participated in psychologist Philip Zimbardo’s 1969 deindividuation experiment were twice as likely to comply with instructions to administer painful electric shocks when they had anonymity. The finding was actually that they delivered shocks that were twice as long in duration. Zimbardo — who passed away earlier this month — was a leading figure in the study of how situations can transform human behavior.  As we noted in a previous episode, much of Zimbardo’s research is controversial; and as with the Stanford Prison Experiment, critics have raised theoretical and empirical concerns.

That’s it for the fact-check.

Before we wrap today’s show, let’s hear some thoughts on last week’s episode about excuses.

Sasha LIUTOVA: Hi Angela and Mike, Sasha here responding to your episode on making excuses. I think there’s a thin line between making excuses and standing up for yourself or protecting yourself. The word “excuse” to me has a judgmental and critical tone and kind of indicates an expectation that the person needs to complete what they committed to no matter what.  This judgment lacks empathy and gives more weight to performance and expectations over human nature and self care.  It’s okay to cancel plans because you need to take care of yourself. It’s okay to give reasons to your management on why some tasks weren’t accomplished and point out systematic issues in the company. An example of Simone Biles at the Tokyo Olympics comes to mind, where in the eyes of the public she failed to do what she was expected to do, and her “excuse,” quote-unquote, was choosing her physical and mental health over achievement. Even calling it an “excuse” seems demeaning, and what she did was a heroic act and a precedent for everyone following her to be able to protect themselves too.

Tom FISHER: Hi, Mike and Angela. As someone who has taught in elementary and middle school for 25 years and is fascinated with the development of personal responsibility, I really enjoyed your episode about excuse-making. I did want to add one potential thought to the discussion, which is that there does seem to be a link between how deeply children feel the sting of making a mistake and their ability to take responsibility for the actions that led to the problem. Some children seem to feel every mistake as unbearable and have a hard time differentiating between small mistakes and big mistakes. This tends to mean that they also have a very hard time seeing that they had any agency in the creation of the problem. They need to blame it on outside sources. And as a result, problems tend to repeat themselves due to lack of a growth mindset.  

Cherry CHENG: Hi, Angela and Mike, my name is Cherry and I live in Singapore. I think sometimes making excuses can be good for ourselves and others. I’ve been married for 16 years to my wonderful husband Johnny. He often makes excuses to help the family and others. My daughter is in the drama club and often she has to make lots of props, and the preparation can be really time consuming, but she didn’t really want to trouble us. So, he would just say something like, um, he’s been feeling really bored and looking for a project to work on anyways. And he will volunteer to source the materials for hours. So, I think we should all be a little bit more like Johnny and make more excuses to help others. It also ties in with the previous episode of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. Because maybe sometimes making us feel good could be a good excuse to do more good. 

Robert SHADE: Hi, Angela and Mike. Robert from Orlando — wanted to comment on your recent episode on making excuses, but I’m sorry, I just don’t have the time. 

That was, respectively, Sasha Liutova, Tom Fisher, Cherry Cheng, and Robert Shade. Thanks to them and to everyone who shared their stories with us. And remember, we’d love to hear your thoughts on costumes and disguise. Send a voice memo to NSQ@Freakonomics.com, and you might hear your voice on the show!

Coming up next week on No Stupid Questions: What’s wrong with proud parents sharing photos and stories of their children online?

MAUGHAN: “Mom, you have ruined my life! Look at all the stuff that you’ve put out there about me.”

That’s coming up on No Stupid Questions.

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No Stupid Questions is part of the Freakonomics Radio Network, which also includes Freakonomics Radio, People I (Mostly) Admire, and The Economics of Everyday Things. All our shows are produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. The senior producer of the show is me, Rebecca Lee Douglas, and Lyric Bowditch is our production associate. This episode was mixed by Greg Rippin. We had research assistance from Daniel Moritz-Rabson. Our theme song was composed by Luis Guerra. You can follow us on Twitter @NSQ_Show. And you can watch video clips of Mike and Angela at the Freakonomics Radio Network’s YouTube Shorts channel, or on Freakonomics Radio’s TikTok page. If you have a question for a future episode, please email it to NSQ@Freakonomics.com. To learn more, or to read episode transcripts, visit Freakonomics.com/NSQ. Thanks for listening!

MAUGHAN: I would escape and be wild and free and my own being.