Seven Sins: People can overcome laziness, says Nobuhiro Hagura

Down To Earth (DTE) speaks to scientists and authors to take stock of what we know so far about the emotions of pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth; the historical debates around them and the critical gaps in our understanding.

In the sixteenth part, DTE speaks to Nobuhiro Hagura, a senior researcher at the Center for Information and Neural Networks, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Japan. Hagura co-authored a paper in eLife in 2017 on how humans are hardwired to be lazy.

Q. You say humans are wired to be lazy. Why is that so?

A. If we are faced with an option that requires more effort, we tend to avoid that. Our brain works in a reward and punishment sort of way. If you really want something and that requires effort, that effort becomes the cost. If your brain overcomes that cost, then you go for it.

But if our brain decides that desire for something is less than the effort cost, then we try to reduce the effort cost as much as possible. Suppose you have an apple in front of you and you want to eat it. There are many ways to reach the fruit. You could just walk straight or jump three times to reach it.

But jumping does not make sense. You want to minimise your energy to get to the apple. We try to reduce that physical activity as much as possible. It is a very rational strategy any organism can adapt to.

Q. Are effort costs also applicable for mental activities?

A. Fundamentally, yes. We are designed to reduce unnecessary effort, regardless of whether it is mental or physical. What scientists are working on is to figure out how the brain decides what is necessary and what is not. So, that is a big question.

Humans care about high order things like decision-making or how we see the world. But our body is the only way we can interact with the environment. I am interested in how we move our bodies, figure out the world and how we interact with the environment.

Q. What do brain scans look like when we exert effort or are being lazy?

A. If you are asked to learn something, your brain activity will be very high at the learning stage. But once you get used to it, your brain activity will become smaller because it learns how to minimise the unnecessary activity in the brain. So, it is designed to be lazy and there is some evolutionary reason why we reduce unnecessary efforts.

In fact, it is not just human beings, but every organism follows this rule. Unnecessary effort means unnecessary expenditure of energy. You do not want to get tired and fall asleep, lest you will be preyed upon. That is the rule of nature.

The brain is less active in a normal situation, but less active does not mean it has shut down completely. Even if you are not engaged in any specific task, the brain is still working. So, perhaps some people say that it could lead to some kind of creativity or spontaneous thinking.

The second thing is that being too lazy is quite interesting. We know working out or running is good for your body. Yet we try to avoid it. I think, that is not only about the effort cost, but it is more about the balance between your desire and the cost it entails. So, some people are good at valuing the long-term goal. But people, typically, tend to do things for the immediate value, and if the immediate value is too small, then your effort cost wins.

But if someone values the long-term goal more, then the cost would be smaller. So then people can overcome laziness. And how you do that is another question. Maybe, it is how you are educated or perhaps some people’s brains are better at estimating the future goal; some people are not.

Q. So, does laziness basically boil down to decision-making?

A. Yes. During decision-making, you gather all sorts of information, take the balance, and get the best out of it. So, if you make a wrong value of a certain thing or wrong cost of a certain thing, then your decision-making would seem irrational.

Q. Your team at the Center for Information and Neural Networks in Osaka, Japan, is designing an optimal environment for humans to minimise cognitive and physical effort. Could you elaborate on that?

A. In Japan, we use trains a lot to commute. The suicide rate of jumping into an oncoming train is quite high. But if you construct a small wall, or a gate, the suicides rates are drastically reduced, even if it is easy to jump the gate. I believe this is because there is a small additional physical cost to jumping or climbing the gate.

Another example would be to design the road or stairs in a way that allows people to move in a very efficient way—more like a human-centred design.

I have heard cases of a country—I think, Switzerland—creating designs for their stairs in a way that people would choose the stairs instead of a lift to stay physically active. The stairs were designed to produce a sound if a person jumps on it. They work like a big piano. In this case, a majority are likely to use the stairs. So, that is really amazing because no one is forcing you to use the stairs. We see that people spontaneously choose this option.

So, I thought if we could design how humans perceive their environment, we could design the optimal infrastructure of the city.

Currently, I am not designing this, but that is something, I think, our study may certainly contribute to—ways people can stay physically active. We call this “nudge” in economic terms. So, I was thinking something like that, to nudge people more.

Q. Given this understanding, should we change how we view and respond to laziness?

A. I think, what the current society is labelling as laziness can be avoided by slight changes in design. For example, the design of the desk, table, keyboard, and even the road. Then, perhaps, we can really understand humans and we could implicitly guide them to do the particular task. If I am able to accomplish this, then the labelling of laziness may change in the future.

If a person does not do work, he is labelled lazy. Perhaps it is not his laziness. It could be his brain treating the environment as not easy to move. Therefore, he stays put.

But with slight changes in design, he might be able to work easily. Then he was not lazy; he looked lazy because of how he treated the environment and that could be different from the other people. So, I think that can be something we can start thinking of. For instance, a particular set of societal infrastructure that should be applicable for every single person. We could think of a tailor-made structured working environment.

Q. Do you think we should do away with the word “laziness”?

A. Laziness is really defined by society. I do not know how this change can happen. But if you really understand everyone’s demands and costs, then perhaps the word lazy may go away in the future.

(as told to Rohini Krishnamurthy)

This is the seventeenth of an 18-part series.

This was first published as part of the cover story of the 16-31 May, 2024 Print edition of Down To Earth