Naked Experts

My husband and I started to watch a new series on TV called “Naked and Afraid”. A man and a woman are dropped off in some desert, jungle or other desolated area to survive for 21 days (naked!! I couldn’t imagine!). They are allowed to bring one item only (a knife, a tool) and they are stripped down to their birthday suits to accomplish this great task. Many of the contestants are experts of survival or they are hoping to accomplish the task so that they can be considered experts.

Experts are individuals who learn about a specific field, apply their skills consistently and eventually become quite knowledgeable about their particular field. Sometimes, there will be one contestant who is more knowledgeable than their partner and they solve problems in the wilderness faster.  In one episode, a woman was smart enough to realize that their current habitat next to the water was not going to last long when the rain came. The river would overflow and their camp would be washed out. The man denied that it was the right season for rain and kept busy hunting for food. The woman travelled higher up and built a canopy out of branches for a better shelter. Sure enough, the rain came soon after. Their first camp was washed away and they both retreated to the new camp she had made. Without her expertise, they would have been exposed to the rain for several hours and would have lost their heat source, food source and tools. This is just one example of how being an expert of survival plays a huge advantage for a person.

The show has many examples of how individuals are highly experienced in the art of survival: starting fires by rubbing wood, building shelters out of brush, hunting, fishing, boiling dirty water, handling meat (making sure its safe to eat) and avoiding certain plants or creatures that could be dangerous. Without these imperative skills, they would quickly perish. Temperatures are usually over 100 degrees, there is no fresh water to drink and food is extremely limited and difficult to obtain. Many of the contestants leave the show with a weight loss of 10-30lbs and are close to dehydration or have bacterial infections.

In Chapter 12, we learned that experts are terrific problem solvers when it comes to their field of expertise because of three reasons. First, experts possess more knowledge about their fields (obviously). Two, their knowledge is organized differently from novices. Experts will sort through the problem by concentrating on structural features whereas novices try to figure out problems based on surface features. Lastly, experts spend more time analyzing the problem rather than immediately attempting to solve it (which is what novices are more likely to do).

For the contestants in this show, being an expert survivalist is useful and helps them make it those long 21 days. Their knowledge and perseverance pays off and they achieve a higher status by completing the mission. Others who drop out before day 21 are still quite good at being a survivalist, they just are not as good as the ones who succeeded.

Being an expert in a field brings about 2 disadvantages. First, experts are less likely to be open to “new” ideas or ways of solving problems. Second, just because an individual is an expert in one field, does not mean they are experts in other fields…I doubt we will be seeing any of the survivalists appearing on Hell’s Kitchen or Dancing With The Stars!

Goldstein, E. (2011). Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research, and everyday experience (3rd Ed.). Australia: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

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