The Keys to a Long Term Relationship & How Our Minds Are Quirky - SYSK Choice

Summary

Podcast Summary: "The Keys to a Long Term Relationship & How Our Minds Are Quirky - SYSK Choice"

Something You Should Know hosted by Mike Carruthers delves deep into the intricacies of building long-lasting relationships and explores the fascinating quirks of the human mind. In this episode, psychiatrist George Blair West shares invaluable insights on making significant life decisions, particularly in the context of relationships, while also unraveling the peculiarities of human cognition.

1. The Impact of Lying on Health

Mike Carruthers opens the discussion by addressing the subconscious effects of dishonesty on our well-being. Citing research from the University of Notre Dame, he highlights that even minor lies can have tangible negative effects on health.

• Key Insight: "Telling even white lies could bring on a cold or the flu." [00:44]

George Blair West emphasizes that the effort and stress involved in maintaining dishonesty can weaken the immune system, leading to increased susceptibility to illnesses.

2. The Secret of Long-Term Love

Dr. West delves into the complexities of forming and sustaining long-term relationships, challenging the romanticized notion of "finding the one."

a. Decision-Making in Relationships

• Key Insight: "The biggest, the one that impacts you more than any other, is choosing who to marry." [02:21]

Dr. West observes that many individuals approach the decision to marry without a structured process, often relying on fleeting emotions rather than deliberate consideration.

b. Arranged Marriages vs. Love Marriages

Drawing from historical and cross-cultural studies, Dr. West contrasts arranged marriages with love-based unions.

• Quote: "The levels of love are greater in the arranged marriages." [12:00]

He references studies indicating that arranged marriages, especially those facilitated by family involvement and collective wisdom, often result in higher long-term marital satisfaction compared to love marriages. Over time, the initial passion in love marriages tends to equalize with the steady commitment found in arranged marriages.

c. Commitment and Expectation

• Quote: "Commitment is the big one." [12:00]

Dr. West underscores that unwavering commitment, rather than transient emotions, is the cornerstone of enduring relationships. This commitment involves caring for one another even during challenging times.

d. Complementarity and Aligned Values

Successful relationships often feature partners with complementary personalities and aligned core values.

• Quote: "Having aligned personal values is essential." [22:51]

For instance, an extrovert paired with an introvert can create a balanced dynamic, fostering a richer and more harmonious partnership. However, without shared fundamental values, even complementary personalities can lead to significant conflicts.

e. Acceptance Despite Shortcomings

• Quote: "We know that our partner, even though they know all of our shortcomings, still wants to be there and care about us." [25:52]

Dr. West highlights the profound impact of mutual acceptance in relationships. Feeling loved and accepted despite imperfections is vital for emotional security and long-term satisfaction.

3. Insights into the Human Mind

Beyond relationships, Dr. West explores various quirks of human cognition that influence our daily lives and interactions.

a. Attention Limitations

• Quote: "The human mind really can only pay attention to one thing at a time." [32:23]

Contrary to popular belief, multitasking is a myth. Our brains switch rapidly between tasks, leading to diminished focus and increased errors, especially in activities requiring sustained attention like driving.

b. Intuition: Strengths and Pitfalls

• Quote: "Intuition is automatic thinking, it's instantaneous, unreasoned responses." [35:17]

While intuition plays a crucial role in areas where we have expertise, it can be misleading in unfamiliar situations. For example, relying solely on intuition for decisions without adequate information can result in poor outcomes.

c. Micro Friendships

• Quote: "Micro friendships... can brighten people's days." [30:21]

Small, brief interactions with others—such as complimenting a stranger or engaging in small talk—can significantly enhance mood and foster a sense of community, benefiting both the giver and receiver.

d. Overconfidence Phenomenon

• Quote: "The overconfidence phenomenon is the tendency to be more confident than correct." [44:31]

People often overestimate their knowledge and abilities, leading to errors in judgment and decision-making. This overconfidence can have practical implications, such as underestimating project timelines or misjudging personal competencies.

e. Behavioral Confirmation

• Quote: "Our social beliefs reflect reality, but they also create our social reality." [47:53]

Expectations can influence others' behaviors towards us. For instance, if you expect a partner to be uncooperative, you might treat them in a way that elicits the very behavior you anticipate, reinforcing your initial belief.

f. Implicit Egotism

• Quote: "We tend to like letters that happen to be in our names." [48:04]

This subtle bias leads individuals to favor things associated with themselves, such as people, places, or even numbers related to their names. This phenomenon extends to various aspects of life, including career choices and romantic preferences.

4. Conclusion

This episode of Something You Should Know offers a compelling blend of relationship advice and psychological insights. Dr. George Blair West effectively bridges the gap between understanding long-term relationships and recognizing the innate quirks of the human mind. Key takeaways include the importance of commitment and aligned values in relationships, the limitations of human attention and intuition, and the pervasive effects of phenomena like overconfidence and implicit egotism on our daily lives.

Listeners are encouraged to apply these insights to foster healthier relationships and navigate the complexities of their cognitive processes more effectively.

Notable Quotes:

• "Telling even white lies could bring on a cold or the flu." — Mike Carruthers [00:44]
• "The biggest, the one that impacts you more than any other, is choosing who to marry." — Mike Carruthers [02:21]
• "The levels of love are greater in the arranged marriages." — George Blair West [12:00]
• "Having aligned personal values is essential." — George Blair West [22:51]
• "We know that our partner, even though they know all of our shortcomings, still wants to be there and care about us." — George Blair West [25:52]
• "The human mind really can only pay attention to one thing at a time." — Mike Carruthers [32:23]
• "Intuition is automatic thinking, it's instantaneous, unreasoned responses." — George Blair West [35:17]
• "The overconfidence phenomenon is the tendency to be more confident than correct." — George Blair West [44:31]
• "Our social beliefs reflect reality, but they also create our social reality." — George Blair West [47:53]
• "We tend to like letters that happen to be in our names." — George Blair West [48:04]

This episode serves as a valuable resource for anyone seeking to enhance their understanding of long-term relationships and the nuanced workings of the human mind.

Transcript

[Mike Carruthers]

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[George Blair West]

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[Mike Carruthers]

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[George Blair West]

So excited that you just want to burst in joy and scream out loud, Bingo.

[Mike Carruthers]

Sorry.

[George Blair West]

So you're playing Bingo Blitz.

[Mike Carruthers]

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[George Blair West]

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[Mike Carruthers]

Download Bingo Blitz and play for free. Now that's a bingo. Today on something you should know. Why lying even a little bit can be bad for your health? Then what's the secret of long term love? Well, there are a couple of them.

[David Myers]

But here's one when we know that our partner, even though they know all of our shortcomings, still wants to be there and care about us. Going through life with somebody who makes you feel that way is gold. It really is the essence of the feeling of a long term relationship.

[Mike Carruthers]

Also a the myth about mushrooms you probably believe and the odd ways humans think like we tend to be overconfident. We often misuse our intuition and we have something called implicit egotism.

[George Blair West]

Implicit egotism is the tendency to like what we associate with ourselves. We tend to like letters that happen to be in our names. There are an excess number of fills in Philadelphia, of Virginias in Virginia.

[Mike Carruthers]

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[George Blair West]

Fascinating intel, the world's top experts and.

[Mike Carruthers]

Practical advice you can use in your life today. Something you should Know with Mike Carruthers hi, welcome. Thanks for spending part of your day with Something you should know. I'm sure you like to think of yourself as an honest person and there's some real wisdom in that because being dishonest can make you sick. Researchers at the University of Notre Dame determined that telling even white lies could bring on a cold or the flu. That's because concocting a lie and then having to cover your tracks can be hard work, and it's stressful to your system. That lowers your immunity and leaves you prone to whatever's going around. In the study, students were split into two groups. One promised to tell the whole truth for 10 weeks. That group had significantly fewer health issues than white liars. They even experienced fewer mental health complaints, such as feeling tense or melancholy, and fewer physical complaints, such as sore throat and headache. Just another good reason to always tell the truth. And that is something you should know. When you think about the big decisions in your life, perhaps the biggest, the one that impacts you more than any other, is choosing who to marry or who to commit to, supposedly for the rest of your life, or at least for the foreseeable future. As life decisions go, it's pretty huge. And yet, given the high divorce rate, it's a decision that we're not especially good at making. Or so it would seem. So why is that? Well, maybe it's the process we use to make that decision, or the fact that many of us make the decision without much of a process at all. Here to discuss this and offer some advice on this very big decision is psychiatrist Dr. George Blair West. He is author of a book called how to make the Biggest Decision in youn Life. Hi, George. Welcome.

[David Myers]

Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here, Mike.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, it is interesting when you think about it, how people make that decision to spend the rest of their life with someone and how so many of us, apparently, based on the statistics, get it wrong. What is it about this that you find so interesting?

[David Myers]

You know, that's where it started for me with patient after patient that I was doing, you know, relationship therapy with. I would ask them this question, you know, how did you get into this relationship? And at what point did you decide to spend the rest of your life with this person? And so often I got answers that basically, if I. If I reduce it down, were answers around. Look, it just kind of happened. It slid from one level to the next level. And so often I'd heard this phrase, it seemed like a good idea at the time, which doesn't when we are making the biggest decision of our life. The point was, what was behind all of these answers was that it often was not a decision. And I think this is one of the pups that we've been sold around romantic love is that we think that it's got a feeling to it, it's about finding the one. And therefore the decision making process is secondary.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, doesn't it seem that whenever you talk about love or romance that it's supposed to be magic, it's supposed to just happen and like you can't really examine it too closely. It's really quite magical.

[David Myers]

And this is the whole issue of romantic love as it sits in our modern world. And we've got to remember this is a relatively new idea for the majority, 95% of recorded history marriages have been arranged. This idea of romantic love defining a relationship, that we find the one and when we find the one, this decision has to be, well, again, let's forget the word decision. This has to be right. And so people, and often their friends are saying, so is it the one? And people go, yeah, yeah, I think they are. Sometimes, you know, they can be more emphatic, you know, particularly when they're in that early stage, the honeymoon phase of a relationship where you can only see the good in your partner. You can't see anything negative. It's an incredibly dangerous time to be, to be making a decision. Because I was being driven by a Pakistani driver when I was in Abu Dhabi a year or two ago and I grilled him because he told me how he's going back to an arranged wedding. And I said to him, he said, my aunt's involved, my mother's involved. And I said to him, how do you feel about them making this decision for you? And he went, look, what would I know? I'm just a 34 year old guy. But he was recognizing that there's a certain wisdom that is brought to bear on this whole process. But yeah, since the industrial revolution, romantic love has taken over. But it's literally, it really got going, particularly in the US in the mid-1900s, early to mid-1900s. But if you went back another 200 years before that, the vast majority of weddings were arranged. And of course that brought a lot of thinking about it to the table. And look, I'm not going to suggest we need to go back to arranged marriages, but there is an enormous amount that arranged marriages teach us.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, you said a moment ago that when you're head over heels in love, that that's a very dangerous time and not a great time to make that decision. But when else are you going to make it? I mean, that's the time that you make that decision because you are head over heels in love.

[David Myers]

Well, yes, and of course the Answer to that question is after that honeymoon phase is over. That phase is designed from an evolutionary point of view to get us to make babies. And while that period is in full swing, we don't want to appreciate our partner's shortcomings because that gets in the way of the unadulterated love. Literally. In fact, when people come to see me and they're in that honeymoon phase of their relationship, I say, look, you might want to take a break from therapy at the moment because you really want to enjoy this. This is a really fun period of life and this is a really cool experience to have. And if we're going to be looking at that through the eyes of psychotherapy or even just relationship counseling, we're going to pull it apart and dismantle it. And I don't want to do that to you. The older patients tend to say, no, look, I actually have been through this a few times and I actually want to dismantle it and see what's really happening here. But the younger ones typically skip therapy for a couple of months and they come back and see me. And I say, come back and see me when it's over. And don't make any decisions during this time about your future. Because one of the things that defines this is a work from an American called Banfield. And he looked at what defined the most successful people on the planet, whether it was financial, in the arts, but also in relationships, which is where I think it applies the most. And he said that the single most defining feature was the capacity to look to the long term when making a decision. And we don't use transient emotional states to make long term decisions. It's like buying a car. The first car you look at when you're in the showroom and you fall in love with it and you got a great salesman, that is probably not the time to choose the car. Often I see people put more thought into buying cars. You know, they test drive different models, they compare them, they work out what, which ones have the longer term benefits, reliability, warranties and so on before they make a decision. And I rarely see that level of thinking applied to what is a way more important decision, which is your long term relationship with a partner. But if you apply that simple test, so I'll ask patients, I'll say, so how do you think they'd be as a father in five years time? And that gets them to stop and think if they're having a great time going out partying with somebody who hasn't had many long term relationships and you ask them that question, they stop and think. So it's a really powerful test is what am I going to feel about this decision, whether we're talking about relationships or anything else in 12 months, 2 years and 5 years time.

[Mike Carruthers]

So when people pick a partner and you ask, well, you know, you mentioned earlier about, you know, this is the one, well, is there one? Or can you make it work with almost anyone within a certain range if you take a swing at it?

[David Myers]

Mike, that is the absolutely key question here. And I want to come at it from the arranged marriage angle first, and then I want to come at it from the manufactured love angle, where there's a whole pile of research into manufacturing love. So let's break this down a little bit. When you look at arranged marriages and you look at their satisfaction levels compared to love marriages, and the most interesting studies here are there's a study done that compared arranged marriages in India with arranged marriages with Indians living in California and with Americans in California. And they looked at the relative levels of genuine marital satisfaction, the sense of loving and caring in these three groups. And the first finding is that the highest level of marital satisfaction, the sense of love and caring, was in the arranged marriage group in America. They kind of get the best of both worlds because in American arranged marriages, the children tend to be more involved. And so they get some say. In particular, they get power veto against somebody who they definitely don't have any sort of sense of connection with. But beyond that, they're relying on the family to use a collective wisdom that goes back centuries here in terms of. And there's matchmakers in the US who work for these families who are very good at what they do, much better than the algorithms of the dating apps because they bring a whole other level to it, which is a human intuition, a knack and a skill at this. But the finding is that the levels of love are greater in the arranged marriages. But then there's another study that was actually done a few years before this one, where they compared Indian love marriages, because there are people over there getting married for love with Indian arranged marriages over time. And what happens is at day one, the level of love, understandably, is much higher in the love marriage. But when you come back and you look at them five years later, the levels are about the same. Level of marital satisfaction, love, caring. Those. Those parameters are about the same. When you come back 10 years, the level of love in the arranged marriage is exceeding the level in the love marriage. So what's going on? The regression analysis would tell us that we're talking about the sense of expectation number one and commitment number two. And of the two, commitment is the big one, because in an arranged marriage people commit to the marriage and that commitment is almost absent in that same kind of way. I'm not saying people in love marriages don't commit, but not in this way that the arranged marriages have it such that that in the love marriages they expect the love to carry them through. And of course it doesn't. When the children arrive, when other problems come along, you often feel irritation, if not downright anger towards your partner. And a commitment is what carries you through those periods.

[Mike Carruthers]

We're talking about love, romance and marriage with psychiatrist George Blair West. He is author of the book how to make the biggest decision of your life. You know, today anyone can sell anything online and if you use Shopify to do it, you are setting yourself up for success. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Whether you're just setting up shop or you have a physical store, or even if you've had a million orders or more. Shopify will help you grow your business. Shopify helps you turn browsers into buyers. They have the Internet's best converting checkout 36% better on average compared to other leading commerce platforms. And what I love about Shopify and what you can see when you peek inside. No matter how big or small you are, Shopify offers everything to manage and control your business. And what's really great is you don't need to know anything about web design or coding or anything. Plus Shopify's award winning help is there to support you every step of the way. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.comsysk all lowercase go to shopify.comsysk to grow your business no matter what stage you're in. Shopify.com sys there are just some things you come across that you have to tell people about. And because I like you have a cell phone and I know it can get expensive, I'm telling people about Mint Mobile. They offer Premium Wireless for $15 a month when you purchase a three month plan. Now I have Mint Mobile and before that I was paying a lot more than that for my wireless plan. And I'm wondering why would anyone do that? You see all Mint Mobile plans come with high speed data, unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with your existing contacts too. So Ditch overpriced wireless with Mint Mobile's deal and get three months of premium wireless service for 15 bucks a month. To get this new customer offer and your new three month premium wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to mintmobile.com something that's mintmobile.com something. Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com something $45 upfront payment required equivalent to $15 a month. New customers on first three month plan only. Speed slower above 40 GB on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details. So George, what was this other research you said about manufacturing love?

[David Myers]

Now this research has been done for a couple of decades now. This is when you put two people in a room and you get them to undertake a range of what might be called intimacy exercises. And what they found was that when they got a group of typically this is done on university students, they get 50 of them and they pair them off and they get them to do these intimacy exercises. This is complete strangers, right? And what they would find is that a percentage of them, it varies from study to study, but 30, 40% of them would actually start to develop relationships out of this, or at least in the first instance, record high levels of a sense of intimacy with the other person. Now what we're looking at here is the phenomenon that sits behind something that we often see as being about finding the one, but it's not. And that's where doctors marry nurses. I saw it all the time in my 20s and 30s. Bosses marry secretaries. I know a couple of lawyers who married their secretaries. Anybody who's working, co workers marrying coworkers, because anybody who's working together where they experience a couple of these effectively intimacy inducing behaviors or exercises, for example, being vulnerable, that's one of the exercises they get people to do. They share a sense of vulnerability about some aspect of themselves which requires inherently a degree of trust. And what happens when people start to be vulnerable with another person? It takes down the walls and people have a sense of connection. So what we found from this research, and this explains why people are marrying people around them and thinking it's the one, they think, oh yeah, I think they're the one. But no, Robert Epstein, he found that there were about 350,000 people that we could have happily have a long term relationship with if you understood these issues around manufacturing love and how to build it over time.

[Mike Carruthers]

So distill this down because obviously people listening are not going to go get into an arranged marriage. Many people are already in Relationships. So with all you know about all this research, what's the advice?

[David Myers]

What I wanted people to take away? Because yeah, I agree we're not here to tell people to get to arrange marriages. But it's the manufacturing love which came out of that arranged marriage research which is really important. And so what it turns into when you're working with couples is that I actually get them to start to recommit to the relationship as step one. I explained to them that love isn't what was ever going to carry them through, that they have to commit to a couple of things. They have to commit to caring for the other person when they don't feel like caring for the other person. When a couple comes to see me, one of the things I will say to them fairly much routinely because they'll always come in complaining about their partner. That's kind of normal. I don't have a problem with that. Except that as I say to them, until they can switch that around, until I can start looking at themselves and what they're bringing to the relationship that is causing their partner to react negatively in some way, then they're not going to get very far in therapy and they're not going to get very far in their relationship. And I can see the transition. And not everybody makes it, of course, but the ones who get this concept, and often it's over some sessions of therapy, they come in and they start to talk about what they're doing that they know they could do better, that's pissing their partner off. And so it's a shift to start to look at oneself and to commit to trying to grow oneself in the relationship rather than looking to the partner to bring the happiness to the relationship. It's about shifting that locus of control. That's one of the central factors that the commitment, you know, means. Because if people in arranged marriages were wanting to pick apart their partner with things that, remember they don't have the rose colored glasses, that would be a long list of things that they could, they could, they could pick on. But the commitment says, look, I'm going to make this marriage work. And when we're going to make a marriage work, we start to think from the get go around how we're going to start to bring ourself to the marriage. And so much of all personal growth begins with self awareness.

[Mike Carruthers]

So I get that that self awareness is important, but still you're in a relationship with another person and so there are still going to be problems, conflicts, that person's going to let you down. Things go wrong.

[David Myers]

So one of the things that we've got to appreciate with our partners is that we're typically drawn to people who are complementary to us. And this is a cause of a lot of the problems in a relationship if we don't understand this process. So we know, for example, that extroverts are very typically drawn to introverts and vice versa, because deep down they kind of know two extroverts together. You know, we had one couple who were like this and they were always competing for the stage. It was kind of tiring being with them because they were both out there and full on the whole time. Whereas an introvert makes a good audience for an extrovert. And the extrovert has a sense that the introvert introvert will slow them down. And they know at some level they need that. If you have two introverts in a relationship, they end up staying home and doing nothing and not developing a social network, which is really important also for children. Children need to have two different kinds of parents who've got different personalities. Because, say, for example, you have two parents who are extroverts and you have a child who's an introvert, that child will feel that they're kind of wrong in the relationship, in the family. Whereas if they've got one extrovert and one introvert, the child can fit in. They can take cues from both parents in different ways. So this complementarity, which is so important for creating richness and a better team because differences. Dale Carnegie said that if two people repeatedly agree, then one of them is superfluous. And so in a relationship, we want that difference. We want somebody who looks at detail and somebody else who looks at the big picture. But if we don't understand that we're being attracted to people because of compliments, complementarity, then this so often is the basis of the conflict that they will come in to see me about. So we need to help them to understand that process. But there's one big caveat. While we can be very comfortably in a richer relationship with somebody who's got different interests and different personality, we have to have aligned personal values. And to go back to the point of your question, there are some couples that they actually don't have aligned core personal values. And those relationships are actually almost impossible to save because they are too different on things that they feel very, very strongly about. So, for example, you can have somebody who's highly religious if the other person is pretty, so so about it. But if you have two people from different religions, who are very committed to that, then you've got a problem going forward because religion is a core value for people. If you've got somebody who's quite comfortable cheating their taxes and somebody who's scrupulously, this is going to be a grounds for conflict that is going to be substantial.

[Mike Carruthers]

Is there something you see in your work that's missing from a lot of relationships? The people who walk in your door for counseling? Is there something you see that's missing that if it was just there, would make such a huge difference in making a relationship work? And if so, it is.

[David Myers]

What is having a partner who accepts us despite our shortcomings. This acceptance is what gives us that. When we know that our partner, even though they know all of our shortcomings, still wants to be there and care about us. That is an incredibly powerful, satisfying experience. And that feeling that my partner still cares about me even though they know that I make mistakes, I make big screw ups, that going through life with somebody who makes you feel that way is gold. It really is the essence of the feeling of a long term relationship.

[Mike Carruthers]

It's really eye opening. When you said right at the very beginning here that for 95% of human history, arranged marriages have basically been the way it's been done. That's how marriages happened. And only recently have we been basing long term relationships and marriages on love. So maybe that explains why, you know, we haven't been very good at it. But also looking at the more pragmatic parts of arranged marriages and how those elements help to make marriage work is something I think everyone can learn from. George Blair west has been my guest. He is a psychiatrist and author of the book how to make the Biggest Decision of youf Life. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thank you for being here, George. Appreciate it.

[David Myers]

That's an absolute pleasure. Mike.

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[Mike Carruthers]

Shopify.com realm the new Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist. And it's the fastest charging Apple watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. Introducing the all new Apple Watch Series 10, now available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum compared to previous generation. IPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary Human beings are odd in many ways. The way we think, the way we process information, the way we delude ourselves into believing things. For example, things like we often believe we're smarter than we really are. We very often use our intuition, but we sometimes misuse our intuition. And it's pretty common to think everybody's having more fun than you are. It's all really curious stuff and something David Myers has studied. David is a social psychologist and professor of psychology at Hope College, and he is author of a book called How Do We Know Ourselves? Curiosities and Marvels of the Human Mind. Hi David, welcome.

[George Blair West]

Thank you, Mike. Glad to be here.

[Mike Carruthers]

So since you're the expert here and you put all this information together, start with something you think is particularly fascinating about humans.

[George Blair West]

Some new research on what I call the happy science of micro friendships. Little brief interactions that we have with people that can brighten their day and ours. And there's some really clever experiments done recently where for example, in one case, commuters are offered a five dollar gift to either do as they would normally do on their train or bus, or to sit in solitude not talking to anybody, or to strike up a conversation with a stranger. And it's going to be awkward, but do it. And at the end of the ride what they find is that everybody's in a happier mood, both the people who initiated the conversation and those who received it. And other studies like this have involved getting people in true experiments to banter with a barista when buying a cup of coffee or to give a compliment to strangers on the street, or in one experiment done at a Turkish university, to talk up the bus driver. And in every case, after doing these small acts of kindnesses, both the giver and the recipient feel so much better. And it's true of introverts as well as extroverts. And so it's just a practical moral to this story that micro friendships, if we could call them that, can brighten people's days. And so we can take initiative to engage in conversation, to chat up the rideshare driver, ask the checkout clerk or how their day is going, or compliment the restaurant server, and it'll have positive effects.

[Mike Carruthers]

Yeah, well, I mean, who hasn't done that? I've certainly been in situations where you just kind of say hello or strike up a short conversation with a stranger waiting in line or something, and yeah, it feels good.

[George Blair West]

Yes. And surprisingly, when you do this, even with a stranger, the effect is bigger than people expect it will be, and it's less awkward than they expect it will be.

[Mike Carruthers]

One of the things you talk about that I think is so interesting is that with the incredible abilities of the human mind, one of its big limitations is how we pay attention, that the human mind really can only pay attention to one thing at a time.

[George Blair West]

Pickpockets use this by diverting our attention and then exploiting that because our attention is not focused where it could be if we were to apprehend the pickpocketer. That's called inattentional numbness. There's even inattentional anosmia. Did you know that word, Mike? That's inability to smell something missing. The smell of coffee, if our attention is devoted, is directed in some other place. And so it's just part of the wonder of attention that is part of the larger wonder of our whole sensory perceptual system. Well, it's interesting right now that you.

[Mike Carruthers]

Say that we can only pay attention to one thing, but people try to pay attention to multiple things. And we have sort of the sense that we can do that. I mean, I can smell the coffee and still read my book. So I am doing two things at the same time.

[George Blair West]

Yeah, but, Mike, you're alternating. You're multitasking, and your attention switches back and forth. So if you think you can be in class and check your smartphone and listen to the lecture at the same time, you really can't. Your attention can be in but one place at a time. And that's part of the power of attention. It's an amazing power, but can only be in one place at a time.

[Mike Carruthers]

So what if you're trying to maybe study and listen to music at the same time?

[George Blair West]

Ah, well, the music can be in the background and it can affect your mood. I mean, I'm not saying you don't process it automatically and unconsciously, but again, your conscious awareness is going to be in one place. If it's thinking about the music, then it's not thinking about the content you're reading. If it's thinking about the content you're reading, then you're not conscious of the music. And so this idea that we can be aware of multiple things at once is really a false notion. We can flip between things, but we can't multitask. And that's why, by the way, it's so dangerous to work to text or be on a cell phone while driving, because that momentary diversion of your consciousness, of your attention can make you miss something. And we have driving simulation experiments and many real life accidents that happen when people think they can be aware of two things simultaneously.

[Mike Carruthers]

Let's talk about human intuition. People have a sense of what it is and they call it different things like hunches or I had a feeling or it just seemed right. But what is intuition?

[George Blair West]

Intuition is automatic thinking. It's instantaneous, unreasoned responses. And it's, first of all, it's a big deal in human existence. So much of our life occurs automatically with implicit expertise that we acquire. Chess masters can make their moves, drivers can make their road decisions, all automatically after they've formed a habit. And we see this in some dramatic ways even when people who are literally blind cannot consciously see anything, will intuitively navigate around an object in their way, indicating that they have some intuitive, what's called blindside below their awareness. And we see it in studies of our intuitive fears of different things, which may be very irrational against all evidence, like fearing flying more than driving, when in fact driving mile per mile is 500 times more dangerous. And by the way, that's an example of intuition's powers, but also of its perils, because unreasoned information can lead us astray sometimes. And while intuition feeds our creativity and guides our lives, it needs to be restrained. Because when unchecked, it can lead us to make terrible decisions. Everything from stock purchasing to thinking we can detect lies, for example, that others are telling us when humans are really not very good at all at that.

[Mike Carruthers]

So what do we know intuition is good for? When is a good time to use it?

[George Blair West]

What intuition is Good for. We're very good at reading emotions instantaneously in other spaces within a fraction of a second. For example, if you observe a teacher's teaching for just 10 seconds, you'll get a very good sense of the energy level that they bring to their classroom. So some judgments we're pretty darn good at, but other judgments, when we use our intuition, turn out not to be very good. So, for example, interviewers using their intuition to predict how effective a potential employee is going to be probably in most cases, have too much confidence in their intuitive predictive ability. So the research shows. And that's why interviewers are best advised to use past behaviors and to use other means of selecting employees than just trusting their own gut.

[Mike Carruthers]

So sometimes when I'm thinking about intuition, it's like. Like when you're driving and you don't, let's say, you don't have GPS or a map or anything, and you think, well, should I turn left or should I turn right? And you, oh, use your intuition. Just go with your gut. That would seem like a bad use of your intuition.

[George Blair West]

That would be a bad use of your intuition unless you have experience on that roadway and you have some intuitive recollection, some implicit memory of having traveled that route before. But if not, then if you just think, I have a whim, I'm going to trust my gut. Your gut is pretty unreliable indicator.

[Mike Carruthers]

Talk about the wonders of walking. What's that about?

[George Blair West]

Wonders of walking refers to some interesting experiments where if people who are in conflict walk together, synchronizing their body movements as they do, so, they can resolve some of their differences and tensions more than if they just sit. And this actually relates, Mike, to a larger area of research on what's called embodied cognition. What we experience in our bodies can affect what we think. And in a number of experiments, people have, for example, if put in a warm room, perceived others as warmer, or if sitting in a hard chair, they become more harsh in their judgments of criminals. Or if their head is held high and their body is striding forward, they feel more spirited, happier. And so if indeed our bodily postures can affect what we're experiencing, then maybe that helps explain why walking together can. Can reduce stress and boost mood between two people who've been in conflict can soften the boundaries between them. By the way, line dancing and martial drills and group singing would be other forms of kind of collective synchrony as people do things with their bodies together and experience some benefits.

[Mike Carruthers]

Why is everyone else having more fun than me?

[George Blair West]

That's a great Question. And it does seem to be the case across a whole bunch of studies, Mike, that university students, mall shoppers, online respondents, almost everybody thinks other social lives are more active than their own dull life. Others, it looks to us like they party more, they eat out more, they have more friends, their dating life is more exciting. And if you've noticed that, you're not alone. And but it looks like this is partly the result of our exposure to social media. If we're just passively using Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and so forth, we see our friends posting things at their happiest, most convivial, best looking self. And we compare our own mundane lives at home as we look at those social media and feel a twinge of envy. Teddy Roosevelt, who supposedly said comparison is the thief of joy. And this is Mike One reason that's given for why teen and young adult depression has dramatically doubled in the last decade, from about 9% reporting a major depressive episode in the Last year in 2010 to 17% in 2020 in government health surveys. And we have various kinds of research that indicates that heavy exposure to social media and those social comparisons we make to others are part of what's at work here, helping us feel bad.

[Mike Carruthers]

But it seems if Teddy Roosevelt said that and he didn't have social media, and I remember a time before social media, I think people still thought this, that people still were envious of other people's lives long before social media.

[George Blair West]

Oh, absolutely. Social comparison, as we call it, didn't begin with social media. We're all the time comparing ourselves to others and feeling relatively good or bad depending on the comparison. However, social media puts that phenomenon on steroids. And so now we're looking at others usually presenting themselves at their happiest, most beautiful times, having fun with others, and then comparing our mundane lives to that. And that could at least be a contributor to the doubled rate of depression, which is really an unprecedented dramatic rise among teens, especially teen girls and young adults.

[Mike Carruthers]

One of the things you talk about that caught my eye when I was looking at the material is you say that death is terrifying to people except for those who are dying. So I'd like to hear your explanation for that.

[George Blair West]

Death is the great enemy. I mean, we are terror struck by the very idea of our own mortality. And yet, on the other hand, we human beings have a remarkable stability to our well being across the lifespan. And as people age, enter their later life years, they don't get unhappier. Their life satisfaction does not go down. Even people that have been paralyzed in accidents, after adapting to that, will have a near normal level of well being. Another example of our human resilience comes from some studies by Amelia Goranson, who looked at the blogs of terminally ill cancer patients or of people on death row and found that their words were not as terror struck or as depressed as you would have guessed. And so she concludes that in her words, death is more positive than people expect. Meeting the grim reaper may not be as grim as it seems.

[Mike Carruthers]

What's the overconfidence phenomenon?

[George Blair West]

The overconfidence phenomenon is the tendency to be more confident than correct. And so in experiments, if people are given factual questions like is absinthe a liquor or a precious stone? If they are 80% confident that they're right, they will in fact actually be about 60% correct. And so this overconfidence phenomenon penetrates into our everyday life. As we tend to be overconfident in the accuracy of our factual judgments when we would be well advised to have a little more intellectual humility.

[Mike Carruthers]

That idea of being overconfident must serve some evolutionary purpose. That people have to feel like they know what they're doing in order to progress, Even though maybe they don't. Because if they just felt, oh, I don't know, I guess we wouldn't get anywhere.

[George Blair West]

So that's a very good point. A certain amount of optimism about our future fuels our activity. If we don't believe in the possibility we have to achieve something, we may not even make the effort. And so there may be some adaptive evolutionary wisdom to this overconfidence phenomenon. But it does, however, tend to lead people to be overconfident when projecting. For example, when projects will be completed, Whether it's students predicting whether or not they're going to finish a course or get a good grade, or whether it's contractors projecting when they're going to finish a project, People tend to be overconfident.

[Mike Carruthers]

Talk about behavioral confirmation. I think this is something that everyone has experienced, and it's pretty significant. So explain what it is and how it works.

[George Blair West]

And all this is an interesting phenomenon that comes from social psychological experiments, for example, in which women who were interacting with men over an intercom and who were believed by the man who was talking to them to be attractive, in fact, behave warmer because of how the man treated them. And so in these and other experiments, People who are led to believe they're like, for example, also behave more warmly. They are liked more. If an interviewer expects an interviewee to be warm and expressive, that interviewee tends to Be more warm and expressive, and this can affect our relationships. If we come home and greet our partner and expect them to be in a bad mood, we may treat them in a way that that puts them in a bad mood. If we expect them to be in a warm, positive mood, we might treat them more warmly and thus elicit the very behavior we expect. And so the perception of hostility can beget hostility. And we call this behavioral confirmation. The simple lesson is what we see in others can get reflected back on how they react to us. And what they see in us may influence how we respond to them. As we expect, so we shall find.

[Mike Carruthers]

Right? Right.

[George Blair West]

Our social beliefs reflect reality, but they also create our social reality.

[Mike Carruthers]

One more before you go, explain implicit egotism.

[George Blair West]

Implicit egotism is the tendency to like what we associate with ourselves. So if you take your face and morph it into another face so you have a blended face, you will tend to like that new face and that person, even if you don't recognize yourself. By the way, there's some concern that artificial intelligence might manipulate us politically in the future by taking our face and subtly morphing it with that of candidates they want us to like. And so, without recognizing what's happening, we may come to like that candidate more. But it extends to other things, too. We tend to like letters that happen to be in our names. We tend to like numbers that are part of our birth date. People tend even to gravitate toward places and occupations that share their name. There are an excess number of fills in Philadelphia, of Virginias, in Virginia, dentists with a name like Dennis or Denise. And so this curious phenomenon, this liking things we associate with ourselves in so many different ways is called implicit egotism.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, it's interesting, you know, as you've talked about all these things, I've experienced many of them and I'm sure everybody has and never really probably understood why, or it's just part of being human. And so it's really interesting to hear the research behind why we do these things we do and why we think the way we think. I've been speaking with David Myers. He is a social psychologist and author of the book How Do We Know Ourselves? Curiosities and Marvels of the Human Mind. And there is a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks for coming on, David. This was really fun.

[George Blair West]

Mike, thanks so much for having me. It's been great talking with you.

[Mike Carruthers]

If you like to cook at all, you have probably been told that you're not supposed to wash mushrooms because mushrooms will absorb the water that you wash them with and make them soggy and hard to cook with. This is mentioned so often in recipes, in cookbooks and online, where they often talk about how you should brush your mushrooms to get the dirt off, but not to rinse them because, oh, you don't want to rinse them. Well, years ago, a guy named Harold McGee who wrote a great book called on food and Cooking, he did an experiment and I remember interviewing him about this many years ago. He did an experiment where he weighed mushrooms and then he soaked them in a bowl and then he took the mushrooms out of the bowl, let them dry off briefly and weighed them again. And the mushrooms did not absorb any water. They just don't. But again, it's mentioned in so many recipes. It's really become conventional wisdom in the world of cooking that you should brush off dirt from mushrooms and not wash them. But I will tell you, since Harold McGee told me that I wash my mushrooms, it's sure a lot easier than brushing the dirt off and I don't have any problems. And that is something you should know. You know, the great thing about podcasts is you can never have too many listeners, ever. And you could help us get some by telling a friend or someone you know that you think would enjoy listening to something you should know. Tell them about this podcast and suggest they give a listen. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know.

[George Blair West]

Ladies and gentlemen, what are you doing?

[David Myers]

What do you mean?

[Mike Carruthers]

Just keep it simple. I'm making the promo. Just keep it simple. Just say, hey, we're the Brav Bros. Two guys that talk about Bravo. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, we're the Brav Bro. No, dude, stop with the voice. Just keep it simple. I've seen promos on tv, dude. This is how you get the fans engaged. This is how you get listeners. We're trying to get listeners here. If we just say, oh, we're two dudes that talk about Bravo, people are get tired of it already. We need some oomph. All right then, fine. Let's try to do it with your voice. Brav Bros. Good job. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go network at Go Kid Go. Putting kids first is at the heart.

[Jennifer]

Of every show that we produce.

[Mike Carruthers]

That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called the Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named who time travels to.

[Jennifer]

The mythical land of Camelot.

[Mike Carruthers]

Look for the Search for the silver lining on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.