Hidden Brain - Episode 9: Aziz Ansari on Modern Love

Episode Date: November 17, 2015

Hidden Brain host Shankar Vedantam talks to comedian Aziz Ansari — star of a new Netflix show and coauthor of Modern Romance — about Tinder, texting and how dating is a bit like... buying jam.

Ladies and gentlemen, Aziz Ansari. This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta. Last year, I was asked a host in event in Washington DC with a comedian Aziz Ansari. You might know him as Tom Havifert from Parks and Recreation or you might be binge watching his original series on Netflix, Master of None. What you might not know is that Aziz is also interested in human behavior. He's thought about how social norms have changed the way people get together, he studied

how romantic preferences have changed over time, and he's examined how online dating is linked to the psychological phenomenon known as the paradox of choice. Like there's too much goddamn jam out there, like there's iPhone apps that literally tell paradox of choice. A Zezus core it in a book with the sociologist Eric Kleinenberg, it's called Modern Romance. We taped a live conversation at George Washington University's List Narodatorium and we played an excerpt for you in the fall. We are working on new podcasts this week and we played an excerpt for you in the fall. We are working on new podcasts this week and we thought you might enjoy this encore presentation.

If you know anything about a Z's, we don't need to tell you, this episode is going to be a little racy. If you're on the car with kids, you might want to save it for later. I want to jump to one particular section that you start right at the top of the book, looking at ways in which people text one another. And the fact that people turn out to be surprisingly bad at texting. Actually, I should correct that. What you're saying is that men turn out to be surprisingly bad at texting women.

Yeah. Well, I will say this, OK? When we ask women, like, well, what are the things you'd like when guys text, like, what are the factors that make a text that you like? And kind of the consensus we got was asking them to do a specific thing at a specific time, saying something that maybe recalled an interaction some asking them to do a specific thing at a specific time,

saying something that maybe recalled an interaction that they had in the past to just show that you were engaged and this was something that you were into. And the last thing was just some sort of humor is also helpful. And when the book we talk about this stuff, and it's not from the perspective of this

is what you should do, more like how the people people not know like this is all you have to do. Like, the bar is startlingly low. Like it's this really like very scary how low the bar is. I'm wondering whether we can have you just read a short excerpt from the book that talks about how badly men are doing this. And you have a little excerpt here with a guy who tries to text a woman. It's on page 42 for anyone if you want to be a girl. Okay. Okay. Some people say it doesn't matter what you text someone. They like you, they like you. After interviewing hundreds of singles,

I can scientifically confirm that this is total bullsh**. For those who doubt me, here's an example from a show I did at the Chicago Theater in the spring of 2014. During that tour after material about texting, I would ask if any one of the audience had recently met someone and had been texting back and forth. They had, they would come into the stage and I would pick a few people and read, analyze and ask them about what was happening in their messages. At this particular show, I was speaking with Rachel, who had met a guy at a good friend's wedding. As it happened, the guy was also a friend of her sisters, so we had a pretty good shot at a first date with her. She was single, she was interested, all he had to do was send her a simple message, introducing

himself, and asking her to do something. Here's what happened. He sends his first message. Hi, Rachel! Since I never got a chance to ask you to dance at Marissa and Chris's wedding, I'm Chris's old roommate from Purdue. He and your sister gave you your number. I wanted to say hi and sort of texty introduce myself.

I hope you had a great weekend. Dot dot dot. Hope to chat with you soon. Rachel wrote back 10 minutes later. Hey, great to meet you. Currently enjoying my birthday weekend with lots of good Mexican food. It happens when your birthday is in Cinco de Mayo.

Hope you had a great weekend too. You wrote back shortly. I totally realize upon reading my last message, I didn't include my name. Ha, ha, ha. I'm Will, smiley face. I totally realize upon reading my last message I didn't include my name. Haha. I'm Will, smiley face. Feliz cumpleaños as well. And totally digging on the synchote of myothene.

Rachel never met Will. After a few messages of this nature, Rachel stopped responding. None of us know Will. You may be a kind, handsome man with a heart of gold. But all we have to go on is those messages. And those messages have shaped in our minds a very dorky, terrifyingly Caucasian weirdo. Finally Caucasian, weirdo. So one of the things that you point out in the book is that there's this arms race in waiting when someone texts you. That if you respond to a text right away, you instantly lose all leverage because you indicate interest, you indicate desperation.

So you wait when someone texts you. And now that person is playing the same game with you So they wait and respond to texting you and now you have this extended waiting game It's so weird and it's weird because everyone knows what people are doing and they still can do it Like oh, you're gonna wait 20 minutes. Oh did you have a meeting? No, you didn't you were waiting on purpose Well, guess what I'm gonna wait 40 minutes Did you have a meeting? No, you fucking didn't. You were waiting on purpose. Well, guess what? I'm gonna wait 40 minutes. I'm gonna double that shit because I have shit going on too.

Not really, but I'm gonna pretend like I do. It's so weird. You know, that was the thing that was interesting to me. Like, I wondered like, why did that waiting drive me crazy when I was single and like had to deal with that? Like, I would go crazy and and you know in the book we looked at a lot of studies we talked to a lot of very smart people and they explained it to me and it made sense like basically the idea is like let's say

you're you're a guy you meet three women and you text all three of them and two of them write you back the two that write you back they kind of put your mind at ease, right? But the third one has not written you back. So they're not putting your mind at ease and they've created uncertainty. And uncertainty is very powerful and it sticks to your mind and you're like, what's going on? What did I do? Did I do something wrong to this person? I like me. What's happening? What's happening? And so that person has more presence of your mind. And just that presence on your mind can sometimes develop into attraction. So when they finally do put your mind at ease, it's more meaningful to you.

But there's also kind of like, at a certain point, if you wait too long, then the person's like, well, screw this person, like they wait too long, like screw them, I'm gonna hang out with these, one of these other people that wrote me back quickly or whatever. So it's never quite a precise thing. There's not like something you can say where

it's like, okay, if you wait like this amount of minutes, you're going to be perfect. Like all those things vary from person to person. There's a lot of factors. But the thing we learned is like that, that amount of time decreases as you get to younger people. Like if you tell I'm 32, if you talk to someone, my eyes are like, oh, if they wait like, you know, a day or like six hours, it's a little unnerving. If you talk to someone who's like, in college, they're like, I haven't heard anything in five minutes. What's happened? That window is getting smaller and smaller.

When we come back, we'll talk about how the ever-growing pool of dating options can be both a blessing and a curse. This is related to an idea and psychology known as the paradox of choice. Having too many choices can be tough when you're dating, or when you're buying jam. You know, you go on a date and you go to the bathroom like a few pieces of jam, of text to you, you're like, what the f*** is this? Stay with us. Welcome back to Hidden Brain.

Aziz and Sarri talk in his book about the vast number of dating choices people have today. This led to an idea that's been explored in the social sciences, it's known as the paradox of choice. One of the big changes for people that are like dating now is you have more options than any generation of people ever. You know, when we talk to people that were living in retirement homes and stuff, it was you have more options than any generation of people ever. When we talked to people that were living in retirement homes and stuff, it was really interesting.

They talked about how, especially the women, it was really interesting. They were saying, well, you know, it's 20 years old. I was living with my parents. I didn't have the opportunity to pursue education or my own career. I didn't really get to become an adult until I got married. There was some guy with neighborhood. He was pretty nice. I wanted to get out of the house and I was like all right I'll get married, you know And they really said that I was like it sounds like it because they're like some of the women

They're really happy and they're like oh we grew to have this debon but other women are like no not as much of a bond and And getting married was kind of the first step in adulthood For those generations. But for us, this, you know, people now, marriages is always the first step. You know, you go to college, you pursue a career, you live in a bunch of different places, and you meet so many people throughout all these different stages of your life. You have this whole stage of life that is referred to as emerging adulthood and yeah you meet so many people that way and then you add in the online dating aspect of things and you have more options

than anyone could have possibly imagined in those generations of retirement homes. So I mean I can see why a dating pool of three people is too small to actually find your life partner but a dating pool of 30,000 or 300,000 is just unmanageable because what happens is every time you meet someone who's potentially interesting, a little voice in the back of your head says, if you wait for another two days, you could find someone better than this. Well, yeah, well, the problem is, what we refer to, what this gentleman, Barry Schwartz, that we interviewed in the book, he does a lot of research on choice and he wrote this book

called The Paradox of Choice and kind of the kind of main thesis of that book is the idea that like you know when you have more options your instinct is oh well that's better I have more off than more things to choose from I'll be happier. But in reality when they do study after study they find the more options you have the harder it is to make a decision and when you do make a decision, you end up being less satisfied because you're thinking about whether you made the wrong decision or whether one of these other things would have been a better match for you.

And then the really famous study is this study they did in a grocery store where they had two different displays with jams. And one display had like five jams and one display had like you know five jams and the other display had like 36 jams and whenever it was the five jams people were way more likely to buy the jams and when they had the 36 jams they were just overwhelmed and they didn't know what to do and they ended up not buying jams sometimes. So and they also said this which is really interesting they said like oh people that bought the jam from the 36, like the bigger display, whatever, if I'm getting these numbers wrong,

I'm paraphrasing, but the core of the thing is right. The, when they bought from the one with the bigger display with more options, the people reported being less satisfied with the jam, which I found really hilarious. The idea that someone ate jam and like, this jam's not satisfying. It's wrong with this jam. It says it tastes like strawberries. But the thing we say in the book is like, to me, like that totally applies to modern romance, because I mean, like, there's just too much goddamn jam out there. Like, you know, you go on a date and you go to the bathroom

like a few pieces of jam of text to you. You're like, what the fuck is this? You go online, there's so much jam out there. There's iPhone apps that literally tell you if there's jam nearby that wants to get eaten at that very moment. I mean, what can you do? You know, you're talking the book about this guy you interviewed who I think was on match.com

And you actually got to observe him making choices where he was sort of reviewing pictures of women And then deciding whether he liked them or not I don't know if you remember the specific anecdote, but I'm wondering if you can just tell us about it Yeah, I remember this guy. So he just, he didn't seem like a, like he wasn't like a hunk or anything like, he wasn't a stud, he was just kind of like, and this is mean, but he was just kind of like a mediocre white guy. And he, uh, he logged on to his account and, and it said like, oh, he was a match.com account in this case. And he looks on it and he was just like, uh, and, and said like oh you he was a match.com account in this case And he looks on it and he was just like and it said like you have these many matches and I looked at the photo

I was like wow that woman is very attractive and then he he looked at her profile and He was like debating whether he's gonna send her a message. He's like nah, and I was like what? Why why are you not sending her message? And he is like, mm, she likes the red socks. And I was like, what? And then I saw him go to another woman and ignore her. And then he ignored one other woman. And then he sent this other woman like a quick message. And it blew my mind.

Because if any of those other three women that he put an ax on, if they'd seen him in a bar, like 20 years ago and like smiled at him, he would have, he would have went crazy. He would have crazy. There's beautiful women. They were very interesting and and and seem like intelligent thoughtful people just, you know, based on what little ice off in the profile, but they seem like interesting people where he would be a catch for this guy. But now he was just like, man, whatever. Like there's so many

people out here who cares. So, but here's was just like, man, whatever, like there's so many people out here, who cares? So, but here's the thing that I find really sad about what you're describing, which is that people are looking at these pictures, and they're making judgements about this other person based on this very, very small amount of information, and often based on things that they think are important criteria to them.

So if you ask people, they will tell you, I want someone who's this tall or this short, or this color hair, or this body profile, and so on. But if you actually look at the data of who people end up with, people often don't end up with the people that they say they're actually looking for. So if they eliminate people based on the criteria they think they have, they might be eliminating their soulmates.

Exactly. Yeah. I mean, there's a plenty of studies that show that we're horrible at knowing what we really like, you know. Whenever they look at these online sites and they see what people say they prefer and what they actually go after, it's always there's always a big contrast of like what you said you didn't like this, but that's actually what you're interested in. I think that goes back to this idea of like, you know, all these online dating sites, you have all these filters and all this stuff, but not of it really matters. Like, it's really just

about like this connection that you have with someone in person and seeing if there's some sort of spark or connection, like, when you have this connection with someone in real life, you don't stop and go, wait, wait, wait, hold on. But what are your favorite movies? Like, you're just, you don't give a s***, you're engaged with the person and you like it and it's fun. And I think sometimes with these online sites, the people that seemed to be a little frustrated were people that were trying to find this perfect person and spending this extended period of time like messaging back and forth and trying to find this elusive rapport. And really, you just find that in person. And I think one of the kind of big takeaway from online dating was what this woman Helen Fisher told us is and she's like this amazingly smart social

eyes. She's also works with match.com and she's like, you know, these sides shouldn't be called online dating science as you're called online introduction services because you want to meet this person in person. And when I realize it's like, you know, you don't meet the perfect person online, you meet a person online, but to find out they're perfect, you have to see how you are in person. So in other words, you really have to get to sort of date three

before you actually figure out whether this person is for you or not. But if you're in constantly swipe right, swipe left mode, you're not going to get to that point. Or even worse than the swipe right swipe left mode is this mode of like, oh, let me just keep sending messages and see if this is my dream person. You know, Tinder actually think, and those kind of swipe apps,

I totally see why those came about. Like, there's some people that would say, oh, that seems really shallow. This is the picture and just like swipe in the side if you're gonna meet someone. But I mean, when you go into a bar or a party, you're looking at people and going, no, no, yes, you're doing that.

So I'm trying to internalize your lesson, which is that it's less important to meet new people and more important to spend time with the people you meet to figure out if they're actually right-footed. So the thing we mentioned in the book is what we call the flow riota theory of acquired likability through repetition, which basically was basically saying like, yes, there are people, yes, of course.

But I'd like to think there's a lot of great people out there and a lot of people that were quick to dismiss If you apply this theory, the theory is basically like we're all like a flow writer song, you know? The first time you hear us you're like all right flow writer. I've heard this before Get it out of here, leave me alone And then you keep hearing it and it gets stuck in your head and you're like, flow right at you, you've done it again, let's dance! I was reading a section of the book this afternoon that brought back some memories from some years ago, involving a certain congressman from New York. And some Facebook messages he had exchanged with a woman named Lisa from Las Vegas.

I'm wondering if you might be able to read this exchange for us. Sure. And I want to ask you whether you think these online sites and this technology has increased the risk of indiscretions and infidelity. Sure. All right. I remember reading the Anthony Weiner Facebook messages. of indiscretions and infidelity. Sure. All right. I remember reading the Anthony Weiner Facebook messages.

Seeing the way he was just messaging random women all over the country and watching the messages, quickly escalate from innocuous to very sexual with unbelievable. This is a transcript of a chat session he had with one of these women, a lady named Lisa from Las Vegas. Weiner and Lisa, sorry to bring this back guys, but it is fascinating.

Lisa, I'm trying to find the wonderful Anthony Weiner who I fell in love with for yelling at those damn Republicans the other day, and you were as funny as hell on the daily show. Your friend requests are full. You must friend me. You were awesome. Anthony, thank you Lisa. Glad you had my back. Your friend requests are full. You must friend me. You are awesome. Anthony, thank you Lisa. Glad you had my back. You keeping an eye on that. Wackadoodle sharing an angle for us. Lisa, how insane is she? Who needs Social Security, Medicare or education? If this Wacko wins my state, I swear I'll have to move. She may be dumber than plain and that is tough to burn.

I swear I'll have to move. She may be dumber than plain and that is tough to find. Like this cute new pick of you, when you come into Vegas to help me beat up the right wing crazies. Anthony, this is my pool my finger shot. Glad you like. I'm ready for a Vegas trip. Truth telling during the day, got a nine plan for us? Question mark. Lisa, that was a very loaded question. I've got all kinds of night plans for us. When are you coming? Anthony, don't know, make me an offer. I can't refuse. Lisa, to get us in the mood, first we watch back-to-back episodes of the Daily Show and Colbert Report. Then, to really spice things up, we go to face all of my neighbors sharing annual yard signs. Then, when we are really hot, we go to the bookstore and cover all of the bland back books with copies of the audacity of hope! I do this about once a week, you can tell I'm a very exciting girl.

Or if this is not your thing, we can just get drunk and have mad passionate sex. For me, the most offensive part was that he used the word whackadoodle. the most offensive part was that he used the word whackadoodle. Also, did you catch that slide, almost subliminal blink and you might miss it allusion to sex? It was when she said they could have mad passionate sex. So, what do you think of these? Have these online technologies made us more prone to indiscretion and infidelity? Or is this just a manifestation of how we've always been? I think it definitely, there's definitely,

if you're trying to get involved in indiscretions, you, if you have these online things and you have your phone, if you have your phone, you have this very private world where you can conduct all sorts of s**t that no one knows about. It's just where we tell in the book of this person who says they were, they had like a work colleague and they were friendly with each other. She was married and she sent like a text message

about something once and it was like a work related and he wrote back and then later he saw something that was kind of funny that reminded him of her and he sent a message and they started joking back and forth and this rapport started developing and they eventually had this like very like intimate thing going on the phone where they were like having a long conversations and it became this very intimate thing going on the phone where they were like having a long conversations and it became It's very intimate thing and it eventually led to some some infidelity and It was interesting because the guy was like, you know if if I didn't have text message I wouldn't have sent that first message that started leading to that rapport You know, I would never have called her at her home

I'd be like, hey, did you see that thing like, you know But with your phone you you can kind of build these kind of things that really escalate very quickly you know i would never have called her at her home and like hey did you see that thing like you know but with your phone you you you can kind of build these kind of things that really escalate very quickly uh... and also i think like you know in the in the in the and the winter thing is like all he's able to test the waters with that meeting a little bit where he's like don't know maybe enough for a rickian refuse you can be like oh well we'll go to chiles and you'll be like all that doesn't sound fun

but she she immediately like got it and started getting sexual and he knew, okay, this is a sexual thing, she's down and then after that message that I read, like the floodgates opened and then there was all the photos and all that stuff. I don't think you can kind of accurately say whether it's led to an increase on the amount of infidelity

that's going on. I do think there's certain aspects of it that make it a little more lend itself to it. One of the things you talk about in the book is about how online dating is rapidly becoming the way many people meet, but you also find that this is especially true for same-sex couples. That same-sex couples online dating is really become the dominant way people meet one another. Why do you think that's going on? What do you think that's going on what

do you think it means well that is about something a phenomenon uh... related to what what referred to a thin markets you know i i spoke with this woman who who like late in her life like she was married to a guy and then she got divorced and this kind of decided like you know what i'm a lesbian like i've been a lesbian my whole life

and she lives in this small town in Texas and she started online dating and going on on dates and stuff like that. And I thought about that. I was like, wow. Like if that was her 23 years ago, that would have been a much different thing. You know, being in a place like Texas

in a small town where maybe people aren't as open to that kind of stuff, it would have been way harder, whereas now she can go online and she's able to meet people and it's really a huge factor. So this is some way sort of the positive side of technology isn't it, because it allows people who have minority interests, if you will, or sort of special interests not to be lonely forever, to actually find people who match their interests, match their needs,

and this is what technology is enabled. It's really helped in those kind of end markets or whatever and I think that's a good point that for all these things I feel like one of the big questions a book is asking is, is all this stuff good or bad and I think for each thing it's not one answer, it's both, it really just depends on how you use these tools. Something like online dating, there's one notion of like, oh, everyone's on their phones, everyone thinks that there's something better out there,

and it just added so much stress to my life and I hate it. Then you could also look at the other side of like, well, one out of three people that get married now, they meet their spouse through online dating and a huge percentage of these people are meeting people that they would not have met had it not been for these sites. So you could look at it like oh well there's an insane amount of new love in the world that's created because of this technology and there's this overwhelming amount of love that would not even be there had it not been for these things and I feel like you can't deny that that's a positive thing.

That's comedian Aziz Ansari. His book written with the sociologist Eric Kleinenberg is Modern Romance. If you like this show, can you do us a favor, go to iTunes and give us a rating. This will help other people find our show. In fact, if you drop the word jam into your review, we'll know you came from this episode. The Hidden Brain podcast is produced by Karam Agar Kalasin, Maggie Penman and Max Nestrak, special thanks this week to Daniel Schuchin and Jay Siz. For more Hidden Brain, find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and listen to my stories

on your local public radio station. I'm Shankar Vitaantham, and this is NPR. you