Something You Should Know - How to Effectively Grow Your Self-Confidence & Why Intelligent People Do Dumb Things

Episode Date: August 12, 2019

Can your boss spy on you? You bet! This episode explains just how far an employer can go to keep tables on you and what you are up to. http://workrights.us/ Do you have a lot of self-confidence? Could you use a little more? We probably all could and Lana Otoya author of The Mindset of Self Confidence: Why Self Confidence Has Nothing to Do with Speaking Up or Standing Straight (https://amzn.to/2yKXqWu) joins me to explain how self-confidence works, what it is and how to develop more of it.   Are you religious? If not, you might want to be? Listen as I discuss the amazing health benefits that happen when you believe in a religion. Duke Johnson, M.D. author of “Optimal Health” Intelligence is a funny thing. Sure, it’s good to be smart but there is also a down side. David Robson is a journalist for for the BBC, the Atlantic, and New Scientist and he is also author of the book The Intelligence Trap: The Intelligence Trap: Why Smart People Make Dumb Mistakes (https://amzn.to/2YRNYLz). He joins me to explain just what intelligence is and how (and when) being intelligent can be a bad thing. This Week’s Sponsors -Embark Dog DNA Test Kit. Go to www.Embarkvet.com and use Promo code SOMETHING to save 15%. -SimpliSafe. Go to www.SimpliSafe.com/SOMETHING to get free shipping and a money-back guarantee! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know was all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu.

She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Today on Something You Should Know, your boss has the right to spy on you. I'll tell you just how far they can go. Then self-confidence, how to feel more of it and project it out to the world. So the best way on becoming more confident is by working on your inner dialogue that involves like you know I'm not

judging others everyone has their strengths and weaknesses and when you can do that to others in your own head you'll find that it's a lot easier to put yourself out there. Then the health benefits of having a religious belief it's really amazing and a look at your intelligence yes it's great to be smart but there are dangers as well. People who are very intelligent, if they don't have the kind of checks and balances to ensure they're applying their intelligence correctly, can actually be even more wrong than people who are less intelligent and actually lead us to make some really disastrous errors. All this today on Something You Should Know. People who listen to Something You Should Know. People who listen to Something You

Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So, I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast

where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for.

Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts something you should know fascinating intel the world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life today something you should know with mike carothers hi welcome to something you should know from to time, I like to remind you that if you hear an advertiser on this podcast and they have a special offer or a promo code or a special URL to go to, all of those things are listed in the show notes for the episode. And all of our promo codes and special offers are also on our website, somethingyoushouldknow.net.

Right at the top of the page there, in the navigation, is a thing that says promo codes. Click on that and you'll get all of the promo codes to take advantage of all the offers that are mentioned on this podcast. We start today with workers' rights. If you work for someone else, if you have an employer, you probably like to think that you have rights. But you probably have far fewer rights

than you think you do. For example, did you know that your employer has the right to spy on you? A lot of what you do on company time or on company equipment is fair game,

according to Lewis Maltby, who is an attorney and president of the National Work Rights Institute. Here is a list of what they can legally look at. They can look at what you send. They can check out any email sent through the company's network. That includes mail and messages

from your personal account, laptop, tablet, or smartphone using their Wi-Fi. They can spy on what you post. Online activity on your company's time or network is on their radar. Even if it's on your own time or equipment, employers can legally monitor Internet content by or about their employees. They can monitor what you say.

Your workplace could even be bugged. In most states, employers have the right to install hidden audio recording devices. And they can monitor where you go. If you have a company car or a company cell phone, your boss can be watching via GPS. For as little as $5 a month, they can subscribe to GPS trackers that can see where you go and what time you get home. And that is something you should know.

What exactly is self-confidence? Is it a feeling you have inside, or is it something you project that other people perceive? And have you noticed that sometimes self-confidence can be fleeting? You can be very confident in one situation and not so confident in another. So how do we get a handle on self-confidence? And how do you get more of it? That's what we're about to discuss with Lena Otoya. Lena is the author of several books, including The Mindset of Self-Confidence,

Why Self-Confidence Has Nothing to Do with Speaking Up or Standing Straight. Hi, Lena. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Hey, Mike. Thanks so much for having me. So what made you decide to research this and get a deeper understanding of self-confidence? It started because I felt like I've always been a pretty introverted person, but I never had any self-esteem problems. So I was always pretty confident within myself and I knew that I had a lot of value and self-worth. But if I were at a party or something like that, I would sort of be like that quiet one in the room. And I would think to myself, you know, if anybody is looking at me right now, they would see a shy person, somebody

who doesn't have a lot of confidence. So what is self-confidence? Is it that feeling inside that I'm a confident person? Or is it that thing I project where other people look at me and say, well, now he's a confident person? I mean, it can get a little complicated, but basically what it is in a nutshell is that confidence does have those two pieces. It has those two parts that need to be working together. So one is how you feel inside and how you want other people to see you. So that's kind of the key there is that it's how you want others to see you and you want that to be very authentic and lined up. So I can give a quick example. So let's say that you're in a meeting, a business meeting or something, and you don't have any ideas. You don't have anything other people in the meeting knowing that you don't have any ideas

and you're sitting there silently, you're actually being confident because you are playing your authentic self and you're revealing to others how you feel inside. The problem is when there's like a mismatch there. So let's say you do have a lot of ideas and you want to be contributing to the meeting, but you're not speaking up, that's where there's like a mismatch because clearly your outside confidence skills are not lining up with how you feel inside. Do you suppose from your talking with people on this topic that people are pretty satisfied with their level of self-confidence and it's just some people need to work on it? Or is this a very

pervasive problem? It is a pretty pervasive problem because it does involve the two different aspects. So I've got a lot and getting the two of them lined up is, is a challenge for a lot of people because either people feel like they, they're, they aren't very confident. They don't like, sorry, they don't feel they're very good at public speaking, or they don't feel they're very good at small talk, but they do have that confidence within themselves. So then they're not confident, and they don't feel like they can reveal their true selves. And that does take a lot of work, especially for introverts, because I feel like introverts, they do have a lot of self-reflection. They're very self-aware. And so this can be a huge hurdle in trying to be able to just let yourself loose into the world without fear of judgment.

How do you define self-confidence? What is it exactly? Self-confidence is when you can reveal your authentic self to others. So it means that you are confident inside, you have self-esteem, and you can reveal that sense of self-esteem and self-worthiness to other people. So it does involve those two sides. So the inner side is kind of like your inner dialogue, the things that you tell yourself and that you believe about yourself. And then the outer part is those social skills, like the public speaking, small talk, engaging with others

confidently. So it's those two things lining up together. So when you say that you might have inner, for example, inner confidence, you feel confident, but you're not good at small talk. Well, why aren't you good at small? If you're confident, what's the problem with small talk? A lot of introverts, I hear this a lot where they say, like, I like to have deep, meaningful conversations. I don't like to talk about the weather. So that's something people kind of often say that they're not very good at just walking up to people and talking about just random casual things. So it's an important thing to remember that, you know, human connection actually has three steps. So it starts with

small talk, it leads into opinions, and then it leads into personal revelation. So humans don't start off by telling their deepest, darkest secrets to somebody that they just met. And if they did do that, like if someone walked up to you and started doing that, you'd think that they're like pretty weird and kind of odd. So the first step in human connection is actually engaging in that small talk, that talk about the weather. And the reason why it's actually so important is because you're not really talking about the weather. What you're why it's actually so important is because you're not really talking about the weather. What you're doing is you're creating a safe environment for

the other person and for yourself to eventually start opening up and leading into deeper conversations, which is a deeper connection. Often when people talk about self-confidence, like you're telling your child, you know, act confident, stand up straight, you know, firm handshake, that kind of thing. Is that good? Is that a good way to lead people into self-confidence or is that just, you know, ornaments on the tree? It is ornaments on the tree. So it is a good goal to have. You want to be able to speak or stand up straight, look people in the eye. You want to be able to get to that level. But starting with that is completely backwards. Like it need, you need to start with why you're connecting with people, how to connect with people, why you might struggle doing that. It all starts within, within inside and that inner dialogue that you have. And then the goal is to

have all of those outward things like speaking up or standing up straight. All of that stuff is actually a goal. It's not really something you should be trying to do, if that makes sense. So you can be self-confident and have a lousy handshake and slouch, but you're still confident inside. You just don't have the social skills necessarily to project it, but it's there. Exactly. And if you are okay with other people seeing you as somebody that slouches and has a limp handshake, then you're fine because you're portraying your authentic, true self. Other people are seeing that within you. And so you're good. You're portraying your authentic, true self. Other people are seeing that within you. And so you're good.

You're all lined up and ready to go. However, let's imagine that you are a lawyer or somebody that's in a very professional work setting and you have confidence inside, but you have this limp handshake and you slouch and you're shy when you talk. If you don't like that about yourself and you don't like that you're doing that, that's where we have that mismatch. So that's where we have the outward side not lining up with the inward. And that's where you would have to work on those outward skills. Is there something people can do when the situation demands it? You're not necessarily

feeling particularly self-confident, but it's important to project confidence anyway. Is there something people can do to, you know, fake it? That is something that you can't really, like, you can't really just do it on the spot if you haven't worked on it. So you can't just be expected to show a huge level of confidence and show everybody that you're the best, loudest person in the room if you haven't worked on it deeply from within. So the best way to actually start doing that is to start working on your inner self dialogue. I find that everybody can kind of relate to this is people who are, um, who struggle with putting themselves out there are often very critiquing of themselves and others in their head. So basically they judge other people. So they're the kinds of people that are thinking in their head,

Oh, that person, you know, they asked a dumb question in the meeting, or that person was studying when they talk, they must be super shy. You know, when you're having these, these thoughts in your head of judgment towards other people, it makes you feel like if you're going to put yourself out there, other people are going to judge you too. So the best way on becoming more confident and, you know, projecting that sense of confidence to others is by working on your inner dialogue and realizing, creating a safe space in your own head that involves like, I'm not judging others. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. And when you can do that to others in your own head, you'll find that it's a lot easier to put yourself out there.

I'm talking with Lana Otoya. She is author of the book, The Mindset of Self-Confidence. My self-confidence has nothing to do with speaking up or standing straight. Hi, this is Rob Benedict. And I am Richard Spate. We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural. It had a pretty good run, 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times, we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone. So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors, and we'll of course have some actors on as well, including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic brothers. It was kind of a little bit of a left field choice in the best

way possible. The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him, but we're looking for like a really intelligent Duchovny type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes. So please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests,

but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation.

And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named the Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back. And in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, Lana, there are those times, times though that even the most confident person walks into a situation that is intimidating and intimidation seems to just sap your self-confidence.

So what do you do then? It is all about that inner dialogue because people who are, if they get intimidated easily, a lot of the times it's because they overthink things in their head. And they're going, they're trying to have this logical or illogical thoughts that are going around in their head. A lot of the times, the most confident people that we see that are able to just kind of talk to anybody, they're able to just start up a conversation. A lot of the times, those people, they're not very self-aware. If you notice, like those, a lot of the times those people, they're not very self-aware. If you notice, like those, a lot of the times people who are very chatty or very, don't mind being the center of attention in the room, they don't care if they're making a fool of themselves. They don't care how they're coming across to others. And that could almost be a weakness in

some cases, but the truth is they are just not looking inward and not looking at, at how they're, how they're portraying themselves. And that can be the detriment to somebody who is very self-aware and is constantly self-critiquing is that you're afraid of putting yourself out there. If you're one of those people who is constantly self-critiquing, then how do you stop doing that? One method I mentioned was not to judge other people. So that's the very first step. Don't judge other people. Try to give other people the benefit of the doubt. But a really great way to start really doing that is to remember that every person has their strengths and weaknesses.

So yes, you're always going to catch people in a weak moment if you're looking for that. You know, somebody at a meeting, let's say again, you know, they speak up to the meeting and they're very shy. They're a little bit awkward. You might easily be able to say, oh, that person's kind of shy. They're clearly socially awkward. But maybe that person is, you know, a genius with numbers and they're a genius accountant or something like that.

So that's going to be the case for every single human being is that you're going to catch people in their weak sides and their weak things that they're not great at. And they also have their strengths, right? So you've got to do that for yourself, remembering that you've got weaknesses and strengths and that other people have weaknesses and strengths. And this can really help that inner dialogue become a lot more positive. So you're So you're not afraid of revealing yourself because even if someone catches you in a weakness, you've kind of mentally prepared yourself that, yes, of course I have weaknesses, but I have strengths too. And I'm a valuable person despite those weaknesses. And that helps with self-esteem.

Do you think that even really confident people, in really confident people, that self-confidence is a variable? In other words, it seems that all of us are confident in some situations, and then there are other situations when we're not. And is that common? Or are really self-confident people self-confident everywhere? No, that's very common. It's very common to be confident in certain situations versus others. Let's say you're at some kind of work retreat and everybody's at the lake and they're all having fun and they're all talking about this big rock, daring each other to kind of jump off of this rock. And you have been an expert diver. You've been diving since you were five years old. You've been in swimming lessons. You're a total pro.

So easily you can say to everybody, yeah, I'm going to go up there and I'm going to jump off that rock. So you can walk up there. You never hesitate. You don't look back. You double backflip off the rock and you land in the water. And it was perfect. You handled that situation with complete confidence. But then let's use a you land in the water and it was perfect. You handled that situation with complete confidence. But then let's use a different person in the group. Let's call him Bob. And if he's your coworker, he says, ah, that's easy. I'll go do that too. And so he goes up to the rock. He never hesitates. He never looks back. He jumps right off the rock and totally belly flops in the water. And everybody starts laughing at him. And as he emerges from the water, he says, see, I told you it was easy.

So this is a really great example because it is putting two people in a situation where one person is an expert in it, they should be completely confident, and the other person is not. So technically, they should not be confident. But in this story, you can see that Bob handles this situation with true confidence. He really does. Even though he didn't perform the jump as well as you did, he still had that ability to be confident and to project confidence despite the situation. So it is common for people to not have confidence depending on certain situations, but that is a goal in our lives, is to be confident no matter the situation. Why do you think confidence is so attractive in other people? Humans are social creatures and we do value connection with other people. And I feel

that especially in terms of like mating and finding a partner in a romantic relationship, stuff like that too, it's very easy to get to know people who are going to be putting themselves out there. It makes it easy for, for example, if for you, if somebody just walks up to you and starts saying, Hey Mike, how are things going? How I heard you're doing this. How are, how is this going? It actually makes it very easy for you to connect with that person because they came up to you and they kind of took the plunge.

So I think it becomes very attractive because it makes it really easy for you to connect with, for others to connect with confident people. It's interesting that we see that in other people. It looks so attractive, but oftentimes it's very hard to do, even though you know that if you did it, if you exuded that confidence, people would be attracted to you. Because as much as we can try to pretend to act confident, it really is something that comes from within us. And so if you're going to try to fake confidence, I feel like that is something that people can spot very, very easily. And it's just not going to be a good time for anybody.

And it's going to be embarrassing for you. Humans are pretty good at spotting when other people are being authentic or inauthentic. And that's why I kind of related confidence very much to the fact that it has to be an authentic experience. You have to be portraying outwardly what you feel inwardly. But can you pump up that confidence temporarily? So maybe you're not faking it, but it isn't your normal way of being, but you really kind of psyched yourself up. Well, yes, of course. Yes, you definitely can. And there is an aspect of confidence that is, that involves fake it till you make it. Um, there, if you are putting yourself outside of your comfort zone and you're, you're, you're trying to speak up when normally you

wouldn't, that's actually you working on your confidence skills. So the more you try doing that, the better you're going to get at it. And then at one point, you're just going to feel actually comfortable with doing that and acting in that way. And that's when you've actually reached that true confidence state. So yeah, definitely working on those skills, practicing them is a way to get to true confidence. Yeah, for sure. What are the things that you sense are the experiences that are either really good at bolstering your self-confidence or on the contrary, really good at knocking it down? One thing that humans really, really hate

because we're social creatures is rejection. That is something that we don't enjoy at all. So that happens when we put ourselves out there, we reveal a bit of ourselves to somebody else and we get rejected or made fun of. And that kind of makes us want to put up this wall that makes us not want to reveal ourselves anymore because we're afraid of that rejection. And that is kind of the way that you're going to start having self-esteem problems and the way that you're going to lose

your confidence is if you have felt that feeling of rejection before and have decided that you don't ever want to feel it again. So it's important to remember that rejection is just part of life and that it's going to happen to all of us because I always like to say this, you know, we have 7 billion people in the world and 7 billion personalities. There's never a personality that's going to be exactly the same from one human being to the other. So rejection is inevitable. It's going to happen no matter what you one human being to the other. So rejection is inevitable. It's going to happen no matter what you do. And so, yeah, that can destroy your confidence is feeling that you're getting rejected. And then you kind of mentioned what's something that can

boost your confidence. Well, it's kind of the opposite of that, which is acceptance. So feeling that you can kind of reveal your true self, reveal an aspect of your personality and have other people go, yeah, that's awesome or that's super cool and that's really great. So whenever you feel accepted by others, that's when your confidence boosts. But there are those people, though, who when they get complimented, when they're told great job, that's really great. They kind of dismiss it as, oh, they're just being polite or whatever, that they're so expecting to be rejected that they don't even believe it. That is a self-esteem problem. So if you have that issue and you're facing that a little bit, one really great way to kind of combat that is to remember that you have two different types of thoughts. You have thoughts that are automatic thoughts. These are the thoughts that just pop into our

heads and we have no control over them. And then you have the thoughts that you do control. So controllable thoughts and controllable thoughts are easy to kind of pinpoint because if I give you an example, like if I say, imagine a pink elephant balancing on a blue ball. You can picture that in your head. You can put that elephant in your head. So this is a controllable thought. This is something you can control. Now, if you want to start slowly changing the generic tone of your automatic thoughts,

the way to do that is by controlling the thoughts that you can control and making those positive so it the more you can kind of switch those negative thoughts into positive thoughts the the better you can kind of control those automatic feelings of doubt or insecurity that kind of randomly pop into your head that's like the first step in getting those thoughts to be a little more positive on a regular basis well it's it's interesting that we all, from the time we're really young, we're told, you know, you have to have self-confidence. You've got to build your self-confidence. Yeah, well, how? And you've explained it really well. My guest has been Lana Otoya, and the book is called The Mindset of Self-Confidence, Why self-confidence has nothing to do with speaking up or standing straight.

There's a link to her book in the show notes. Thanks, Lana. Thanks for being on the podcast. Great. Awesome. Thank you so much, Mike. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown.

I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life.

So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone. Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, Check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our Lister poll results from But Am I Wrong? And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.

If I asked you, are you intelligent? You'd probably say yes, because we all like to think we're intelligent to some extent. But what does it mean to be intelligent? What makes someone more intelligent than someone else? What, in fact, is intelligence? And can you get more of it? Can you be too intelligent for your own good? Well, that's what David Robson decided to look at. David is a journalist for the BBC, The Atlantic, and New Scientist, and he's the author of a book called The Intelligence Trap, Why Smart People Make Dumb Mistakes. Hi, David. Welcome.

Hi, thanks for having me. It's my pleasure. When you say the word intelligence, everybody has a sense of what that means. I know what you're talking about when you talk about someone's intelligence. But what do you mean by it? How do you define intelligence? That's a great question, and it is one that has really puzzled, you know, psychologists and philosophers and thinkers. But the definition I'm going with here is really the one that psychologists have now, the kind of consensus that psychologists have come to, which is that intelligence is this kind of general underlying

brain power that helps us to process complex information. So it's the kind of things that are measured quite well with intelligence tests, the IQ tests that are now a century old. So you know, those verbal problems, nonverbal spatial reasoning, pattern recognition, all of those tap into this kind of underlying brain power. And I think of it as a little bit like a car's engine, you know, it's really what gives you the kind of propulsion and power. And I think of it as a little bit like a car's engine, you know, it's really what gives you the kind of propulsion and force in your thinking. Is our intelligence set or can we become more intelligent or less intelligent? So there's undoubtedly a kind of genetic component to people's IQ scores. When you

compare people within the same population and roughly similar backgrounds. You know, it's about 70 to 80 percent genetic. But that doesn't mean that it's fixed. And we know that it's not completely fixed and that you can still make huge strides due to something called the Flynn effect. So this is this mysterious rise in IQs that we've seen between generations for the last 80 years or so. And it actually amounts to around 30 IQ points overall. And that shows just how much our intelligence is affected by the kind of environment around us. The psychologists think that numerous factors could have caused the rise, and it could be partly down to improved health healthcare and nutrition that help us to build better brains that are better equipped to process complex

information. But it could also just be improvements in education that help us to think a little bit more abstractly, to follow rules, to see patterns. And it could also even be things like technological changes. So, you know, today we're just so used to using computers and smartphones that all require a certain kind of abstract thinking that's important for IQ tests. So that suggests that, you know, our thinking skills can be trained. Now, I would say that we should not just focus on intelligence as measured by those IQ tests, but also how we apply that intelligence. And the really promising and important thing about the research I discuss in my book is that we know that that in particular can be very easily learned. So no matter what your IQ, you can learn how to apply your intelligence

more effectively, more wisely, more rationally. So what is the trap? What's the problem that you discuss? So if we go back to that analogy of the brain being like a car's engine, then I would say that a faster engine can obviously propel a car to its destination more quickly. But any car needs all these checks and balances to ensure that you apply that horsepower in the best possible way. Otherwise, if you don't have a GPS or good steering or brakes, it could just drive you off a cliff. And I would say that we see exactly the same with people's intelligence. So people who are very intelligent, if they don't have the kind

of checks and balances to ensure they're applying that intelligence correctly, can actually be even more wrong than people who are less intelligent. Now, there are various reasons for that. But to give just one example, there's this phenomenon known as motivated reasoning. And that's where you have a very strong emotional connection to your beliefs. It might be a political ideology, or it could be a religious belief. And you're so convinced by that, and it's so important to your identity, that you just apply your intelligence to rationalize those beliefs, even if it's wrong. So one example of that would be Arthur Conan Doyle, the author who created Sherlock Holmes. And he had all of these beliefs in spiritualism and fairies, you know, really irrational beliefs. And he actually just applied his intelligence

to protect those beliefs, even when he was presented with evidence, with really strong evidence that he was wrong. What is the curse of knowledge that you talk about? So that's another form of the intelligence trap. And that is where our kind of perceptions of our own expertise and the kind of brain changes that come with expertise can backfire and actually lead us to make some really, really disastrous errors. So there are various reasons for this. One is this kind of process of entrenchment and the fact that the more knowledge, the more expertise you have in a field, the more your decision making becomes automatic and intuitive rather than careful and deliberate. And that automatic process of thinking or kind of not

thinking but just going with your gut is often very good, but it's also open to all kinds of cognitive biases that can lead you to error. So this is one reason that doctors often make misdiagnoses, is because of that kind of entrenchment. They're kind of going with their gut feelings, and they sometimes miss really important evidence that could lead them to the right diagnosis. It would almost seem like trying to avoid these various traps is almost impossible, that you're going to fall into one of them. To try to stay neutral against all of that seems difficult. I would say it is a challenge, but not impossible. And, you know, no one can make the absolutely most correct decision 100% of the time. But the research is very optimistic,

in my opinion, in showing that we can all improve our decision making. We can all contract these biases and these tendencies by being more reflective, by having more self-awareness, and by applying certain very easy-to-apply strategies. It also seems as if, and maybe you talk about this as well, that sometimes our intelligence seems to fly out the window when we're in a group, that groupthink will often trump individual thinking. Exactly. I mean, one of the researchers in this area, Reid Montague, I think he's at Virginia Tech University,

he kind of said that, you know, in group area, Reid Montague. I think he's at Virginia Tech University. He kind of said that, you know, in group meetings, and especially in business, we often feel like we're becoming brain dead. But his research has actually shown that in a way you do become brain dead. So the most damaging group dynamic really is when people feel very competitive against each other. And Reid Montague's research has shown that that can actually cause a temporary decrease in the IQs of some members of the group because they're so worried about their status. It's actually such a distraction that their overall abstract reasoning, that information processing drops as a result. It's like the brain can't devote all of its resources to the problem at hand. So that's definitely one reason.

There's also some great research by a researcher called Anita Williams-Wooley who's also shown that the kind of group dynamic as a whole can influence the group's overall performance on these kind of cognitive tasks. And again, we see a very similar pattern, that when you have a lot of conflict in status, when some people are trying to reach the top of the hierarchy and are dominating the discussion, then that as a fire and everybody's running in that direction, that even very smart people will run in that direction without stopping to think, well,

why are we running in that direction? Like you mentioned the term groupthink, and you know, there is this problem that you can kind of reinforce each other's confirmation biases. So you gave a very kind very, I would say, elemental problem there, a survival problem, where you might reinforce each other's biases. But we also see this in business and in organizations and in politics between different leaders and government cabinets, where they will start to reinforce each other's biases and ignore important pieces of evidence because, you know, they kind of believe that the consensus of the group is more important than analyzing the evidence for what it is. You gave the example a while ago about doctors, which I think is a great example,

but it's also true in other professions, but it's particularly true with doctors where they see the same symptoms over and over and over again. And so they're probably quicker to rush to say, well, if you have these symptoms, it must be this without critically looking at each case and deciding what it is. And to give just one example, there's some fascinating work looking at doctors' decision-making that had found that simply asking them to pause and to listen, first of all, to their professional intuition,

but to then argue against that, to look for the confounding evidence and to consciously try to question that judgment can vastly improve their diagnostic accuracy, reducing errors by as much as 40%. So a really significant increase that could save lives just by applying some more thoughtful and considered thinking strategies. And these are the kinds of strategies that anyone could use, whatever their profession. One of the things I guess I don't always understand about intelligence is it isn't one thing.

I mean, can't someone be very intelligent in math, but pretty unintelligent in a lot of other things? And so are they intelligent? I don't know. So this is the whole problem of defining intelligence. What we do see is that there is good support for the idea of a general intelligence to a certain point. So, you know, someone who's good at maths might not necessarily be brilliant at, say, verbal reasoning or writing or that kind of thinking, but the two are correlated fairly strongly. So it is much more likely that if you're good at one of those skills, you're good at another. And that's true for these kind of abstract academic skills. Absolutely, there's no question of that. It's a very well replicated result. But I think it does become

murkier when you look at other forms of thinking. So rationality, as we've just discussed, is one example. But you could also have, for instance, tests of creativity and also tests of practical intelligence, which is really how well people are able to pick up on those kind of implicit rules and the kind of pragmatic thinking that's necessary to carry out your plans and to reach your goals. Now, what we see with tests of those particular kinds of thinking is that they don't correlate so very strongly with the analytical abstract intelligence. So to a degree, it is true that we do have different forms of intelligence. And just

because you have a high IQ or you're brilliant at maths absolutely doesn't mean that you're going to be a more creative thinker or even that you're going to be better in the workplace to carry out really important tasks and to actually get things done. There is that image of the, what is it, the absent-minded professor of somebody who's like brilliant at history or economics or whatever, but everyday life is very confusing to them. And it makes you wonder, well, why is that? Or is that just a stereotype with not a lot of validity?

There is some truth in that stereotype. So, you know, there are plenty of intelligent people who lack practical intelligence, and there's also plenty of intelligent people who are irrational, and that can affect their personal lives in really disastrous ways. One example of this amazing physicist, Paul Frampton, who appeared to be in running for the Nobel Prize for physics. You know, a lot of his research had inspired the work at the Large Hadron Collider. So there's no doubting he had amazing general intelligence and was a

really profound thinker. But he happened to fall for this scam, a honey trap scheme, where he was online dating. And through this apparent interest of this glamorous young woman called Denise Milani, who was in fact a glamour model, he was persuaded to carry two kilograms of cocaine across the Argentinian border and was arrested as a result. And so you see there, he really wasn't thinking in a rational way about his actions. All of his friends had told him that he should avoid this apparent relationship, that it really was obvious that it was some kind of scam. But he just ignored all of that, all of that evidence, all of his friends' advice, and went ahead with it anyway.

Well, that's a great example, and it relates to the subtitle of your book. You could be the smartest guy in the world, but if you don't apply what you know, if you don't apply your intelligence to a situation, it doesn't do you much good, does it? I mean, if you're going to smuggle cocaine across the border, well, in retrospect, and objectively speaking, that's not the brightest thing to do. That's exactly it. I certainly wouldn't deny the value of intelligence. And, you know, we still need to cultivate those skills and to protect them and to give people a good factual education and to help with things like numeracy and, you know, all of these things. But we also do need to teach children to be able to apply that brain power in better, wiser ways.

We need to teach them things like rational thinking and critical thinking to really help them to avoid those kinds of errors. Is there any, when the dust settles from all of this, any general advice, knowing what you know? Is there some takeaway here? Yeah, there's lots of practical strategies that anyone can apply. So I mentioned one, which was this form of decision-making that had been tested by doctors. And it's really just the strategy of looking for your intuitions, but then questioning them and looking at the kind of base assumptions

behind those intuitions and then trying to find contradictory evidence. And there's so much research showing that that strategy called considered the opposite for obvious reasons can really help you to mitigate your biases and produce better decisions. Another very simple technique is called self-distancing. And it sounds a little odd, but the idea here is to try to just create a kind of little bit of psychological distance from the problem at hand by talking about the problem in the third person. So for instance, if I was considering changing jobs, I might start by saying, David is considering this new opportunity because, and I would go on in that way, talking to myself in the third person. You know, even though that sounds quite artificial, maybe a bit silly,

so much research now has shown that actually that can just help you to rein in some of the emotions that might be pulling your decision-making astray. And the good thing about that is that with regular practice, in fact, it can improve your decision-making in the long term, too. So it can have really profound consequences, even when you're not consciously using the technique itself. Yeah, well, I think we've all had that experience of looking at someone else's problem and being able to see it and the solution much more clearly than the person can, because as the third party, you can divorce yourself from all the emotions and whatever else is making that such a difficult decision. Yeah, that's exactly the philosophy behind this. It's the idea that, you know, with these tests of wise reasoning, we do actually

score much better when we're looking at someone else's problem compared to our own. And self distancing just helps you to kind of create that artificially, so that you just can take a step back to reappraise the evidence for what it is rather than for what you want it to be. So you avoid applying your intelligence in the wrong way, and you just help to apply it in a more rational, even-handed, wiser kind of way. Well, it's so interesting what you said about how intelligence can obviously make you more intelligent,

but misapplied intelligence can actually really get in your way. David Robson's been my guest. The name of his book is The Intelligence Trap, Why Smart People Make Dumb Mistakes, and you'll find a link to his book in the show notes. Thank you, David. Thanks for being on Something You Should Know. Absolutely. It's been a real pleasure, and thanks for such great questions. I really felt like you touched on the most important parts. Over 1,400 studies have confirmed

that people who have strong religious faith have lower rates of heart disease, better recovery from heart disease, lower rates of cancer, better recovery from cancer, lower drug abuse rates, and so on. Interestingly, no one's really sure why this is. One theory is that religions make people part of a group,

and being in a social group is good for your health. But people with strong religious faiths have better health than people who are involved in non-religious social groups. Oh, and it doesn't matter which religion you believe in. So, although science can't tell you what to believe, you should believe it intently. And that is something you should know. Follow us on Twitter. We're at SomethingYSK.

I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible

criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. 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 Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.