Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: How to Instantly Detect BS & The Secret to Conflict Resolution

Episode Date: November 4, 2023

You often hear the terms antique, collectible and vintage used interchangeably. However, they do have different meanings that have to do with the age and value of an item. I begin this episode with a brief and helpful explanation. https://www.antique-hq.com/the-difference-between-antique-vintage-and-collectible-item-127/ We don’t swear here on Something You Should Know, so we won’t actually say the word that BS stands for. But everyone knows what it means because we hear BS from people all the time. People toss it around in an effort to make themselves look good or maybe try to sell you something. Being able to tell the truth from BS is a helpful skill and one John Petrocelli is going to teach us. He is a professor of psychology at Wake Forest University and author of a book called The Life Saving Science of Detecting BullSh*t (https://amzn.to/3vNOyfl). John is what you would call an expert on BS after you hear what he has to say, you will be much better equipped to detect BS when you hear it. Wouldn’t it be great if people could just get along? Today more than ever, it seems people are less forgiving and easily upset by the actions of others. So how can we fix this – at least in our own lives? A good starting point is to listen to my guest Bill Eddy. He is an attorney and mediator and author of the book Calming Upset People With EAR (https://amzn.to/3Ch58qm.) Bill is the kind of person who doesn’t get upset. People rarely rattle him or make him mad. Instead, he just tries to resolve whatever the problem is. Listen and he will teach you how. And it’s not that hard.  There are friends and then there are friends with “refrigerator rights.” Those are real friends. Given that we live in a time when people have fewer friendships and feel more isolated, friends with refrigerator rights are precious and rare. Listen and discover what it means and why these friends are important. Source: Dr. Will Miller author of Refrigerator Rights (https://amzn.to/3Ch0jxh). PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Indeed is the hiring platform where you can Attract, Interview, and Hire all in one place! Start hiring NOW with a $75 SPONSORED JOB CREDIT to upgrade your job post at https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING Offer good for a limited time. U.S. Cellular knows how important your kid’s relationship with technology is. That’s why they’ve partnered with Screen Sanity, a non-profit dedicated to helping kids navigate the digital landscape. For a smarter start to the school year, U.S. Cellular is offering a free basic phone on new eligible lines, providing an alternative to a smartphone for children. Visit https://USCellular.com/BuiltForUS ! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, what's the difference between a collectible, an antique, and something that's vintage? Then, how do you protect and defend yourself from people who fling BS at you? We know that clarification is a major antidote to BS. So you'll already be exposing yourself to less BS by just acting maybe a bit dumb, a little bit confused. Say, well, I hear you saying X. Is what you are saying X? Also, a test to determine how many true close friends you really have. And a simple technique that will diffuse almost any argument,

and it always works better than getting angry. Angry emotions are contagious. Your positive emotions are also contagious. And so the other person feels that coming at them, and that automatically influences their brain to be calm. All this today on Something You Should Know. This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines. Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures and warm Porter hospitality on your way there. All Porter Fairs include beer, wine, and snacks, and free fast-streaming Wi-Fi on planes with no middle seats. And your Tampa Bay vacation includes good times, relaxation,

and great Gulf Coast weather. Visit FlyPorter.com and actually enjoy economy. 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 hey welcome to something you should know maybe it's because of ebay and people selling their old stuff but you hear a lot of times people talk about antiques or collectibles or vintage.

What do those terms mean? Well, what constitutes an antique has been debated for some time now. Some say that an antique is an object of considerable age that is valued for its aesthetic or historical significance. In the antique trade, the term refers to objects that are more than 100 years old. Some dealers are attempting to lower the standard of an antique, believing that an item over 50 years old should be considered an antique. But traditional antique dealers say the 50-year definition lowers the standard

to a point that dealers can sell collectibles and call them an antique, which takes us to collectibles. A collectible, that's a term that describes valuable objects less than 100 years old, often distinguished from antiques, which are over 100 years old. Then we have the word vintage which originally applied to the age of a bottle of wine. The term was hijacked and is now used to describe an item that has cycled back into fashion or is less than 25 years old. However, it should be known that the label antique, or vintage, or collectible, or retro, none of that really has any effect on the value of the item.

The value of an item is determined more by whether there is demand for it. There are very rare antiques which are sold for much less than a newer collectible, because there's no demand for the rare antique and a high demand for the collectible. And that is something you should know. We don't swear or use profanity on this podcast, mostly because it's just not necessary. Also, that way we don't have to put that little explicit E in our description, but the fact that we have that policy here at Something You Should Know requires a preface to this next segment, because my first guest today is here to discuss BS, and the word that BS stands for is in the title of a book he wrote. He wrote, astray in life. According to John Petruccelli, he is a professor of psychology at Wake Forest University, and his research examines the causes and consequences of BS. He's author of a book

called The Life-Saving Science of Detecting BS. Hi, John, welcome. Thank you. Thank you for having me. So I guess we need to define what BS is. What is it exactly and what isn't it exactly? Absolutely. BS, as I've defined it, is consistent with Harry Frankfurt's definition. He's the philosopher that first defined BS in this way. And he defined it as a communicative substance that results from communicating something with little to no regard or concern for truth, genuine evidence, or established knowledge. So this may come out as exaggerating one's own knowledge or competence or skills in a particular domain, or it may be useful to impress others, to fit in, to influence, or to persuade others, such as when one is trying to confuse or hide simply the fact that one does not know what they're talking about. And so this is very different, actually, from lying. It

may sound like lying, but it's different in the sense that the liar is often concerned about the truth so far as to be successful in detracting us from the truth. But the BS-er really doesn't care. So what the BS-er says in many cases may actually be correct. It may actually be true what they're saying. But even they would not know that because they're not paying any attention to truth, established knowledge, or evidence. So if somebody's trying to sell you something, somebody's trying to sell you a car, and they say, you know, knowing full well that this car does not get 40 miles to the gallon, but I'm going to say that anyway, because it sounds good. That's not BS. That's a lie. Exactly. That's right. Because they, in that case, they know the truth, but they're telling you something that they know not to be true. And then also the liar,

it's important to know that the liar doesn't actually believe what it is that they're saying, right? But the BSer oftentimes does believe what it is they're saying. It's not necessary that they believe, but in a lot of cases, what you find is BSers actually do believe what it is that they're spewing. Don't you suppose we all BS once in a while? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. That's by definition, it is such an easy behavior to engage in. So it's, I mean, it's almost like breathing because the opposite of BSing is evidence-based reasoning and evidence-based communication. And that takes time and effort. And in most cases, people are not willing to put forth that time and effort to have a well-informed opinion about everything. And this

is one of the reasons why BS is so pervasive and ubiquitous in society because people often feel as though that they need to have an opinion or they're obligated to have an opinion about everything. And it's just, it's impossible to have an informed opinion about everything. And so people, people often say, you often hear the expression, you know, that they have a BS detector, that they can spot it a mile away. I can tell when this guy's giving me the business here. And are some people really good at detecting it or not? Well, Mike, you are hitting on an issue of great interest and concern to us. What our data suggests right now is that people have opinions about their abilities to do just that, to detect BS. But the early data suggests that the most overconfident or the people who feel that they are most competent in detecting BS, oftentimes they are the least likely to successfully detect BS. So the big problem is that almost everyone feels as though they're not susceptible to the unwanted effects of BS

because they can detect it and it's really harmless to begin with. And people cannot be more wrong in that. And we do know that there's sort of a continuum of harm. Well, people may vary in terms of their ability to detect it. And I imagine that also is dependent on how good the BSer doing the BSing is, that some people are easier to detect than others. Yeah. What we find, though, in our research is there's actually more variance in the former. So there is more variance in the likelihood of asking critical thinking questions when you can communicate directly with the potential BSer. So, so if you don't ask questions, if you don't ask your, you know, who, how, you know, what, what agenda do they have? What are they trying to sell me? Kinds of

questions. You will oftentimes be exposed to BS and it may have a longer lasting effect than you actually realize. So, so there's more's more variation in that than there is this charismatic kind of stereotypical vision of the BS artist that we usually think of. Those are pretty rare, but the real reason why people fail at detecting BS is that they fail to engage in evidence-based reasoning, basic critical thinking skills, and a healthy attitude of skepticism. It also seems that part of the reason BSers get away with it, it seems like we have kind of a predisposition to want to believe people. So in the absence of evidence that it is BS, we tend to believe what people tell us. Why would they tell us otherwise?

Absolutely, yes. I've argued that perhaps the most potent form of BS is that coming from our interpersonal relationships. Our family, our friends, our colleagues, our neighbors, people who we actually trust and care about, they can have a bigger impact on what it is that we believe, which is the foundation of decision-making, is what we believe to be true. And so since you study this, I mean, it's interesting to hear you use the phrase, you know, the data on BS, because who would think that you would actually study this, but you study it. So why and what have you found in studying it and what are you trying to find in studying?

The very first studies that we conducted in my research lab were designed to better understand the conditions and the context under which people may generate BS. And that was all geared to improving our BS detectors, because if we know when we're likely to be BSed, we can be more on guard and more likely to kind of kick in the basic critical thinking skills that need to occur in order to detect it. So what we find is that there's really only one specific instance in which people do not typically generate BS, is that it would be rather difficult to get away with BS. For example, I personally, I'm not going to BS an auto mechanic. I just don't know enough about cars and engines and parts. Auto mechanic is going to know right away that I don't know what I'm talking about. So if it would be rather difficult to get away with,

and I don't feel obligated to share an opinion anyway, why should I make myself look like a fool in talking about things that I don't know, really know anything about? But in all other conditions, all of the combinations, if you have, like, if it's easy to get away with, or if you feel obligated to share your opinion, or if both are in place, you feel obligated, and you think it's going to be easy, and it's going to be acceptable, you're going to get a social passive acceptance for your BS, then people will let it fly. So in many cases, the BS detector needs to be at full throttle. You know, they say in the advertising business that you have to expose people to a message

multiple times in order to get them to believe it and to take action. That also seems to be true with BS in the sense that, you know, if you hear something often enough, if people keep repeating the same BS often enough, it sort of moves over and makes its way into the truth column and people start to actually believe it. Yes. Well, Mike, we used to think that maybe you need to hear that false statement 20, 40, 50 times before you start to believe that's true, even when you know better. But my own research lab and the lab of others, Lisa Fazio at Vanderbilt University has also found this, that it only takes one instance of hearing something that is false and to process it to later believe that it is true. And what is typically going on here is that people often confuse something that sounds familiar.

It feels mentally, it feels familiar. We confuse that for truth because typically what feels familiar is true. It only takes one instance, especially when you mix it in with other statements that are actually true. It only takes one time, only one exposure. We're talking about BS with a guy who actually studies BS, John Petruccelli. He is a professor of psychology at Wake Forest University, and his book is called The Life-Saving Science of Detecting BS. This is an ad for BetterHelp. Welcome to the world.

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That's BetterHelp.com. Metrolinks and Crosslinks are reminding everyone to be careful as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress. Please be alert as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals. Be careful along our tracks and only make left turns where it's safe to do so. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. So John, have you done any research where you're a fly on the wall and you're just kind of trying

to figure out what percentage of conversations is just total BS? Okay, yeah, I get this question a lot. Well, from my experiments, about 40%, the answer is about 40% of what people are typically willing to admit. I do think it's greater than that, but that's a huge chunk that people are readily willing to admit. It's not the same amount that they are willing to admit for lying. most people will say, well, I lie a little bit, but rarely do people say, oh yes, I lie 40% of the time. So 40% is a huge chunk. Well, but much of conversation isn't evidence-based. It's, you know, how are you and how's Bobby? Oh, Bobby's sick. I think he has the flu. Well, okay. So that's BS because you don't know if Bobby has the flu. Is that what you're talking about? Well, no, no, no. So if you are, are qualifying the assertion or the claim in some

way to say, well, I'm speculating, or I don't know for sure, or I heard, but I haven't actually talked with Bobby, you know, you are expressing, you're giving the cues that, okay, I do actually have some interest and motivation in communicating truth, genuine evidence, or established knowledge. You had mentioned the situation where you're not going to try to BS a car mechanic because you don't have the knowledge that he has, but because he has the knowledge that you don't have, he could very easily BS you. And so how do you prevent that, if possible? Or at least how do you detect it? Yes, the very, very best way, I'll just get to the skinny on this, and that is to ask questions.

That is the number one reason that people fail to detect BS, is they fail to ask questions. That is the number one reason that people fail to detect BS, is they fail to ask questions. The very first question that you should ask when you suspect or you're in a situation where you might be exposed to BS, or even lies for that matter, is to ask what. What exactly is the claim or the assertion. If you ask for clarification by asking what, most often BSers, they'll start to clean up the assertion a bit. They'll take a couple of backpedaled steps. We know this, that clarification is a major antidote to BS. And so you'll already be exposing yourself to less BS in most cases by just acting maybe a bit dumb, a little bit confused and say, well, I hear you saying X. Is what you are saying X or are you saying, you know, what does this look like? And then the second question we should ask is how?

How is it that you know that X is true? And then if you can get through how, because most often people do not give you much evidence, which you will get more evidence if there is readily available evidence that they're aware of, you'll get more evidence than explanation if you ask how. But if you get through that, and you can ask then, well, have you considered why? You know, I hear you saying X. Have you considered Y? Have you worked that out? And all three of these questions, what they're designed to do is they are designed to diagnose the potential BSers, you know, interest in truth, genuine evidence, and established knowledge.

And then if they can answer those questions, then you can make a more well-informed decision as to whether or not you're buying the claim or the assertion that they're making. It does seem that we can BS ourselves. You know, we'll say things out loud to other people, but really we're just saying them out loud to kind of test the waters and see how it flies. And in a way, we're kind of BSing ourselves. And then if other people buy it, then maybe we'll buy it. Yeah. And in addition to interpersonal BS, probably the most potent BSer to have an effect on our own opinions and attitudes about issues of the world and things that we think about ourselves is ourselves. So when we are not

asking our own selves, to what extent is this claim or this assertion built on evidence or established knowledge, it's very easy to BS oneself. So absolutely, Mike, I mean, it has, you know, looking in the mirror, you'll see probably the most frequent BSer that you're ever going to meet. Well, it also seems, and you alluded to it earlier, that we're more likely to fall for a BS that confirms what we believe, even if it may not be true. I mean, you watch cable news, depending on your politics, whatever flavor of cable news you like, somebody will tell you something and there's your evidence. The guy just said that. So, boom, I was right. Exactly.

Yeah. And what we do know from our studies in the lab too, is that if I give you a statement, we've done two studies where one was, we just gave you what we call pseudo profound statements that are really nonsense statements that don't really have any meaning, but they kind of sound profound. They have profound sounding words in them. And so if we say like hidden meaning transforms unparalleled abstract beauty, right? And if you happen to have conservative values or political orientation, and that statement is coming from Newt Gingrich or Paul Ryan, as opposed to Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi, Bill Clinton, that's regarded as pretty good stuff. All right. But if it's coming from if the speaker's own political orientation misaligns with your own,

people are then likely to ask, well, what kind of how what evidence is there for that? This sounds like BS. So again, if the political orientation or the general attitudes that the speaker has align with our own, it's very difficult to detect BS. And even if we do detect it, we're less likely to say it. We did another study where we looked at, well, let's take a look at meaningful statements that actually do make sense. Let's look at statements about innovation. And they were sort of heady, sort of ambiguous statements about the future of innovation and business and technology and science. And again, we found the same thing, that if the speaker's political orientation aligned with your own no matter what

it was that they said that was good stuff but if it misaligned with your own orientation it was it was trash right it didn't it didn't make any sense and it was it was judged as less profound generally speaking if you've studied this if you're talking with someone, all things being equal, you have no reason to believe that you're being BS'd here, but something tells you all of a sudden, a little alarm goes off that this is BS. What this guy is saying is BS. Is that reliable? I would say to the extent you're talking about the conclusion that it is BS, is that reliable?

Yeah. If you're not expecting BS, but all of a sudden you're starting to sense what you think it is BS, if it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, is it likely the duck? Yeah. And I have sort of a mixed opinion about this. And that is that, I mean, it certainly is, it's good to have an open mind. But at the same time, you don't want to be so open minded that your brain falls out, right? So I would say that to the extent that you have asked follow up questions, and as many follow up questions as you can, then you can start to uncover any inconsistencies if they exist. But if you ask follow-up questions and you are now, you're still convinced that, all right, this doesn't make sense and this isn't very well thought out. It's not tied very well to truth, of the information as false until otherwise proven otherwise, you know, is a safe bet to take. and you think now I need to ask some questions because this sounds like BS because you're not going to ask those kinds of questions for everything someone says you the conversation will never get anywhere so I'm was more about just like just kind of detecting it in it without asking questions and that maybe then you do start to ask questions yeah and that's that's not something

that that the research currently answers. My guess is that people feel that they're better at doing that than they actually are, but we don't have any data that directly speak to how accurate people actually are yet. Well, that's interesting because I think my BS detector is pretty good that I can spot it when I hear it. And, but, but, but what you're saying is probably not as good as I think. Again, especially with BS, some, sometimes the information is true and we are much, much more likely to count the hits, um, in our BS detection. We can say, oh yeah, I remember I, I called it out. Right. You know, we remember the hits, but we were not only, um, unaware of a lot of the misses,

but we're not as likely to count them. Right. So, um, there's probably many, many more instances in which we have fallen for BS and just never knew it. Um, and that's, that's why it was never counted. So, so the scoreboard too, would be a very difficult kind of thing to, to, to track. You know, I wonder why it's bull excrement. Well, some people say horse, but, but what is it? What, what is it about bull excrement that makes it so appropriate? Yeah, we really don't know. Yeah, why did they pick that animal? Who knows? Why not lizard S or rat S? Well, that's probably not part of your research. But the part of your research that we've been

talking about is pretty interesting. John Petruccelli has been my guest. He's a professor of psychology at Wake Forest University, and the name of his book is The Life-Saving Science of Detecting BS. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thank you, John. Thanks for being here. All right, Michael.

Well, thank you very much. 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,

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The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. I don't know if you share this opinion with me, but it certainly seems to me that people today are quick to disagree and argue. We have become very contentious. Not only do people disagree, they get mad about it and they argue and fight rather than try to resolve the disagreement, much more so than in the past. Yet, when you stop and think about it, resolving a disagreement is far better than fighting about it. So I want you to listen to Bill Eddy. He is a mediator who has been helping people resolve conflicts for a long time. And I swear, I don't think you could rile him up or get him mad no matter how hard you try.

He's written a book called Calming Upset People with EAR. EAR being an acronym for Empathy, Attention, and Respect. Hi Bill, so give me the quick overview of this EAR technique, the Empathy, Attention, and Respect. What is it? Yeah, it's a technique that I developed about 15 years ago, working with clients as a lawyer and as a mediator. And what I found was often people, of course, are upset and dealing with conflict and all of that. And giving them an ear statement, something that shows empathy or attention or respect, seemed to calm people down. So I've been teaching professionals this for 15 years, but now with kind of the negative times

we're in and polarization and all that, I thought it's time to teach everybody. And the result of it is it does what exactly? What it does is it calms down people's emotions. So let's say they're angry at you, they're pointing a finger at you, saying it's all your fault. And instead of arguing back saying, no, it's not all my fault, it's all your fault, is instead to say, wow, I can see you're worried about how this is going to turn out. Or I know you've been having a hard day. Or I respect the work that you've been doing. Or I'll pay attention. Tell me more.

I want to understand. And the effect is that people, 90% of the time, people really do calm down. And then you can solve problems instead of just having an argument. Which probably works a lot better than telling people, calm down. Right. Telling people calm down really bothers them. Don't tell me to calm down. You calm down. So it has the opposite effect. But being calm and making a calm ear statement does help people calm down probably 90% of the time. So teach me how to do it.

So let's say someone's saying, you know, behind on a project that you're working with. And suddenly they say, Mike, it's all your fault. So what you would do is tell yourself, it's not about me. I don't have to get all that excited about this. It's just someone that needs in your statement. So you can calm yourself down and then you go, well, let me think. Am I going to give them empathy or attention or respect? So let's say you're going to give them empathy and you say, well, Joe or whoever it is, I can see you're worried about us getting this done on time.

Let's look at what we can do. So it's just a sentence. You know, I see that you're worried because underneath anger is usually another emotion like being worried, afraid, hurt, frustrated. And that's a big one. I always have that ready. People say something and say, well, I can see you're frustrated. Let's look at what we can do.

So that way you calm yourself and then you give your ear statement. Could just be empathy, could be time, attention. You might say, well, Joe, tell me what's happening. This really seems to be stressing you. Or respect, Joe, I really appreciate the work you've been doing on this. I think we're going to be able to get it done and it's going to be a good result. So how do you decide which of those three types of statements to give or it doesn't matter?

It doesn't really matter. They all seem to work. So whichever one is the easiest. You wonder why we don't do this naturally since, you know, when you talk about it in a calm, you know, disinterested way here, like we're not in the middle of an argument, it makes a lot of sense. It's just that in in the moment it's very hard to do yes and that's why it does take practice and that's why up to now we've been teaching it to professionals because they they kind of have to be the grown-up in the room so they're the ones that need to stay calm even when a client is angry with them in a a way, it's like a parent staying calm while a child's having a temper tantrum.

It's something that we're not always used to. But today, we're seeing more upset people, more angry people, seeing more conflict and polarization. And so the automatic response is to get angry back. So we're really needing to learn this because there's more conflict in our faces today than say, you know, 20 or 50 years ago. So give me an example and a situation of people in a conflict and how this would work? Well, first I'll give you one and I won't give you the exact words, but this was a real consultation case that I had. A woman in

her job, her boss left and her new boss, she was just a year from retirement, and her new boss picked on her, decided to make her the target of blame. And apparently her new boss had a high conflict personality. So she always had to blame somebody for everything. So the person, we call her Lori, says, what do I do? I try to kind of hide from my boss when I come into the office and go quickly to my room. And I said, I want to suggest you do the opposite. You check in with your boss when you come in in the morning, pop your head in her office and say, hi, how's your weekend? Or, hey, that program on Friday was really helpful. I really appreciate that. That's a form of respect. Anyway, so each morning she'd give her an ear statement,

one or the other, empathy, attention, or respect. And a month later she said, guess what, Bill, I'm now her favorite. And she's picking now on somebody else. So I gave him your book. So why does that work? What is going on when you give an ear statement, an empathy, attention, or respect statement to somebody? What happens to the dynamic between the two people that causes the conflict to subside? Well, what happens is emotions are contagious. And so angry emotions are contagious. Someone's angry with you. Your body wants to get angry back and fight or flee. override your own angry response. And instead, you put out an ear statement, empathy, attention, and respect. That's a positive emotional response. And the other person, your positive emotions are also contagious. And so the other person feels that coming at them, and that automatically

influences their brain to be calm. And so what you're doing is either person, you have to shift yourself. That's the key. So when you've got anger coming in and your body wants to have anger going out, you override that, which you can do. Tell yourself, it's not about me. I'm just going to give an ear statement. And then you give your ear statement, and then you give your ear statement that's calm, it's really hard for someone to be angry with a calm person if the

person's engaged and seems to have empathy, attention, and respect. A calm person who's just kind of cold and calm will irritate the other person even more and that'll escalate them. But this is a positive emotion that really does calm people if you can do it. It takes practice, but it can be done. It often seems, as I think about conflicts I've been in with people that that part of why it gets so contentious is there's this desire to teach somebody a lesson to get at them to get to get them not to solve the problem but to teach them a lesson because they're wrong and I'm right yes and that's know, part of human nature built into us is the win-lose construct. So we want to win. We don't want to lose.

But the idea with ear statements is you turn it into a win-win construct. So you're right. We're all built to defend and protect ourselves. But the smart thing about humans is we can figure out when it's a dangerous situation and when it's not so that we can shift gears into problem solving. So this is kind of like your gear shift into, you know, the other person's going in reverse and you can shift yourself into going forward and that influences the other person. So you're right. It's, there's an automatic fight response, but you can overrule that. And there's so many times, let's say you're watching TV or a movie and somebody's yelling and you don't

get upset about that at all because you know, it's not about you. Well, it's thinking the same way with someone else who's upset. It's not really about you. It's about them losing control of their own emotions. And you can control yours and calm the other person because your positive emotions are contagious. So as I'm sitting here listening to you talk, I have to ask, do you ever get upset? You seem like the kind of guy that like never gets upset. How could you say such a thing? I'm generally calm by nature. And I think that's why I was attracted to doing mediation, for example.

So two people can be angry in front of me. And what's going on in my mind is, let's see, I wonder how this is going to turn out. I wonder where the solution is instead of getting angry. And I've had people, two people in a mediation both turn at me and say, Bill, you're not helping. And I'm like, oh, okay, then what do you recommend we do next instead of defending myself? Because I'm used to people being angry at me and it's not about me. That's made it easier, I guess, because I deal, I'm in business dealing with other people's arguments. So I'm really used to staying calm and not taking it personally. I think, you know,

people ask me about this sometimes, and I may have been born calm. So it's more natural for me. But people find that they can learn this. And I do get upset sometimes. I mean, I was practicing as a family lawyer for 15 years. And I'll tell you, I had some difficult situations where I just wanted to wring the neck of the other lawyer because I disagreed so much with some of what they were doing. But it's really, it's all about practice, I think. Well, and when you think about it, I mean, what good does it do to, you know, want to wring the neck of the other lawyer or, or, you know, get upset with the other person? It doesn't, it doesn't help you. It doesn't help them. It doesn't help the problem. It doesn't do anything other than just inflame the situation. And yet somehow it scratches an itch in the moment that really seems to need scratching. Yeah, or it feels like it does.

And that's the thing. And I think, you know, parents of teenagers go through this all the time. Teenagers are just furious. What do you mean I can't go to that party because it's going to be so late or there's no parents there or whatever. And it's the end of the world. And the parents like, yeah, I know, Johnny, I know it's frustrating, but you know, this, I might be saving your life by setting this limit on you. Well, mom, you're just, you know, you're the worst person in the world. I hate your guts. And it's like, yeah, Johnny, I understand you feel that way.

And you can't talk to me that way, though. And we got to work on this. And so you really, you know, it's a practice, but it's something people do have the skill for. But also understanding we're built to defend and get angry and fight back, but we're also built to override that depending on the circumstance. Well, what you just said about like a teenager who says, you know, mom, I hate your guts. And you said, well, you know, we really have to work on that. And I can understand some people hearing that and go, no, no, no, no, no, we're not going to work on that. I'm the parent, He's the child. And I'm going to, you know, I can't be too wishy-washy. I can't get pushed around like this. No, you don't talk to me that way. And you get upset about it.

Yeah. Well, it's, it's really depends on the particular parent and particular child. So the way we're going to work on this might be, I'm going to take your cell phone away for 24 hours. And so it really depends on the situation. But the idea is it helps if the parent has empathy for the child, even while they're setting limits. And I have an example actually in the book like that. It's a father and a daughter, and that can always be a pretty volatile relationship with a teenage girl and her father. And it's easy to get into that, wait, I'm the boss here and you just have to do what I say. I have to tell you, as a counselor, I've worked with a lot of parents and teenagers, including teenagers that then ran away.

So the idea is by giving the teenager some empathy, attention, and respect and setting limits, it calms the situation and teaches the lesson. And the teenager, in many cases, is more likely to accept the limit even though they don't like it. Well, one of the phrases often in parent-child conversations and also at work between a boss and an employee is, because I said so. Yeah, and that really depends on the situation. You may be able to go, oh, okay, fine, or all right, I quit then. So it depends so much on the relationship. But in general, you can set limits with ear statements. And we're teaching because we teach this to managers and human resource professionals. And with some people in the workplace today, it can be pretty dangerous

if you don't find a way to calm them. You know, people that are fired and they leave the office and they come back ready to hurt people. So we have to be, in general, I think as a society, I think we all need to be responsible for calming things more nowadays, because things are getting so cranked up emotionally with polarization and COVID and other disputes. We all need to start practicing calming things. And that's why I think this ear statement technique is the kind of thing that anybody can learn. And it's simple. And the more people that do it, the calmer world will have.

Well, what would you say if you were working for me and we were getting into it and I wanted you to do something and you didn't want to do it? And I said, no, you're going to do it because I said so. What would you say? Well, I would say, hey, boss, you know, can you, I want to understand this a little bit more. Can you explain your reasoning behind this? Because then it'll be easier for me to accept it. Tell me more. That's what I would say. Yeah, I've worked for bosses who have no interest in telling you more. It's because I said so. And that's the end of the

story and get out of my office. And the reality is that like three quarters of managers are never trained in being a manager. But a good manager will have some empathy and respect for employees. And for example, I've done trainings with people in the high tech world where there's really smart people who are really rude and they don't want to lose them, but they also can't have them around offending everybody and having people quit on them. So teaching them a little bit of skills in how to communicate more respectfully can make the difference and has made the difference because managers like that eventually lose their jobs as well. When people try this and it doesn't go well, what typically goes wrong? Well, some people are high conflict people and we actually designed this for high

conflict people. They're the ones that are more intensely upset and they may need more than one ear statement. So I suggest you try a couple of your statements, but if they are so invested in their anger, uh, in their blame that even a couple of your statements makes no difference, it's probably more of a personality problem for them. So when you're saying what goes wrong, it's probably more of a personality problem for them. So when you're saying what goes wrong, it's probably because they have a personality that's stuck in conflict and high conflict where they're used to just increasing the conflict until they win and you lose. And that's not very helpful in the modern world where we're looking for win-win solutions. So what goes wrong is that that other person really can't shift themselves. And so if you're

the person that's given them a couple of ear statements at that point, move on to problem solving and say, let's look at our options or say, okay, I'm going to move on now. Have a good day. Yeah. I wish I could be more like you. I've had 15 years of practice, so it's a little bit easier, but, but people do learn this and find that they can pull it off sometimes. Well, I would imagine it just makes your life so much easier because you don't spend the same amount of time that other people spend getting all worked up and upset and pissed off. And it just seems to be water off a duck's back to you. Yeah, you're absolutely right that it really saves time because I don't have all these outstanding conflicts with people. And I can't think of someone who I've taught this method to that said that it's made their life worse.

I've had people say it doesn't always work. And I agree with that. But generally, they say, I did it and it worked yesterday. I can't believe it. I wish I knew this a week ago when I was talking to my mother-in-law or something like that. So again, it's practice, but it is possible. You know, I don't know if you watch the show, but you kind of remind me of Ted Lasso. You know, you don't get stuck in that angry, retaliatory, fight it out with people. You're looking to solve the problem, which ultimately is the goal anyway. So why bother with all the negative and all of the anger?

You just solve the problem. And really, that's the goal. That's the point. Bill Eddy has been my guest. He's a mediator and an attorney and author of a book called Calming Upset People with EAR, EAR being an acronym for Empathy, Attention and Respect. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Bill. Well, thank you for so much. I appreciate you listening. Everyone knows that having good friends means a lot. Yet today, people have fewer good friends than ever.

Partly because we're busy, also because people move a lot, we've been locked down for a while, and people live much more private lives, it seems, than, say, our parents or grandparents. I mean, how many of us know who our neighbors are, let alone have them over for dinner? According to psychologist Will Miller, all of this is part of the reason we have high levels of mood disorders, depression, anxiety, and loneliness. So here's a test to determine how many good friends you have. Ask yourself, how many friends do you have who have refrigerator rights? Meaning, they're friends who can walk into your house, go to the refrigerator, grab something to eat or drink without having to ask you permission.

Those are friends with refrigerator rights, and those are the kind of friends you want. And that is something you should know. Remember, the best way to support this podcast is really to help us grow the audience, which is very easy to do. Just one person. Just tell one person about this podcast and suggest that they give it a listen. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Hello, I'm Simon Jack.

And I'm Xing Xing. And together we host Good Bad Billionaire, the podcast exploring the minds, the motives and the money of some of the world's richest individuals. Every episode we pick a billionaire and we find out how they made their money. And then we judge them. Are they good, bad or just another billionaire? Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Contained herein are the heresies of Rudolf Buntwine, erstwhile monk turned travelling medical investigator. Join me as I study the secrets of the divine plagues and uncover the blasphemous truth that ours is not a loving God and we are not its favored children. The Heresies of Randolph Bantwine, wherever podcasts are available.