Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: How You Got Your Personality & Why You Click With Some People

Episode Date: April 18, 2020

Noise is more than just annoying. Noise can affect your health, your work and your mood. This episode begins with a look at just how much trouble noise can cause in your life. http://www.shape.com/lifestyle/mind-and-body/7-ways-noise-can-affect-your-health Your personality is what makes you – you. But where did it come from? Can you improve your personality? Professor Brian Little, author of the book, Who Are You, Really? The Surprising Puzzle of Personality (http://amzn.to/2vWHYm7) examines why you are who you are and how much of your personality is changeable and how much is set in stone. If you think someone is lying to you, there are a few words and phrases to look out for. Liars tend to use certain language that can help you determine if they are being truthful or not and I’ll tell you what to listen for to spot a liar. Source: You Can’t Lie To Me (https://amzn.to/3elH4an) by Janine Driver Also, have you ever just clicked with someone? You know that feeling of instant connection? It can happen in a romantic way but also happens platonically and with people at work. Ori Brafman, author of the book Click (http://amzn.to/2vWATSC) has studied this phenomenon and believes strongly that these relationships are special. Ori says we shouldn’t just brush it off as “love at first sight.” Listen and understand why these relationships are worth exploring. This Week's Sponsors -Best Fiends. Download this fun mobile game for free on the Apple App Store or Google Play. 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, too much noise in your life is a bigger problem than you may realize. I'll explain that, plus your personality. Do you like who you are? Can you change your personality?

I think most people settle for who they are. And in a way that's a bit dispiriting, because there's so many more possibilities, possible selves that they could explore. Also, liars tend to use some interesting words and phrases that other people don't use, and they're easy to spot. And why do you click and become friends with some people but not others? Those last few feet really make a difference.

So if you live next door to someone, as opposed to two doors down, you're twice as likely to make friends with the person who lives next door to you. And when you go another door down, the chances of you clicking drop by half, and then by half again. All this today on Something You Should Know. 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. 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 Carruthers. Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know, our weekend episode where you can feel safe to settle in,

crank it up, and rest assured that in this episode, except for right now, we will not be discussing or mentioning social distancing, face masks, toilet paper hoarding, or anything coronavirus related. And first up today, we're going to talk about noise, because noise is everywhere. And it's a problem because noise affects you in ways you may not realize. First of all, it can make you fat. Research shows that people who are regularly exposed to the noise of traffic, like commuters, are 25% more likely to have larger waistlines. This is especially true for women. Noise makes you less productive.

People who work in open offices are less productive than those who work in closed and are less productive than those who work in closed and quiet offices. And it's not just the distraction. Noise causes stress, which reduces productivity. It interferes with memory. A noisy environment makes it hard for people

to remember. And wearing headphones with music doesn't really help drown it out. Silence is a great memory enhancer. People who work in noisy environments tend to hunch over their workstations, and that can lead to physical problems like back pain. So silence is golden, and that is something you should know. You have a personality. It's what makes you you. But where did it come from?

Why are you the way you are? And are you destined to be that person forever? Were you born this way? Can you change your personality? Let's discuss this with Brian Little. Brian is a professor at Cambridge University and author of a best-selling book called Who Are You Really? The Surprising Puzzle of Personality.

Welcome, Brian. Delighted to be here. So why is this subject of personality so important to understand? It raises some fundamental questions about what it is to be a human being. It explores the way in which each of us, each of our listeners, is like all other people, like some other people, and like no other person. And I found that that is a really intriguing perspective from which to look at life. Do we know roughly how much of our personality, you know, is pre-wired, comes with the package,

versus how much of it develops over time? We've sort of reformulated that over the years, in that the nature-nurture controversy has actually been resolved, because most of the people in our field, at least, see them as being co-constituted. And so the two are sort of in a kind of choreography, and in the course of development, both have an influence, but they're interdependent. And so what are those things, whatever they are, what are the things that determine who we are and who we become?

I think it's really helpful to distinguish between the relatively fixed traits that could have what I call a biogenic influence, and what I call free traits, which take us into a domain of human growth and how we can shape our own lives. So the big five traits spell out a nice acronym, OCEAN, O-C-E-A-N, where O is openness to experience, C, conscientiousness, E, extroversion, A, agreeableness, and N, neuroticism.

And those have biogenic influence. That is, they appear relatively early in life. They're subject to a development across a lifespan. And they're really consequential for the ways in which our lives are going to go. They can predict success in academic and our vocational pursuits, happiness and well-being and health and so on. But I believe that if we just stop there, we miss out some of the most intriguing aspects of what it is to be a human being. I coined the term free traits to describe how many of us will act out of character in the course of our development. And we act out of

character because of the personal projects that matter to us in our life at various stages. So the example I use with my students is that I'm very introverted. I have all the characteristics that would be associated with it from a biological perspective. But my students see me as an over-the-top extrovert because I'm pursuing with them a project that matters dearly to me, which is to convey with passion what I believe to be true as a professor. And if I have to stand on my head in an extroverted way at 8 in the morning to keep them excited, I'll do that. And I'm certainly not rare.

Many people listening to this might realize that they have been acting out of character for some time. Well, when you say we act out of character, would another way of saying that be, you know, we're different people in different situations. I don't act the same with my children as I act at work, as I act when I go to a meeting, as I act when I go to the grocery store. I'm very different people. Yes, indeed. You're absolutely right. But even that tendency to be different people is itself an aspect of human personality. So there's one personality characteristic known as self-monitoring. And those who are high in self-monitoring shape their behavior to conform to the situation they're in.

As you say, you know, at the soccer pitch, you're a soccer dad. When talking with old friends, you're yet another person. And some might see you as a kind of stand-up chameleon, constantly shifting your personality to suit the situation. On the other hand, there are those who are low in self-monitoring who are just themselves. So you've got Doug, who is always Doug. He's never Douglas, and he's never Dougie. He's always the same in every situation.

And those two individuals, high and low self-monitors, can really find it difficult to sustain a relationship, for example, because the low self-monitor says, I don't know who I married. You're a different person each time I see you in a different setting. You see, I don't know who I actually fell in love with now. But doesn't everybody do that at least? I mean, it's not an either or. It seems like it's more of a sliding scale. Indeed is. Indeed it is. But some people are extremely high on that disposition. Others are not at all.

But on virtually all of the dimensions of personality, they're bell-shaped. They're the normal distribution. So most people will stack up in the middle. And that's why I think it's important not just to look at the variability, but to look at the variability, but to look at the reason for the variability and the projects, as I call them, the personal projects that underlie them. So it may well be that the reason you appear to be so different is due to an underlying project. Like one of the big five dimensions is agreeableness.

Michelle may be the most agreeable and lovely person you can imagine, but for all of August, she acts out of character because she's trying to get her mother into a care facility. It's not working. And she's up against bureaucratic intransigence. And consequently, she's Hurricane Michelle for the whole month. And if you look at her, you'll say, boy, she's just so variable and so uncharacteristic right now. I think the better thing to look at is what is her core project that drives that behavior? It makes sense of seemingly inexplicable conduct.

Knowing what you know about how personality builds in people, is it possible, has there ever been, to your knowledge, a case of, could you be someone you're not if you really devoted yourself to, I want to change, I want to be a better person, a different person than I am. Can you change your personality, or are you guided by the things you've been talking about, and you're stuck in that rut, no matter what? Yeah. I think change is possible, and increasingly now we're getting evidence from studies at the University of Illinois, for example, that suggests that even the big five can be changed,

especially with therapeutic intervention and so on, that we're not fixed like plaster in our lives. We have to be careful, though, in changing personality. For example, the participants that we've looked at over the years sometimes generate self-change projects, so the project is being more outgoing, let's say. So that's a self-change project. And what happens is that if you generated the project yourself,

if it is a self-exploratory project, I wonder what it would be like to be more extroverted this summer or fake stability until I actually am stable, then that can be health-inducing. But if it's imposed upon you by somebody else, if you're told to be more outgoing by your boss or by your boyfriend or somebody who is insisting that you change, that can actually lead in studies that have been carried out with personal projects analysis. That can lead to feelings of depression and vulnerability. My guest is Brian Little.

He is a professor at Cambridge University and author of the bestselling book, Who Are You Really? 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. 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, Thank you. 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. All right, Brian. So with all this knowledge about personality and how it forms and whatnot, so what's the advice for guiding it? What's the advice for having the best personality you can have? That is to have the capacity to stand back from rigorously pursuing everything that matters to you. Take your life a little bit more easily. Not be so focused upon success and

self-promotion that you forget the little things that can come and gobsmack you with delight on a Thursday afternoon. So give me an example of what you mean and what it is you're turning off and what it is you're turning on. You know, I think somebody who is constantly trying to advance projects, particularly if they're high achievement projects, and they've read books on how to get ahead and how to promote your life in a way that you're absolutely certain is important to you, they may miss little signs that are really important. For example, Type A individuals are peculiarly unable to discern hints in their own bodies that they're overdoing it.

They've got to get this job done. They've got to get that project completed. And my advice at the end of the book is that such individuals, you don't need to be type A, each of us can get into this rut, that you need to be able to disattend from project pursuit or the pursuit of goals that matter to you at various times and restore yourself. see things that are outside of you. And that way it's both restorative and empowering. And I think that lesson is often missed.

So are you saying that if you wanted to be more extroverted, that if you adopted a project that put you out there and made you be more extroverted, that you would become more extroverted if you did it long enough? Yes, unless you don't avail yourself of restorative niches along the way. So in my own case, my students would never know until I tell them that I'm very biogenically introverted because I've had many years' experience of acting in an extroverted fashion. It's part of my professionalism, as it is with you or anybody else

who has to act in a way that may be somewhat different from their natural disposition. Do you think your experience that people think about this a whole lot other than you, that people just live their lives and adapt their personality and life goes on? Or do you think people actually sit around and wonder about their personality and how to make it better, or is it worth adapting? I think that there are various stages in our life when it becomes more salient. Normally we're so busy with the average expectable things we need to do to get on with our life that we don't reflect. But if you're just retiring now, if you've started to retire,

you've given up a regular function and now you're switching to something that's a little less ambitious, or your kids are just going off to college, or you suddenly find that you no longer have a job, you've been laid off and you've been at the same mill for 15 years, then I think at times like this, you start to say, you know, who am I? Am I just my job? Am I just my kids? Am I something that is immutable, is going to be me forever? Or am I at the stage of my life where I actually need to reflect a bit? Lastly, I wonder, do you think most people are content with who they are? Or do they wish they were someone else or more like someone else? I think most people settle for who they are. And I think that in a way that's a bit dispiriting because there's so many more

possibilities, possible selves that they could explore. But some people are so constrained by their social circumstance, by their poverty, by the rigidity of the family framework within which they were raised, that those possible selves don't arise on their horizons. And so I think it's a bit of a luxury of us in the West to be able to muse about possible selves. But that is inconceivable to people in other cultures for whom there is no alternative self. There is no possibility beyond what you have been constrained to do. So I think we need to be humble in Western psychology about postulating that there are all these degrees of freedom for being a better you. We're very fortunate that we can even conceive of such an idea.

Yeah, but in the West, where we do have possibilities, and I can think of people like, even my father, who, you know, his father was an engineer, and my father was an engineer,, his father was an engineer and my father was an engineer and his brother was an engineer. And I don't think my father and his brother wanted to be engineers. I think they were pushed into it by their father. And I wonder if, you know, I never talked to him about it, but I wonder who would he have been if he'd been able to choose rather than be pushed? And did he ever regret it?

That's a really intriguing issue. I remember talking to my own dad when he was in his 90s. He's a very talented man. He was a cabinetmaker. He left school in grade four in Ireland because he had to work to support the family. And yet he was very bright and became a cabinetmaker and a very skilled fellow. And I remember in his 90s me talking to him, and it was a very loving conversation. I just said, Dad, you know, you would have made a great architect. And he just stopped and looked at me in a way that I'd never seen him look at me before. And he said, I didn't do too badly, son. And I thought, oh, God, was I making him feel that he hadn't quite lived up to his aspiration? What he had done was he had reconciled that he had done

something that his generation needed to do, as you were saying about the engineer begetting an engineer begetting an engineer, it was something that he was entrained to by his social circumstance. But what he took inordinate excitement in was the fact that his son might be able to create another path. And basically, that's what happened. Yeah, we adapt. We adapt and we push forward with new agendas and new horizons. Well, what other option is there? I mean, you really, what else could you possibly do?

You play the cards you're dealt and you do the best you can. This has been really interesting. Brian Little has been my guest. He's a professor at Cambridge University and author of the best- can. This has been really interesting. Brian Little has been my guest. He's a professor at Cambridge University and author of the best-selling book, Who Are You Really? The Surprising Puzzle of Personality.

And you can get the book, well, you can get the book wherever you get books, or you can use the link in the show notes for this episode of the podcast and buy it on Amazon. Thank you, Brian. Delighted. Thanks so much. Hey, everyone. Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me,

we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong?, 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 listener 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.

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. At some time in your life, you have absolutely clicked with someone. Maybe it was romantic, like a love at first sight thing, or maybe it was at work. You just felt instantly connected with a co-worker or in a social situation. Sometimes people just click. And it's nice when it happens, but does it mean anything? If you click with someone, is that a good sign that this is a relationship worth pursuing? Or is it likely to just be a momentary thing that flames out?

Ori Brofman and his brother Ron Brofman have studied this and actually a few years ago had a very popular book out on this subject called Click. Welcome, Ori. And so set this up. When you talk about people clicking, give me an example of typically how that happens. Whether it's at a party or at work, you meet someone and it just seems like you've known them forever. You just hit it off. You click. And we think of those kind of events as nice to have. They're a serendipity. But it turns out that those moments really play a crucial point in our lives and that the relationships that ensue from those kind of connections

are categorically different than other types of relationships. Mainly, they're more passionate and have a level of intimacy that is even deeper. Why? Why would how you click in the beginning have anything to do with how the relationship goes later on? The theory is that when you meet someone in that way and you have something we call the quick-set intimacy, that that intimacy stays with you long into the future. And that when you experience, oftentimes when you have a click, the experience feels magical. This feels something that's kind of special about it. And it turns out that that magical experience really has a lasting effect. My brother's research, my brother's a psychologist, turns out when people reflect on magical

experiences that they've had even 10, 20 years ago, just thinking about the magical experience makes you relive it again. There's something that taps into your brain that's really core about these special types of interaction. So what do you mean by, or what does your brother mean by in his research, the definition of a magical experience? What he did is he asked people to really describe a point in your life when you just felt more connected, more alive, more in tune with everything.

And people had very different responses. One person was, the magical experience for her was her night at the prom, which had the first kiss with her boyfriend. Other people, a magical experience can be driving a car down 100 miles down the street. The interesting thing is that regardless of the type of experience, whether it's the first boyfriend or driving down too fast, people described in using the exact same emotional language that basically there's moments where you feel even more alive, even more connected.

And so what? I mean, as interesting as this is to identify and observe and talk about, what's the big implication here? Well, we argue a couple of things. One is that the relationships are romantically have a different tenor in them. They have more passion. And who doesn't want more passion in their relationships? But when you look at it from a work perspective, it turns out that teams that

click together function much more efficiently, much more effectively. String quartets, for example, who are comprised of members who all click and get along, tend to have more recording contracts. They tend to have higher ticket contracts. They tend to have higher ticket sales. They tend to be much more successful than their counterparts who are just as good as musicians, but just because they have that team bonding. Similarly, when you take MBAs and you put them into a room and you have triads of people who really click together and triads of people who just are normal acquaintances, the triads of people who click together and tribes of people who just, you know, are normal acquaintances. The tribes of people who click together achieve tasks in a much quicker way, achieve tasks in a more efficient way, and are more supportive of each other.

There's something that we call personal elevation, that when you click with someone, it kind of brings out the best in us, and it brings out the best in them. And we looked at cases from business to string quartets. One of the cases we looked at was two guys who invented the modern microphone. And from the very moment that they met, they had that connection. They had that magic. And their work style was actually very different because of that, because they had this intimacy.

They were able to trust each other more. They were able to kind of brainstorm better. And the result was that they came up with a really significant discovery. When I'm talking to you on the phone right now, the microphone that the phone's using is as a result of these two guys clicking. Must a click happen, according to your definition, must a click happen when people first meet? Oftentimes it does. There are cases when people kind of know each other for a little bit, you know, for a week or two,

and then all of a sudden they click because they found, say, a similarity or they're put into a situation where we found that joint adversity is actually a really good indicator whether two people will click. We actually discovered that there's five separate forces we found that joint adversity is actually a really good indicator of whether two people will click. We actually discovered that there's five separate forces that can help people click. Physical proximity, and what matters about that is that it's not just obviously you're going to click better with someone in the same city,

but those last few feet really make a difference. So in my study, they looked at college dorms, and if you live next door to someone, as opposed to two doors down, you're twice as likely to make friends with the person who lives next door to you. And when you go another door down, the chances of you clicking drop by half and then by half again. So that there's something exponential about the physical proximity. The second element we looked at was vulnerability, which is when you express vulnerability to someone, when you really share your true self, people tend to reciprocate

that. And there's a trust that bonds people together. And we interviewed a hostage negotiator. And you think hostage negotiators would be all about intimidating the hostage taker, but really it's about being vulnerable and about building a real relationship. There is similarity. Basically, it doesn't matter what you're similar in. What really matters is how many similarities you have. It can be really stupid things like you both like Disneyland, but the amount of similarities is what's going to predict whether you click.

And then there's the joint suffering. And the last one is being a high self-monitor. So people who are able to mirror the emotions of others around them tend to be much better at creating this kind of instant connections. The result of all of this, though, is what? Is better friendships, more productive work? What is the payoff here? It's better friendships. It's more efficient work teams. It's more passionate relationships. It's personal elevation. It brings out the best in us. So it turns out that people who

naturally click with others tend to get many more promotions, tend to be much more closer to the nucleus of a company. And in personal lives, it tends to be that it's a passion and the intimacy of a relationship that is affected. To the point where would you say that if you don't click with someone right away, that that's a bit of a red flag, that if it doesn't happen now, it's probably never gonna? I mean, we shouldn't always give up on people just because we don't click with them. I would turn it around and say that oftentimes when you click with someone, you say, oh, that's nice.

You know, you meet someone at a supermarket, you're like, oh, that's nice, we clicked. We don't follow up. We don't always give that relationship the energy that it deserves. And we do two things that are problematic. The first thing at work is we try to separate personal lives from business lives. So if people click, we almost want to separate them. We don't want friends working together because it's almost like a first grader type thing.

You want teams to be professional. And yet teams that are made of clickers tend to be much more effective. And the second thing that we do is we automatically dismiss a love at first sight relationship. And love at first sight can be romantic and it can also be platonic.

And we automatically dismiss those relationships as being, you know, not as substantive, not as meaningful, and yet the research shows that they are, that they really do have meaning in our lives. But there are people who seemingly click with everyone, you know, very charismatic people who make you feel good when you meet them and you're drawn to them. Do we discount that kind of clicking? No, because those people don't do, they're not trying to be politic. They're not trying to just kind of impress us and get ahead and left.

They do it naturally without even thinking about it. And it turns out those people who click with everyone are much more successful because of those clicks, because people trust them more, because they more easily form relationships. And it really matters. There was one longitudinal study about MBAs who graduated business school, and the folks who were natural clickers or the high self-monitors did much, much better in their careers than their other counterparts, and it was because of those soft skills.

It was because of those connections that they were able to form. How important to people clicking, how important is it that they be face-to-face? Because we live in a world of online communication, and we often don't see people. We communicate online. So if you're just communicating online and never face-to-face, does that pretty much mean you can't click? Face-to-face makes a huge difference. And especially in work situations, even when you think about meetings and you're like, why don't I just call into this meeting? It's going to be a lot easier.

It's not going to be a hassle. It turns out the really important stuff that happens in meetings at work actually happens right before and right after the meeting. And what it is, it's about the connective dialogue that people have, the ability to say, hey, Mike, how's your family going? What's going on with your wife? Something like that. It actually brings the team much closer together, research has found. So, yes, face-to-face makes a huge difference. It doesn't mean that you can't hit it off with someone online. One of the stories we looked at in the book is of this woman named Kelly, who ended up having the exact same last name as a guy who was also named Kelly.

And they hit it off online on Facebook. They kind of texted each other, and they had this really magical relationship, and they're now married. Of course, they had to get together in person. So proximity plays a very important role. You can make up for it by similarities, by being vulnerable, by drawing from the other accelerators. So now that I know this, now that you've explained this so well, what's the big takeaway

from all of this? What's the big news? Big news is that you can predict whether you'll click with someone. You can also change your behavior in specific ways to form more instant connections. And that these connections are, although they seem serendipitous, there's kind of a predictability to them. And that they play a really major role in our lives. They affect whether it's in business or in our personal lives. Those connections really matter. Well, it is interesting, as you said earlier, that we have been told to be wary of love at first sight, that instant attraction, that infatuation, because that will burn out quickly, and that in fact it is a red flag

that this is not something that's going to last in the long run. And yet you say just the opposite. Exactly. And it turns out that relationships, marriages, when you look at them 20 years after, and they studied couples who were friends first, couples who were daters, and couples who were kind of love at first sight. And it turned out that the relationship happiness is just the same even 20 years down the road, and that people stay together regardless of really how they met. But the difference is that the love at first sight people

had higher levels of passion in their relationships. So a lot of what we thought about love at first sight, you know, and there's Romeo and Juliet and all those kind of infatuation stories. But a lot of what we thought about love at first sight was wrong. Just because it's an instant connection doesn't mean that it's not a deep one. connection doesn't mean that it's not a deep one. It doesn't mean that it's not a meaningful one.

So if I'm getting this right, you're saying not only is that instant connection, that click, that love at first sight, not only is it not a red flag that it could be trouble, it's just the opposite. It's a sign that this really could be meaningful. That it not only can be meaningful, but it can also be more passionate and even be a better connection than some of our other relationships. So that love at first sight, thinking about love at first sight, it being a facturation, isn't necessarily right.

But I certainly wonder when there's such a consensus, and I think there is a consensus, that love at first sight, that magic instant click thing, is a warning sign that it'll burn out and it's not going to go anywhere. If everybody believes that, you have to think there must be some truth to it. So why do you think people believe it if, in fact, your research shows it's not true? I don't think we trust our emotions sometimes, because it doesn't make rational sense, right? Like, how is it that you meet someone and

you automatically feel like you've known them for a really long time? And that vulnerability that it creates is kind of scary for us. And we say, well, there's no way that those emotions can be real. There's no rational basis for me to feel this close to this person, so therefore let me back up slowly. But it turns out that the emotions really play an important role. They create a tenor for the relationship that's difficult to attain in other contexts. And it's platonic as well as romantic. It's not just matters of the heart here.

It's just people connecting even at work as well. Yes, absolutely. It's romantic and it's platonic and it's work-related. And clearly it's something worth paying attention to. Thanks, Ori. Ori Brothman has been my guest. He is co-author, along with his brother Ram, of the book Click, the forces behind how we fully engage with people, work, and everything we do.

And if you want to read it, there's a link to the book in the show notes for this episode. If you ever suspect that someone is lying to you, there are some words to listen for. Janine Driver, author of the book You Can't Lie to Me, has a list of words and phrases that liars use a lot. The first one is left, as in, I left the bar at six. A liar would say that rather than I went home at 6 because it's less specific. Never. Listen for the use of the word never when no would suffice.

Liars tend to overcompensate when they lie. The word that. Putting the word that in front of a noun such as that money or that woman, is an attempt by the liar to put some distance there. By the way, liars use phrases like by the way to try to minimize what they're about to say. So listen closely to what comes next after by the way, because it's probably very important. Why would I do that? This is a favorite question of liars.

It's an attempt to buy some time to work out what they're going to say next. In addition to why would I do that, look for questions like, what kind of person do you think I am? Or are you calling me a liar? All of that is to just buy time. And that is something you should know. That's the podcast today. If you would like to email me, I am reachable by email.

Anytime you like, you can write to me at Mike at somethingyoushouldknow.net with questions or comments, or just tell me how you found the podcast. I love to hear how people and this podcast meet up. I'm Mike Carruthers. 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, 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.