Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: The Best Advice is Not to Give Any & Overcoming Cognitive Dissonance

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Starting point is 00:00:17 You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Today on Something You Should Know, people are attracted to people who have a good sense of humor, but only a specific type of humor. Then, why the next time someone asks for your advice, you might want to not give it.

Starting point is 00:00:46 There are basically three ways advice giving goes wrong. The first is you're almost always solving the wrong problem. The second reason is that your advice is not nearly as good as you think it is. The third challenge with advice is it's often not a strong leadership act. Also, how you mow your lawn really matters. I'll explain the right way to do it. And cognitive dissonance. It's the idea that you have

Starting point is 00:01:11 certain beliefs about yourself and about life. And it's very hard to change them. And the more important the belief is to us, the harder it's going to be to accept evidence, even from a credible source,

Starting point is 00:01:24 that we might have made a mistake. All this today on Something You Should Know. At Wealthsimple, we're built for whatever you're building. Built for Jane, who wants to break into the housing market. We're built for Ted, who's obsessed with what's happening in the global markets. And Built for Celine, who just wants to retire and explore the world's flea markets. So take a moment and think about what you're building for. We've got the financial tools to help make it happen.

Starting point is 00:01:57 Wealthsimple. Built for possibilities. Visit wealthsimple.com slash possibilities. 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. You know, we put a lot of time and effort into these episodes, and it is very satisfying and gratifying that so many people download and listen and share with their friends and take the time to email me. Most of our listening happens in the United States, but I get emails. I just got an email the other day from East Africa. I get emails from all over the world from people who enjoy this podcast, and that means a lot to me, and thanks for doing that. First up today, people often say they are attracted to people who have a good sense of humor. But it's a little more complex than that. Looking at research from the past 30 years, what really seems important in relationships is not just having a good sense of humor, but having a similar sense of humor.

Starting point is 00:03:07 Couples who laugh together at the same things seem to get along the best. It's not about being a comedian. It's really just about finding the same things funny. Researchers say it's crucial to laugh with your partner, not at them. Having an aggressive sense of humor, in other words, making your partner the butt of too many jokes, undoes the magic of shared laughter and likely indicates an underlying bitterness. It's also something to consider in evaluating a new romance. If you and your new date are not laughing at the same things, that can be a red flag.

Starting point is 00:03:43 And that is something you should know. When someone asks you for advice, you're inclined to give it. Because after all, they asked. But maybe giving advice to someone who asked for advice is not the best course of action. At least not right away. And that's the advice of Michael Bungay-Stainer. Last year, Michael was named number one thought leader in coaching, and he is considered to be one of the top coaches in the world.

Starting point is 00:04:17 He's author of a book called The Advice Trap. Be humble, stay curious, and change the way you lead forever. Hi, Michael. Welcome to Something You Should Know. I'm happy to be here, Michael. Anybody who's called Michael is obviously a talented, good-looking person, so we're off to a perfect start. Oh, thanks. Yes, I couldn't agree more. So what is the advice trap? Explain what it is.

Starting point is 00:04:42 The advice trap is not advice itself. There's nothing wrong with advice. Advice is a key part of how we show up in life. You know, it's the essence of this podcast. But the advice trap is when you default into giving advice as your standard reaction anytime anybody comes to you and asks for help. And we all know that experience. You know, somebody shows up and starts telling you about a situation. And after about 10 seconds, we've got this little thing in our brain going, oh, I think I know what they should know. I think I should tell them something. That's the advice trap. It seems as if, though, if somebody asks my advice,

Starting point is 00:05:20 well, they're asking for my advice. I should give my advice because they asked. If they didn't want it, they wouldn't ask. There is a perfect place for advice, and that might be what this podcast is, which is like when you need to find out anything from the advice trap to what a mushroom is, this is the place to come. But it's the default response that kills you because there are basically three ways advice giving goes wrong. And I'll just list them off quickly for you. The first is this. You're almost always solving the wrong problem if you think that the first challenge that they show up is the real challenge. Because the first time somebody's sharing something with you, it's almost never the real challenge. It's their best guess. It's a stab in the dark. It's an early hypothesis.

Starting point is 00:06:07 But the first challenge is really never or very rarely the real challenge. The second reason where advice goes astray is that your advice is not nearly as good as you think it is. And we've got these cognitive biases in our brain that are there to convince us then our advice is pretty awesome all of the time but truth is your advice is not quite as accurate as up to date or as useful as you hope it might be but even in a perfect world if if you know what the challenge is and you've got really clear what the problem is that needs to be solved and even if you've got a stonkingly good piece of advice to offer up to that, the third challenge with advice giving is it's often not a strong leadership act because you have this crossroads and you can either be the person who gives them the answer and in doing so sends them away with a good answer to solve the problem and also sends them away with a subtle or

Starting point is 00:07:06 not so subtle message which is come to me all the time when you have a problem and my job is to give you the answer or you have the opportunity to say look let me help you figure this out so that not only do we get a good answer but you you walk away going, I feel more confident and more competent and more self-sufficient and more creative, and I'm better able to do stuff on my own. And so there's a level at which this kicks in because, you know, if somebody pulls up next to me when I'm walking my dog and says, can you tell me where Main Street is? I'm just going to tell them where Main Street is. I'm not going to go through thinking about these three problems with advice giving, because my advice is going to be pretty good and it's going to get them on their way. It's not going to make them feel more confident or anything else. It's just, how do you get to main street? So we're talking about things a little

Starting point is 00:07:57 more complex than that. On one hand, you're right. I mean, there are plenty of times where there's an obvious answer, a question asked, and there's an answer just waiting to be given. And just because you said, you know, tell me where Main Street is, I've literally had this moment where somebody said to me, hey, Michael, how do I get to Roncesvalles Avenue, which is the Main Street close to where I live in Toronto? And I was just on the cusp of telling them. And I said, hey, well, what are you after exactly?

Starting point is 00:08:23 And they said, well, I'm actually after this shop the blah blah blah and I'm like you know what there is one on once's fails but there's one just around the corner from here and your best bet is actually just to whip around there and go to that alternative branch of the same shop instead so even with something as obvious as tell me how I get to main street. There's a case to be made for saying, hey, just stay curious for 10 seconds longer, 15 seconds longer. Because in asking how do I get to Main Street, they've already gone, my problem is, the solution to my problem is on Main Street. And sometimes they're right and sometimes maybe not so. Yeah. Okay. So if giving advice isn't the answer, what's the answer? The answer is to stay curious a little bit longer.

Starting point is 00:09:15 And I'm not talking a week or a day or an hour even. I'm saying, look, in a conversation, if you're in that kind of conversation that we're talking about here, see if you can stay curious an extra two minutes. And just before you rush into advice, when you feel your advice monster looming up out of the dark and you think to yourself, oh, I've got a good answer for them. I need to tell them what's going on. If you can just say, look, I'll just ask another question or two, two minutes, and I'll see how the conversation changes and evolves if I can stay curious a little bit longer. And so how do we know that's better? How do we know that your way is a better way? There's just quite a lot of research that says that curiosity is a powerful behavior, you know, in a kind of formal leadership way,

Starting point is 00:10:05 but just as a human to human way in all walks of life. But, you know, in organizational life, there's, you know, there's research that says the rush to try and solve the first problem is almost always a dangerous rush. Because almost always, if you think that the first challenge is the thing that needs to be fixed you're you're often kidding yourself i mean lots of people have heard of the the five whys and that way of getting to root cause analysis and the power of that you know why did that happen but why does that happen but why does that happen and even though that's a formal strategic planning process it turns out that that same curiosity is powerful on a day-to-day basis, which is to say, look, if you have a conversation that's

Starting point is 00:10:52 driven by curiosity, so you do a better job at figuring out what the real problem is, you do a better job at figuring out what the better answer to that problem is, and you do a better job at empowering the people around you so that they feel more able to solve these problems by themselves, well, then that's a win for you, and it's a win for them. And, you know, in an organizational context, it's a win for your organization and your team as well. And so when somebody comes to you with one of those kinds of questions that you would normally respond with advice, how, for example, might you respond specifically, word for word? Like, how do you do what you're talking about in a very granular way?

Starting point is 00:11:34 Practical way. Yeah, sure. So here's a classic one. I'll give you an exact script. You come to me, Michael, and you say, hey, Michael, how do I do X? And, of course, there's no stronger call to action and advice giving when somebody goes, hey, Michael, how do I do this? Because it's just that your whole body is leaning forward going.

Starting point is 00:11:55 They actually want me to give advice here. So it's the responsible thing to do to tell them exactly what they're asking for. So here's your script. You go, hey, Michael, great question. And you know what? I do have some ideas on how you can do X. But you know what? Before I give you my ideas, I bet you've got some thoughts of your own. What's the first idea that you've already got? And I will promise you that 99 times out of 100, they will have an idea. They'll already have a first stab, a best guess at what they could do.

Starting point is 00:12:27 And what you do is you nod your head and you look interested and engaged and you go, great, that's a nice idea. I like it. And then you go, and what else? What else could you do? And they'll actually have a second idea or a second thought. And then if you want, you can go, this is terrific. Is there anything else you could do and you that question and what else which is in my previous book the coaching habit i say this is like the best coaching question in the world because it just means that

Starting point is 00:12:55 you squeeze the juice out of any question out of any situation you go and what else and what else is there anything else and at the end of that if you still have a idea that you want to share you go look these are great i love i love the ideas you come up with so far here's what i would add here's what i'd put on the table and maybe there's something useful there as well and what you're doing here is you're embracing the power of laziness, which is like, you know what? I've got an idea, but my job is less about being the person who comes up with the fast, not always great advice. It's about creating the space for the other people to have their ideas and make sure that they walk out the door with the best possible solution to whatever the challenges. So that script, I've got some ideas, but before I tell you mine, what ideas

Starting point is 00:13:45 do you have and what else and what else? Now, let me tell you, mine is a really powerful way to drive empowerment, but still get good ideas on the table. I'm speaking with Michael Bungay-Stainer. He is author of the book, The Advice Trap, Be Humble, curious, and change the way you lead forever. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-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 Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, friendship,

Starting point is 00:14:39 honesty, and positivity. Join me and an all-star cast of actors, including Liam Neeson, Emily Blunt, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others, in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go network by listening today. 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, 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

Starting point is 00:15:23 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

Starting point is 00:15:57 wherever you get your podcasts. So, Michael, do you ever worry that people will think, hey, you know, let's go ask Michael. He's probably, he knows about this. Let's ask him. And people would say, oh, no, you don't want to ask him. He is going to squeeze the juice out of it. This is going to take 45 minutes, and he's going to make you squirm to get the answer yourself.

Starting point is 00:16:21 Let's go ask somebody else. Sure. You know, the only thing I worry about in all of that is if they say that's going to take us 45 minutes, because if somebody says, look, I can either go to Bob down the hallway and get an answer in two minutes, or I have to go through some sort of elaborate process with Michael and it's going to take 45 minutes. Well, obviously, everybody's going to go to Bob. But my standard on it is this, Michael. If you can't coach somebody in five minutes or less,

Starting point is 00:16:50 you don't have time to coach them. So speed is of the essence. Now, here's what I'm trying to do with the people I work with. I don't try and be tricky about it. I don't try and be kind of Wizard of Oz, hiding behind the curtains, manipulating the conversation. I'm just really explicit about it. I'm like, you know how we work. I want to make sure you get a great idea. But before I give you my ideas, I'm always going to ask you for your ideas first because I trust you. And I think you're smart and competent and you can get stuff done.

Starting point is 00:17:18 So what do you got? You know, what ideas you got? What do you think the real challenge is here for you in all of this? And if you have a commitment to that other person, if you're willing to help them learn and grow, if you're willing to say, part of my job as a leader is to trust you and help you become a better, smarter version of yourself, but to do it in a way that still gets the work done and doesn't take, you know, 45 minutes of lying on a, you know, therapist couch in my office, then you've got to find that blend between the two of them. Companies like Microsoft and Salesforce and Google have taken these strategies and are using them to

Starting point is 00:17:57 change their culture, the way they do work, because they've just found that it just doesn't work to be the person who feels like you have to have all the answers and you have to tell your people what to do. You don't have all the answers. The answers you do have aren't nearly as good as you hope they'll be. It's not scalable. And you spend your whole time keeping your people disempowered because they're like, what's the point in me coming up with an answer? I'll just get trumped by Michael's answer. So you shoot yourself in the foot if you become that person

Starting point is 00:18:30 who always has to be the person with the answer. Well, I can see that. That makes a great deal of sense in a lot of cases. And what's sounding clearer and clearer to me in what you say is you just have to be really good at figuring out when to pull this out of your quiver and when to just answer the question. Yeah. And here's what I know to be true. We all have overdeveloped advice giving muscles. Like we're all pretty damn good at that. There's nobody going, oh, you know, I just don't give

Starting point is 00:19:04 enough advice in my life. Everybody gives a lot of advice. Most of it goes unheeded. The stuff that goes heated often isn't as helpful as we all hope it will be. This power to say curious a little bit longer is something that can become an everyday leadership act and everyday leadership behavior that really can shift the way relationships are built and work is done but to your point you know daniel goldman 20 years ago wrote an article for the harvard business review called leadership that gets results and he says look great leaders know how to use all six different styles of leadership and most leaders only know how to use two or perhaps three of those leadership styles.

Starting point is 00:19:49 Coaching, being more coach-like was one of those leadership styles. It was the least utilized of all the leadership styles. So to your point, it's about just trying to rebalance your behavior. So you're building curiosity into more of your day-to-day actions. Because sometimes you have to not get people to answer the question. You have to teach them how to do something and then let them go. But if they don't have the fundamentals, asking them what they think is kind of a big waste of time. Well, that's true, although it depends also on the teaching moment. So there's obviously some technical stuff that it only works if you teach it to them, if there's a download and exchange of technical information.

Starting point is 00:20:34 But there's a lot of evidence to say the best learning process is actually to start people trying to figure stuff out themselves, even if they're starting from a place of almost knowing nothing. Because people make quite a lot of progress and deepen the sense of ownership and deepen the sense of curiosity if they're learning from starting from scratch. You know, when I am running my training courses around coaching skills, I actually start people practicing coaching before I've taught them anything. And there's this kind of look of incredulity in the room when I start doing this because they're like, wait, you haven't taught us anything yet. What are we doing here? And I'm like, yeah, but let's see how it goes when you don't know anything and see what you learn immediately.

Starting point is 00:21:19 And then I can start layering in teaching based on your experience of it so far. So to your point, obviously there's a place where you're like, you know what, here's the technical specifications, let them give them to you because there's no point in you trying to figure this out. But in a lot of stuff, actually, even if they don't know something, it's still worth them having a go. Yeah. Well, but it can also be frustrating too, if you don't have the fundamentals to solve the problem and people are telling you to give it a shot. I was thinking back as you were talking when I was in high school and math was not my big subject, but my dad was very good at math and he would try to help me with my homework. And he would he would do what you're suggesting he would say well go ahead and give it a shot and it was so frustrating because i have i had no idea and i couldn't get from zero to one

Starting point is 00:22:12 and then he would have to show me how to do it but we weren't going to go very long with me trying to do it myself right so it is just the point you were making earlier on, which is like it's finding the balance and going is now the time for me to share the advice, to teach, teach the lesson. And this kind of comes around nicely around where we started, which is, well, what's the advice trap? The advice trap isn't advice. The advice trap isn't teaching. The advice trap is when giving advice becomes your default response to every situation. And that's what a lot of us have. And that's the behavior we're looking to break. I wonder why we don't do this more naturally. Why we kind of didn't evolve to teach people,

Starting point is 00:23:00 you know, the old, you know, give a man a fish and you'll feed him for a day kind of thing. Why we don't do that normally? Yeah. You know, there's an answer there that combines both nature and nurture. So the nurture side is that we live in society which rewards people all the time for passing the test, for having the answer. You know, when your kid is passing the math test, it just matters in the end that they know that eight and eight is 16. It doesn't always matter if they understand the principles of that. So through school, through our early career, we're always encouraged to be the person that knows your stuff. You know, will you pass the exam, whether it's a literal exam or a metaphorical exam?

Starting point is 00:23:46 But there's a biological reason as well, which is, you know, we in our amygdala, this kind of lizard brain, as it's so called. It's one of the oldest parts of our brain and sits on the top of our brainstem there at the back of our head. It in an unconscious way reads our environment five times a second and asking am i safe here or am i at risk you know it's very much primed to help you survive and one of the things that it's looking for and dislikes is uncertainty it's always going look if if i know what's going to happen i feel safer and if i feel safer i'm more likely to survive and And if I'm more likely to survive, that's the purpose of my DNA, which is to survive so the DNA can continue on down the line. So we have a way that we're trying to unlearn some primitive behavior, primitive instincts to say, look, when you stay curious, you actually put yourself in a place of unknowing a little bit longer. And there's one part of us that goes, why would I do that?

Starting point is 00:24:51 And I had risk. But the truth is, you know, now in our more civilized times, that place of curiosity, that opening up of possibilities, it's what allows us to start creating our future. And so I think the next time somebody asks me for advice, I'm going to really try and stop and not offer it and try your way and see what happens. Michael Bungay-Stainer has been my guest. Michael was named the number one thought leader in coaching last year, and he is considered to be one of the top coaches around. His book is called The Advice Trap. Be humble, stay curious, and change the way you lead forever. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:25:34 Thank you, Michael. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. 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.

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Starting point is 00:26:37 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. 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,

Starting point is 00:27:09 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. If you think about it for a moment, you can probably recall, without a whole lot of trouble, something you've done in your past that was wrong or lacked judgment or was foolish. And rather than admit you were wrong or lacked judgment or were foolish, you justified what you did.

Starting point is 00:27:41 You reconciled what you did with the fact that you're a decent person. That is cognitive dissidence in action. It's hard to admit when you do something dumb when you don't, in fact, think of yourself as dumb. It doesn't line up with your beliefs about yourself, so you justify it to reconcile it. And we all do it. It's interesting that we do it, but there are more important consequences to it as well. Carol Tavris is a social psychologist and author. Her latest book is called Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me,

Starting point is 00:28:15 Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts. Hey, Carol, welcome. Well, I'm so happy to be here, Mike. So explain in more detail what cognitive dissonance is and why it's so important for us to discuss it and understand it. There's no news in the fact that we will lie to other people and justify our actions to other people when the consequences could be that we get fired or divorced or some

Starting point is 00:28:45 awful thing happens to us. The insidious thing about cognitive dissonance, the crucial thing to understand about it, is that we reduce the conflict we feel between two crashing ideas. We do it unconsciously without even being aware that we're doing this. So what dissonance, all that dissonance means is we hold a belief. The most powerful form of this is a belief about ourselves. I am a good, kind, competent, smart person. And now you are telling me I just did something foolish, bad, harmful, unethical, and wrong. Let me tell you where you can go with your criticism.

Starting point is 00:29:35 We could accept the dissonant information, but that's hard to do. This is a mechanism we all do because it's really uncomfortable to live with dissonance. For example, I mean, we see this, look at the thousands of Michael Jackson fans who had such trouble accepting the documentary evidence that he was most likely a child molester. That's where the discomfort is, see? And what people tend to do is resolve it in an adamant way. See, instead of saying, okay, I love Michael Jackson's music, but, and, he did these bad things. Instead, what many people wanted to do was deny that he did the really bad things, or chuck out any feeling of support for him and his music. So it's important, I think, to understand how dissonance works, because when we do understand it, we can see it operating in ourselves and take some more control over it.

Starting point is 00:30:36 Well, sometimes, I don't know about that example specifically, but sometimes you'll hear something that contradicts what you believe, and at least for me, I'll take the stance that, well, maybe, but I'm not going to believe it just because you said so. You're going to have to prove to me that this is true, that just because you say it doesn't make it right. Oh, of course. Well, first of all, let me make it clear.

Starting point is 00:31:05 Of course many people accept useful, informative information that we need to have. I'm not saying everybody is closed-minded. And in the best of all possible worlds, we accept evidence that is supported, right, and worth listening to. No, no, this is a different matter. And let's take as an example the vaccine situation. The anti-vax movement began with a fraudulent story. This man, Andrew Wakefield, this doctor who took money from lawyers, $800,000, to claim that vaccines caused autism. He lost his medical

Starting point is 00:31:49 license. His article in Lancet was retracted. But what happens is when people have to make a choice, a decision, do I want to buy a Prius or an SUV? Do I want to believe Michael Jackson or not? Do I want to believe that vaccines cause autism or not? The minute we make a decision, we will now be motivated to keep our beliefs in harmony with the decision we made and to minimize or trivialize, overlook, forget any information that is discrepant or deviant. So it would be nice to think we were all open-minded, and we are open-minded before we make a decision, before we commit ourselves to a belief. After we make that decision, after we accept that belief, then we spend a lot of mental energy justifying it. And the more important the belief is to us, the harder it will be for us to change our minds. The more effort and energy, attention and time we have put into justifying

Starting point is 00:33:02 that belief, the harder it's going to be to accept evidence, even from a credible source, that we might have made a mistake. And we see this is what has happened with the anti-vax movement. The more these people committed themselves to the idea that vaccines cause autism in spite of massive evidence from every health organization around the world, what did they do? They increased their commitment to the belief that vaccines are dangerous. That's how dissonance reduction works, and that's why it can be so self-defeating. Well, it may be defeating, but isn't it also a coping mechanism, it seems,

Starting point is 00:33:42 because every time I do something wrong, or every time I make a misjudgment, I can't just, I just can't sit around and beat myself up about it. I have to somehow reconcile it with who I am in order to carry on with my life. You see, here's the basic premise. What cognitive dissonance is, is a conflict, a clash between two beliefs, or a belief and a behavior. And we are motivated, as I say, unconsciously, to keep them in harmony. So if our action is dissonant with our belief, you know, I'm a good, honest person, but I'm going to cheat just this once here on this exam or on this office thing. I'm going to cheat just this once. It's no big deal. The minute I cheat, I must now make my views about cheating consonant with what I have done.

Starting point is 00:34:48 So I will now decide that cheating isn't really such an awful thing. Everybody cheats. It's no big deal. If I resist the temptation to cheat, my beliefs about cheating will move in the other direction. Cheating really is, you know, not a victimless crime, and it's a bad thing to do. So this is the principle in social psychology as well. When people are obligated to behave in certain ways, to wear seatbelts, to have their children vaccinated, to pick up their trash and so forth, their attitudes will follow.

Starting point is 00:35:23 This is a good thing to do. I am a smart, good parent. After all, I want the best for my child, and so forth. It's interesting that example you used about cheating, because everybody, you can't go through life and not cheat somewhere, sometime. And everybody justifies it. Oh, I cheat on my taxes because everybody does it. And in some cases, you know, everybody does do it. I mean, pretty much. I mean, there are a

Starting point is 00:35:54 lot of people cheat on their taxes or they fudge a little bit. And I think it's partly because the tax laws are so vague and difficult to interpret that that allows for that. It makes it very possible to say, well, it could be that. Okay. Well, of course, we're all very good at justifying this. If it's a small thing, no big deal. Everybody does it. I mean, we all have plenty of those. The point is less that, though, than this. In our book, we have a metaphor we call the pyramid of those. The point is less that, though, than this. In our book, we have a metaphor we call

Starting point is 00:36:27 the pyramid of choice. You know, you imagine two people at the top of a pyramid with the same attitudes about cheating. This was actually an experiment that was done with children. You know, it's not a great thing. It's not the worst crime in the world. It's no big deal. Everybody does it. But I wouldn't if I didn't have to, etc. Okay, not a strong feeling one way or the other. But if given an opportunity to cheat or resist cheating, now this is what happens, you see, that's so interesting. The first step, the first time you justify cheating, it may indeed be a trivial issue. But over time, and if that decision is then reinforced by subsequent opportunities to cheat, more and more of them, it becomes harder in a way to go back up the pyramid and say that first step I took was wrong. We have a story in our book of

Starting point is 00:37:23 Jeb Stuart Magruder, who, when he was hired in the Nixon White House, he had no idea what he was going to end up doing, the immoral, unethical, and illegal acts that he did for the president. And by the end, as he wrote brilliantly in his autobiography, I couldn't believe how far I had fallen. Somewhere along the line, I lost my moral compass. And that's really the issue. It's not that one decision about your taxes or that one decision to whatever it might be. It's whether it sets us on a path of behavior that is harmful and wrong or corrupt or unethical, from which we then cannot extricate ourselves because we have put so much energy into saying it's the right thing.

Starting point is 00:38:26 But you can't live your life questioning every decision you make and saying, but what if I'm wrong? You'll never get anywhere. Exactly right. No, that's absolutely true. We must live our lives with convictions and with passion for the things we believe in and care most about. No question. If you had to go and get the research on brushing your teeth every morning before breakfast, you know you could never get through the day. No, that's absolutely true. We all live according to our beliefs and convictions, and we must.

Starting point is 00:38:57 The challenge is the wisdom of holding those beliefs lightly enough so that if better evidence comes along, better evidence, we will be able to change our minds. How many doctors continued to practice radical mastectomies on their patients with breast cancer long after the evidence showed that lumpectomy was just as effective and not disfiguring? See, that's where you want. You don't want doctors to change their minds every two minutes, but once there's a massive persuasive amount of evidence, you want them to be able to say, now is the time to change our minds. That's why it matters. We talk about this because it's both important to live with convictions and important

Starting point is 00:39:49 to change our mind once we need to, whether this is professionally, politically, socially, psychologically, it's not easy. And so what's the step, though? What's the baby step to get your head around this? How do you start to be that person who leaves the door open for new evidence when you're typically not that kind of person? Well, we love a story. This is a true story of Shimon Peres, who was then prime minister of Israel, when his good friend Ronald Reagan accepted the invitation to go to the cemetery at Bitburg in Germany, which turned out to have 47 Nazi Waffen-SS officers buried there. And as you can imagine, the world was pretty horrified by Reagan's decision to do this. And so someone asked Shimon Peres, well, what do you think of this, your friend Ronald Reagan going to Bitburg?

Starting point is 00:40:47 And Peres said, now, okay, the normal thing people would do is end the friendship or diminish the importance of this visit to Bitburg. Peres said, when a friend makes a mistake, the friend remains a friend, and the mistake remains a mistake. That's a guy telling us how to live with dissonance, meaning when I make a mistake, when I do something that's wrong and hurtful, I remain a good, decent, smart person. But what I did remains foolish and hurtful. And I don't need to spend a lot of time and heat and energy propping up a belief that's past its shelf life. What am I doing? I mean, and I laugh about this because you'd think, you know, if your beloved says to you, you know what, honey, I've been thinking about that running argument we've had for the last 20 years. You're right. You're completely right. And I was completely wrong.

Starting point is 00:41:50 Does the world fall in? No. Does your beloved say, I knew it. Thank you so much. You know, when people actually admit error, admit wrongdoing, when doctors tell their patients, yes, I did make a mistake. Let's talk about this. All human beings make a mistake. The world doesn't fall apart. People are glad to hear it when someone admits that they did something wrong and they changed their mind for a better solution. So in effect, in fact, the rewards are great for admitting when we are wrong, but we don't seem to recognize that as often as perhaps we should. There does seem to be a difference between people making a mistake

Starting point is 00:42:35 and deliberately doing something wrong. You commit a crime, you know you're committing a crime, you know that's wrong going in. You make a mistake and you find out later you made a mistake. To me, those are very different. Well, they are very different. They are very different because in the former case, you know you're a con man. Con men don't feel any dissonance. Yeah, I just robbed this woman out of her life savings. So what? She's a chump. She should have known better. There's no dissonance there. And if you know that you're

Starting point is 00:43:09 going to commit a crime, you'll come up with plenty of reasons for it. But that's not the issue here. The issue here is the mistake that you made. By mistake, I mean something like this. The mistake you made was believing that children never lie about sex abuse. That belief started a massive hysterical epidemic in our society. Children never lie? Are you kidding? This is something that can only be said by someone who wasn't a child or never knew a child. Children, you know, they lie all the time. In fact, some theorists say that language emerged so that we can lie. In any case, you see, but if you carry that belief with you, that's a mistaken belief. It's a narrow belief. It's a limited belief. And it's wrong.

Starting point is 00:44:12 And children don't have to lie in the way adults think about lying to be wrong. It's the same with any adult who, I mean, we see this in our society today. Think of the dissonance people feel when a woman makes an accusation or a man makes an accusation, and we're supposed to believe them unquestioningly. But you don't have to be lying to be wrong. You can be misremembering. You can be confabulating. You can be influenced by people around you to be wrong. But when we hold a rigid belief, then it allows no exceptions.

Starting point is 00:44:53 And what happens over time is that a person can get backed into a corner of throwing more and more defensive self-justifications on that belief until the point where they finally can't back out of that corner at all. That's what we mean by a mistake, not a crime, not a simple mistake that you know the minute you do it you've made a mistake, but a belief you hold that really you should be modifying by now. And when you modify it, when you realize, you know, hey, well, I guess children do lie, and mistakes were made, and people got hurt,

Starting point is 00:45:31 but you still need to carry on with your life and not feel horrible every moment of every waking day for the mistake you made. You somehow have to reconcile, I made a mistake, but it doesn't mean the end of the world for me, because, you know, what good is that? No, exactly right, Mike. That's exactly right. Remember, here's Perez, you know, when I make a mistake, I can remain a good, kind, good person, but what I did remains a mistake. So the task for us is to admit and accept what we did wrong or what belief we held that was wrong. Get it. Understand it. Not just throw it overboard in one second. Well, I'm fine and this is no big deal. But live with it enough to understand what was wrong with what you thought and did, except the harms that you might have caused for others.

Starting point is 00:46:33 And then, indeed, the point is not to dwell on it forever. The whole point of cognitive dissonance reduction, the fact that we do reduce dissonance the way we do, is precisely so that we don't have sleepless nights. Everybody knows about buyer's remorse and what a miserable feeling that is. And the goal is not to live your life beating yourself up over regrets, over choices that were wrong, over decisions that turned out to be foolish, or so forth. No, I completely agree with you. Dissonance reduction is what lets us sleep at night. But sometimes a few sleepless nights are called for so that we don't throw away the

Starting point is 00:47:15 chance to learn what we were doing that was wrong and to make some amends for it. We tell a story in the book of a young man who was texting and driving and got into a terrible car accident and caused the death of the driver in the other car. So that boy could have, that young man, could have just said, there's no problem with texting and driving. You know, everybody does it. It's okay. And, you know, it was his fault and it's not a big deal. And at the trial, at his trial, he heard the evidence of the scientist talking about how distracted driving, texting, is like driving drunk, blind drunk. You just are setting yourself up for an accident.

Starting point is 00:47:58 And as this accumulated scientific evidence hit him in the head. He said, holy cow, look what I've done. Look what I've done. Now, should he sleep the rest of his life? Well, of course he should. But what he decided to do was to become a spokesman for the dangers of texting and driving. He spends his time talking to teenagers and young adults about these hazards. He says, I'm here because I don't want you to be like me, to happen to you what happened to me. That's learning from your mistake. Well, it's interesting that this is something everyone does. We all do it. We all justify our actions and reconcile it. And yet we don't talk about it much. But we just did. Carol Tavris has been my guest.

Starting point is 00:48:46 She's a social psychologist and author of the book Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me, Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts. There's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for being here, Carol. Thank you, Mike. So how do you mow your lawn? Do you go side to side, front to back, or perhaps you go diagonally? Well, actually, it's best to do all of those things.

Starting point is 00:49:23 When cutting the grass, you want to switch up the routine, not just for kicks, but for your lawn. Cutting the grass in the same pattern every time trains the grass to grow in one direction. Over time, that flattens the grass, and who wants flat grass? So the next time you mow, give the neighbors and your grass a thrill and take an alternate route. If you use a lawn service, go ahead and request that they alternate the pattern. With all those lawns and tight schedules, many of them are also prone to fall into a routine. And that is something you should know. We love ratings and reviews on Apple Podcasts or wherever else you listen. Just take a moment, give us a rating and review. It helps. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

Starting point is 00:50:09 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. 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

Starting point is 00:50:41 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.

Starting point is 00:51:16 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.

Starting point is 00:51:44 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.

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Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: The Best Advice is Not to Give Any & Overcoming Cognitive Dissonance

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