Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: The Psychology of Design & How to Be a Better Conversationalist

Episode Date: July 9, 2022

It seems to be human nature that the more money you have in your wallet, the more likely you are to spend it. And it also turns out that what kind of money is in your wallet influences how much you spend as well. Listen as this episode begins with some interesting psychology that will help you spend less so you keep more of your money. http://www.forbes.com/video/4061993829001/ I bet you have had someone design a logo or brochure or website for you and then when they show you what they did, they ask, “What do you think”? It has happened to me several times and the problem is, I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what makes a well-designed brochure or website. I don’t know what other people will think when they see it or what motivates people to respond. If this has happened to you, you’ll want to hear my guest Susan Weinschenk. Susan has a Ph.D. in Psychology, she is the Chief Behavioral Scientist and CEO at The Team W, Inc. (https://theteamw.com/) as well as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Wisconsin. She is also author of the book 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People (https://amzn.to/323kNKK).  Think about how many times a day you speak to other people. Conversation is the primary way we communicate. Yet, you likely haven’t learned much about the science of conversation. The fact is that a conversation can beautiful and brilliant or it can be awkward and difficult. When you understand how it all work, you will be a better conversationalist. Joining me to explain the science of conversation is David Crystal. David is a writer and editor, and his latest book is called Let’s Talk: How English Conversation Works (https://amzn.to/32e4qLF). When your doctor takes your blood pressure – does he check both arms? He or she should check both because the results are likely different. Listen as I explain why this is so important. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120320195749.htm PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Indeed’ is doing something no other job site has done. Now with Indeed, businesses only pay for quality applications matching the sponsored job description! Visit https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING to start hiring now. Hometap is the smart new way to access your home’s equity and pay for life’s expenses without a loan! Learn more and get a personalized estimate at https://HomeTap.com With Avast One, https://avast.com you can confidently take control of your online world without worrying about viruses, phishing attacks, ransomware, hacking attempts, & other cybercrimes! The magic is waiting! Download Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells, for free, from the iOS App Store or Google Play today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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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, a simple way to spend less of the money in your wallet. Then, we all need to know a little bit about design for things like websites or brochures. What colors work? what fonts to use. So fonts are really interesting. There was a great research which showed that when a font was hard to read,

people thought the meaning of the text was difficult. So basically, I tell clients, don't use fonts that are hard to read. Then, why you should take your blood pressure readings from both arms, not just one. And the science of conversation, and why conversations on Zoom can be so unsatisfying. At the end of a Zoom conversation, whoever it might be with, you feel a bit exhausted. Why? Because you're always on attempting to get into rapport with people that sometimes you can't see. 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.

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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. And as with every episode, we have a lot to cover today, so let's get right to it. We're going to start today by helping you keep more of your own money. And who doesn't want to do that? And it all has to do with the way that the brain conceptualizes cash. This is according to Forbes.com. We know that you're more likely to spend more with a credit card than with a debit card.

And you're more likely to spend more with a credit card than with a debit card. And you're more likely to spend more with a debit card than with cash. So just by using cash instead of plastic, you will spend less money. But it gets more interesting than that. The next time you need cash, skip the ATM and go into the bank

and ask for new $50 bills. Why? Because research says you're more willing to spend older bills than newer bills, and you're much more willing to spend smaller denomination bills than larger ones. So skip the plastic and stuff your wallet with new $50 or even $100 bills and see if you don't keep more of your own money. And that is something you should know. Every one of us, you included, has had to design something.

A resume, a flyer, a website, a logo, a brochure. And even if you didn't design it outright, you were asked your opinion. Here's your website, what do you think this has happened to me I I don't know how many times in my career and when people ask me what do you think well what I think is how the hell would I know I'm not a designer I don't really know what to think generally when you have a brochure or a website or a logo, you want to present an image and often you want to motivate people to act or elicit some sort of response. But I don't know what works and what doesn't. You probably don't either. But Susan Weinshink does. Susan has

a PhD in psychology. She is the chief behavioral scientist and CEO at a company called the Team W Inc. And she is also an adjunct professor at the University of Wisconsin. She's the author of a book called 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People. And she has researched what the science says about what motivates people, what gets people to engage and respond, and what people think when they look at your logo or your brochure or your website. And here she is. Hi, Susan. Hi, how are you doing? I'm great, thanks. So to start by telling me a little bit about how you got into this and what it is you do when it comes to designing things and how people respond to them. Yeah, well, you know, I have a PhD in psychology and I've had a career in applying psychology to the design of stuff.

Primarily the design of technology and software and apps, but really the design of anything. I mean, I've worked on how you should change a museum so people spend more time looking at the paintings. But most of my career has been, what do we know about people and how should that affect how we design? Well, as I said in the beginning, and I think it's true for a lot of people, when somebody designs something for us or we're trying to design something ourselves, most of us are just going on what we think, our opinion, gut feeling, well, this sort of looks good, this might work, but it's not based in anything other than, really, other than opinion. Sometimes what might make sense to you and might

feel right to you is not necessarily what's going to work for everybody or not necessarily going to work for your particular target audience. So if you can make those decisions not just based on a gut feeling or not just based on your opinion, but you can actually make it based on what the research shows, you know, you have a better product and a more effective product for what you're trying to do. So let's talk about some of the decisions you have to make when you're designing something. Like if you're doing a web page or a brochure line length, is it better to have the text go all the way across or should you have little chunky paragraphs that only go part of the way across

and then you have to scroll down more to read it? I have no idea what the science says, but my gut would be that shorter is better. All right, so here's what the research shows. Shorter, most people prefer a shorter line length they do however the research shows that you actually read faster with a longer line length and actually and you can count it's called characters per line so a hundred characters per line which i can tell you is a really long if if i showed you a page of text that had 100 characters per line, you'd say to me, oh my God, nobody's going to read that. But 100 characters per line is actually

increases reading speed. However, when you're, you know, when you're doing a web page, like, do you really care that someone finishes reading that text in like two seconds faster than not? No, because preference is important. Because if I look at the screen and I say, oh, my God, that's too much text, I'm not going to read it at all, right? And you don't want that. So this is a case, and there are several of these cases, where there's a preference versus performance.

And in this case, this, you know, most of the time I say to people go with what they prefer. So what are the things that we know work in terms of pulling people in and getting them interested in drawing them in? And what are the things that don't work? You know, one of the really interesting things, there's two I want to talk about. They're both visual. One is what's called the fusiform facial area, the FFA. So you have a particular place in your brain, it's actually deep in your midbrain, that is sensitive to faces. So and it works largely unconsciously. So when you see a face, and that's loosely defined, you know, it looks like two eyes, a nose and a mouth. When you see a face, and that's loosely defined, you know, it looks like two eyes, a nose, and a mouth.

When you see a face, it grabs our attention automatically, unconsciously. And so especially if the face is large enough that you really see it, that it's a face, and if the person is looking straight out, you know, at you from the page. So anytime you're going to, you know, you want to grab people's attention, have a face and have that person looking right out at you. Also, we know that if that face is showing a lot of emotion, doesn't even matter whether it's positive or negative, doesn't matter if they look happy or fearful, but it's just a high emotion that will also grab attention. So that's something that will grab attention. Now, the other thing that I think is really interesting about vision is we really don't understand, we don't give enough credence to peripheral vision. So you

have two kinds of vision. You have the vision when you're looking straight ahead, and that's called central vision. But when you are looking straight ahead, there's you can see things kind of out from the corner of your eyes, but you actually don't see them very clearly. But the research shows us that things in your peripheral vision have a huge effect on you. We use our peripheral vision to get emotional information in. So if there's an image in the peripheral vision that is scary or has a high emotion, that will grab our attention and make us stay on that page. And also we use our peripheral vision to tell us whether we're in the right spot. So imagine you're at a restaurant website and you're looking straight ahead at the menu

in the middle but it on the sides there's like pictures of food that unconsciously says oh yeah i'm at the right page i want to stay here you know in terms of grabbing attention you want to use faces you want to do something you know don't forget the peripheral vision yeah look at a lot of websites there's nothing in peripheral vision. The outskirts of the screen are all blank white, right? They're not using that space to its best advantage. There has long been a phrase that sex sells. Does the science back that up?

Sex sells. The research shows. I mean, I'm not saying that that means you should use that because the other thing obviously that you have to be concerned about is how does that affect your brain and who does that annoy or who finds that offensive. But from a purely scientific point of view, we have part of our brain, it's called the old brain or the reptilian brain. It's a part of our brain that evolved longest ago. Basically, that part of the brain is asking, can I eat it?

Can I have sex with it? Will it kill me? And because that's such a strong unconscious filter, it means that we are extremely sensitive to images of food, because that's the eat it part, any images of danger, something horrible happening, you know, a fire, flood, accident, and then also anything that gives us an idea of sex. Is it that sex sells or sex just gets attention? So sex gets attention. The other thing that happens though, you know, in psychology, we talk about a heightened state of arousal. And we don't mean that sexually, we mean that in any way. So if

there's anything that gets your heart rate going, you may, there's always like video ads on online or on TV, where the you know, there's like a, almost a car accident. And then you find out that they're selling soda, you know, it doesn't have anything to do with the car. And, and the goal there is to just get your heart rate up. Because if they get your heart rate up, then you pay attention and the message sticks. We're talking today about how to design things, what works, what motivates people, what do people like to see. And we're talking with Susan Weinchenk. The name of her book is 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People.

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It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast

that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. So Susan, one of the first things people think about when they sit down to design, I don't know, a webpage page or a brochure or whatever it is that they're designing, one of the first things they consider is color and font. So can you talk about those? So fonts are really interesting. First of all, we've been debating fonts for literally hundreds of years. And basically, these days, especially if you're talking about

screens and, you know, mobile devices, most fonts, as long as it's not overly decorative, most fonts are readable. People often have a preference for one font or another, but that's a very individual preference. However, when the font gets so strange or decorative or, you know, too italicized, when it gets very hard to read, a couple of things happen. There was some great research done which showed that when a font was hard to read, people thought the meaning of the text was difficult. So the example, the research I really like is they gave people instructions for doing physical therapy exercises at home, right? So you go to the physical therapist, you have a problem with your back, they give you exercises, you go home and do them. So for half of the people, they gave them the instructions in a font that was very easy to read, very plain font. And for the other half, they gave the instructions in a font that was very easy to read, very plain font. And for the other half,

they gave the instructions in a font that was kind of decorative and it was harder to read. It wasn't impossible, but it was a little harder. And what they found was two things. One was if the font was hard to read, people estimated that they asked people, how long will it take you to do these exercises when you get home? When the font was hard to read, they estimated twice as long as when the font was easy to read. Twice as long they thought it would take them to do the exercise. And then they followed up and found that the people who had the hard to read font were half as likely to actually do the exercises when they got home. So hard to read equals hard to do. But here's something also, a really other interesting set of findings about font. I don't know if you've heard about system one and system two thinking.

And we have a way of thinking that's really easy and intuitive. And then we have another way of thinking where we're thinking really hard and concentrating. But when a font is hard to read, it triggers system to thinking may you you automatically unconsciously say, Oh, this must be hard. But it sometimes especially if it's in a learning situation, that means you work harder at it, you pay more attention to it. You say to yourself, oh, I can't just skate by on this. Like this would be especially true if you were studying, if you were a student.

The research shows that students who had reading material all semester in a font that was harder to read actually worked harder, spent more time, and got better grades and remembered the material longer. But it was probably because they looked at it and said, oh, man, this is going to be tougher than I thought. I'd better pay more attention and spend more time. So it's just an interesting thing. So basically, I tell clients, don't use fonts that are hard to read. Make it easy to read, especially if you're doing something like a brochure website and you want it to be inviting yeah now in terms of color color is again very individual and has a lot to do with your brand but what we know about color is that if you use too many colors at the same time, then you lose the attention-getting effect.

So the most attention-getting, like if you had a web page and it was a sign-up form and all you wanted people to do was click on this one button, like that was the most important thing on the page, then you shouldn't have any other color anywhere no color no color in the images no color in the text and then you just have the one bright button because that'll grab the most attention but in terms of what are there any colors that like you would never use because the science says this is just this makes people nauseous yeah the science says you should not use um in terms of especially you know foreground background like the font on words on top of a background color you should never you got to be really careful

that you have enough contrast you know if you use like uh medium gray letters on a medium blue background, then it's just hard to read. You also don't want to use red and blue or red and green, like red letters on a green background or red letters on a blue background or reverse that. Because that actually calls you on a fancy term it's called chromostereopsis and it actually causes the letters to look like they're vibrating so that's a particularly bad combination to use uh you know otherwise you got to pay attention to color meanings which are uh are cultural in nature you you know, so white. In some cultures, white means sterile and clean, or white is what, you know, brides wear at the wedding.

In other cultures, white is what you wear to a funeral. Some cultures, red means, you know, lucky and happy. And in other cultures, red means stop and danger, right? So you need to be careful based on the culture you're designing for as well. When you're designing something, website, logo, brochure, whatever, it's basically a creative function that you're performing. And sometimes just getting started. Like where do you, if you say to somebody, okay, we're going to create a website. Well, God, geez, I don't know. What should that look like?

I don't even know where to begin. What about the creative process to kind of spur things on and get people going when they have to basically create something from scratch? Creativity is amazing. And the new research on creativity shows us that there's three brain networks that are involved in creativity. And basically what you do, whenever you're thinking creatively or solving a problem, the best things to do are to concentrate on what it is you're trying to create or what the

problem you want to solve. And that engages the first of the networks called the executive attention network. And then what you need to do is drop it, is go away, do something else, preferably something that does not require you to think much at all so you need to give that part of your brain a rest like go for a walk or work in the garden or you know anything so as long as you're not thinking that gives another part of your brain called the imagination network time to go through all these scenarios and check everything you know and that's all happening unconsciously and then we've all had this right have you ever like you know an hour later a day later you go oh i know what i should do right you have that aha moment well that's the third brain network which

is called the salient network it is constantly monitoring what the imagination network is doing and when it finds an idea it thinks it's particularly good it brings it into consciousness and that's really how how anytime you're being creative you're going through that process whether you realize it or not and there's things that you can do to help that process along, right? Like thinking of something very clearly and then letting it go. And then we also know that sleep is important for that process. Even a nap will help that process. So I'm really fascinated with what's going on in the brain

when we're being creative. I know you say that using examples is always helpful in trying to motivate people. And it's very easy when you're trying to explain something to get very abstract and not be specific and not use examples. Yeah, you got to be concrete. You know, we're pretty good at abstract thinking, but it really is hard work. To think abstractly is hard work. So we've evolved to tend to like to make quick decisions and be able to process information really quickly. And examples allow us to do that. And they allow us to tie what you're talking about, tie it to something we already know. And that's very

helpful. So yeah, anytime you're trying to get across information or teach someone something, giving an example is really the best way to go. And if you know if it's appropriate and possible, a visual example is great. Let's talk about what motivates people, because I think people have opinions and some common practices that they think motivates people. But when you're designing something, I mean, what do we know? What does the science say about what motivates and what doesn't? You know, if you said, oh, I want, you know, people to use my product more or my service more. And, and then, you know, how can I do that? A lot of times people say, oh, we'll reward them, right? If they get friends to join and give them, you know, extra something. We think of rewards as being a really

great motivator. And it is sometimes a good motivator. It's especially good with, you know, dogs and toddlers. But there are many more powerful ways to motivate people to take action. For instance, one of my favorites is the idea of the self-story. So we all have stories about who we are and why we do the things that we do. And if you can connect your product or service to someone's self-story, or if you can help them decide to change their self-story, that's when you get the really deep, meaningful, motivational change. So give me an example of the self-story, changing someone's self-story. How would that work? Let's say that I'm someone who has always used

Apple products. You know, I have an iPhone. I love my iPhone. I have an Apple laptop. And you are interested in seeing if I will switch to Android, switch to an Android phone. And I'm very resistant because my self-story is that I'm an Apple person. But if you can get me to take a small step, a small, like if you can get me to try an Android phone, if you can show me something cool that you can do with your Android phone that I can't do with my iPhone, then you might be able to make a slight crack in that self-story. And instead of me thinking of, oh, I'm an Apple person, maybe you can get me to think, oh, I'm a person who likes some of the new technology. I'm a person that's open to ideas. And then I might be willing to start to change. So you've got to

think about what is the operating self-story and speak to that. Well, I certainly know a lot more now than I did 20 minutes ago about design and what motivates people and what gets them to respond and what doesn't work. So I appreciate that. Susan Weinchenk has been my guest and the name of her book is 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People. You'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Susan. Mike, it's been great to talk to you. people. You'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Susan. Mike, it's been great to talk to you. Thanks. 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. Every day, you engage in conversation with people,

likely without giving it a whole lot of thought to how it works or how to make it better or how to be a more effective conversationalist. In fact, though, there's a lot to it. How people speak to each other has been studied a lot and there's some interesting science to how conversation works. Here to explain and discuss it is David Crystal. David is a writer, editor, lecturer, and broadcaster who has written or edited over 100 books. His latest book is Let's Talk, How English Conversation Works.

Hi, David. Welcome to Something You Should Know. It's a pleasure, Mike. Nice to see you. Well, it's interesting when you think about it how important conversation is to everyone. I mean, that's how we communicate with the world. That's how we present ourselves. We engage in conversation. And yet, I certainly never got any formal training in here's how you have a conversation.

Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, take the basic principle of conversation, which is turn-taking. I speak, then you speak, then I speak, then you speak. And of course, you can overlap a little bit and there can be interruptions and things, but on the whole, that's the basis of it all. Now, when does that start? Well, people who have studied the development of communication in infants, and I mean over the first year of life, have established that that

turn-taking principle is there from about three months or so of age. You notice it when a mum, for instance, is feeding her little baba. And while the food is being prepared, the mum is chattering away, oh you're hungry, yes I know you are, wait a minute it's coming, it's coming and so on. When the food is in the mouth, whether it's a teat or a bottle or whatever it might be, then the mum shuts up and there's no sound. And then out comes the bottle and the baby gets winded in some way and there's chatter, chatter, chatter by the mum. And then out comes the bottle and the baby gets winded in some way. And there's chatter, chatter, chatter by the mum. And if the baby then makes a noise like a burp or something like that, well, that's equivalent to a whole sentence, really.

And that then gets a reaction by the mother. And slowly there is a kind of toing and froing and toing and froing. It's the basis of interaction. And it starts back young it's always fascinated me how there are some people who are just brilliant conversationalists in the sense that they they hold your attention that that you know like every word is right where it needs to be and then there are people on the other end of the spectrum who just i mean, they just bore the death out of you. And I wonder why, because I'm sure they both think they're doing a pretty good job,

and one has got it, and the other one has totally missed it. You know, to be a good speaker, you've got to be a good listener. You can be a bore very, very quickly if you do all the talking. And there's a lovely story, and I can't remember the source of it now, where somebody said next to nothing in the course of this conversation. And afterwards, the person he was talking to was observed to say, you know, he's a really good conversationalist, even though he'd said hardly anything at all, because he was listening all the time. There has to be a balance. I think if people are astute listeners, as well as quite competent speakers, they somehow or other develop a kind of rapport between themselves. So there's a balanced amount of conversation. You know, you and I are speaking together.

We roughly, at the end of the day, say roughly the same amount to each other. And then we both feel that the conversation has been a success. People who are good at conversation, I think, move towards that goal. People who find it difficult to converse, well, they're in a kind of a downward spiral aren't they and and when the other person senses that they're speaking to somebody who isn't so good at conversation well they then tend to try to make up for that lack by speaking more which puts the other person in an even worse position and so it goes on i think it's the circumstances as much as the personality that's involved here. There does seem, though, to be some tactics or strategies that... I can hear it in the way you talk. I haven't heard you say um or ah once.

I hear people, you know, those conversations with people that go, well, the part of the thing that and I want to I want to scream. You scream when somebody does something too much, when they overuse a particular word, even or grammatical construction or sound or hesitation noise, as you mentioned just then. I can make you hate any word in the English language by overusing it in no time at all. Really, I can. I really can. Really. Really, because really, and as soon as I do it more than four or five times, you're about to scream, aren't you? And it's the same with hesitation and these filler phrases, as they're called, these comment clauses, as the grammarians call them like

you know you see i mean mind you and all the rest of it they say nothing but on the other hand they have a very important role in conversation is that they give you time to think if i if you ask me a hard question i say well you know that gives me a moment to think of what I'm going to say next. They've sometimes been called the oil that makes a conversation grow smoothly if they're used judiciously. But if they're not, if somebody overuses them and the worst examples, of course, are the politicians who you ask a straight question of the minister and the minister says, well, you see, I mean, like, you know, and of course, that's when it really gets your back up. But in everyday life, yeah, there are some people who, for whatever personality reason or because they haven't got anything to say or because they lack control of the subject matter or whatever it might be, they overuse. They rely on these fillers, these hesitation noises and so on. And the conversation becomes very awkward, very difficult to continue. How do you solve that situation?

Well, you have to do it to analyze it a little bit. And one of the things that turns out is that if the two people in the conversation don't share the same background or don't have the same access to the topic of the conversation, then the person who hasn't is in a very difficult position indeed. That's crucial. That's one of the basic principles of conversation, that we both bring something to the conversation. And if one person doesn't really have anything to say, then of course you're going to get the situation that you mentioned. I've always thought, and you study this so you would know better, but I've always thought that there are a lot of people who use those ums and ahs and you knows to kind of slow

things down, to try to sound smarter or to explain things better. Academics, I think, do this sometimes where they throw in a lot of ums and ahs to kind of sound more professorial, you know. And I don't think that as a listener people generally find it helpful, but that that's why people do it. It's not just those phrases either. I've noticed this too. There's the so-called academic stutter. I don't know if you've come across that. You ask me a question, I go, well, yes, I think so. You get this kind of false stutter.

You mentioned that that was one of the basic principles of conversation. What are some of the others? Probably the most important is the phenomenon of simultaneous feedback. Now, this is not something that we're illustrating in this podcast dialogue, because it's not something on the whole that people online do. But in face to face conversation, it's there all the time. What do I mean by simultaneous feedback? I mean that while I'm talking, my listener is simultaneously feeding me with all kinds of reactions to show how I'm doing. They're saying things like uh-huh yeah yeah yeah no really yeah yeah yeah and so on now you

have to have those and there's an easy experiment that anybody can do to show how important they are if you're having a conversation with somebody and I suggest somebody you know well you know not your boss or something like that, then at a certain point in the conversation, when you're both speaking quite fluently, stop the feedback. Simply don't do it. Just shut up. Just stare at the floor or just look at the person or do nothing. The other person will not be able to continue the conversation. They will look at you and say, sorry, David, are you all right? Are you all right? Hello? Hello? Have I said something to offend you? They are puzzled by the lack of simultaneous feedback.

This is absolutely crucial, critical to the success of a conversation. And that's why for those people who have spent a lot of time over the last few months in forums like Zoom and the other strategies that you have to keep conversation going, they find it difficult. So many people have told me and I felt it myself at the end of a Zoom conversation, whoever it might be with, with your business associates, your friends, your family, you feel tired. You know, you feel a bit exhausted. Why? Because you're always on, you're always there attempting to get into rapport with people that sometimes you can't see. And even if you can see them, there are too many people

sometimes in the gallery view to mean that you can make rapport with any of them. And even if you can see them, there are too many people sometimes in the gallery view to mean that you can make rapport with any of them. And they're not giving you the feedback because even if they were, the lag between the time you speak and the time they go, uh-huh, can be enough to mean that it just doesn't turn up at the appropriate time. And so all of this means that that lack of simultaneous feedback results in a conversation that is valuable because it's keeping us in touch with people, but it nonetheless is artificial. And so to transfer that back to the face-to-face situation, it turns out to be one of the most critical factors in keeping a successful conversation going.

Well, I wonder if this becomes the new norm, if we're going to have to somehow adjust to that, because that may just be how group meetings get conducted. If it does become a kind of new normal, we're going to have to develop much more sophisticated strategies to make sure that the conversation goes smoothly. And what do I mean by that? Well, for example, turn taking. Probably anybody who's been in a Zoom room has had this experience. You're sitting there in front of your computer and on your screen, I'll say three or four people. You say something, you ask a question. Well, who's going to respond first? If they haven't unmuted, if they haven't muted their microphones, they're all there ready to come in. Now, what's going to happen? They're going to have people speaking

simultaneously. That happens. And then people don't quite know who to defer to. Or are you going to develop a strategy like I'm going to raise my hand and then it means I want to speak next or I'm going to take my hat off or something like that. People have devised all kinds of ingenious ways of handling this. But at the moment, because we lack experience of how to do it, it all is a bit artificial and a bit difficult. And I've lost track of the number of times conversations I've been involved with on a system like Zoom have simply broken down. And everybody suddenly stops talking and nobody quite knows whether it's their turn to speak next.

And if they do, then how long should they wait? And all of these difficulties, you know, they all come in. It would seem that really every conversation has the potential to take a wrong turn, to turn into an argument or to deteriorate in some way if we're not careful. And I know you talk about the strategies that we tend to use to keep a conversation pleasant, to keep it going, to keep it moving forward. Interestingly, these are all strategies that people have a kind of mythical view about. I'll give you two examples Mike. One is, I'll put it

as a question, why do you laugh? And the answer is people will say because you've said something funny. Well no, that is not why we laugh in conversations. You might say something funny and get a laugh, but usually the laughter that turns up in a conversation is much more a sympathetic laugh, an empathic laugh. I'm sort of, yes, I the things you can do is introduce that kind of empathic giggle or chuckle or gesture of vocal friendliness to help the conversation get back on track. Another example is interruption. Interruptions get a terribly bad press. You know, you go online and type in interruption and the style guide say, never interrupt. It's bad to interrupt. Well, that's the argument concept of interruption. If I'm making a serious point to you and you interrupt me, then I feel threatened.

Then I feel that I had the chance to say what I wanted to say. And the interruption itself fuels the argument. But in everyday conversation of a kind of informal type, interruptions are there all the time, and they're actually appreciated. Because the purpose of the interruption is to help the speaker move on to another point, or to add something to what the speaker has just said in a friendly kind of way that you interrupt and you say, yes, well, of course, that's what so-and-so said as well. And the first speaker says, yes, I hadn't thought about that. Or indeed he did. So that kind of interruption is the norm in everyday conversation. And it's a positive thing, not a negative thing. And so I was going to ask you, can I have a couple more? Because those are really good strategies that people probably, you know, do them anyway

and don't necessarily realize what they're doing. But it's interesting to shine a light on it like this. So if you have some others, I'd love to hear them. Let me give you an example of something from the beginning of a conversation and something at the end. How do you start a conversation? Well, one of the first things you have to do is you greet each other. And so something that people don't usually realize, what's the difference between various kinds of greeting and various kinds of farewell? Take good morning. You say good morning to somebody or morning or whatever the phrase is that you like to use most and at the end of the end of the day or when you're leaving or something you might say good night

night good night or goodbye you might say hello and goodbye good morning and good night there are lots of these paired strategies what's the difference between them well the difference is this that when you're greeting somebody you express the greeting to an individual person just once. If I see you in the morning, Mike, and I meet you for the first time, I say, morning, Mike, and you say, morning, David, and we get on with our day. Oh, but five minutes later, I go back into the room and you're still there. Now, I don't say, morning, Mike, a second time. If I did, you'd look at me very oddly. You'd think, didn't you see me the first time? What's going on?

Indeed, if I realized that I've said it a second time, I might even apologize. And I might say, oh, sorry, Mike, I've said good morning to you already, haven't I? Now, fast forward to the end of the day. I'm leaving your office. And I say, good night, Mike. And off i go oh i've forgotten my bag i go back into the office i pick up my bag i see you again i say good night mike i say it a second time and that's fine no problem indeed i can say it as many times as i

like and say night night night good night and so on and some people do that when they're leaving a friend. So the difference between good morning and good night, or hello and goodbye, something that people don't really realize until it's pointed out to them. And then once it is pointed out, they say, oh, yeah, of course, yeah, I knew that. I think when you look at conversations, one of the sloppiest parts of lots of conversations is the ending. There's no often neat way to end it. It's, well, yeah, good to see you.

So how is it? We notice it online. If you're having a chat with somebody, how do you end the chat? It's more difficult than beginning the chat isn't it no so you're sitting in your dining room uh with uh it's you and your partner and a couple of visitors have come to meet you and you've been there you've had dinner and you're there all evening and you've been chatting away partners the visitors say it's time to leave so they say oh they look at their watch or something and they say oh really must be going. Time to go. They don't go.

That's the point. You then carry on the conversation for a certain period of time, a few minutes, maybe a bit longer. And then they look at their watch again and say, no, look, I really must go. And at that point, everybody is allowed to stand up and the person, the people leave the room with appropriate farewells and so on and so forth. Notice how strange it would be if the very first time somebody says, looking at their watch, I really must go. The host says, OK, fine. Up they get. And you go. That wouldn't happen. Or if it did, it would be a very strange situation indeed. So we have these unconscious strategies about how to end in a polite, comfortable sort of way. That's another example. There have been people in my life, and I'm sure everyone or, yeah, I'm sure everyone's had this experience where there are just certain people that you really like talking to because they make you feel smart.

And I've tried to sort of figure out what it is they're doing to make me feel so smart and make me feel like I really contributed to the conversation. And I guess it's many of the things that you've been talking about. But I still think there's just some kind of je ne sais quoi, I haven't been able to figure it out, that there are just some people, people have said that former President Clinton used to have, or has this ability, that they make you feel so special, and I don't know what it is. Do you? Well, again, personality aside, one absolutely cast iron strategy to develop that kind of feeling is you talk about the person you're talking to, not about yourself. I talk about you. I ask about you. I don't mean in a casual sort of how are you kind of situation, but you keep asking about

the other person, about their interests, about what it is. And occasionally, of course, referring back to yourself or to some other circumstance. But the more you ask about the other person, the more the other person feels that you're a really nice guy now if both people are doing this then both people end up happy because i ask about you mike about your background and everything and things like that uh and you think oh yeah everybody wants to talk about themselves you see and so i'm giving you the chance to talk about yourself and then you do the same to me. And we ask each other how things are going and how was the lockdown for you and things like that. And so long as each person is eliciting information about the other, everything's going well. You become a bore

if you elicit information only about yourself. Well, it is interesting to pause and take a look at conversation because it's something all of us do all the time without really examining how it functions, how it works, and how to make it better. David Crystal has been my guest. He's a writer, editor, lecturer, and he has written or edited over 100 books.

His latest book is called Let's Talk, How English Conversation Works. And there is a link to that book in the show notes for this episode. Hey, thanks for being here, David. Well, thanks, Mike. That's been a really interesting chat. Thanks for your interest.

When you go get a physical at the doctor's office, he or she will take your blood pressure. But do they take it twice? According to British research, taking blood pressure measurements in both arms is critical because each arm usually has different measurements, and that difference can play a large role in your risk for cardiovascular problems. Those of us who have a significant difference of systolic pressure between the two arms are at much more risk of stroke and heart disease. Recommendations to measure both arms actually do exist in blood pressure management guidelines,

but it's estimated that fewer than 50% of doctors actually do it. Dr. Christopher E. Clark, lead author of the study, says don't be shy. You need to be proactive and ask your doctor to measure blood pressure in both arms. Knowing your risk early and making necessary lifestyle changes could extend or even save your life. And that is something you should know. At the end of many episodes, I ask you to share this podcast with someone you know, because, well, that's how we grow our audience, and it helps us a lot. So please share this podcast with someone you know.

I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law,

her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show

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