Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: The Science of Happily Ever After & How To Rethink Anything

Episode Date: May 20, 2023

When you have a smart phone, you can take pictures of anything, anytime, anywhere. This episode starts with one very simple piece of advice that can make the pictures you take more interesting and more memorable. And it is really, really simple. https://daystarvisions.com/Docs/Tuts/Comp/ Love isn’t always easy. In fact, it can be really hard sometimes. That’s because despite our desire and need for love – we are not especially good at it. Perhaps that is because we are looking for the wrong characteristics in a partner according to Ty Tashiro. Ty is a psychologist, social scientist and author of the book, The Science of Happily Ever After: What Really Matters in the Search for True Love (https://amzn.to/3o3IWtO). Listen as he explains what turns out to be really important but is often overlooked in creating a lasting love relationship. We are all taught from an early age that it is important to learn and think. Yet just as important as learning and thinking are - UN-learning and RE-thinking are also critical. Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist, host of the very successful TED podcast called Work Life with Adam Grant https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/worklife-with-adam-grant/id1346314086?mt=2) and his latest book is called Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know (https://amzn.to/3o51NVk). Adam joins me to explain how to unlearn and rethink and what happens when you do it well.  Does it actually matter what brand of gasoline you put in your car? After all, gasoline is gasoline – right? Listen and find out why that is not exactly true. https://www.thoughtco.com/does-it-matter-where-get-gas-607905 PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! The Daily Boost Podcast is the most popular and longest-running personal growth podcast in the world - for a good reason. Every episode delivers a positive boost of daily motivation and coaching designed to help you get what you want - no matter what gets in the way! Be sure to get your Daily Boost at https://motivationtomove.com today! Discover Credit Cards do something pretty awesome. At the end of your first year, they automatically double all the cash back you’ve earned! See terms and check it out for yourself at https://Discover.com/match If you own a small business, you know the value of time. Innovation Refunds does too! They've made it easy to apply for the employee retention credit or ERC by going to https://getrefunds.com to see if your business qualifies in less than 8 minutes! Innovation Refunds has helped small businesses collect over $3 billion in payroll tax refunds! We really like The Jordan Harbinger Show! Check out https://jordanharbinger.com/start OR search for it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, a very simple way to make your photos much better. Then, how the characteristics we look for in a romantic partner often result in a bad match. For example, for both men and women, physical attractiveness and wealth are two of the top three characteristics that they select on. Both of those characteristics don't have a great return on investment when it comes to satisfaction and stability. Also, is gasoline gasoline? Does it really matter what brand? And while it's important to learn and think,

it may be more important to unlearn and rethink. I think this applies to every part of our lives, right? We've watched BlackBerry, Blockbuster, Kodak, and Sears go out of business not because they lacked the ability to think, but because they couldn't rethink the business models that had made them successful. All this today on Something You Should Know. human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual. That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit betterhelp.com to learn more. That's betterhelp.com.

Something you should know. Fascinating intel. the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, and welcome to Something You Should Know. I'm always amazed by those people who always think to take their phone out and take pictures everywhere, anytime. It could be a natural disaster that's about to kill them, but somehow they'll see it in their heart to take out their phone and take a picture of it. I'm not one of those people, probably because I've never really thought I was that good at photography, but I did get a little bit better when I understood the golden ratio,

which is used in art and architecture and photography. It's a technique that can be very alluring. It's called the rule of thirds, and you want to apply it by imagining a grid on your viewfinder of your camera that divides into three equal parts. When taking a picture, you try to position the most important part of the shot, maybe the subject's eyes, or the lighthouse, or the elephant, or whatever you're taking a picture of. Put that thing not at the center of the picture, but just off-center, in the left or right third of the frame, because it naturally makes for a more interesting picture.

And for landscape shots, you do the same thing. By positioning the horizon in the top third of the picture, it can give a more interesting perspective, and you become a better photographer. I have. And that's something you should know. Love and relationships are fundamental to being human. We kind of need love and relationships to keep our species going. Yet as a group, we don't do relationships particularly well

when you consider how many people get divorced, how many people are unhappy in their relationships, and how many people can't seem to find love in the first place. Even more interesting is that there is a ton of research on romance and love, so you would think that with all this data and knowledge, we could do better. That's what Ty Tashiro thought, so he took a look. Ty is a psychologist, social scientist, and relationship expert. He's a former professor at the University of Maryland and the University of Colorado,

and he is author of the book, The Science of Happily Ever After, What Really Matters in the Search for True Love. Hi, Ty. Hey, thanks for having me. So I think we like to think of love as being something kind of magical and mystical and not something you can, you know, dissect scientifically. But as you point out, there really is a lot of solid research into how love works and how to find the right person,

right? Yeah, that's kind of part of what surprised me, I guess, about the whole process, because the odds aren't very good to start with. So the divorce rate for first marriages is about 41%. Some clever sociologists figured out about 10% of people never file their paperwork, but for well-intentioned purposes are divorced. So that's about another 10%. And then about 7% of couples are chronically unhappy, so unhappy more years than they are happy. So really your odds of finding a happily ever after are below 50%. And so I was interested in this idea of, so what happens with the couples that do find a happily ever after, that do find stable and satisfying relationships? And there's a number of factors involved, of course, but one of the things I was

really struck by is that the decisions people make when they're selecting a partner. So the kind of personality and characteristics that they get in a partner are actually highly predictive of whether or not that relationship will be stable and satisfying decades later. And what are some of those things? How do you take what you just said and put that into practice? Sure. Well, I think the first thing folks should know is that you don't get to wish for everything. So this isn't like an all-you-can-eat buffet when it comes to traits and characteristics. One of the things I like to do with undergraduate students is I'll say, what do you want in a romantic partner? Just write it down on a piece of paper. And they'll list as many characteristics as they have time for. So in about a five minute time span, they'll list 20 to 30

characteristics, which is great to dream big. But, you know, you quickly start to rule out people just based on one characteristic you want. So let's say, for example, you want someone who matches your political party. Well, you rule out about 66% of people just by making that one wish. Let's say someone wants to choose a male partner who's six foot or taller. Well, they would rule out 80% of men because only 20% of men in the U.S. are six foot or taller. So that's one thing to know is you have a limited number of wishes, let's call them. And so you should really prioritize those and get the most you can with the things that are most important to you. So one example we use is personality. If you look at what people do in the wild when they're just choosing partners on their

own, they'll prioritize things like extroversion, for example. And there's nothing wrong with being extroverted, but extroverted personalities actually don't predict satisfying or stable relationships. Something that gets a bad rap in our culture is being nice. If you say someone's just a nice guy, for example, it's almost a bit of an insult in the context of dating. But if we look at personality characteristics like agreeableness, that kind of map on someone who's nice and kind, that's highly predictive of how satisfied you'll be and how stable your relationship will be decades later. One other example from personality is neuroticism or a lack of emotional stability. There's another thing that intuitively seems like, oh yeah, I should get someone who's

emotionally stable or not neurotic. But people prioritize that about ninth or tenth in their list of characteristics that they look for in a partner. So when you say things like agreeableness or neuroticism are highly predictable, predictable how? These are good things or these are bad things? So agreeableness would be a good thing. So people who are high in agreeableness are more generous. They're less likely to look at the relationship as a zero-sum game that I'll do something for you if you do something for me. They just kind of freely give, trusting that you'll give in return or work out in the long run. They're better at reading emotions, so they're better at what we call empathic accuracy, understanding your position.

Something like neuroticism is not good, of course, for a relationship. People high in neuroticism are moody. They tend to be prone to anger and negativity. And of course, that affects their evaluation of how happy they are in a relationship. But it's also going to affect how happy you are in a relationship if you're with someone who's pretty emotionally unstable. So when you ask people to list what's important, and you said somebody might say, well, I want somebody who's six feet or taller. Someone might say, I want someone with a full head of hair.

But do these things actually predict happiness? Are these things really that important? If you actually married a guy who was five foot ten, are you doomed because you said you wanted somebody who was six feet or taller? Yeah, so there's two ways to look at that, and I'm glad you bring up some of those characteristics. So one of the other interesting things that psychologists have found is they've looked at, so we kind of know what people should wish for in a partner. But then the other question is, so what do people naturally prioritize? And for both men and women, physical attractiveness and wealth are two of the top three characteristics that they select on. Both of those characteristics don't have a great return

on investment when it comes to satisfaction and stability. So having a good-looking partner, it's not bad for your relationship, but it really doesn't help out much when we're looking at happiness. Same thing goes for money. Money is helpful up to about $45,000, $50,000. After that, you get a diminishing return. So you want someone who has some financial stability, but you don't need to get someone who's rich. Now, if you don't get what you think you wanted, so if you don't get someone, let's say you want someone who's really physically attractive, like a nine out of 10, you don't get that. It doesn't seem to matter. You know, what really matters in the long run, when you think about the long haul over the course of 20, 30, 40 years, what most couples learn is that, yeah, it is these characteristics like

having someone who's kind or having someone who's stable during times of distress that really is important for the long-term happiness of a relationship. But how individual is this in the sense that, you know, I know couples that yell and scream at each other and swear they love each other, and if one of them was agreeable, they might not have that relationship that they have that sort of seems to work because they're both not particularly agreeable. Right. Yeah. Well, so these are averages, right? So on average, these are the best bets to make for traits in a partner. But I think all of us, no exceptions to the rule, right? So the kind of couple you're describing, I know a few couples like that. And as a social scientist, it's a minor miracle to me that's worked out as well as it has for some of these couples, but it seems to work.

So my hope, I think, is that people take pause and think critically and think deeply about what it is that they really want and what it is that is really going to work for them. I think if that step is in place, that's the most important thing. And then people can take into account some of these idiosyncratic things that might actually work for them. Has anybody looked at, you know, when people say, you know, hair or height or weight or eye color, whatever, is a deal breaker, but they give in to that deal breaker, do they regret it? Or is that what you're saying, basically, is that those things really don't matter in the long run and people quickly forget? That's right. That's right. That's right. So in the short term, I'm sure there's a

little bit of regret or yearning for what could have been maybe a full head of hair in some people's case. But of course, as time goes on, you know, we our physical appearance changes for all of us. A lot of things change as couples progress past those early years. And as they get into that long run, you know, past that honeymoon phase, these kinds of things that really matter as far as dispositions or character traits really rise to the top. And then people see, oh, you know, maybe I lucked out because that full head of hair wasn't really the most important thing. It's that this person has certain values or characteristics that's really going to make the difference in the long run.

So what about that grass is always greener thing that shows up a lot in relationships where people wonder, you know, did I settle? Did I, even if this person has all the characteristics you want, maybe somebody could have been a little bit better. Right. I think that's a bit of human nature. This grass is greener tendency, and it certainly happens in relationships. I'll give you a quick analogy here to kind of show how this plays out. So it turns out when we look at people's level of commitment and the likelihood that they'll stay with the same person, you can use the same economic model they use over in the economics department or business school about when people buy and sell stocks or buy and sell homes, which is a little

bit depressing. It's not very romantic, but it predicts pretty well. And there's three factors. It's what do I want? What do I think I'm getting in return? And what are my attractive alternative options? So something else that I could invest in, and that's the grass is always greener part of it. And there's been a number of studies where they've looked at, so how do these three variables predict people's commitment and maybe their tendency to have a wandering eye? And among those three variables, it's the perceived attractive alternative options that's the strongest driver of commitment. So even if you're pretty happy with the current relationship you have, it's really your ability to control your desire to explore other possibilities that's the biggest difference maker. So yeah, people are always going to have that. I think they need to be really aware of it. I think it's great when couples

can talk about it and people don't totally freak out about what's going on. And I think it's particularly important in this day and age when the perceived alternatives are right at your fingertips on your mobile phone. And you can do some swiping right or left, and all of a sudden, you know, there's a wealth of alternative possibilities. We're talking about the characteristics that make love work. And we're talking with Tai Tashiro, a psychologist and social scientist who is author of the book, The Science of Happily Ever After. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey, no, too basic. Hi there.

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People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool.

And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. So, Ty, it's interesting that when you look at dating websites, for example, or just hear people talking on the first date, it's all about things that, according to you, really don't matter talking on the first date. It's all about things that, according to you, really don't matter much. That's right. That's right. And so in some ways,

you know, some of these apps, especially the swiping apps, actually kind of move us towards the worst of our human nature in some ways and towards some of our worst possible decision-making strategies. There was a great study done a couple years ago on this dating app Hinge, and they looked at how long do people spend on a profile before they decide to swipe that, yes, I'd be interested in this person or no, I wouldn't be interested. And it was only about three seconds that people spend on each profile. And if you kind of look at the layout, that means you pretty much look at the picture and then you make a decision. So, yeah, I think if people are single, then with these dating apps, they really kind of have to be mindful of what it is the app is pulling for and then kind of fight against that a little bit to look for things that might actually give them

a better clue about who this person is. But do people, when they hear what you're saying, go, oh, see, I've always picked the wrong kind of guy. Now because Ty says this, I'm going to change and be much better at picking people. Does that work? Or do people pretty much stick to, you know, if you like the bad boys, or you like the pretty girls, or whatever it is, that it's, even when you have the knowledge that you're talking about, it's still, you like what you like. Yeah, there can be that realization like, okay, this makes sense. And oh, if I do an audit of my past relationships, maybe I haven't chosen on the best characteristics.

And gosh, what would it be that would really make a difference as far as a good partner? I think people can pretty intuitively move through those steps. Now, the next step, I think, and this is where people can get tripped up, is will they actually act on that insight? But I think one of the things we know that happens is now their mind has this framework to think about what happens maybe in this next relationship they're in where they've chosen on the same bad characteristics. But now they can see that play out in real time and they can see, wow, I'm missing these characteristics I told myself I should have in a partner and look how it's playing out. So, you know, my hope would be is maybe over the course of time, with some experience mixed with their insight, they could correct course. When people talk about, you know, I need to find the right partner,

I wonder too, though, when people get married and they're in a long-term relationship for a while, how many people come to the conclusion that it isn't the person, it's this institution. I'm not the marrying kind. And it wouldn't matter who it is that you find out once you're in a marriage, I don't belong here with anybody. Yeah, which is a terrifying kind of thought to have, right? Once you're already in it.

But a lot of people have that feeling. And if they're with a perfectly fine or wonderful partner, it probably feels even worse to be in that situation. Now, one of the personality characteristics that we didn't talk about is novelty seeking, which is this tendency to always want to look for something new, to always be doing something exciting and getting really absorbed in the moment. You know, it's a great person to date and people high in novelty seeking are really fun. They're really adventurous. They tend to get really absorbed in things, which means they'll be really absorbed in the relationship and all about you. But we also know that they tend to get bored pretty easily.

They tend to be pretty scattered in their focus, and they're pretty impulsive. So they can do things like being prone to cheat, which obviously doesn't work out very well in places like the U.S. So there's a personality characteristic where if someone's dispositionally high in novelty seeking, they would naturally struggle in the institution of marriage. So let's review some of the characteristics and traits that we should be looking for and ones that we should be wary of. You know, just know it's natural to want somebody who's as physically attractive as possible and who's as wealthy as possible. And that's okay. People don't have to feel bad about that. But I think where they go wrong sometimes is to think, let me get the hottest person possible or the richest person possible when really that that shouldn't be the goal. who's relatively emotionally stable. Let's get someone who's kind and empathic. And then let's

get somebody who's not too high in novelty seeking. Doesn't mean they can't be fun or like new things, but you don't want someone who's out there on the extreme end of things. Now, if someone did something like that, for example, they would go from about a 40% chance of happily ever after to well over a 75% chance of happily ever after. And that's how much choosing on those characteristics can tilt the balance of possible success. I wonder, too, though, are we just more picky than we used to be? I mean, since now with the internet and everything, we basically have access to almost anybody who's looking for love that we just are getting more picky. And one of the most interesting findings in that regard is for the millennial generation. And millennials are the first generation in decades to reverse the divorce curve. So they are getting divorced significantly less often than previous generations, which is, I think, really interesting.

And one of the leading hypotheses for why they're getting divorced less is that they're taking longer to marry. And the thought is that they're being more thoughtful, maybe more picky about who it is that they want to be with. So I think, of course, this can go to an extreme. We all we all know people who are too picky. And you're like, you got to make up your mind or not have such ridiculous standards. But I do think the trend that we're seeing right now, at least among millennials, is a really good trend. And it's already having some payoff, it seems like, when it comes to the stability of their relationships. Well,

you know, it's, it's so interesting to listen to you talk. You know, when you think about all of the gurus and the speakers and the books that have been written and all this about romance and, and it's not as complicated as apparently people think it is. No, you know, it's not as complicated as apparently people think it is. No.

That's one of the things that I think. Sometimes I bang my head against the wall for that reason. And then other times, I think that's pretty great. And one thing I'll oftentimes tell folks when it's a one-on-one conversation or a small group of people is that, you know, unless you're some weirdo or real far field, you have the wisdom that you need within you already. Like, we kind of know, right, what would be a good decision for us. It's just that we don't follow that internal wisdom that we have all the time. And it's understandable because things like physical attractiveness or excitement or wealth, those are pretty flashy kinds of things.

And so it's easy to have that obscure the things that really matter. But it's super rare, Mike, that I find somebody who doesn't already have a good sense of relationship wisdom within them. If only they would listen to it, because I think so often people make choices in love and romance that they chalk up to, you know, following my heart. I do what I had to do. But clearly there is some pretty solid evidence that if you want to find somebody that really matches who you are, there are certain characteristics to look for, and it's good to know.

Tai Tashiro has been my guest. He's a psychologist, social scientist, and author of the book The Science of Happily Ever After, What Really Matters in the Search for True Love. And there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. And I appreciate you coming on. Thanks, Ty. Hey, thanks, Mike. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like

The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes.

Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. important as learning is unlearning. If our knowledge is no longer true or valid, it isn't doing us much good. For example, if there's a business model that used to work but no longer does, well, then we need to unlearn what we learned about it and rethink a new business model. That's the message from Adam Grant. Adam is an organizational psychologist at Wharton, where he has been the top-rated professor for seven straight years. He's the author of four best-selling books. He hosts the successful podcast called Work Life with Adam Grant. And his latest book is called Think Again, The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know. Hi, Adam. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Thanks. It's great to be here.

So explain the premise here. Why is this important to understand that we need to unlearn and rethink? I think the big mistake that so many of us make is we think that intelligence is just about your ability to think and learn. And that's true if the world stands still. But we live in a rapidly changing world. And that means we need to be as good at rethinking and unlearning as we are thinking and learning. And I think this applies to every part of our lives, right? We've watched BlackBerry, Blockbuster, Kodak, and Sears go out of business, not because they lacked the ability to think, but because they couldn't rethink the business models that had made them successful. I think so many of us get attached to images of who we want to be and how we want to lead our lives, which might involve a career path that we're committed to,

the kind of person we want to marry or the place we think we want to live, only to realize decades down the road that we should have rethought some of those early ideas. And my goal in writing Think Again is to say, look, we don't just need to think slower. We need to rethink faster. Well, is it that we shouldn't have taken those paths or we just need to adapt better? Because, I used to have a career in radio until that business took a turn for the worse, or at least

until the part of radio that I did took a turn for the worse, or at least until the part of radio that I did took a turn for the worse. And so I switched over to podcasting, which is doing pretty well. So, but I wouldn't be doing this if I hadn't done that. So I guess that's rethinking, but it also seems like I'm just adapting to a new situation. Yeah, I think it can be both. So when I think about thinking again, I'm saying we should be open to reconsidering our opinions, our decisions, and our knowledge. And sometimes we might conclude that we made the wrong choice and we wish we could undo it.

In other cases, we say, you know what, that was a completely reasonable decision given the information I had at the time and the opportunities in front of me, but now it's time to pivot a little bit. And in some cases, rethinking might mean that you don't change your mind at all. And you reconsidered, you reevaluated, and you say, you know what? I'm actually comfortable with where I'm at. And I think the risk is that too many of us don't even get to that point. We subscribe to the gospel of gut feelings and we say, follow your intuition. I think we're better off with the advice of test your intuition. When you say, you know, we should rethink our opinions, it doesn't seem like that's really human nature. Because if I rethink my opinion about things, say politics or whatever, and

realize I was wrong, I don't want to realize I was wrong. That's not human nature to want to conclude that I've been wrong all along. It's much more comfortable to stick with what I've been believing all this time. I think sadly, that's true for a lot of people. We tend to prefer the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt. And yet, if that's the way we lead our lives, then we close the door to learning. I mean, when I think about what it means to learn, it's not about just affirming what you already believe. It's about evolving what you believe. And I think that one way of reframing the idea of being wrong is that you've grown. I had a

fascinating conversation while I was writing Think Again with Danny Kahneman, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on decision making. Danny just lights up when he discovers that one of his hypotheses was false. And I wanted to know how he learned to take so much joy in being wrong. And he said, nobody enjoys being wrong. But it's a thrill for me to discover that I was wrong, because now it means I'm less wrong than I had been before. And I think that's what we're looking for. I think that that means we need to surround ourselves with people who challenge our thought process, not just the ones who agree with our conclusions. It means we need to listen to ideas that make us think hard, not just the ones that make us feel good. Because the reward is what? Other than to change your mind or feel like you're keeping up with the times, what's the payoff for doing this? It seems like a lot of work. So why would I want to do this? Yeah, it's a lot of work for some people and in many situations, but it also has a real payoff. So my favorite example of this is to think a little bit about how you tend to go about forming and reforming opinions. And what many people do is

they think like preachers, prosecutors, or politicians. When I'm in a preacher mode, I am trying to spread my sacred beliefs and proselytize them as much as possible. When I'm in prosecutor mode, I'm trying to win an argument and score points. And those two mindsets stop us from rethinking. If I'm preaching that I'm right and you're wrong, I am not going to change my mind. In politician mode, I sound a little more flexible. What I'm trying to do is I'm campaigning for your approval. I might be lobbying and I could tell you what I think you want to hear, but I'm probably not changing what I believe deep down. I'm just flip-flopping. The alternative that I like is to think like a scientist. And I don't mean that you should have a microscope or a telescope or

wear a lab coat. What I mean is value humility over pride and curiosity over closure. And there's a great experiment with Italian entrepreneurs looking at what happens when they're trained to think like scientists. So they're all pre-revenue. They take a three to four month crash course in how to start and run a business. And what they don't know is that half of them have been randomly assigned to learn the same information, but to just put a scientist lens on it and say, you know what, your strategy for your business, that's just a theory. Go do customer interviews to develop hypotheses. And then when you launch your first product or your first service, that's an experiment to test your hypotheses. Those entrepreneurs who have been

randomly assigned to think like scientists are more than 40 times more successful if you track their revenue on average over the next year compared to the control group. And the main reason that being taught to think like a scientist pays off is they are more than twice as likely to pivot. Instead of being threatened by a failure of a product or a false start with a new service that they were testing, they say, oh, that proved my hypothesis wrong and now I need to change course. And I think that's a pretty incredible reward, right? More than 40 times the annual revenue. So who else does this well? Another place we see skill in rethinking is with people who excel at predicting the future. There are these tournaments where you can compete to be a super forecaster.

You're asked questions like, who's going to win the next election? Or who's going to win the next World Cup? And you get scored not only on whether your predictions are right or wrong, but also on whether your confidence is well calibrated, so that you were highly confident when you were right, but you expressed a lot of uncertainty when you were wrong. And one of the things we see is that forecasting success is not predicted by how gritty and hardworking you are. It's not even predicted most strongly by your intelligence. What matters several times more than how smart you are is how open to rethinking you are. The average forecaster,

once they make a prediction, they'll update it two times. The average super forecaster updates it four times, twice as often. And what I love about that is it suggests that you don't have to get trapped in analysis paralysis. You don't have to rethink your opinions and your predictions 19 times. All you want to do is just one or two more moments of rethinking than you might have done by instinct. Well, the idea of thinking like a scientist, which is what it seems like is it's more detached, it's more objective. And but because when you change your opinions about things in the world, I mean, your your opinions are like part of who you are. And so you're changing who you are, whereas if you're a scientist, you're kind of a step back and you're just looking at the facts. And so I like that, that approach. It just seems like it doesn't apply to everything.

Well, I think it's an open question whether doesn't apply to everything. Well, I think it's an open question whether it can apply to everything, but I agree that people have often failed to apply it. I think that it's really easy for us to let our ideas become our identities. And part of thinking like a scientist is to say, you know what, who I am is not about my opinions, it's about my values, right?

I anchor my identity personally in core principles of, I want to be a generous person. I want to strive for excellence. I care a lot about integrity and freedom, but I'm pretty open about the best ways to pursue those principles and advance those values, right? As opposed to locking into one opinion or one set of habits. And I think that's what we see good scientists do. It's what we see super forecasters do as well. A great example is there's a super forecaster named Jean-Pierre Bougam, who is the world's most accurate election forecaster

according to the tournaments. And one of the things that Jean-Pierre does is when he registers a prediction, he knows that the longer it sits with him, the more attached he's going to become to it. And so at the very beginning, he makes a list of the conditions under which he would change his mind. And I got a chance to see this in action two summers ago. I asked him who was going to win the Democratic nomination for president in the U.S.

And he said, it's way too early for me to even consider this. I'm not ready. And I pushed him a little bit. He said, well, based on the information I have, for the following reasons, I think it might be Joe Biden. Then he emailed me later that night and said, I've changed my mind. I'm actually gonna bet on Elizabeth Warren, but here are the circumstances where I would rethink that. Couple months later, he sent me a Bernie Sanders prediction

and then he had shifted back to Joe Biden long before Biden actually won the nomination. And you can see that process in real time where he knows what it's going to take to change his mind. And then he's rigorously pressure testing every update he makes against whether those conditions come true or false. So that's a good example of somebody who rethinks and then rethinks and then rethinks. It isn't just a one step process because, because, but then if you're, if you're constantly rethinking, well, you're throwing so many darts at the board that sooner or later, one of them is going to hit. I do think that's, that's one of the hidden advantages of

being open to rethinking is you, you essentially earn yourself more flexibility and you get to, you take more shots on goal is another way to think about it. And the more shots you take, the more likely you are to score. I think that it doesn't mean though that we have to rethink every single decision or opinion, every moment of our lives.

One of the things that often happens to my students at Wharton is they end up going and taking a career. Let's say in many cases, they get an investment banking job. And then they're really focused on moving their way up the ladder. They're trying to climb as high as they can. They want to earn as much money as possible. And they've gotten seduced by the status and by the salary. And at some point, 10 years later, they realize, you know what, this is not the career for me, but it's too late. I've already invested too much. And my advice to them is that just once or twice a year, they

should put a reminder in their calendar to do a career checkup, just like they would go to the doctor or the dentist, even when nothing is wrong. Just have that little excuse to back up and say, is this still the job that I want? Have my values or my interests changed since I took it? Have I reached a learning plateau or a lifestyle plateau in this line of work? And I think just doing that a couple times a year is enough to keep yourself open. Well, who hasn't thought in their job that they have, if they're in the right job, because no job ever turns out to be as good as you hoped and there's always bad things you have to do that are not the best and so i think don't you think everybody does that at some point saying is this

i don't know about this job i think everyone should do that at some point i think a lot of people they they have those lingering thoughts and then they push them away it feels too risky i don't want to i don't want to admit that I wasted two years in this field that is not for me. And I would say, you know what? It's better to recognize now that you wasted two years than to waste the next 20. But the issue here that you just brought up is, okay, so maybe this isn't the career, the job I want, and maybe I've wasted two years. But that's only step one. Step two is, okay, now what do I do?

That's a whole different, those are two steps that are fraught with trouble. You're right. I think that question of, okay, if I am going to rethink this, what do my alternatives look like is a place where a lot of people get stuck. And I think that one of the reasons that a lot of people get stuck is they fall in this trap that psychologists call identity foreclosure, which is where we pre-commit too early to who we want to be before we've really explored that many possibilities. And so if you knew your whole life that you wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer, and suddenly partway through med school or law school, you say,

hmm, maybe this is not for me. You don't really even know what the other options are out there. And I think, you know, there obviously, there isn't a silver bullet to solve that problem. But I think one of the things we should do is we should think about those kinds of identities as experiments to run to say, okay, let me try on lots of possible selves and see which ones might fit before we get attached to one. I knew a guy who was a lawyer. And after he went to law school and became a lawyer, he hated being a lawyer. So he rethought that. And he thought, well, you know, I like golf. I'm going to be a golf pro. So he became a PGA golf pro. And he really didn't like that either. And he went back to being a

lawyer. Wow. That's fascinating. Did he approach being a lawyer differently the second time around? advice of follow your passion kind of thing. So he likes golf, so I'll go work in that. But playing golf and working in the golf world and teaching people how to play it are not the same thing, and nor does it pay much money. So he went back to being a lawyer and making bigger money and then playing golf when he can play golf. Oh, that's intriguing. It makes me think of a couple of things that we have data for. The first one is that a lot of people, when they're given the advice, follow your passion. They think that passion is just out there in the world waiting to be discovered. And the reality is that most passions are actually developed. It's hard to love something if you're not good at it yet, right? When we gain mastery, we start to find more joy in the things that we're doing because we're more likely to succeed or win than fail and lose. The second

thing that I hear in that story is a Hemingway quote, which is, you can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. And I think that in many cases, when people exit a situation, they haven't done enough thinking about, is there another way to approach this situation that might actually bring more satisfaction or more meaning? My colleagues, Amy Resnesky and Jane Dutton, have studied this. They talk about this idea of job crafting, where you recognize that your job description was not written for you. It was written for a generic person who doesn't have your interests, your skills, and your

values. And so the idea of job crafting is to become an active architect of your job and try to reimagine it on the margins and say, okay, how could I create a more ideal, but still realistic image of what this work is? And I think it's, you know, you find job crafting happening in every job, in every organization. And it's something that people should be open to doing early on to try to mold the job they have into more of the job they want. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's good advice. I think it's good advice. You seem to know what you're talking about. So this whole idea of rethinking, I mean,

if you're not inclined to do it, how do you do it enough and work it into your day so you're rethinking as much as you're thinking? Yeah, I think scheduling it in your day might even be too ambitious. What I like to do is I like to try to carve out an hour a week for not just thinking time, but rethinking time and look at how some of my opinions and maybe even some of my core goals have evolved. And the more I see that, the more I realize it's tempting to believe in the moment

that I have all the information I need. But when I look back on some of my biggest mistakes and some of my most consistent regrets, they usually came from times where I was a little bit overconfident. And I want to remind myself of that as often as possible to try to stay on the humble side of the equation. Couldn't your biggest mistakes also come from rethinking that things are just fine.

You're just looking for things to rethink and stir in the pot up when the pot's just fine. Yeah, I think that's a very real concern. That's why I say that rethinking doesn't have to change your mind. And there's actually research on this with students taking tests, which shows that if they, instead of going with their first answer, if they revise it, on average, most of them improve their score. But it's not actually changing your answer that drives that effect. It's just being open to reconsidering your answer, which increases the probability that you find the times when your first instinct was wrong.

And then you also find the times where it made sense to stick with your first response. And that's what I think rethinking should be driving us to do. It should be pushing us to look for better logic, more compelling data, but not just changing our minds on a whim. Yeah, because a lot of times I've thought about things and thought, you know, this would be better. And then the next day or a week later, I think the same thoughts and think, no, I don't, maybe that's, and after thinking about it a little longer, maybe it's not better. Maybe, you know, it seems like your state of mind has a lot to do

with the conclusions you draw when you rethink and you could rethink the same thing tomorrow and come up with a completely different conclusion. Yeah, that's where I really want to have a group of people that I can trust to help me think through important problems and decisions. I think when, you know, whenever we need advice, what most of us do is we go to our support network. And it's great to have a support network. Those are the people who cheerlead for you and encourage you and rebuild your confidence when it's shattered. But we also need a challenge network.

A challenge network is a group of people who see the holes in your thinking and help you identify the flaws in your logic. And I think for me, my challenge network is my most thoughtful critics. So one of the things I did recently was I went to some of those people and I said, hey, you may not know this, but I actually consider you a founding member of my challenge network. I haven't always taken your feedback well. Sometimes I've been a little defensive. Sometimes I felt like it wasn't a priority and I just dismissed it. But I've always valued the way that you challenged me. And I want to encourage you to keep doing that. And if you've ever shied away from giving me candid feedback because you're afraid of hurting my feelings, don't. The only way you can hurt my

feelings is by not telling me the truth. And I have gotten much more helpful input on my key decisions and also in the quality of my work once I've made it clear to people that I want to be challenged. And I think inviting a little bit more of that into our lives is something that probably helps us figure out when to rethink and when to stick. Well, that's, I think, really important to bring other people in because I've always believed that you you know, you can convince yourself of almost anything. And if you don't have anybody else offering advice and input into what you're thinking, you can convince yourself you're right or that you're wrong and you've got no one to say

no. So when people get isolated and they can convince themselves that anything's a good idea. I think having a sounding board for vetting your rethinking is invaluable. And a lot of people have noticed that we often give better advice to others than we take for ourselves. And there's a name for this. It's actually called Solomon's paradox. And it happens because when we make our own choices, we tend to be stuck in the weeds and we might be weighing 19 different factors on choosing an opinion or a decision. Whereas when we give recommendations to others, we zoom out, we have much better peripheral vision, and we really see the big picture and say, okay, the two or three most important factors are what? And I think sometimes when people are agonizing about, well, should I stay where I am? Should I rethink this? One of the best things they can do is they can give advice to somebody else

who's facing a similar dilemma and then recognize the advice you give to others is probably the advice you need to take for yourself. Well, I think this is really important advice. And one of the reasons I really wanted to have you on to talk about it is because I think we generally tend to, you know, we're so busy thinking that we just don't think to rethink. And yet, as you've clearly pointed out, rethinking can do us all a world of good. My guest has been Adam Grant. He is an organizational psychologist at Wharton. He hosts the TED podcast Work Life with Adam Grant. He's written several books and his latest is called Think Again, The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know. And you'll find a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks for coming on, Adam. Appreciate it.

Thank you very much. Appreciate you having me. People have often wondered, is all gasoline for your car created equal? And yeah, there are differences, and then there's top-tier gasoline, and that's supposed to be better. But actually, gasoline is pretty much gasoline. 99% of all gasoline sold in the U.S. is probably going to be just fine for your car. Now, you might get a bad batch of gasoline every once in a while, but that's more likely a problem with the storage tank at the station you bought it at than the quality of the gas when it left the refinery. Consumer Reports some years ago tried to test to see if there were differences in fuel economy from brand to brand of gasoline,

but they abandoned the test because they just couldn't find any difference. Now, some brands of gasoline put additives in their fuel supposedly to make it better for your engine. And typically those additives are added to the tanker truck before it leaves the refinery. So a tanker truck full of gas gets one set of additives, and poof, like magic, you've got Shell gasoline. Another tanker truck from the very same refinery gets another batch of additives, and like magic, that's now mobile gasoline. Typically, it's about one quart of additive

for every 8,000 gallons of gasoline. So pretty much, gasoline is gasoline. And that is something you should know. In the podcast business, we're not supposed to be saying, subscribe to this podcast, because we're trying to get away from that term, because in people's minds it means paying and subscribing to a podcast is free. So now we're supposed to say, follow this podcast. So please follow this podcast. Because if you do that, then the episodes are delivered to you as soon as they publish and you don't have to come find them. It's a good idea.

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

criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts.

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