Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: What Influences How Food Tastes & How Habits Work

Episode Date: January 7, 2023

You’ve heard about pheromones, right? Supposedly they can make you more appealing. In fact, some perfumes and colognes claim to have pheromones in them that will give you more sex appeal. This episode looks at those claims and whether they can really improve your love life. https://www.rd.com/article/do-pheromone-perfumes-really-work/ Does dessert taste sweeter on a round plate than it does on a square plate? Can candles on the table improve the taste of a meal? It seems that a lot of things can influence our perceptions of the food we eat. Joining me to discuss how this works and the research behind it is Nell McShane Wulfhart. She is a journalist and author of the audiobook Off Menu: The Secret Science of Food and Dining (https://amzn.to/3n2rbsC). How do you form a positive new habit or break an old bad one? It is something we would all probably like to know how to do. And here to discuss it is Wendy Wood, Provost Professor of Psychology and Business at the University of Southern California and author of the book, Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick. (https://amzn.to/34USXAW). Listen as she explains some effective yet simple ways to change habits to really improve your life. It's easy to spend a lot of time wishing people were different and trying to get them to change. Is it a waste of time or can you help people change? Listen as I explain one renowned psychiatrist take on changing how other people act and behave. Source: Dr. Steven Reiss author of Who Am I? (https://amzn.to/2WZY2DP). PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Did you know you could reduce the number of unwanted calls & emails with Online Privacy Protection from Discover? - And it's FREE! Just activate it in the Discover App. See terms & learn more at https://Discover.com/Online 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, can the right cologne really make you more appealing? Then the interesting things that affect your food preferences, like lighting, music, even how you describe food. Rather than calling a food healthy, I would suggest telling a story about, I got this recipe from my grandmother, or, you know, oh, I found this ingredient in this little market. But don't tell them what they're eating is going to be healthy or good for them,

because you're just telling them not to like it. Also, is it really worth it to try to get someone to change their behavior? And how to start a good habit or get rid of a bad one? We actually have learned a lot in the past couple of years about how to change habits. And the answers are going to seem pretty obvious, but few of us actually apply them in our own lives. All this today on Something You Should Know. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations.

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If you're looking for love, and I know many people are looking for love, you've perhaps seen those ads for perfumes or colognes that supposedly contain pheromones, and they're supposed to make you more appealing to other people. And you've probably wondered if they work. Well, the answer seems to be maybe, sorta, and only slightly. According to Sean Talbot, he is a biochemist and author, and this is according to Reader's Digest. First of all, who knows what's really in it? There are no standards and no regulations of pheromones.

And not all experts even agree on the existence of pheromones or their function in humans. If someone is already interested in you, pheromones may help deepen the attraction, but they work best when they're your pheromones, the kind your body produces, not the kind in a bottle. But the idea that somebody is going to abandon all judgment and fall in love with someone just because of some scent in a bottle, that's not going to happen. Depending on the formula, pheromone perfumes could very well be able to help reduce stress, promote relaxation, or enhance sleep. And someone might perceive this relaxing effect as increased libido or enhanced romantic feelings,

but it really isn't. And the placebo effect may also lead you to feel or act sexier or be more outgoing simply because you believe you're more attractive. But really, being charming might be much more effective. And that is something you should know. It's really interesting to me how we humans are so suggestible. We're easily swayed. And one place in particular that we're going to discuss today is the food we eat. A drink tastes better in a real glass than a plastic cup, even though it's the same drink.

Soft music and linen tablecloths in a restaurant help us like the food better, that kind of thing. But it gets more interesting than that as we're about to discover with Nell McShane-Wilford. Nell is a journalist who's looked into the research on what influences our food preferences and experiences. She's the author of an book called Off Menu, The Secret Science of Food and Dining. Hi, Nell. Welcome. Thanks so much for having me, Mike. So I think people have a pretty good sense that we are influenced by a lot of things when it comes to the food we eat. For example, that's why you often hear the phrase, you know, it's all in the presentation.

How food looks and the plate it's on and the atmosphere that we're in all influences our perception of the food. And all of this has been studied or is being studied, right? This stuff is all backed by science. There have been innumerable studies done that show that all the different things in your environment, even down to the color of the plate you're eating off or the tone of the light bulb or the music playing in the background, all of that has like a measurable effect on the taste, you know, the flavor that's happening in your mouth. It's all science backed and it's pretty astounding. And you would think that by knowing this, by being made aware that you're being influenced, you're less likely to be influenced. But that's not really the case, is it? Humans are not that bright, is something that

I've been discovering. Even something like, you know, there's an old tip about how if you want to eat more fruits and vegetables, you need to put them right in your sight line when you open the fridge. And then you put the junk food out of sight into the cupboard. And that seems like, you know, our brains know the junk food is still there. We should be able to reach for the junk food just as easily as we reach for the apple. But we don't, you know, we are really, really easily manipulated. Okay, so let's dive in here. What specifically are some of the things that influence our experience and our pleasure of food? There are a lot of studies that show that the color of the plate you're eating off will actually change the flavor of the food. So if you go to a restaurant, you might notice that desserts are usually served on a round plate and often a white plate. And that's

because those two things, the roundness of the plate and the whiteness of the plate, make things taste sweeter to us. There was even a study done in the UK a few years ago, Cadbury, the chocolate company, the price of chocolate had gone up. And so they were saving money. They shaved off four grams of chocolate per bar. And they did that by changing the sharp edged corners of the bar. They just made them round so they could save a tiny bit of chocolate on each bar. And the chocolate was the same. The recipe was the same. But the roundness of the corners made people think it was sweeter. And people wrote to the company complaining that the recipe had been changed and why had they was sweeter. And people wrote to the company complaining that the recipe had

been changed and why had they done this? And the recipe was exactly the same, but the roundness of it made them think it was sweeter. Well, and this brings up a point that I think is important. So when you say that a round plate makes food taste sweeter, like how much sweeter? Like it does it barely move the needle or it's profoundly sweeter or more likely somewhere in between? It's somewhere in between. Studies have varied. I think it's around 10 or 15 percent. I mean, that sort of thing is very hard to measure, right? Like someone's interpretation of how sweet something is. But it's just enough that if you, you know, you made a cake and it's not quite sweet enough, or you're actually trying to cut

down on sugar, so you want things to taste sweeter, but you're deliberately using, you know, less sugar, that you can just trick yourself a little bit into enjoying it more by changing the plate instead of changing the recipe. What about the sound, the sound around us while we're eating? How does that affect us? Well, it affects us in a number of ways. First of all, sound in general, as a general rule, will take something away from the flavor of the food that we're eating. And one of the scientists that I interviewed, she has her own food company, and she says that when she sits down to dinner, she will turn down the music. She'll definitely turn off the television. She will even turn off her washing machine and dryer because they're in her kitchen because she knows that every little bit of sound does something to take away from the flavor of the food.

And one example I used is on the airplane. You might find yourself adding more salt to your food on the airplane or ordering a Bloody Mary when you normally wouldn't order a Bloody Mary. It's because in general, the food will have less flavor because of that jet engine noise. And that's true for almost every aspect of flavor, sweet, salty, etc. But they have found that for some reason being on the airplane will increase your ability to taste umami. So that kind of explains the Bloody Mary. You know, the Bloody Mary is full of umami flavors with the tomato and the Worcestershire sauce.

And so you can get a lot more flavor out of a Bloody Mary on an airplane than you can out of a gin and tonic. And music? Music is amazingly interesting. It really can change the flavor of what's in your mouth, especially with things like wine that are very complex and that you could pick out a number of different flavors in a glass of wine. changing the music in the background from something high-pitched to something low-pitched or from string instruments to brass instruments. All of those things will kind of focus your brain on different flavors and different aspects of the wine. So you can use that if you bought a bottle of wine, say, and you don't like it that much before, you know, returning the case or throwing the bottle away. Play with the

playlist a little bit and see if you can see how that affects the way you're enjoying the taste of it. Often restaurants have music playing. Is there a science to the music? Because they have to play the same music for everyone in the restaurant. Is there some guidelines there about like what music people play that helps whatever? Sure. If you're in a fast food restaurant, you're not going to ever hear slow music, classical music, things like that, because the tempo of the music will affect how fast or slow people eat. So I also, you know, if you're having a dinner party and you're ready to go to bed and your guests are still lingering, you can get them to eat faster by putting on some up-tempo music. And restaurants and bars will often play with the volume of the music because loud noises,

as we say, like they take away some flavor and they encourage people to order less healthy food because loud noises increase our production of cortisol, the stress hormone. So and also when the music is loud, people have to speak more loudly. And, you know, how many times have you ended up in a noisy restaurant and you're sort of shouting at your dinner companions and that makes you thirsty. So you order more drinks. So knowing what you know, how do you take that information and put it to work for you in terms of, I don't know, eating more healthy or or or maybe just eating something that may not be quite as delicious as you'd hoped, but you somehow make it a little more palatable? Well, a lot of it has to do with, you know, playing with our other senses, right? Playing with our sense of sound and our sense of smell and our sense of sight. So instead of actually having to go dig up a new recipe, what I'll do is I will try and change the texture a little bit. I've been putting a lot of like sesame seed salt on things to add some crunch

or even something like tearing up a handful of fresh herbs and putting it on your dish right away that creates this aroma sensation. It creates a visual sensation and it sort of, you know, gives your brain a freshness cue that makes it excited to eat the food that's different. And yeah, definitely playing with the music in the background. That's probably the easiest way to make your meal feel a little different. Well, talk about smell, because we've all heard that taste is in large part smell and how that works and how you make it work. Smell is really everything. Like when we talk about taste, we can only really taste sweet, salty, umami, like the five basic tastes that scientists have

identified. But when you add smell, you're creating flavor. Like that's what, you know, makes the difference between eating a potato chip with your nose closed and eating a potato chip, you know, when you're not pinching your nose. Like, you know, it goes from being just crunchy and salty to being like a full flavor of potato chip. So aroma is hugely important. And I think a great way to increase the aromas in your food is to serve your food in bowls rather than on plates. It tends to concentrate the aroma like right in front of your face, which is, it's really helpful. If you're getting a coffee to take away, if you know, to walk down the street, take the lid off immediately because when you have the lid on, you're only really getting the taste of the coffee one way and you're not enjoying that whole bouquet and the whole aroma. And that's what makes the coffee so good.

That's what creates the coffee flavor. And I would say one more thing would be to avoid using straws if possible, because if you're getting, you know, a cocktail that has maybe some herbs in it or some fresh juice or something like that, that aroma is going to really, is really what makes that cocktail so delicious. And if you put a straw in the drink, you're basically forcing your face further away from the glass and you're losing a lot of that aroma sensation. So did you say that we don't really taste flavors, individual flavors, that that's all smell? We tend to say, oh, this tastes delicious or this tastes bad. But it's not that's not really what taste is. Taste really is just, you know, sweet and salty

and, and umami and those, those very basic things. While the, the, yeah, the aroma you're bringing in through your nose is what actually makes the flavor happen. So when I eat a plain old potato chip and it, and then I eat a barbecue potato chip, the barbecue part of it is all smell? It's mostly smell. Of course, there are spices and things in there that are triggering, and also a lot of sugar, you know, that are triggering those taste sensations on your tongue. But it's not just smell that comes in through your nose. So we smell orthonasally and retronasally, which means that through our nose, which is, you know, what we think of when we think of smell, we bring in those flavors through our nose. But then when we have the food in our mouths and we're chewing it and we swallow,

we're actually sending some molecules up to our nose and that's the retronasal smell. So that's why with something like maybe a particularly smelly cheese, that the smell of it, if you just sniff it through your nose, it's not that appealing. But when you're tasting it and you're getting that retronasal smell, that's when it becomes really delicious. We're talking about the experience of eating and how it's so much more than just the food itself.

My guest is Nell McShane-Wolfert. She is author of the audiobook, Off Menu, The Secret Science of Food and Dining. This is an ad for BetterHelp. Welcome to the world. Please, read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow 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. 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,

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an interview about this not too long ago, that, you know, when you eat a potato chip, just a plain potato chip, you know, there isn't much to it, but potatoes are pretty bland, it's salty, and it's crunchy, but that's about it. But potato chips without the crunch wouldn't be much. So why is crunch so important? I actually think that crunch and texture are two of the most underrated ways that we can improve our food and enjoy them more. I actually think that's why, you know, somebody, people will often put lettuce on a sandwich. And lettuce, in my mind, like doesn't have much flavor, doesn't have much taste. But it's that crunch, it's that sensation of texture that's like really contributing to the overall experience. And crunch tends to indicate freshness.

I think if there are ways that you can add some crunch and add more chewiness and texture to your food, you just have a totally different and much more fulfilling experience. Yeah, I agree with that. It does seem that way. And, you know, when it makes that sound, it's there's something about that sound that's kind of, you know, fresh. There's a freshness to it. There's one experiment that was done by Dr. Charles Spence at Oxford, and it's called the sonic chip. And he gave his subjects, you know, a can of Pringles each, and he recorded the sound of the crunch when they bit into one. Then he had them all wear headphones. And with some of the

participants, he turned up the volume, headphones. And with some of the participants, he turned up the volume. He played back the sound of the crunch and he turned up the volume. And those people reported that the chips they were eating were fresher and more delicious than those people who were just listening to a normal sound, a normal noise level of crunch. And of course, I mean, all Pringles are the same. That's the whole point of a Pringle is that it's exactly the same as every other Pringle. But just turning up the noise in the background, turning up the sound of that crunch gave them the sensation that what they were eating was much fresher and much more enjoyable.

Talk about, well, I think you refer to it as comfort, but, you know, it's that feeling. You walk into a really nice restaurant and, you know, the piano's tinkling in the background and the lights are dim and the candles and the linen tablecloth, there's a feeling that you get. It's a comfortable feeling that probably primes you to enjoy this experience. Yeah, there's a lot of different things that contribute to making a meal enjoyable, right? And feeling physically and even emotionally comfortable is essential. So one of the most important things is if you're having people over to a party or a dinner party, when people walk in, they can feel a little bit loose ends. They can feel a little nervous.

So right away, you should give them something to hold on to. Usually it's a drink, but it doesn't actually have to be. A lot of studies have been done that show that humans feel more comfortable and actually they're nicer to their fellow humans when they're holding something warm than when they're holding something cold. So probably the ideal thing to give a guest would be like a mug of cocoa or something like that. But I like that tip because it's a very easy one to put into action and it makes people feel good right away. What about things like, you know, the table, the tablecloth, candles, those little things that seem to telegraph, you know, this is a good meal even before the food comes out. Yeah, when you do things like that, you're really priming your guests for a more delicious experience.

Like lighting is super important. I interviewed a number of restaurateurs and people who are interested in lighting for this book, and they all are huge candle enthusiasts. They say candlelight is flattering. It's cozy. It makes people feel, it makes people feel comfortable, makes people feel good. And when you're lighting candles and you're putting out a tablecloth, you are signaling to people that you have prepared for them, that they're in good,

capable hands, that you're welcoming them into your home. It's just a way to make people feel good right away, I think. And that, in turn turn makes them more excited about the food. It's all about the cues. So when I mentioned earlier, you know, fresh herbs, tearing up fresh herbs, if you're having people over, I would suggest that you do that final step in front of your guests, because then they can see how fresh it is. And even if maybe you made the meal the day before because you didn't want to be stuck in the kitchen all night, if you add that kind of freshness cue and you do it right in front of them, either opening the bottle of wine in front of them or tearing up those herbs in front of them or just, you know, throwing some freshly, freshly grinding some pepper in front of them,

you're doing the same thing as you are with the tablecloth and the candlelight. You are showing them that, like, the food is fresh, that they're in a comfortable atmosphere, and that they're in capable hands. It really seems that packaging and presentation really matter. So talk about that. Packaging is so, so important. There are actually one of the things I would advise people, if you're not sure if you want to buy something, don't pick it up off the shelf in the supermarket because studies have shown that if you pick something up and you touch it and you're holding on to it, you're more likely to buy it. But the packaging itself can infect us in so many different ways. Some products will put smells like some kind of perfume in the glue that they use to seal the product. Ice cream is a good example of this

because ice cream actually doesn't smell, you know, frozen things don't have a smell. But if you can add like a perfume of vanilla, then when you take the lid off of the ice cream, you're like, oh, right, like smells so good. But, you know, you're not smelling the ice cream itself. Also, you might have noticed that now a lot of packaging is clear, especially for products that are, you know, in some way organic or natural or supposedly healthy. And by having that clear panel on the front or by selling it in some kind of clear packaging, it's sort of another signal to the consumer that, you know, there's nothing artificial here. Everything is natural. What you see is what you get, which may or may not be true, but it's a way of marketing to us. Well, somehow organic and green have gone together, that there's so many packages

that have green on them that are supposedly healthy. Yeah, and it's not just the colors, it's also even the word organic. People tend to think that things that are marked organic are better for them in some way. Like if you bought a pack of Oreos that was labeled organic, people tend to think that things that are marked organic are better for them in some way. Like if you bought a pack of Oreos that was labeled organic, you would think that there were fewer calories in those Oreos. That's an actual experiment that's been done. Or, you know, people think that something with low salt has fewer calories, but salt doesn't have any calories. So you should pay special attention to the wording and see like, what is it really telling you? So oftentimes people when they serve

food will say, you know, here, eat this, it's healthy, it's really good for you. And I wonder, does that, does that work? Is that a good thing to say? Actually, there have been studies done that show that calling something healthy actually turns people off. That people are sort of, even the word healthy is sort of like programming us to think, oh, God, this isn't going to be as delicious as something that is not labeled healthy. So one of the first things to do is if you're trying to eat more healthfully or to get somebody else to eat more healthfully is don't call the food healthy. So what do you call it? Just don't call it anything. One of the best things to do is to sort of build a little story around the food if you can.

If you think about going to a restaurant and maybe the sommelier brings you a bottle of wine and he says, oh, this comes from this small producer on this hillside in Italy. And then you're like, oh, wow, like you're already primed to think this wine is gonna be spectacular. So rather than calling a food healthy, I would suggest like telling a story about, I got this recipe from my grandmother or, you know, oh, I found this ingredient in this little market.

Come up with some other kind of story to draw their attention to a part of the food they might not have noticed. But don't tell them what they're eating is going to be healthy or good for them because you're just telling them not to like it. In all the research that you did for this and all the studies that you looked at, are there some things that really surprised you or you found particularly useful or interesting that we haven't talked about that we could talk about? I think one of my favorite pieces of advice for, again, for eating more healthfully is something that I think Pam Mandel at the Monell Smell Center told me, that vegetables, everyone is trying to eat more vegetables, right? Like we're all trying to eat more salads, et cetera, et cetera.

And she's done a number of studies that show that if you put the salad on the same plate as your meat or your chicken or your potatoes, those other things are more appealing to us. She says that the way to get people to eat more salad and more vegetables is that you have to put them in a contest that they can win. And the contest that a salad can win is salad versus nothing. So what you have to do is get your salad, make your salad, and you eat it first. So you're not being tempted to help yourself to french fries or burger or whatever else is on the table. Make the salad, sit down, eat the salad. You know, you're hungry. It's the first thing. You're probably likely to eat more than you would if the salad was fighting the potatoes for your attention. And then go back to the kitchen and either get the rest of the food

or, even better, make the rest of the food. I found that tip super helpful, and now I try to have my salad kind of before my dinner, and I do find myself eating more vegetables that way. Well, this has been really interesting and useful, too. This is information I think everybody can use in their life. Nell McShane-Wilfert has been my guest. She is a journalist and she's author of the audio book, Off Menu, The Secret Science of Food and Dining. And there's a link to that book in the show notes.

Thanks, Nell. Thank you so much, Mike. This is so much fun. 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

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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. Imagine if you didn't have habits and routines. Life could get very complicated. Imagine, for example, if every time you made coffee in the morning or got in your car to drive to work, you had to really stop and think, OK, how do I do this again? Why am I doing this?

How do I remember to do this again tomorrow? So you see, habits are important, but then again, there are bad habits that can be hard to break. So habits can be good or bad. And here to make the good habits better and the bad habits go away is Wendy Wood. Wendy is a provost professor of psychology and business at the University of Southern California and author of the book, Good Habits, Bad Habits, The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick. Hi, Wendy.

Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me. So I've noticed that we seem to have two kinds of habits. The kind of habitual but conscious behaviors, like I get up in the morning and I make coffee it's just a habit that's what I do but then there are the unconscious habits like you know someone who unknowingly adjusts their tie or scratches their forehead when they get nervous and they aren't even aware that they're doing it but it's a habit. Well, you're right. Some of our habits we're aware of and others we're not. But a habit is a learning system. So, it's part of your memory that helps you repeat behaviors

that have worked for you in the past. Obviously, you're somebody who likes coffee, so you make it every morning, as you said. I bet you go through pretty much the same motions, same activities each time you do it. And that's a habit. You don't have to think, what am I going to do? How am I going to do it? Do I even want coffee this morning? Instead, you just do it. And I would challenge you on the idea that you really want coffee every morning. I don't know about you personally, Mike, because I don't know you. But there's great research showing that for those of us who eat breakfast every morning, we tend to eat the same things no matter how much we've eaten the night before. So we could eat a banquet or we could actually miss dinner. And we're likely to have about the same breakfast, suggesting that maybe we're not responding to hunger so much as it's just what we do in the morning.

It's our habit. Well, seems to serve us well in many ways and perhaps serve us in not so great ways in other ways. But do you differentiate between a habit like making coffee or eating cereal for breakfast every day versus, say, smoking, which is more of an addiction than a habit? Yeah, but even smoking, you're absolutely right. Addiction has physiological changes that, I mean, nicotine is a highly addictive psychoactive substance. But there are behavioral patterns, too. So that's one of the challenges to quitting smoking is you can handle some of the physiological effects with nicotine patches and other things. But people still report behavioral patterns that they want to repeat, holding cigarettes,

fussing with them when talking with other people. So they miss those patterns too. So I think there's a habit component even to something like smoking. So we've all heard that it takes so many days or so many repetitions to create a habit. It would seem to me that it would kind of depend on the habit and your motivation to want to change it. But is that a general guideline or what is that? You're right on. Because habits are a learning mechanism, it takes longer to learn more complicated things than easier things. But I can give you a kind of a rule of thumb. A postdoc who worked with me in my lab at one point, she did a study asking people to add a simple health behavior that they wanted to do into their day.

So some people said, I'll take a walk after dinner. Others that they drink a glass of water with dinner or have a piece of fruit for lunch. So those are simple health behaviors, and they tied them to a specific event so there would be a context that could activate that habit. With all of that, it still took them an average of 66 days for the behavior to start to feel automatic. They didn't have to struggle or think or remember anymore. It was just part of their day, something they always did, like brushing their teeth. But it took 66 days. Wow, that's a long time. Yes, it is.

It's a lot of repetition. So set your expectations accordingly. And so when you make a decision to create a habit or change a habit, and let's say it roughly takes 66 days to do it, what happens if on day 27 you don't do it? Do you then start all over again? Or how forgiving is this process? Habits are very forgiving. That's one really positive feature of habit formation.

Because habit memories build so slowly, you can not do them for a day, two days, and that memory will still be there when you start up again. So it's like the habit is still waiting for you because the memory system doesn't change. It's an understanding habit requires understanding that our brains aren't just a single unified whole. They're not just a thing that processes information in a certain way. Instead, we have many different ways of processing information and many interconnected networks in our brain.

And habit is one of them. Once information gets in there, it doesn't get out very easily. So here's a question. I, for example, go to the gym pretty regularly. I do it, but it doesn't really feel like a habit as much as it feels like every day that I go, I have to make a decision to go. It doesn't feel habitual. If you told me I didn't have to go, I'd be fine with me because I don't necessarily really enjoy the experience as much as I enjoy the effects, the feeling you get afterwards and all the other effects that come with exercise. So is that a habit or is that a decision I make every time I go?

Let me tell you about a study we ran with runners. And these were habitual runners who went out running regularly. Many of them ran long distances. We asked them why they ran. What are their goals? And most of them said what you'd expect, fitness, weight control, relaxation. We also asked them where they ran. And this was done at Duke University. So a lot of them ran in Duke Forest, but some ran on treadmills or in the gym. And we brought them into the lab later on, and we presented their location where they personally went running.

And then we saw how quickly they could think of the words running and jogging after being primed with the location. And what we found is that people who run a lot, if you present them with the context, the location where they run, they're very fast to think of running. That's what they do there. That's what comes to mind. But when we presented them with their goals for running, these are their personal goals, the ones that they said got them out there, weight control or fitness. They didn't bring running to mind. So priming with goals for habitual runners didn't bring thoughts of running to mind. What does that tell you? Well, it tells you that people who have a running habit have really in their minds tied running

to the location. And it's not so much a motivated activity anymore. It's not something that they have to encourage themselves to do, really. It's location-based very much for them. But people who didn't have a running habit in our study, for them, goals were really important. Goals brought thoughts of running to mind. So if you prime them with weight loss, they thought, oh, running, that's what I should be doing. People who don't have habits do have to motivate themselves much more. And you can see that in the mental associations they have. So what is the best way, since everybody has tried to eat healthier, go to the gym,

run, walk, whatever it is, and failed, why do we fail and what works better? The trouble is, is that we have habits that conflict with those goals to be healthy. And we actually have learned a lot in the past couple of years in behavioral science about how to change habits. And the answers are going to seem pretty obvious, but few of us actually apply them in our own lives. So let's go back to your gym example. There was a great study done with people's cell phones. We know our cell phones are being tracked all the time.

Well, this study tracked how far people traveled and their cell phones traveled to a paid fitness center, to a gym. And what they found is that if you travel about three and a half miles to get to your gym, you're going to go five times a week on average. If you travel over five miles to your gym though, you're only going to go once on average per month. That's a very small difference, right? One and a half miles. But what that does is it puts friction on the behavior. It's enough to make it difficult so that you don't go or go much less often. So putting friction on a behavior is a very effective way to control a habit. And we know this, we've seen this, some of this in our lifetime with smoking, right? The Surgeon General report that came out middle of last century, 1965 or so, outlining the health risks

of smoking. Well, that got a few people to quit, but not for long. People understood smoking's bad for them. It's sort of like our health challenges today, but they couldn't really change their behavior until smoking was banned in public places. Do you remember we used to be able to smoke on airplanes? There was a smoking section in an airplane. No more. Can't smoke at the office. Cigarette packs aren't available on shelves anymore. You have to ask somebody. We don't see ads for them. Taxes. It's harder to buy cigarettes because they're more expensive. All of these things put friction, made it more difficult for people to smoke. And it reduced the smoking rate in this country from 50%, which is what it was in the middle of last century, to 15%. So what our motives and knowledge can't do, friction or a little resistance on our behavior

can. In those two examples, you can see, well, reduce friction, reduce distance to the gym, and you're more likely to go. Increase friction on buying cigarettes and on smoking, and you're less likely to do it. So friction works both ways. It can be your friend. You know what seems important in terms of developing or sticking with a habit is time of day. Once you start doing something at the same time every day, it seems like that's the time you should do it and that's the time you're more likely to do it. To give you an idea of how hard it is to make sense of our habits, a graduate student and I recently did a study with coffee drinking, and we asked a bunch of coffee drinkers what made them drink coffee, why did they do it, and the most popular reason was as a pick-me-up.

When I get tired, it just sort of wakes me up, or early in the morning, it wakes me up. But some also said it's their habit. So we followed them for a week. We assessed when they drank coffee and what they were experiencing. And what we found is that fatigue, needing a pick-me-up didn't predict coffee drinking very much at all. What really did is being in the same time, being at the same time, in the same place, on the same day that you typically drink coffee. It's that habit. People do it at a regular time. It wasn't when they were experiencing fatigue, even though that's what people claimed made them drink coffee. That could have been why they started.

But once the habit forms, automaticity takes over and you repeat the behavior and you're left explaining it to yourself. And if you really hate it, if you really hate the taste of coffee, you're not going to repeat it enough to be a habit to begin with. So keep that in mind. Most of the habits we form, we form because they're working for us in some way. so knowing what you know if you were going to start a new habit or either break an old one so you stop doing something or start a new one what would you do i'd make it easy i'd remove friction

so clean off if if your habit that you want to change is you want to eat more healthfully, make sure that that's easy for you. So I know when I go to the grocery store, I could save a little bit of money if I bought vegetables that weren't already prepared. Because if you buy them prepared, they're usually a little bit more expensive. But I also know I'm less likely to eat them if I have to prepare them myself. So I buy the already prepared kind. I stick them in the front of my fridge. I try to put them together as much as possible so they're ready to eat. And then when I get hungry in between meals, they're there. And that actually works pretty well for me. And there's great research data behind it.

So there was a study where people had two bowls of food. One was a slice of apples and the other was a bowl of buttered popcorn. When the apples were right in front of them and the buttered popcorn, they had to reach for it. They ate a third fewer calories than when the popcorn was right in front of them and the apples were farther away. Just having something close reduces friction

and makes it more likely that you're going to repeat the behavior and makes it more likely you're going to form a habit. Well, this episode of the podcast is being published right around the first of the year, which I always think is a good time to talk about habits because it's the time of year when people are probably most motivated to change them. And I appreciate all your advice. Wendy Wood's been my guest. She's a professor of psychology and business at the University of Southern California. And the name of her book is Good Habits, Bad Habits,

The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick. And you'll find a link to her book at Amazon in the show notes for this episode. Thank you, Wendy. Thank you for coming on. Great. It's good talking to you. If you're not careful, you can spend an enormous amount of time trying to change people who don't want to be changed. Dr. Stephen Reese, a professor of psychiatry at Ohio State University, says, A person's nature is a person's nature. It's not likely to change, particularly from nagging by someone else.

For the most part, people are pretty happy with who they are, and they don't sit around wishing they were different or wishing they were more like someone else. So it's best to give up trying to change people or criticize them for being who they are. It's only going to cause problems. It's not going to change anything and it's certainly not going to fix anything. And that is something you should know. You can help us by leaving a rating and review of this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, CastBox, TuneIn, Stitcher, wherever you listen. I'm Mike Carruthers. I appreciate you listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated

Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.