Something You Should Know - What People Really Think About You & Why a Little Dishonesty is Probably Okay

Episode Date: January 18, 2018

I bet this has happened to you… you are all set to take a bite of something delicious when you notice a fly has landed on it - a filthy disgusting fly! So is that food still safe to eat? Find out what the science says as we begin this episode of the program. Then, your success in life is due in large part with how you deal with people and how people perceive you. Wouldn’t it be great to know how to make yourself more approachable and interesting to others? Wouldn’t it be great to be able to size up and read people when you meet them? Vanessa Van Edwards has been studying people and their behavior for a long time. She is author of the book Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People (http://amzn.to/2rfyB3T) and she joins me to discuss some effective strategies to improve your people skills like you won’t believe.   Then, there is a fascinating limitation of the human brain you must know about. IT seems you cannot keep track of more than 3 things at once unless condition is met. What is it? Listen and find out. Since you were a child you’ve heard that honesty is the best policy. However, dig as little deeper and you’ll find that most of us think a little dishonesty is probably okay. The fact is we do think dishonesty is acceptable as long as it is not too much and as long as it is not too overt. Dan Ariely, author of the book, The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone--Especially Ourselves (http://amzn.to/2Dg1FtE) explains the little ways we are all a bit dishonest and why we think it is perfectly fine - so maybe it is. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on Something You Should Know... If a fly lands on the food you're about to eat, is it still okay to eat it? Then, how can you better read other people and how do you make yourself more likable? What we found was that certain nonverbal cues over and over again tend to increase likability. For example, we tend to like people who tilt their heads. Also, did you know your brain is incapable of keeping track of more than three things unless they're all the same color? And while most people are pretty honest, it turns out almost all of us are a little dishonest.

You know, you can go over the speed limit a little bit. We can add a few extra receipts to our tax return. And in the same way that the people who deal with us professionally, your plumber, your mechanic, they don't feel okay taking money away from your wallet, but recommending services you don't really need feels much more comfortable. All this today on Something You Should Know. As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life.

I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know was all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes.

Join host Elise Hu. She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know,

I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. 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. We have so much practical advice you can use in your life today in this episode.

You may want to take notes because we are going to talk about honesty, or more to the point, dishonesty, how to better read people and how to present yourself to be more approachable and attractive to other people. And we're going to start today with the situation that I know you've been in where there's this piece of cake or something in front of you, some delicious piece of food, and then a fly lands on it. And now what do you do? If a fly lands on your food, does that mean it is no longer fit for human consumption? Probably not, according to Cameron Webb of the University of Sydney, who lectures on the subject of food hygiene. A single fly landing on your food is unlikely to trigger an illness in anyone who eats it. However, if there are multiple flies, or if a fly has been lingering on your food for an unknown amount of time, well, now you need to be concerned.

Flies can carry up to 100 human and animal diseases, as well as a whole host of parasites, and they can deposit all of those things on your food. Interestingly, city flies are more hygienic than country flies. Why? Well, in the city, flies are more likely to spend time on other food, while country flies are more likely to spend time on dead animals and animal waste and things. So a single fly on your food? Probably no big deal. Lots of flies, and you're probably better off eating something else. And that is something you should know. What is it that makes some people more attractive than others? What makes some

people more popular than others? And how do you make yourself more interesting and appealing to other people? Could a smile or a tilt of the head really make a difference in what others think of you? All of this is the science of people and the laws of human behavior. And Vanessa Van Edwards is the professor on this. Vanessa has been studying people and studying what other people have been studying about people. And she's put it in a book called Captivate, the Science of Succeeding with People. Hi, Vanessa. Welcome. Thanks for having me.

So, knowing what you know about human behavior and human interaction, tell me something that will help me understand or connect with people or something that will surprise me about how people communicate and connect. Yeah. So, the first thing that we found very quickly is that you'd think it's about attractiveness and attractiveness helps certainly, but actually that's not the most important factor when we're trying to judge someone on success or effectiveness or even likability. And what we found was that certain nonverbal cues over and over again tend to increase likability. For example,

we tend to like people who tilt their heads. Now, this was something that came up in the research. It also came up in our research that people in a Twitter profile picture or a LinkedIn profile picture who just had a slight little head tilt, people liked it. And I went, why? Why is this the case? Well, it turns out that when, as humans, we're trying to hear something, like if I say, hey, do you hear that? Usually we tilt our head up to expose our ear, just helps us hear more. And so we think of people who are tilting their heads as more empathetic, as better listeners, as possibly warmer. And those are the kind of people that we like to be around. So that was a really interesting way that like,

wow, that's something that's a universal nonverbal that we tend to use that as an indicator in just a profile picture. So just in list form, what are the kinds of things can you understand about people? Things like what approachability, likability, what are the things? Just give me like a short list of things that are available to you if you know this stuff. Yeah, I would say that there's actually three big ones, the three buckets. One is warmth, so likability, friendliness, approachability. The second is competence,

so power, intelligence, capability, effectiveness. And the last one is charisma. And actually, Harvard business researchers found that charisma is kind of a blend of warmth and competence. So those are kind of the three buckets that we really focus on in our courses, in our books, in our labs. So talk about charisma, then. What is it? How do you identify it? And probably more importantly, how do you project it? Yeah, I've been fascinated by charisma ever since I was young, because I never had it. So I was, you know, that real, I joke, I've been fascinated by charisma ever since I was young because I never had it. So I was, you know, that that real I joke I'm a recovering awkward person.

And I was that kid in school who just like watched the popular kids across the cafeteria and was in awe of them. And so I think that when I got into college and I started doing my own research and taking psychology classes, I was really obsessed with this idea of charisma, popularity. What is it? And so the very first thing I learned was that this Harvard Business School research study found that we're always judging some people on their warmth and competence factors. And you can have just warmth. You can be very friendly, very likable. But if you only have warmth, you're often not taken seriously. People forget your name more often. People might interrupt you in meetings. Now, you could also have just competence. And competence is okay too. But if you just have that without the warmth, people see you as powerful, capable, but maybe intimidating or hard to talk to. And so that charisma is actually the perfect blend

of being both approachable and credible. And we can learn that. Yes, people are born with it. There are people who naturally have very high levels of both. But luckily, there are both nonverbal and verbal signals or social signals of warmth and competence that you can adopt and learn. And that helps increase that charisma factor. What I'm surprised not to hear in that description is self-confidence, because when I think back in high school of the popular kids, that's something they had that I didn't have. They seemed to carry themselves like they were on top of the world. They knew what they were

doing, and they kind of didn't really care what you thought. They had that, I don't know, I guess it's charisma. It's that je ne sais quoi. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but it sure looks cool. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. You mentioned confidence. So I tend to, and this is, this is a personal choice and you know, it's interesting you bring it up. I don't use the word confidence only because I feel like culturally we've abused it. We have over, it's almost like we don't hear it anymore. Like if I were to say, um, I teach a course on confidence, people would be like, like, people would not be very fed. If I was like, I teach a course on charisma, people would be like,

Oh, well that's interesting. Um, now charisma and confidence are very close. And I would actually say that the bridge between the two is comfort. So think about it this way. If you are very competent, so competence is not faking it. Competence is actually doing things, talking about things, acting in a way that you feel powerful and capable and effective. That brings a certain level of comfort. So for example, I am not charismatic in a math class. I never will be. I'm not competent in that subject. I can barely do tips at the end of a dinner. However, I'm a little bit more charismatic in I can barely do tips at the end of a dinner. However, I'm a little bit more charismatic in, say, a science class or an English class, because those are my rock star subjects. So you cannot always have charisma. It can be learned,

but there's a very fine line between faking it and faking competence, which usually doesn't work, and finding the topics and the things that you actually feel competent about, and then dialing the charisma up on that level. So I think that comfort brings confidence, if that makes sense. Well, and I think that's a really important point, that all of this is somewhat seemingly situational, that like you say, you can feel one way in one room and go to the next room with other people and feel completely different. Yeah, that's, I think, the biggest problem that we face with teaching people skills or soft skills. You know, my career is teaching soft skills, and I love soft skills. I think you can teach soft skills like hard skills. And the biggest problem that I face is that people have been taught, once you learn it, it's kind of like you're done, right? Like you learn how to be charismatic and you're charismatic forever.

And that just isn't the case. It's also impossible to be highly charismatic, or we can even use a different word, highly influential, highly impactful, even trying to be an extrovert if you're not one, in situations that make you highly uncomfortable. And so the one thing that I teach is the idea of breaking down context into three different say to them, do not start there. Don't even go there second. Let's go to some of the neutral areas, some of the areas you're already pretty comfortable in, and let's dial up in those areas. So not all contexts are created equal. Since you know all this stuff, do you, when you meet somebody, do you go through like a checklist and size them up? And if so, what is that checklist?

You know, I wish I could say no, but I think the answer is yes. And this is only because it does not come naturally to me. Speed reading people is a skill that I have developed out of survival. I had a childhood where I had a lot of people who, unfortunately, adults who lied to me, and I really had to learn to get good at reading people to protect myself. And so I developed a sort of system. And this has taken years to develop. That's what I actually teach in the book for speed reading people. And so what I'm checking off is three different things. You'll notice I like the rule of three.

Yeah, apparently so. Helps me remember. The first one is there are five personality traits. So that's the first thing I'm trying to figure out. It's the outer layer of what I call their matrix. I think everyone has three basic layers. And so the outer layer is their five personality traits. So that's the first thing I'm trying to figure out. It's the outer layer of what I call their matrix. I think everyone has three basic layers. And so the outer layer is their personality. So I try to figure out their five personality traits. And I literally have matrices for every person in my life. Almost all my students have matrices for all the people in their life. The second layer is their appreciation language or their love

language based on Dr. Gary Chapman's research, the five love languages. And the middle inner layer is their primary resource, which is research based on Foa and his associates on what is someone's primary need. So there's six resources, and I'm trying to find out what is their primary resource. And when you say their primary need, what might those be? Like, for example? Yeah. So, for example, FOA argues this is kind of like the updated version of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, if you're familiar with that. This is kind of the newer version of that. It's basically that we all need all six resource categories, but we tend to favor one that we have trouble with. It could be one that we didn't get a lot of as a child. It could be one that just fulfills us the most. And so for example, one of them is

information. So these are people who are like know-it-alls, people who are always Googling things, people who always want to be in the know. They tend to be gossipers sometimes. That would be one category. So for them, giving them information is much more valuable than, say, giving them status. So another one would be status. So status is praise, responsibility, larger titles. So at work with colleagues, this is really helpful because if you are working with someone, you know that their value resource is status. For them, praise and public praise and public responsibility and a brand new shiny title, that is far more of an incentive than goods like a gift or a gift card. So looking at all the

different resources helps you appeal to people, understand their motivations. It's greatly changed my relationships, both professionally and socially. Vanessa Van Edwards is my guest today on Something You Should Know, and she is the author of the book Captivate, the Science of Succeeding with People. Listen, if you're starting a new business or a new project, you have to have a website. But it's more than that. It has to be a great website. And sure, you could have your neighbor's cousin's nephew build your website. But why when there's Squarespace? With Squarespace, you build your website using one of their beautiful templates designed by world-class web designers.

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So, Carolyn, tell me how, because I would love to know this, how to work a room. When you walk into a room full of people, what is the best way to become part of that and not feel like you should just hang out by the wall and watch the clock? Yeah. So we did a really fun study on networking where we went to networking events all over Portland, Oregon. I'm in Portland, Oregon. And we filmed, we had a camera in each corner of the room. We filmed networkers and we followed them and we tracked them. We also gave them pre-surveys most, because that's important. We wanted people who liked it, but also who got the most contacts, business cards, and had the most robust and active LinkedIn networks. And we found that there was very specific patterns that those super connectors worked a room very specifically. First thing is that they avoided the very first entrance area. In my book, I call this the start zone.

They went right through that. The worst networkers tended to hover in the start zone. The start zone is like right as you enter a room, right near the coat check, hovering kind of right at the entrance. That seemed to be a rookie mistake and super connectors blasted right through it. They went right for, and I, I call this a sweet spot. Um, they went right for the first sweet spot, which is right as people exit the bar. So it seems to be that first of all, waiting in line for the bar is a great way to start up conversation with someone because you're sitting next to each other and you can say, Hey, what are you getting to drink? And then right as people exit the bar, they're pretty desperate for someone to talk to. And so, um, standing in that place, you kind of become a social savior. So they would

say, hey, welcome to the event. What'd you get? And it was the easiest kind of startup conversation as opposed to trying to approach someone randomly across the room. And they just racked in those business cards and clearly had the best time. Now, that could be because they were standing at the bar. That could have been why they had such a good time. But we saw this over and over again. So I always say, avoid the start zone, avoid the side zone. So bathrooms, um, hover around the food. You would think hovering around the food is a good idea. What we found was that produced high quantity, low quality conversations. Why? When people have their food, they're happy to chit chat with you while they're getting their food. When they get their food, they want to eat. So they often then will say, okay, great

talking to you. I'm going to go sit down and eat this. And they're also only half with you because half their brain is eating. So that's another rookie mistake is the side zone. That's really interesting because I think most people approach a room and start looking, well, I don't know what they look. I don't know what I look at. I'm not, I feel like I go into a room of people totally blind. Like I'm hoping to find something, but I don't even know what I'm hoping to find. Oh, you know, that's actually, that's actually the problem. So when we talk about confidence or we don't talk about confidence, we don't say that word, but actually, um, I, one of the things I say in my courses over and over again is, um, this is about being purposeful, not confident.

So if you walk into a room and you don't know what to do, like you have no plan because you walk into a room and you're like, I guess I'll get a drink. I guess I'll go to the bathroom. That person looks kind of interesting. That lack of purpose is it's very hard to be confident. So actually, I think purpose, like knowing I'm checking in, I'm turning in my coat, I'm not standing in the start zone. I'm getting my food. I'm getting my drink, but I'm not standing in the food zone.

And then I'm going to go plant myself once I'm ready at that spot. It gives you a kind of confidence because you are so purposeful with what you are doing. Can people tell, do you think that if you walk into a room and you feel kind of lonely and desperate and you don't know what to do, can people consciously or unconsciously sense that and react to that? And if so, how? I think yes. And the reason why I kind of couched that without a definitive answer is because we really don't know that je ne sais quoi exactly. Like sometimes you hear women say, or men or women say, I can smell the desperation on them. And I think there's some truth to that. I don't know how, I don't know why, or they have also found that our emotions are contagious. In my TED Talk, that was my whole theme was that we're very, very contagious,

but we don't know exactly how or why. So I say, I think so, but I don't know where that comes from. I don't know if that's from facial expressions. I don't know if it's from pheromones. I don't know where that comes from. I don't know if that's from facial expressions. I don't know if it's from pheromones. I don't know if it's from body language cues. But I think that somehow we do know. We are more like herds than we like to believe. We like to think that we're individuals alone in the storm. I think a lot of the time we engage in a lot of herd behavior subconsciously we don't realize. Once people are in that room, though, and they make that connection and start to talk, a lot of people don't realize. Once people are in that room though, and they

make that connection and start to talk, a lot of people don't know what to say. They hate small talk. They don't know how to make small talk and they don't know what to talk about. Yeah, I think, so I love using context cues. I think that that's the easiest way to come up with things, come up with something to say. Context cues are the best because you're always in a context of some kind. You're never without one. And so this is using cues in your environment to easily bridge conversation. So it could be, hey, what'd you get at the bar? What are you drinking? That drink looks interesting. It could be, oh, did you try those amazing wings? Oh, they were so much better than I thought. It could be, hey, have you been to this gorgeous restaurant

before? It could be, hey, how do you know the host? What brings you here? There's always context, and context is always safe because you already share it. With a stranger, you are already sharing the context. And so to bring it up, to talk about it, it is easy because it's right in front of you. And also it feels like a safe topic, so it's a really easy bridge. Is there a way to tell when you look at someone, whether, and I guess this is somewhat subjective, but how approachable they are? And is there a way

to project that you're approachable? And if so, what a long question this is. And if so, is there a difference whether it's romantic or not? Yes, the answer is yes. It's a long answer, but I would say that what you should focus on first is being purposeful. We like people who know what they're doing. We like to talk to people who know what they're doing. We like to talk to people who like where they are. So everything we've talked about so far actually helps you with that approachability. One, being in context that you thrive in, so places you're already comfortable. Two, talking about topics or doing things where you feel competent. Three, being purposeful with your actions, knowing where you are and who you're already comfortable to talking about topics or doing things where you feel competent.

Three, being purposeful with your actions, knowing where you are and who you're trying to talk to. And then having really, really easy, easy bridge topics at the ready that we pick up on. We want easy, right? We in social interactions, we're searching the room for someone who's going to be fun, who's going to be a really good conversation. So if you have those four things going, that's that's the right start. Anything we haven't talked about that you think is really important that people understand about this that would really help? I always like to end on the idea that I don't think you have to fake it till you make it. I know that that's a really popular thing right now that people talk about. And I think that faking it till you make

it is okay. But I'd much rather you find things you're already good at and dial that up as opposed to trying things you're not so good at and trying to fake it. So I would say, do what you're really good at, even if it seems like it's really small, and try to just maximize that as much as possible. But when you have to go to places where you're not comfortable, you don't feel like you belong, what do you do then? Sometimes you're forced into situations that are out of your comfort zone. Again, I would try to find the things that work for you. So if you have to go to a place that you really don't like, eliminate as much faking it as you can. So finding topics that you really like and having those at the ready to go, having stories that you love to share, ready to go, making sure that you get there

early because it'll be a little bit quieter or get there late. So it'll be a little bit easier. I'm trying to minimize all the opportunities in that kind of forced opportunity that will make you fake it. Well, even though you don't like using the word confidence, I think knowing this stuff, knowing what you just said, knowing what's in your book can give people confidence, the ability or the willingness to go out and interact and feel more like

they know what they're doing. Vanessa Van Edwards has been my guest. The book is called Captivate the Science of Succeeding with People. There is a link to it in the show notes.

Thanks, Vanessa. Oh, I appreciate that. Thank you so much for giving me the space and the time. And thanks, everyone, for listening. 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

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but why not fudge a lot of deductions? Why not just not file your taxes? Somehow we rationalize that a little dishonesty is probably okay. Dan Ariely is somebody who has really explored dishonesty. Dan is a professor at Duke University and author of several books, one of which is The Honest Truth About Dishonesty. So, Dan, since you're the one who's researched this, what is dishonesty? I mean, how do you define it?

So, I do experiments with people, and so for me, the definition of dishonesty is really very simple. It's whatever I can measure in my experiments. So, my basic experiment is the following. I take a sheet of paper with 20 simple math problems, and I ask people to solve as many as they can in five minutes. At the end of the five minutes, I ask them to take the sheet of paper, count how many questions they got correctly, and go to the back of the room and shred that piece of paper. After that, they come to the front of the room and they tell me that they solve an average,

let's say, six questions and I pay them $6. What the people in the experiment don't know is that I played with a shredder. So the shredder only shred the sides of the page, but not the main body of the page. And now I can jump inside the shredder and I can find out how many questions they really solved correctly. And what I find is on average, people solve four problems and report to be six. So for me, this gap between what people actually do and what they report is the main measurement of dishonesty. And we do lots of experiments like that. And we try to change all kinds of things about the environment, about who they cheat, about how they think about themselves. Do they look at the Bible when they do it and so on? And we try to see what kind of things changes the magnitude of the gap between what people

actually do and what they report. Well, it's interesting in that example that if people think that they're shredding the paper and you'll never know, why don't they say they answered all 20? That's a fantastic question. And what's interesting is that something stops people. And, you know, I mostly focus in the book about the dark side of dishonesty, mostly about how people cheat. But it's true that people don't cheat enough, right? If a rational economist would look at our experiments, I would say people should cheat all the way. Turns out people don't

cheat all the way. And you can think about it for yourself. I mean, just today, you probably had lots of opportunities to take some money from people. You probably had opportunities to somebody left their wallet by their desk. There were probably things at the station. There are all kinds of opportunities for us to take money away from people. And nevertheless, we don't take it. And what's interesting is that we don't think about the cost-benefit analysis. What stops us, the vast, vast majority of us, from being immoral and dishonest is not the fear of being caught,

it's our internal gauge. And I think this is both kind of the irrational part on one hand, but also the wonderful part about human nature is that we do have this wonderful tendency to be honest, only that it's not perfectly controlling our behavior. And it does leave some room for a fudge factor that gets us to be slightly dishonest. So we're sort of honest, but it's okay to be dishonest a little bit. We think to ourselves that as long as we're slightly dishonest, we're okay.

You could go over the speed limit a little bit. We can add a few extra receipts to our tax return. We feel okay if we have an insurance claim to add a few things here and there. And in the same way that the people who deal with us professionally, your plumber, your mechanic, your physician, your dentist, they don't feel okay taking money away from your wallet, but recommending services you don't really need feels much more comfortable to them. So there is this level of dishonesty that we can kind of turn a slightly blind eye and still think of ourselves as doing God's good work.

I love that. And in all your work that you do, do you ever find people who are just flat-out honest as the day is long? So this is actually very tough for us. It's very tough for us to do experimentally. So in every experiment, we find some people who don't cheat. So in this book, I describe experiments from about 30,000 people. And from these 30,000 people, we found 12 who are big cheaters, and I lost about $150 to them, right? 12 big cheaters lost $150 to them. And we found about 18,000 little cheaters, and I lost about $32,000 to them. Now, we do have some people who don't cheat. And you can ask, who are those people? And the reality is we don't know.

In particular, we don't know if it's the same people time after time. So in every particular experiment, we find that some people don't cheat. But what we don't know is if it's people who would never cheat. And, you know, you could say maybe those are the people who just came back from church. Or those are people who just thought about the Ten Commandments. Or people who just did something else that primed them to be more honest at the moment, or it could be somebody like Mother Teresa that never cheated and lied. We don't know.

That's kind of something good to consider in the next phases of the studies. When people cheat in the way you describe, when the doctor orders that extra test, what is he telling himself? That he's really doing the right thing? Or, hey, I can get a little extra money this way out of this guy? I think it's much more about telling ourselves that we're doing the right thing. You know, if you're a fan of some sports team, are you a fan of a sports team of some sort?

Oh, sure. Okay, so when you go to a game and you see the referee calling a call against your team, it's very hard for you to see things in an objective way. It's very hard for you to not think the referee is evil, vicious, stupid, right? Something about the referee is wrong because your motivation is coloring your view of the world. Your desire to see your team win is coloring your view of the world. Now imagine that it's not a sports team that you care about, but it's your financial well-being. You get to earn more money if you see reality this way to another way. Now imagine that it's not a sports team that you care about, but it's your financial well-being.

You get to earn more money if you see reality this way to another way. Don't you think that now you would be able to see reality in a slightly biased way and with it get more money? And that's basically what we see. And this, by the way, is very important because if we think that people who are dishonest are bad people, then we can just kind of categorize the world into two parts, the good people and bad people, and as long as we don't deal with bad people, everything is fine. But what we find is that it's not about good people and bad people, it's about good people being in bad conflicts of interest, and therefore having a biased view of the world, a view that eventually turns out to be negative. So, Dan, what do we do with this?

We know that everybody probably, or most everybody, probably fudges a little bit. They're a little bit dishonest. But so what? Knowing that, what do we do? So there's a few things to do with it on multiple levels. First of all, we should think to ourselves, what are we fudging, perhaps without thinking too carefully. The next thing is when we go to our financial advisor, doctor, dentist, and so on, we should realize that even if they're good people, and even if they have kids in the same school as we are, and with the same PTA and so on,

if they have a biased incentive, they might not be able to give us the right recommendations. And I should tell you that this is kind of a tremendous burden. It's a tremendous burden to go to a mechanic, a doctor, and so on, and to feel that they might have a biased incentives, and you need to protect yourself. But the truth is, we should be aware of this, and we should try to protect ourselves. And then it means for companies. Companies should try and figure out what are the gray zones that people could over-interpret and overstep and how they should limit it. And finally, it's about the government. In government regulations, we often think that as long as there's a big punishment at the end, people would behave well because they would be

fearful of the punishment. But in all of my research, in all of my discussions with big cheaters, nobody thinks about the long-term ramification and nobody thinks about the punishment. So it means that lots of these attempts are basically misplaced. And because of that, we're getting much more dishonesty in the marketplace and in society than we think, than we plan to. So when these people that do big dishonest things get caught and say they're sorry, what they're really sorry is they got caught. You know, of course they're sorry that they got caught, but I think that, and this is from my discussion with dishonest people, you know, when you look at the long sequence

of people who've been dishonest, you say to yourself, I can't imagine doing all of that. But in most cases, they didn't plan on all of that long sequence of events. In most of those cases, they took one step at a time. And they took one little step that at that moment they could rationalize, and at that moment they could feel good about themselves. And then the next step was there. And then the next step was there, and so on.

And if you think about it step by step, it's not justifying it, but it's much more understandable. And I think many more of us could see ourselves, if we admitted it, taking one step at a time and quickly justifying what we have done. Do you find that people, the more they do it, the more they do it? It's a slippery slope? It is. It is absolutely a slippery slope. And part of the reason for the slippery slope is that once rationalization kicks in, you start basically explaining why this is actually okay. And now the slippery slope becomes larger and larger. And then at some point, many of the people I've talked to get to a situation where it's too late. They can't go back. It's very hard to change things. And at that point, they just try

to protect their tracks with the hope that nothing bad would happen. And here too, we've done some experiments. And the experiments have been something like the Catholic Confession or the Jewish Day of Atonement. When we ask the question of what happens when there's a slippery slope and people start cheating all the time, wouldn't it be the case that unless we give them an opportunity for a new page and open a blank slate, wouldn't that allow them to restart again? And that's actually what we find. We find that a slippery slope is incredibly tempting.

People get to it. And if we don't offer them a way out, they just keep on cheating. That's actually what we find. We find that a slippery slope is incredibly tempting. People get to it. And if we don't offer them a way out, they just keep on cheating. But if we stop the situation and we offer people a chance for a new beginning, a chance for an open new page, they often take it and start behaving well. And I think this is actually an interesting lesson to take from religion. I think religion has basically figured out the importance of new pages, and we need to think about how do we implement stuff like this in regular society. But don't you think that human beings are also interested in fairness and justice,

and if somebody gets caught doing something wrong, it isn't about giving them a clean start, it's about making them pay for what they did wrong. Yeah, retribution is clearly important, right? For some crimes, we want people to pay because we want to feel that justice has been done, and we feel angered, and we want a sense of justice. And I'm not saying that this is a bad thing to have, but the reason we punish people is often is not just because of sense of justice, it's also because we want to deter other people from doing the same thing. asking whether the death penalty reduces crimes, mostly the crimes that you get for the death penalty, crimes of passion and murder and so on, and there's no evidence for that.

Now, the studies are not very good because it's hard to do the study well, but even something like the death penalty doesn't seem to decrease crime. Now, ask yourself if the death penalty was kind of a big punishment, right? You can't get bigger than that. It doesn't seem to have a big effect. What are the odds that small things like, you know, nine years in prison or 10 years in prison are going to deter people from committing crime? So my sense, if you look at the financial crisis, for example, if you look at Wall Street or insider trading, is that we take good people, we tempt them to be dishonest, and then we create at the back end very severe punishment. Maybe not so severe, but somewhat

severe punishment. And I think this is just not something that is going to influence behavior. Instead, I think we need to try to prevent the misbehavior at the moment. We need to decrease conflicts of interest. We need to decrease the temptation of misbehaving rather than trying to punish people at the end and hope that this would have an effect. But what about, you know, we hear, I remember the publicity about a case in Indonesia where they, you know, publicly flog people for doing things. And boy, that's a very clean country and people don't screw around. You know, I don't know when you've been last in Indonesia.

I haven't been there actually for quite a while. But the results, I think, don't show up, and I haven't seen the results about Indonesia. The results don't show up that prison sentences are deterring anybody. You know, look at something as simple as downloading illegal content on the web, MP3s, music, and so on. There have been a few really big cases in which people paid a ton of money and had all kinds of costs to pay. And nobody, nobody that I know of from my students cares about that.

It's just not something we think about. Or think about other things. People, this is not in the domain of dishonesty, but lots of people text and drive. Lots of people overeat, under-save. All of those behaviors are really about not thinking long-term. Human beings were just not designed to think long-term and small probabilities, right? So if you take people who text and drive, for example, which is the majority of people,

and you say to yourself, those people don't seem to be thinking long-term. They think about the immediate gratification of the phone vibrating. What are the odds that the same people would think about small probability of being caught down the line? I think it's just not going to happen. This is one of those topics that's really interesting to talk about, but maybe not too much for fear of what you'll find out about yourself.

Dan Ariely has been my guest. He's a professor at Duke University and author of the book, The Honest Truth About Dishonesty. There's a link to his book in the show notes for this episode of the program. Thanks, Dan. Did you know it is basically impossible

for you to keep track of more than three items at the same time unless those items are the same color. So, for example, when you watch a football game, the common color of the uniforms allows you to overcome that limitation because you see the team as a single set. Team sports would be incredibly difficult to watch if it weren't for the colors of the uniforms. According to a study at John Hopkins University, the ability to only keep track of three items at a time is a fundamental limitation of the human brain. Almost everyone has it, and the only way to override that limitation is with color coding. This principle works in everyday life. For example, if you wanted to take seven kids to the zoo by yourself,

it would be tough to keep track of them all. But if they all wore the same color shirt, that would make it much easier. In general, if you want to keep track of multiple things or people, make them the same color. And that is something you should know. Please follow us on Facebook and Twitter, and we'll have another program for you in just a few days. I'm Micah Ruthers.

Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. 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 Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. We had a pretty good run, 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times, we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone. So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride.

We've got writers, producers, composers, directors, and we'll, of course, have some actors on as well, including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic brothers. It was kind of a little bit of a left-field choice in the best way possible. The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him, but we're looking for like a really intelligent Duchovny type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes. So please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now.