Something You Should Know - Why Conventional Wisdom is Often Wrong & How Others Shape You Thoughts and Actions

Episode Date: November 25, 2021

Ever talk to someone who is looking at their phone and they act as if they don’t even hear you? This episode explains why that happens so often and why that is likely not the best time to try to talk to someone. https://www.yahoo.com/health/weird-way-looking-phone-mess-195042844.html You’ve heard those phrases like, “Don’t sweat the small stuff” or “Don’t judge a book by its cover” or “Everyone deserves a second chance" or “Think outside the box.” It may be time to rethink these common conventional wisdoms, according to attorney David Libman author of the book 100 Reality Checks (https://amzn.to/2E7JGqW) . Listen as David explains that a lot of these phrases sound good but actually turn out to be really lousy advice. There is something called “The Waiter Rule.” It’s actually the idea of former Raytheon CEO Bill Swanson and it has to do with how people treat waiters. Listen as I reveal why it is important to know about this important rule and why it is a very good indicator of a person’s character. https://www.rightattitudes.com/2007/09/12/waiter-rule-interpersonal-skills/ You are being influenced in subtle ways by all the people around you. Often, you have no idea it is even happening according to Matthew Jackson, a professor of economics at Stanford University and author of the book The Human Network: How Your Social Position Determines Your Power, Beliefs and Behaviors (https://amzn.to/2EvVfJY). Listen as he discusses how people in your circle influence your thoughts and behaviors and how you influence theirs.  PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Grab NordVPN’s Cyber Month Deal! Go to https://nordvpn.com/SOMETHING or use code SOMETHING to get up to 73% off your NordVPN Plan + a bonus gift! T-Mobile for Business the leader in 5G, #1 in customer satisfaction, and 5G in every plan! https://T-Mobile.com/business Discover offers "Live Customer Service" with US based representatives available 24/7! Learn more at https://discover.com Grow your business with Shopify today at https://Shopify.com/sysk  Visit https://ferguson.com for the best in all of your plumping supply needs! https://www.geico.com Bundle your policies and save! It's Geico easy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Today on Something You Should Know, ever talk to someone when they're looking at their phone and they act like they can't hear you? I'll explain why. Then the problem with conventional wisdom like don't sweat the small stuff, or think outside the box, or practice makes perfect.

If you truly adopt the notion that practice makes perfect, I think that you'll always be disappointed. My reality check is practice almost never makes perfect. It makes better, which is still an excellent goal. Also, you can tell a lot about a person when you apply the waiter rule. And influence. It is amazing who influences who and how. Look at kids in school.

The kids with the most friends tend to try drugs earlier, they smoke more, they tend to go to more parties. The fact that they're acting differently or more extremely means that the rest of the kids perceive that as the norm, even if it's not the norm. All this today on Something You Should Know. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey. No, too basic. Hi there.

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Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life not to get too dated and talk about today because the episodes stay up and people listen to these episodes for days and weeks and months after. But since it is publishing on Thanksgiving Day, happy Thanksgiving. Oh, and here's something pretty cool we found out. Amazon Music has a podcast page on their website and on their app, and they have, you know, categories on their feature page of, you know, shows about certain topics or editor's choice or whatever it is, and they have a category called Hidden Gems, and I don't know if it's still in there, but as of a few days before Thanksgiving when I'm recording this, it's there. So something you should know is officially one of Amazon Music's hidden gems.

First up today, have you ever talked with someone who's looking down at their phone and you get no response at all, as if they didn't hear a thing you said? Well, maybe they didn't. Research published in the Journal of Neuroscience has revealed that when you're concentrating on a visual task like scrolling through Facebook or scrolling through your texts, it may render you temporarily deaf to normal volume sounds. Researchers looked at brain scans of people as they did visual tasks while sounds played in the background. As the tasks got harder, the brain's response to the sound was reduced. These findings suggest that

our vision and our hearing share limited resources in the brain, which is essentially forced to choose between processing information from our eyes or processing information from our ears. It could explain why you miss your bus stop announcement while you're reading a book or why your kids can't hear you calling them for dinner while they're watching TV. And that is something you should know. So, until I heard about my next guest and the book he wrote, this is something I've really never thought much about.

But you and I have heard a lot of wisdom over the course of our lives. And often that wisdom gets boiled down into a sentence or two. Things like, don't sweat the small stuff, or the early bird gets the worm, or don't judge a book by its cover. And because it's catchy and clever, we often believe it without really examining it. But wait a minute. Sometimes the small stuff really matters, and you do need to sweat the small stuff. And the early bird gets the worm, meaning getting up early somehow gives you an advantage. Well, not if you're a night person.

And don't judge a book by its cover. Well, we all make some judgments about a book by its cover, including whether or not to buy it and read it. So maybe we need to examine some of the wisdom that we've come to believe. And that's exactly what David Libman did. David is an attorney in Southern California and author of the book, 100 Reality Checks. Hi, David. Welcome. Thanks for having me.

So you're a musician turned attorney and now author of this book. So how and why did you decide to examine these commonly held words of wisdom? A lot of it comes from life experiences and also experiences with clients. You know, the nature of my practice is that I deal with a lot of individuals and business owners. So, for example, somebody might come in and they've got a dream, say, of starting a restaurant. You know, and I've had these kind of situations where they're a good cook. They've got, you know, their life savings might be something like $50,000, $100,000. People tell them they're a good cook.

They decide they want to sink their entire life savings, say, into a restaurant. And yet they've never run a restaurant. They've never worked at a restaurant. They've never done any of those kind of things. And I've seen it in both phases. I've been lucky enough to see the phase where maybe somebody comes to me before they start that endeavor. And we can talk about realistically really what that means and the risks they're taking. And maybe they'll go get some life experience first before they just dump their

life savings in. But I've also unfortunately seen the other side where I've never met somebody and they come to me after they've devoted a bunch of time and money and effort to something like that, and it's failed. So that's why I'll have a reality check that says something like, being a great cook does not always mean you can successfully run a restaurant. Because people hear these kind of things, and I hate to see it when it happens, where they rely on something that sounds great, but doesn't necessarily have any real support, I guess, for lack of a better term, especially

when you're attorney evidentiary support. So let's dive into some of these reality checks, and let's start with one that I mentioned in the intro, and that is, don't judge a book by its cover. Books are a perfect example, obviously, where when you go to the bookstore, there's just so many, we're drowning in them. If you don't have a good cover, unless you're famous or there's some other reason that somebody's going to pick up that book, they're probably not going to pick up the book. So I know for me personally that many times I'll judge a book by its cover. And I think, of course, that obviously goes beyond the regular phrase as well. I mean, we live, that obviously goes beyond the regular phrase as well. I mean,

we live in a more casual society. I've been on both sides of the spectrum when I was a musician. People were very casual in the business and professional setting. People are less so. But I think there is this trend sometimes where people are sloppy or things like that. And then they're upset that people don't get to the meat of who they are, but they don't really consider that first impressions matter and that people are going to consider you based on your initial presentation out in the world. So it's important. You have a good one about problem solving, and you being an attorney, a business attorney, that you are in the business of solving problems. So what is that one? One of the reality checks is problem solving is problem-centric,

which creates the wrong focus. Solution finding is the better way to go. And the way I came to that, a lot of people that I deal with, I do a lot of lawsuits, or they'll come with problems, and you'll have these meetings or you'll have these negotiations, and it's very surprising to see that people will continually want to talk and focus on the problem and there might be very little discussion or consideration of what to do about that problem

other than just focusing on how bad it is and how annoying it is, and, you know, they kind of get in a loop. And so you always hear these things about problem solving, and I think even that phrase kind of gets you in this loop of focusing on the problem. So I try to, at least in my personal practice or negotiations, deal with not so much the problem, but, okay, we can acknowledge there's a problem. Maybe there's a disagreement. Usually when you have disagreements, you're not going to get to a place where people will admit the other side is right. There's too much ego for that. But the very least you can do is focus on trying to

solve problems by thinking more in terms of solutions. One of the business reality checks in your book that caught my eye was this one. A threat should be a promise in negotiations. Following through on a threat can make your adversary trust you, which can lead to resolution. And the reason I say that is what I see is people get heated with each other. They get battling with each other. And they want to threaten the world. I'm going to sue you. I'm going threaten the world. I'm going to sue you.

I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. And they never consider the notion that if you make a threat and you don't follow through, in some way it's actually a breach of the trust, and it really weakens you. Because, you know, especially when people get heated, when somebody else threatens you, most of the time people aren't just going to whimper and go away. They're going to start thumping their chest and fight back. And so what I find is whatever your threat's going to be, you have to seriously consider if that's something you actually want to do.

Is that something you actually want to follow through on? If you say you're going to sue somebody in a week unless they respond to your letter, and then a week goes by and you do nothing, then the other side kinda knows that you're just blown off steam and so that i think is something that people really need to think about on the other hand if you actually make the threat you actually follow through the people ok you keep to your word whether they like it or not they start to see there's a consistency

in what you say and what you do and i think that's very important in a negotiation. A common one I know everyone's heard is there's no I in team, meaning that there are no stars, everybody works together, and you have a take on that. It says saying there's no I in team merely demonstrates that you know how to spell. Great teams can and probably should include members with unique approaches and perspectives. Because from what I can tell, if you've got a team and the expectation is that everybody's supposed to have the same mindset, in some bizarre way you actually lack what the benefit is of a team.

That the best teams have people that make up for each other's weaknesses and fill different roles. I like the one you tackle, because I've heard it so many times throughout life, that you should live each day as if it's your last. It really comes from the notion of, you know, you go to a coffee house, you go to a restaurant or something, and they'll have that quote up on the chalkboard, or you'll see it on a commercial or some variation of something like that. And it's one of those feel-good sayings that frankly drives me crazy because I don't see that. And those are the kind of things where, let's face it, if this was my last day, no offense to you, I probably wouldn't be talking to you. I

might be eating at a buffet, spending as much money as I possibly could, maybe doing many things that on an everyday basis would be poor planning. You have a different take on another one that I mentioned in the beginning, and that is the early bird gets the worm. I say the early bird gets the worm works for morning people. If that's not you, you can still succeed later in the afternoon. Honestly, give the example of my personal life. I was always, especially, you know, coming to be, being an attorney, after being a musician, when I was a musician, you know, you'd work till two or three in the morning, get to bed three or four,

and get up late. Now that I'm an attorney, if I have a morning court appearance, I'll show up. But in general, my schedule here in Southern California is I might pop into work 10, 10.30, and I might leave like 7 or 7.30. And it's got many benefits, right? I skip Southern California traffic on each way in the commute. I feel rested. And so it's one of those things where people say things, and it doesn't mean you have to abide by that. If you're not a morning person, instead of torturing yourself with that, pick a schedule that works and just work hard on the hours that work for you.

I'm speaking with David Libman. He is an attorney and author of the book, 100 Reality Checks. 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. 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. So David, one of your reality checks that I'm in total agreement with is, if you want to be known as someone who thinks differently, use a phrase other than thinks outside the box. The way I came up with that one is, you know, probably like many people who are in the business world, you go to a lot of

networking type events, or you'll hear people give you their elevator pitch about their business. And I would say somewhere around, and this is anecdotal, but I would guess somewhere between 30% and 40% of the time, if you ask somebody about their business, they'll tell you that they think outside the box, and that's partly what makes them different. And if that many people are saying they think outside the box, it seems to me that couldn't possibly be outside the box

because that phrase is used just far too much in the society. So I think if you actually are different, you've got to come up with something different. I've got a similar quote, similar vein. It just says, stop using the word passion because that's another one. I can appreciate that passion is a great concept, but so many people use it in the business context. They say they're passionate about their work or passionate about what they do, that it starts to lose its impact, at least for me personally.

Something we've talked about on this program several times, something people talk about and complain about a lot is the lack of privacy today that our information is out there. And you have some thoughts on that. Social media and privacy do not realistically coexist. Choose one, then stop complaining. That may sound harsh, but I find it interesting that people will post things, say on Facebook or Instagram or any sort of social media site, and then they're highly offended that their information might not be private. And I can appreciate that people don't want necessarily what they sign into to be sold to

third parties and things like that. But on the other hand, if you participate in a platform like that, you have to expect there's going to be abuse. It's just the reality that if you give your information away, you can't necessarily trust who you're giving it to. So my concept with that is you don't really have a realistic expectation of privacy in general. There's just too much information flowing, and that if you really truly want privacy, you really have to go above and beyond and take probably many steps that most people would never take to ensure true privacy for your information.

So what about the small stuff? I mean, the phrase, don't sweat the small stuff, it was the title of a very popular book. That phrase has made its way into the culture. People say it all the time. Hey, don't sweat the small stuff. What say you? Yeah, I mean, I can appreciate that.

It's a nice phrase. Sometimes you cannot avoid sweating the small stuff. When the small stuff causes too much perspiration, look for as many distractions as possible. So there's two things. There's the reality check itself. I think in some way that one speaks a lot for itself because, you know, but there's also the sort of bigger picture of a lot of these reality checks have to do with, at least for me personally, this idea that you'll hear something like, don't sweat the small stuff. And at least for me, I'll find myself sometimes sweating the small stuff. And then I feel bad about myself, like, why can't I do this thing that everybody says you should do,

which is just don't sweat the small stuff. So some of these things where, you know, people tell you things like, oh, you know, give 110%, don't sweat the small stuff, you know, be the early bird. Whatever it is, when you don't end up doing that because you're a human, you can feel really bad about yourself. Or you can just get realistic and say, maybe that phrase doesn't really work for everybody. Maybe I'm just one of those people that does sweat the small stuff. So for me, since I know that I am, I just try to get distracted. If I'm sweating the small stuff, I'll go do something else, go practice an instrument, go watch something,

go for a walk, something to get my mind off of it. So one more, you pick one. You know, there's a lot of these reality checks in the book, but I'm sure you have some favorites. So you talk about one of your favorites. I got this one from being both a musician and an attorney. When you're a musician, you practice your instrument. When you're an attorney, you practice the law. So I have this phrase, the quote we always hear is, practice makes perfect. And my reality check is, practice almost never makes perfect. It makes better, which is still an excellent goal. That's another one of those aspirational things where if you truly adopt the notion that practice

makes perfect, I think that you'll always be disappointed. I've seen some of the greatest musicians ever, and still when I've seen them perform, I could probably find maybe one mistake or one imperfection in their performance. But really, the perfection is not really the goal. The goal is to improve and get better. So I think it's important to think about those things. At least for me, it's been important because otherwise I could drive myself crazy. Well, it is so interesting, and I mentioned this at the beginning, that we hear these

things like, practice makes perfect. Don't sweat the small stuff. That they're catchy phrases. And so we kind of buy into it mostly because they're catchy phrases, not because of any critical thinking that anybody does about it. And yeah, maybe practice makes perfect and maybe not. And maybe not for you and maybe not for you in this case. It isn't a one-size-fits-all thing. And here's one that I think everybody believes, or at least likes to say,

is the idea that everyone deserves a second chance. I mean, that's like a perfect example. My phrase, of course, on that is everybody may deserve a second chance, but that second chance doesn't have to come from you. We could think of any number of examples, but, you know, if, I mean, just on something mild, right, if in my area, you know, if somebody comes to me and they've got a business partner that stole $200,000, it could be that that business partner had drug problems, did lots of things, might correct himself or herself.

But it doesn't mean that the person that I'm representing should ever give that business partner a second chance. That person that needs a second chance has to redevelop their life and go to someone else and prove themselves to someone else because you do get these sort of oil and water situations where you see people, they want to be so altruistic, they want to be good, they don't want to be judgmental, which are all great aspirations. But at what point do you sort of cannibalize yourself with these aspirations because they don't necessarily work in your interactions with other

people. Well, I know for myself, I've never really stopped to think about these things. I just kind of believe them. You know, you don't sweat the small stuff. Practice makes perfect, and you just believe them. And so I really think it's a great idea that you did this book and that you make people think a little more critically about this common conventional wisdom that we've all heard forever. Well, I appreciate you saying that. I mean, I think you've articulated it very well. That's the concept I'm trying to get across. So I appreciate that you've picked up on that.

Thank you very much for that. David Libman has been my guest. He is an attorney in California, and he's author of the book, 100 Reality Checks. And you will find a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Hey everyone, join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current

events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong. And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover.

We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Count people influence you and your behaviors. But it goes on a lot more and a lot deeper than you probably think. You're part of networks, different social networks, not just online networks, but in real life, too. And all these people and all these networks are influencing you, and you're influencing them in subtle and often not-so-subtle ways. Matthew Jackson is a professor of economics at Stanford, and he's author of a new book called The Human Network, How Your Social Position Determines Your Power, Beliefs, and Behaviors.

And he joins me to give a peek behind the curtain and reveal how all this influencing works and your part in it. Hi, Matthew, welcome. Thanks, Mike. It's wonderful to be here. So in broad strokes here, explain how this works. We're sort of embedded in networks, and we always think of networks like Facebook and Pinterest and Instagram, but, you know, we're in constant contact with other people, everyone around us, and they are the people that influence us in terms of they get us jobs, they help form our opinions about whether to vote, and all this is sort of going on constantly, and, you know, we're not necessarily aware of it. And we're very social

animals. We naturally imitate and are in constant contact with other people. But doesn't it seem that since people tend to like people who are like them, that we're already with people in social circles who are like us? So how much more influencing can there be because we're attracted to people like us? A lot of it is just that we tend to imitate other individuals. Let me give you one example. There's a program called Teach for America, and it's a program that basically hires people that are fresh out of college. And what they do is they try and get people to go into low-income neighborhoods and teach. And so these are places where it's hard to get teachers.

It's hard to get good, qualified teachers. And so they go through this elaborate interview process and try and find the best candidates. And those candidates spend a lot of time thinking about whether they should join or not. So they did an experiment. And what they did is they just, in the acceptance letter to people, they added one sentence. And the one sentence was, last year, more than 84% of admitted applicants joined the Corps. I sincerely hope you'll join them. And just that one sentence gave them an extra 8% of people who joined. And, you know, it's a two-year commitment. So people are spending two years of their lives just because they heard that most people do this. So what's the principle at

work there? Is that people like to follow the crowd, that we like to do what most people do? You know, if other people are doing it, it must be a good thing. Sort of like an inference, right? It's actually fascinating. I have a colleague here. This is sort of a tangent, but it's really related. I have a colleague here named Deborah Gordon, and she studies ants. And they've discovered something they call the ant-ternet.

And what happens is ants go out and they look for food. And if they find it, they come back and they're bringing food. And there's other ants sitting there in the nest waiting for the ants to come. And the more ants they see coming in, the more go out. Right? So they just imitate each other. and the more ants they see coming in, the more go out, right? So they just imitate each other. If they see somebody coming back with food, then they get stimulated, they go out, and that means that the more food's available, the more ants are going out.

But in times when there's not many ants coming back, they don't go out. So it's a system that's sort of self-correcting. It ends up working very, very well. So I want to ask you, because it's in the of sort of self-correcting. It ends up working very, very well. So I want to ask you, because it's in the subtitle of your book, How Your Social Position Determines Your Power, what do you mean by that and how does that work? So I guess one example is what's known as the friendship paradox, meaning that people who are really central in networks end up having outsized influence on other individuals. So, for instance, if I have, you know, thousands of followers on Twitter, somebody else has five followers on Twitter, then, you know, you end up having thousands of times more reach than somebody else. And so more people are hearing your opinion than the other person's

opinion. You know, I think one example of this I always think of is, you know, my daughters, I have two daughters, when they were young teenagers, they would always come home with ideas, you know, saying things like, everybody at school has a cell phone, or everybody at school gets to stay up and do X, or everybody at school is getting this? From their perspective, everybody was, but they're paying attention to a few people. And those few people tend to be the most popular individuals at school. So the friendship paradox is people with the most friends end up being counted as more friends by friends of more people. And that ends up meaning that they end up having a lot more influence. And if those people act differently than the rest of the people in society, they end up, you know, changing their perspective. So from my daughter's perspective, you know, everybody did have a cell phone and was getting their ears pierced. Or I guess nowadays it's probably getting a tattoo or whatever. But that perception wasn't necessarily true of what the whole population in the school was doing. It's just that the people who are the ones paid attention to by the most people,

if they're acting that way, that ends up having a big effect. How did those people who have so many friends and have so much influence, how did they get to the top of the heap there? You know, I think there's also this sort of a snowball effect of friends beget friends aspect to it. And this is something I've studied in my own research and a bunch of people have looked at it in the sense that, you know, if somebody has a lot of friends, you hear about them more, you want to get to know them more. It's easier to meet them because they have friends that can introduce you to them. So there's sort of a rich-get-richer aspect of the way that we form friendships.

Well, what's so interesting about that is people who have friends and then get more friends become more influential, and just because they're influential doesn't mean they're right, and so their influence could be quite negative. Yeah, and the more we're aware of that, then we can begin to think, look, these leaders might not be the people that we really want to be paying attention to in terms of what's best for us to do in terms of behaviors. Like, look at kids in school.

The kids with the most friends, they tend to try drugs earlier, they smoke more, they're just more active in drinking and so forth. So they have behaviors that are more extreme in a lot of cases. They tend to be more social. They tend to go to more parties. There's a lot of dynamics going on. It's hard to disentangle all the forces that they're acting differently or more extremely means that the rest of the kids perceive that as the norm, even if it's not the norm. So they're not seeing the kids, you know, studying. They're seeing the kids partying. And that's what gets posted on Facebook. You don't post a picture of yourself in a study carol. You post, you know, a picture of yourself out having fun. And so our perceptions are biased that way.

So Matthew, you were talking a moment ago about how influence works in school, in high school. But what about adults? Are the same things going on, or are we a little more set in our ways and a little less influenceable, if that's a word? So here's an example of, I think it's easy to underestimate how much we're influenced by our friends, but there's a group at Facebook, actually, a series of former students from Stanford, and they looked at people's decisions to buy houses, right? So this is a major investment, huge amounts of money you're putting on the table. And what they found was we imitate our

friends there too. So take me in California, look at one of my friends in Boston, a 5% increase in that friend's house value would lead me in terms of averages to be 3% more likely to buy a house. And I would tend to pay 3% more, buy a larger house. What's the difficulty? The difficulty is that, you know, my friends in Boston, I'm in California, the Boston market and the California market have almost nothing to do with each other. And so one amazing thing about the study was, you know, the friend who lives down the street from me, who I should really be paying attention to in terms of, you know, house value, has just the same amount of influence as the friend in Boston or Toledo or Austin, Texas or Alaska. And I might be paying attention to the friends who are the most popular friends on Facebook.

And they might not be the normal, you know, individuals or the people that I should really be paying attention to when I'm making decisions to buy a house. But this kind of stuff was always just permeating our, you know, we're just bombarded by this and it's difficult for us to know why we think it's a great time to buy a house. You know, this is all going on in our subconscious to some extent. Isn't that interesting that you, that, that somebody buying a house in Boston would influence you? And, and even more interesting that you don't really know it. It's, it's subconscious, but it, it, and, and 3% is not a huge influence, but it's still an influence. Yeah. I mean, it's 3%, not that much of an influence, but when you start adding up all my friends, it ends up being that, you know, I get bounced around a lot by what's happening to my friends.

Yeah, it's a huge effect. You know, I guess one of the other really big example is how we get our jobs, right? Most of our jobs are through referrals, not by applicants. We have, there's a fascinating interview with a corporate recruiter and they, you know, go into sort of how they find people. They call people who get the job, they tend to flake out and not last long. Whereas they call the people who are really qualified, they call them purple squirrels. And they call them purple squirrels because they're very rare. They're hard to find. And almost all of those people actually come through referrals. And so, you know, if you don't have a friend who's well-employed, it's difficult to get jobs. And so, you know, you just apply. And it just makes common sense that someone's going to pay attention to somebody who gets referred than somebody who's just sitting in a stack of resumes on their desk. But as you make the point, you can only be referred if you have

somebody in your circle of influence who can refer you. Yeah, exactly. And then when you begin to look at the numbers, then what you see is that you can be at high employment, but there can be pockets where there's a whole community that's unemployed. And it's not just because there aren't businesses in that area. It's because they're all friends with each other. And none of those friends tend, you know, if none of my friends are employed, then I don't get employed. And if all my friends are employed, then it's a lot easier for me to find a job. There was actually a fascinating study that was done of how people got jobs after World War I. And this was done by Ron Lashever. And what he did was,

you know, the U.S. Army had, before we entered the war, the First World War, it had like 300,000 people. And then it went up to 4 million people by 1918. So, you know, they had to get a huge number of people into the army. So this was a massive draft. And the way they put companies together was they randomly picked 100 groups of 100 people, they put them all together. And then these guys, you know, were in the trenches together, literally, so they became best friends. And so it's sort of a unique opportunity to see people randomly put together and completely mixed. And then what he does is follow them through the 1930s and then looks at whether they get employed or not. And it turns out that whole companies tend to be more employed or less employed. So a 10% increase in the employment in somebody's

company led to that person having a lot more job opportunities and a 4% higher chance that they're employed. So you get these huge correlations in whether people are employed or not just by whether their friends are employed. And the effect is lasting. This was like 10 or 20 years later that he was looking at this. And it makes a big difference. So, you know, our friends are just so important in so many ways. How else? You've given some really good examples of how this is kind of happening behind the scenes.

How else? Are there other ways, other things that are going on like this that we may not even be aware of? There's a lot of studies of sort of information flows that are quite fascinating. The way we learn about these things is from our friends. There's a study, the original Wisdom of the Crowd study. And this was a study that was done in 1907 by a guy named Sir Francis Galton. And this was sort of a fascinating study. So what he did was he, this was a poultry, just livestock and poultry fair in West England. And what you could do is you could go up and guess the weight of an ox. So they had this ox there, a prize ox.

You could go up, you could guess the weight. And then, you know, the person who got closest to the actual weight won a prize. So what did they find? You had 787 entries. The ox actually weighed 1,198 pounds. The average guess was 1,197. So the average of all these people was almost right on the mark, right? So somehow the crowd, the people together, you know, if you combine all that information, would just nail it. So collectively, people have a lot of information, a lot of knowledge, a lot of expertise.

The question is, how do you get that together? How does somebody learn that? So if I'm at the poultry fair, I can start asking people and polling people. If I polled enough people, I could guess the weight of an ox and be very accurate. The problem is that, you know, we're not averaging all our guesses. We don't have a bulletin board where we all post our guesses and then look at them. You know, we're talking to each other, and I'm talking to – I'm not talking to everybody. I'm talking to a few people.

I tend to talk to people who think like me. And then out of those people, I tend to talk to the most popular ones. So I'm not getting that full view of the whole society's impressions. Well, that's kind of the theory behind the random sample. If you randomly poll people, you'll get a pretty accurate, if you randomly pull enough of them, a pretty accurate response. But if you're always inside your own little circle of influence and you pull those people, you're probably way off. Right, exactly, exactly, yeah, yeah. And the internet is changing that a lot nowadays. So, you know, via the Internet, we get exposed to a lot more information.

So we have the opportunity to seek out a lot more information, to look at more sources, to do searches, to find out more things and to come closer to polling people. The difficulty is that it's also easier to find things we like and people who are just like us and then, you know, say something that resonates with us. We'd like to hear our own view bounced back at us. And so, you know, it's hard to necessarily pay attention to the whole, to be unbiased and to really sort everything and make a good estimate. It does seem that compared to other creatures on the planet, that humans are more susceptible to being influenced than other creatures. And maybe that's just my perception, and maybe it's not true, but there does seem to be something unique about humans where we're able to influence each other with thoughts and pictures and things like that.

What makes humans so special in that way? One thing that's very special is that we can process abstract ideas and thoughts. So, for instance, you could describe a place you've been to. Say you went on vacation. You could describe the city. You could tell me what you ate. You could tell me went on vacation. You could describe the city. You could tell me what you ate. You could tell me where you went. You saw these amazing sites. And I can get an image of that in my mind, right? So you experienced it, and I experienced it vicariously. I listened

to you, and I feel like I'm there. And I form an image in my mind. That's something that's very unique to us, that kind of communication and our ability to imagine things by hearing from other people, get an idea in our minds of what actually went on. And that's great. It's what allows us to teach people how to do things much more easily. It allows us to build knowledge bases and to develop technologies and all kinds of stuff. But it also leads us to mistakes, right? Where suddenly I imagine that I've done something that I've never done, or I can have superstitions because somebody tells me something, I can imagine it being true. So it leads us down some strange paths as well. Well, I appreciate the insight into how influence works.

It's especially interesting where it happens and we're not really aware of it. So I appreciate you sharing it. My guest has been Matthew Jackson. He's a professor of economics at Stanford, and he's author of the new book, The Human Network, How Your Social Position Determines Your Power, Beliefs, and Behaviors. You'll find a link to his book in the show notes. Thanks, Matthew. Well, thanks so much, Mike. It's really wonderful talking with you. If you're out on a first date and you notice that your date is rude to the waiter, you may want to make it your last date. There's something called the waiter rule that's gained popularity in judging a person's character in all walks of life. In essence, how a person

treats a waiter is a good indication of their true nature. Some behavior to watch out for is playing the power card, or having a short fuse, or demanding too many details, or speaking in a condescending manner, or making a scene, or being a really bad tipper. Former Raytheon CEO Bill Swanson is the guy who came up with the waiter rule. He basically said, if someone is nice to you but rude to the waiter, he says he is especially wary of people who are rude to those people who are perceived to be in subordinate roles. If that person has a situational value system or can turn the charm on or off, there's a good chance it's not the kind of person you want to depend on personally or professionally. And that is something you should know. And hey, again, if you are listening to this on the day this episode publishes, which is Thanksgiving Day,

happy Thanksgiving, and feel free to share everything you learned in today's episode around the Thanksgiving dinner table. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening 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.