Something You Should Know - Why It Doesn’t Hurt to Ask & How We Determine Who and What is Beautiful

Episode Date: September 20, 2021

What is the purpose of that ball of cotton in your bottle of pills? You probably think you know but I bet you don’t. This episode begins with an explanation of why that cotton is in there and what you should do with it. https://www.businessinsider.com/why-huge-cotton-ball-comes-pill-bottles-medicine-health-pharmacy-prescription-2017-5 I am sure you have wanted to ask someone to do something for you but felt reluctant. It seems we hate to ask people for things. Even when we do, we often say, “Gee I hate to ask this but…” However, you might want to ask anyway according to Vanessa Bohns, PhD. Vanessa is a social psychologist as well as a professor of organizational behavior at Cornell University. She is also author of the book, You Have More Influence Than You Think: How We Underestimate Our Power of Persuasion, and Why It Matters (https://amzn.to/3Emj83G). Once you hear what she has to say, you will probably feel better about asking for what you want. Have you ever looked closely at the back of the $1 bill? Listen as I explain why you should and what it all means. http://www.onedollarbill.org/decoding.html Everyone likes beautiful things and beautiful people. We are drawn to beauty. But why? And what makes something or someone beautiful? Can you make yourself more beautiful? Listen as I speak with Anjan Chatterjee, Professor of Neurology, Psychology, and Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania who has done some fascinating research on beauty. He also has an excellent TED Talk on the topic which you can link to here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wgt8QUHQjw8 PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! We really enjoy The Jordan Harbinger Show and we think you will as well! Check out https://jordanharbinger.com/start OR search for The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.  You can grow thicker, healthier hair AND get $15 off at https://nutrafol.com Promo code: SOMETHING Get 10% off on the purchase of Magnesium Breakthrough from BiOptimizers by visiting https://magbreakthrough.com/something Go to https://Backcountry.com/SYSK and enter promo code SYSK to get 15% OFF your first full-priced purchase. Listen to Build For Tomorrow with Jason Feifer, our favorite new podcast, right here! https://apple.co/3rPM8La or visit https://www.jasonfeifer.com/build-for-tomorrow/ T-Mobile for Business the leader in 5G, #1 in customer satisfaction, and a partner who includes benefits like 5G in every plan. Visit https://T-Mobile.com/business Omaha Steaks is the best! Get awesome pricing at https://OmahaSteaks.com/BMT For more information on fire safety products, safety tips and educational activities you can do at home with your family visit https://firstalert.com/firepreventionmonth   Discover matches all the cash back you earn on your credit card at the end of your first year automatically and is accepted at 99% of places in the U.S. that take credit cards! Learn more at https://discover.com/yes Visit https://www.remymartin.com/en-us/ to learn more about their exceptional spirits! Never try to beat a train across the tracks. Stop. Trains can’t. Paid for by NHTSA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Today on Something You Should Know, why is there cotton in your pill bottle and what should you do with it? Then why it doesn't hurt to ask for what you want, because people will say yes to you more often than you think. Just like it hurts to be rejected, it's actually really painful to reject someone as well. And so we miss all those dynamics that make us think that it's pretty easy to say no, when in fact it's not that easy for people to say no to us.

Also take a look at what's on the back of a one dollar bill. It's really interesting. And how we determine what is and who is beautiful. And it's not just always how they look. If people think of someone as being a really good person, or a smart person, or a confident person, or a trustworthy person, it seems to also affect how they perceive the person, that the person starts to appear more attractive. All this today on Something You Should Know. 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. Something you should know.

Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. How many times have you gone and grabbed a bottle of pills for your headache or some prescription pills you're taking and there's that cotton ball in there that you have to get your finger in there and pull it out. You probably have some theory as to why it's there in the first place.

Maybe it has to do with moisture or something. Well, would you like to know the real reason that cotton ball's in there? According to the Wall Street Journal, Bayer started putting cotton balls in their bottles of aspirin in the early 1900s, and the reason was to keep those powdery pills in place so they wouldn't get knocked around in the bottle and break apart. If they did, that could lead to improper dosage, as patients would try to piece those broken bits back together to form a full pill. But the pills today are coated, and actually Bayer stopped putting cotton in its aspirin bottles in 1999.

Other companies continue the practice, and the reason they do is because we expect it. The National Institute of Health actually recommends that you remove any cotton stuffed in your pill bottles, as that fluffy ball of cotton could draw moisture into the container. And that is something you should know. You most likely have the power to influence other people far more than you think. You could get people to do things for you more often than you ever imagined. How do I know this? Meet Vanessa Bonds. She's a social psychologist and professor of organizational behavior at Cornell University, and she is author of a book called You Have More Influence Than You Think, How We Underestimate Our Power of Persuasion and Why It Matters.

Hi, Vanessa. Welcome. Thanks for coming on. Hi. Thanks so much for having me. So explain how it is we have more influence than we think. In my research, one of the ways that I show that we underestimate our influence is that we tend to think when we ask someone to do something for us, that they're more likely to say no to us than they actually are. So we've run a bunch of studies in my lab where we basically sent participants out into the world to ask people

for things. So they'll ask, for example, for small favors like, will you fill out a survey for me? Can I borrow your cell phone to make a call? Or they might ask for charitable donations. And before they go out and do this, we ask them, how many people do you think are going to agree to this request that you're about to make? Then they go out and do it. They actually test out their influence and find out that many more people, in fact, twice as many people as they imagined, actually do agree to do these things. And so they come back to the lab. They're completely sort of blown away by how much more influence they actually have than they imagined. And as you said, the question is, what do we do with that? So now we've just learned that

people are more likely to agree to things than we might think. So do we go out and ask all the time? I think on the one hand, it's kind of an empowering thing to know that now we should go out. And if there's something, you know, like a favor or something that's going to make everybody feel good and sort of increase the bond in your relationship, like asking someone for help, where everyone gets to feel good once that person agrees, then yes, we should ask for things more often. On the flip side, one of the things we show in those studies is that one reason that people say yes more than we think is that it's actually really hard to say no to somebody who's standing in front of you asking for something. And so with that sort

of knowledge, we also might want to think twice about the things that we ask. So there might be situations, for example, if I'm a boss asking someone to do something they may feel uncomfortable with, where we want to think twice about the things that we're asking for someone. So the takeaway is kind of twofold when we sort of recognize this influence. One, we want to use it more in certain situations because we have it and we should feel more confident and empowered to use it. But if we do have that influence, it also comes with a certain degree of responsibility. So we also want to think twice in certain situations and maybe hold back from time to time. With great power comes great responsibility.

That's exactly. I think that's from Spider-Man. It is from Spider-Man. That's right. You said something, though, I want to go back, because this is like jumped off the page at me. Well, it's a podcast, so it jumped out the headphones at me, that people are twice as likely to say yes,

twice as many people will say yes to things than we think. That's right. And we've shown that in so many studies. So at this point, we've had thousands of participants in our studies ask 15,000 people from the last time I did this calculation where I actually added up all the studies we did, 15,000 people for different kinds of requests. And they can range from, as I said, simple things like, will you fill out a survey? Can I borrow your phone? To bigger things like asking for donations. In one study, we had our participants ask another person to actually escort them three city blocks. This was in New York City, and they were trying to find this building that was kind of hard to find. And they would ask people, you know, they would say, I'm trying to find this building,

but I keep walking over there and I can't find it. Will you just take me there? And in that case as well, they thought people would be about half as likely to agree to escort them three city blocks to this building as people actually were. So we said, you have to go out and get one person to do this for you. They thought they would have to ask like six people, but they only had to ask a few people before one person would agree to do this. And so people seem much, much, much more willing to do things the ask, what you look like when you ask, how you ask, what you say. All of that has to play a role. So what's fascinating in our studies is that, indeed, those things play a small role. And we actually don't see it in our studies. We don't see big

differences. But we do know from other research and social influence that there are certainly things that play a role. So for example, if I ask someone and I dress kind of like them, and so they think I'm kind of similar to them, they're more likely to agree. If I'm dressed, you know, in a suit and I look really professional, they're more likely to agree because I have this sort of sense of authority. So there are these kinds of things that make people a little bit more or less likely to agree to our requests. But actually, those differences are relatively small when you compare them to the difference of what I think is going to happen when I ask versus what actually happens when I ask. So what we find is that 90% of the participants in our studies make this error where they think they're going to be rejected more than they actually are, which is a huge

effect. And the fact that on average, they do this by twice as much that they sort of overestimate the rejection by twice as much, that's a much bigger effect than sort of these little things that change the actual amount of compliance. So we tend to focus so much on how to get someone to say yes. And we think that, you know, we have to ask in a very particular way and all these sorts of factors are going to matter a lot. Like we have to use a very specific script, but in fact, those things make tiny differences and the ask is the biggest part. And that's partly because we're so focused on how to get someone to say yes, and we forget that in fact it's often really hard for people

to say no. When people say yes, apparently much more often than we think they will, do they regret it? Do people say yes because they're feeling pressure or do they say yes because they really want to help? That's a really important question. And what we find is that for sure some people agree to help because they are just more sort of pro-social than we might think and they're more happy to help. And there's other research that shows that as well. But in fact, we also agree in the moment because it's just really hard to say no. And if you imagine that you're sort of standing there and someone comes up to you and they're like, oh, you know, my phone died. I really need to make this important call. I just borrow your

phone. And you're standing there looking at this person. It's really hard to find the words to say no. And there's this sort of pretense that if I say no, it's going to insinuate something about this person that I don't trust you. It's going to insinuate something about me that I'm not a good person or a helpful person. And so people really do sort of just feel pressured in the moment. But the interesting thing is when it's something like being helpful and you hand over that phone and that person makes a call and they're so grateful and you feel kind of good about it, we pretty quickly convince ourselves that the reason we did it, even if we did it because we were like not able to find the words to say no, we quickly convince ourselves that actually, you know, that made me feel good. That made that person feel good. And I probably just did that because I'm a really good, helpful person. So when it's something like that, where everyone sort of

walks away with this warm, fuzzy feeling of, you know, exchanging help, then people don't really feel as pressured. They reframe the situation. On the other hand, there are other places where we might ask someone for something and they also feel similarly pressured. They feel like they can't say no. They feel like they might damage the relationship. And in those cases, if it's not something that they actually feel good about, that actually they feel just as uncomfortable doing, but they just felt too uncomfortable to say no, then they do feel pressured into that. And then you can have these kind of problematic longer-term effects. What about the difference though, if any, between what you're talking about,

which is going up to strangers and asking them to do something, as opposed to asking a friend to do, you know, asking your neighbor to drive your kids to school because your car broke, or, you know, where you're asking someone who you have an existing relationship with versus going up to a stranger and saying, will you walk me three blocks to this building I can't find? That's another great question. And we've actually done some studies to look at that. And what we've looked at is both whether friends and strangers are different in terms of how likely they are to agree, and also what we think, what our intuitions

are about what a friend versus a stranger would be likely to say. And so in some studies, we had our participants either go and ask strangers to do sort of this tedious task. We gave them a jar of beans. We wanted to do something just like general bean counting, just something that was kind of silly and tedious. And they would go up to either friends or strangers, depending on the condition they were assigned to, and say, you know, I have to get an accurate count of this jar of beans. Will you just be my second counter? And before they went out, just like before, we asked them, how many people do you think you'll have to ask before a certain number agree? And then we actually kept track of how many people they actually had to ask. And what we found is that when we asked people, their intuitions were that their friends were going to be much

more likely to say yes to this request than strangers. So they thought it was going to be a really difficult task asking strangers, but that most of their friends would probably say yes. And when we looked at the data of how many people actually agreed, it turned out that friends and strangers looked very similar. Friends were only a tiny bit more likely to say yes. In fact, much, much, much less more likely to say yes than our participants thought. So they thought there was going to be this huge difference, but it was a really tiny difference. And so what we sort of learned from that is that actually, we think that, you know, if we need something, our friends are kind of the only people we can go to. But in fact, in many cases, strangers are also quite willing to do things for us. And that might

be, you know, you might not be asking strangers, obviously, to pick up your kids or drive them somewhere or something that, you know, is more sensitive like that. But in lots of other situations, we might want to go to, you know, a stranger or a colleague we don't know as well for some help. They might be the best person to ask. And we think because we don't have a close relationship with them that that's going to affect how likely they are to agree to help us out. But in fact, that doesn't play as big of a role as we tend to think. We're talking about influence and how to get people to do things for you. And my guest is Vanessa Bonds. She's author of the book, You Have More Influence Than You Think. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-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 Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness friendship honesty and positivity join me and an all-star cast of actors including liam neeson emily blunt kristin bell

chris hemsworth among many others in welcoming the search for the silver lining podcast the go-kid go network by listening today look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or 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 Vanessa, it would seem to me that a lot of this has to do with what you're asking. The ask. I mean, I can't ask a stranger to drive me to do with what you're asking. The ask. I mean, I can't ask a stranger to drive me to the airport at four o'clock in the morning or help me move, but I could ask a friend that. And I would think, because that's a pretty big ask, that most strangers would say, no, I'm not going to drive you to the airport.

That's right. The context of the things that are sort of normative to ask friends and strangers are definitely different. And once we start, you know, going around asking strangers for sort of crazy things, in those cases, we might not find these effects. But I will tell you that we have had our participants ask strangers for some crazy things. So for example, in one study, we came up with this task of asking people to vandalize library books. And so we took library books off of my, or we took books off of my bookshelf and we put these little codes on the binding so that they looked like library books. And we had our participants go into libraries

and ask random strangers, hey, I'm playing a prank on my friend. They know my handwriting, but I really want to write the word pickle in this library book and pen. And so they would hand a stranger the pen, this presumed library book. And people in those cases were much more likely to agree to this request than our participants tend to think that they would be. So more than half of the people they asked actually did this, again, because they felt so awkward saying no, even to this request that was, you know, pretty unethical and something that they really encoded as something that they felt uncomfortable with and didn't want to do. So when we asked our participants to record what people said when they asked them this kind of crazy thing, the people they asked would say, I don't think we should do this. You

know, I think we might get in trouble for this. And in the end, they clearly didn't want to go along with this. But at the same time, it was so uncomfortable for them to actually say no to this person that so many people agreed. So you're right that there's certain requests that don't really make sense. You know, you wouldn't ask a stranger for a ride to the airport, most likely. But at the same time, I think the sort of sphere of things that we can ask people for and that they would say yes to is probably bigger than many of us think. How important is the why? And what I mean by that is, I remember hearing there were studies about this. I just don't remember the details. But basically, you know, if you run up to the

front of the line at Starbucks and say, do you mind if I cut in here? People are going to say, no. If you run up and say, I'm late for my flight or my baby's in the car, or you give a reason why you need to do this, people are much more likely to say yes. That's right. So the studies you're referring to are some classic studies by Ellen Langer. They were done in the 70s, but they were actually recently replicated. So we know that they were pretty accurate. And this is what she found.

She basically had people, as you say, cut in line. And in this case, there was a line of people waiting to use the copier. Yeah, that's what it was. It was the copier. That's right. Right. So they would go up to people and say, hey, can I cut in line? And then they would give a why. So there were three conditions. There was one condition where they gave no why. They just said, hey, can I cut in front of you and use the copier? And another condition, they said, hey, can I cut in front of you and use the copier because I'm in a rush? So there's your why. I have a reason. It's because, you know, I'm running make some copies. And what she wanted to see is how sort of mindfully people process requests. So saying, because I need to make some copies is actually a totally nonsensical why, right? Everyone in that line needs to make copies. And so it just doesn't even make sense. It's not an actual justification. And what she found though, is that it didn't matter that the

people who said, can I cut in front of you because I need to make copies were just as effective at getting into that line. And it was over 90 percent of people let them cut as the people who said, you know, because I'm in a rush, who had like a legitimate excuse. And her conclusion is basically that we process these things mindlessly, that as long as someone has sort of a basic script, we just kind of go along with it. And one of the things I like to point out about that is that when we process things mindlessly, we overwhelmingly seem to process them in a way that leads us to agree. So over 90% of people were letting people cut, even though they were kind of barely thinking about this. So we tend to think, you know, the default that people have is no, that like at the heart of it, people are resistant to doing things for us and that we have to sort of overcome that resistance and get to the yes. But in fact, our default tends

to be yes. Why do you think it is, since people do say yes more often than we think, why do we think they won't? What is it in the asker's, what's going on in the asker's mind that makes them think it's going to be no, when if they look back on their life and when they've asked for things, probably they got yes a lot? Why do we always go to the negative? There's a couple of reasons that people don't seem to learn from those experiences because, you know, as you said, we all have asked people for things and had them say yes. And one reason is something called negativity bias. And that shows up in all sorts of domains of life that basically the negative looms larger than the positive.

And so when we have a negative experience, it just, you know, we have a very long, intense memory for that negative experience. So every time we've asked someone for a little thing like, you know, a seat on the train or just for a small favor and they've agreed, we kind of forget that pretty quickly. But each time someone has said no, that's a lot more painful. And we tend to focus on that and remember those experiences more. So that's one. And then the other reason is something called egocentrism. And that means that we tend to be so focused on what's going on with us and our own emotional experience that we're really bad at sort of taking the other

person's perspective and recognizing what that person is feeling. So when we're really bad at sort of taking the other person's perspective and recognizing what that person is feeling. So when we're asking someone for something, we're really focused on how painful it would be for us to be rejected, how awkward it is to ask. A lot of us, you know, experience a lot of awkwardness and guilt and self-consciousness when we make a request. And we forget that that other person, you know, also is experiencing awkwardness. They find it awkward to say no. They, you know, also don't want to, you know, hurt the relationship. And that just like it hurts to be rejected, it's actually really painful to reject someone as well.

And so we kind of miss all those dynamics that make us think that it's pretty easy to say no, when in fact, it think that it's pretty easy to say no, when in fact it's not that easy for people to say no to us. One of the reasons I think people are reluctant to ask others for something is that if the person says no, then that has somehow damaged the relationship. When in fact, people say no probably more often because they just can't do whatever it is the person's asking and then they move on and don't think about it anymore but the asker is thinking oh gee now now i've damaged this relationship that's exactly right we actually have research showing that as well that when people get a no when they ask for something

they attribute that to something about themselves or the relationship. So, you know, they said no, because, you know, maybe they don't like me as much as I thought that they did, or maybe we're not as close as I thought that we were, or maybe this thing I'm asking for, there's something weird about it. And so we tend to attribute it to that when in fact, most no's are more about the context. They couldn't do it at that time. You know, something else was going on. There was just some sort of tradeoff that they couldn't make work.

And so when we ask people, once you get a no, what do you think if you ask this person something else, they would say? We find that people tend to think one no means future no's. That if I get one no, that means if I go back to this person, they're just always going to kind of say no, because it's about me. It's about our relationship. When in fact, what we find is that when someone says no to us, they actually feel pretty bad about that to the point where it makes them more likely to say yes the next time that we ask them for something. Well, you know the saying, it doesn't hurt to ask. And I've always believed that. Assuming that the ask is appropriate, what harm could it do? But I think everyone has felt that reluctance.

That, yeah, gosh, I really hate to ask. We often even say that. I really hate to ask. Well, why do you hate to ask? I mean, if people don't want to do something, they'll say no. But as you point out, they may say yes a lot more often than you think. My guest has been Vanessa Bonds. She is a social psychologist and professor of organizational behavior at Cornell.

The name of her book is You Have More Influence Than You Think, How We Underestimate Our Power of Persuasion and Why It Matters. And there is a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you, Vanessa. Thanks, Mike. This has been great. 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 Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. We use the words beauty and beautiful to describe people as well as places and objects. And when we see something or someone we consider beautiful, it catches our attention. But why? Why are we so drawn to beautiful things and beautiful people? Well, here to discuss this and take us all on a journey into the world of beauty is Anjan Chatterjee. He is Professor of Neurology, Psychology, and Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. And he did a really interesting TED Talk that's available on YouTube about how your brain decides what is beautiful. He also writes for Psychology Today on their website.

Hi, Anjan. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Thank you for inviting me, Mike. So when I look at someone, or I look at a landscape, or I look at a smartphone and say, oh, it's so beautiful, what am I saying? What does that mean for something to be beautiful? In each of those, there's probably something slightly different going on. At the core of our experience of beauty tends to be pleasure. And pleasure is a device, you can think of it as an experience that allows us to approach things. So very fundamental and elemental aspect of all mobile organisms is you approach something or you avoid something. And the question is, as organisms get more and more complex to the point of humans, what

are the kinds of things that drives an approach? And pleasure is one of those things. So let's take the kinds of things that drives an approach and pleasure is one of those things. So let's take the example of faces. There are certain features that people have discovered that tends to make the apprehension of faces beautiful. These tend to be faces that are broadly symmetric. If they're completely symmetric, which you can do digitally now, it gets a little weird. But in general, faces that are symmetric

are regarded as more attractive. Faces that are averaged, and this is a curious thing, which is if you take, say, 64 or 16 or 32 faces and you average them, you take their geometric means, so you get a face that is the average of all of those features, almost always the averaged face looks more beautiful than any of the individual faces that contributed to this. And this is something

that Galton at the end of the 19th century discovered completely serendipitously and has been replicated many times. The effects of estrogen, the kind of effects that estrogen has on women's faces and the kinds of effects that testosterone has on men's faces in terms of affecting features are also generally regarded as beautiful. And what are those features? For estrogen, it tends to be for women with larger eyes, with narrower chins, fuller lips. For men, it tends to be the kind of classic Dick Tracy, square jaw, heavier brow, those kinds of features. Well, it's normal to talk about people's beauty as it relates to their face, but there are a lot of things that

go into the decision that this person is beautiful. It could also be, you know, the way they're dressed, or are they really skinny, or are they very heavy, and all of that goes into the pot to determine if someone is beautiful, whether you realize it or not, all of that is going on in your assessment, right? Sure. You know, we also apprehend bodies the same way. You could also argue that the way someone sounds, their voice can be beautiful. You know, people who work in radio and podcasts like you typically have very beautiful voices. And so all of these things

are happening simultaneously. And our brains are very quick at apprehending all of this. Even before we're aware of our responses, our judgment that someone is beautiful, our brains are responding to this in an automatic way. But they're combining all of this information. And ultimately, this is all about mating and making babies, right? I mean, that's the purpose of all of this. That is the purpose when it comes to facial beauty and when it comes to facial beauty and physical beauty, particularly in the young people, which is what there has been most work on. If we're talking about places, for example, landscapes, it's a different story to be told. If we're talking about objects like artwork, it's also another different story to be told. So tell those stories. Well,

maybe not tell the whole story, but briefly, what's the point of that? Make the connection. Yeah, so the connection, again, for landscapes, the evolutionary argument is that the kind of landscapes that provide both safety and nourishment are what we end up finding beautiful. Historically, it has been argued that the way African savannas look, and there's a buzzword that academics use, a phrase, prospect and refuge. Prospect means you can see vast distances, so you can tell if there are any threats coming your way. And refuge is their safety and sources of nourishment. And we tend to think of landscapes that meet those criteria as generally beautiful. This plays out a little bit in architecture as well. One thing we find is that natural kinds, natural objects like faces and landscapes, people tend to be fairly consistent in

what they find to be beautiful. But for artifacts, so artifacts would be artworks or consumer products or even the built environment, people are much more variable. And if I could just continue on this theme a little bit, we have argued that our aesthetic experiences emerge out of a combination of the sensory properties of what we're looking at, our emotional systems. And a third part of this triad has to do with our knowledge, our meaning, our personal experiences. And that's really where variability comes in. So depending on where you've grown, what your education is, what your experiences are,

that overlay on sensory properties of our brain, which are more similar than they're different, and our emotional systems, which are also more similar than they're different, the overlay of our personal experiences on top of that is what makes us different and what we might regard as beautiful. What about, it seems that all these kinds of beauty, people, landscapes, things, there's like a time limit. Like, you could be married to the most beautiful spouse in the world, but after a while, you don't really notice it that much.

If you have a beautiful view out your window, it's beautiful when you first move in, but after a while, it's just the view out the windows. That beauty works as a means of attraction, but it wears off. Yeah, that's a fascinating question, which is what's the timeline of beauty? And you're absolutely right. It initially attracts you. And then we habituate to it. You know, whatever is provoking that kind of beauty often starts to become the new normal.

It is also the case with most examples of that kind of habituation. if you go away for a while and then come back to it, you again realize how beautiful it is, or you re-evoke those initial experiences. So the purpose of beauty is really an attraction more than it is any kind of long-lasting, pleasurable satisfaction? To a first approximation, initially, there is this kind of attraction. What people will, you think of a kind of automatic reaction followed by more of a deliberation. So certain kinds of beauty, let's take artwork, for example. People will return to the same artwork over and over that they quite like. And it is something that keeps, you know, keeps giving a certain kind of pleasure. Now, that's an example where you're not just staring at the same painting, you know, for hours on end. I think there is that kind of habituation that happens regardless. Why else is this important? You know, we do seem to, at least with people anyway,

we do seem to react, and there's, I know, been quite a bit of research about how attractive people make more money and they're treated better and they don't get traffic tickets and, you know, that we treat beautiful people differently than we treat non-beautiful people? We have been very interested in this question. And what are the consequences of exactly what you're pointing out that is sometimes referred to as the beauty is good stereotype?

One thing that we have in our research been finding is that there is the opposite and unfortunate side of that. birthmark, that viewers, when they're looking at faces like that, without even realizing, have an implicit bias against those faces, that the people with facial anomalies are less intelligent, less competent, less hardworking, less trustworthy, and so on. So I think beauty does have an effect in our day-to-day lives. One of the things that we are trying to do is to highlight and make sure that people understand those kinds of biases so that just because that's your initial reaction, your initial response to a face of which you have no other information, it doesn't have to be your final response to them. And being aware of that as a first step ends up being important to be able to counteract that. And if I could just add one more piece to that, we're also finding

that the opposite direction of beauty and good also seems to be true, which is that if people think of someone as being a really good person or a smart person or a competent person or a trustworthy person, it seems to also affect how they perceive the person, that the person starts to appear more attractive. And I think this is also an experience that many people have. You might meet someone for the first time, you don't know anything about them. You know, you have an initial reaction of how attractive you think they are. And as you get to know them, if you think they're a really good person, they start to look as if they're more attractive. Or if you find they're just not that pleasant to be around, they start to look less attractive.

So what's the big takeaway here, do you think? Like we were discussing in the beginning, beauty is something I know it when I see it. But beyond that, so what? Well, I think the way in which the basic idea that beauty around us makes us feel better. I sometimes make this argument in the reverse, which is if everybody wore the same clothes, clothes are primarily to cover our bodies and to keep us warm. If everybody wore the same clothes. If you think of food as being the primary function of food is to nourish us. If we just had all ate the exact same food, if we lived in houses that were perfectly functional, but they were all the same. Is that the kind of life anybody would want to live in? And so I think beauty and an attention to these kinds of

aesthetics in our environment is really one of the things that makes life interesting, life worth living, and gives a kind of joy to our existence. I have heard the advice for people who are not classically beautiful, who are not drop-dead gorgeous, that what you should do is make the most of what you do have, that with the clothes you wear and with your hair and your makeup, whatever things you do have that you can make the most of, that will move you down or up the beauty scale. Does it? Probably. I mean, to the extent that cosmetics, for example, are often designed to enhance those features that I was talking about. So eye makeup often is to highlight the eyes and make

the eyes look bigger. Lipstick is, this is for women, lipstick is often used to enhance the contrast and make the lips more prominent. So often the kinds of things that people try to do are enhancing those sorts of features that we tend to respond to automatically. So I think all of that is true. As I was saying, that being a good person makes you over time appear more attractive to other people. That's also something you can do. You know, but at the same time, it would be like, I love watching basketball, for example. I'm 5'9". There's no way. I'm pretty athletic. I was a decent track and field person, but there's no way I could ever be a fantastic basketball player.

There's just certain physical limitations. And I think the same thing is true with this kind of beauty, which is there are things you can do to get better, but an average looking person is never going to be a supermodel. And we all come into our lives with a set of limitations and that is one of them well we often see because we notice when it's not the case like if if some gorgeous person is with somebody who is looks to be out of their league like there's no way that that we do seem to find people that that tend to be in our league that we find them Is it that we find them attractive or we just look, we tend to not look outside our league? So your observation is exactly right. There are some differences. So when, again, these are all heterosexual norms, when women or when men are asked about who they find attractive, they put physical

attractiveness often at the top of their list of what they find attractive or what they're looking for in a partner. For women, and this has been shown across several cultures, attractiveness is certainly important. Physical attractiveness is certainly important, but it's not necessarily the top of the scale. So it might be power, it might be wealth, it might be the ability to provide resources tends to predominate. And so my guess is the examples you give when sometimes we think a person is not in the same league physically, it's more often that the woman is very beautiful and the man is physically not as beautiful would be my guess. I don't have empirical data for that, but I think that's probably true. But shy of that, I think people kind of find their own level. And so your general observation, I suspect is true, is that people pretty much sort themselves out in how they interact and pair up with each other. Well, it's interesting to get

your insight into this because we think we know what's beautiful and what goes into our decision of what's beautiful, but there's a lot going on under the surface, as you point out, that, you know, how good we think a person is can make them more or less attractive. It's really interesting. Anjan Chatterjee has been my guest. He is a professor of neurology, psychology, and architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, and he has a TED Talk that you can see on YouTube about how your brain decides what's beautiful. There's a link to that TED Talk in the show notes.

Have you ever looked closely at the back of a dollar bill? It tells a really remarkable story. If you have one, pull it out and take a look. The circle, that circle on the right-hand side, that circle appears every time the president speaks as the presidential seal. You'll also see that at every national cemetery and on most monuments to U.S. heroes. The bald eagle was selected as a symbol of victory, strength, and intelligence. In his beak, the E Pluribus Unum banner means,

From Many, One. He holds in his talons an olive branch on one side that he gazes on, and arrows on the other. This is to signify that he wants peace, but he's not afraid to fight to preserve peace. Interestingly, the number 13 is prominent in many ways on the dollar bill. There are 13 stars above the eagle's head for the 13 original colonies, 13 stripes on the flag, 13 steps on the pyramid in the left circle, 13 bars on the shield, 13 leaves on the olive branch, 13 arrows, 13 fruits, and there are 13 letters in E Pluribus Unum.

And that is something you should know. We can always use your help in spreading the word about this podcast. You know, word-of-mouth advertising is the best. That means the words have to come out of your mouth and tell someone else that you know or a couple of people you know about this podcast. 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 get your podcasts. It 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.