Something You Should Know - Why You See the World Differently Than Me & What Cellphones Do to Relationships

Episode Date: October 15, 2020

When you get angry, it seems normal to also get upset and maybe start yelling at whoever made you mad. Bad idea. This episode begins with a discussion how on to use anger constructively, so you get what you want without everyone being mad at each other. Source: Thomas A. Schweich, author of Staying Power (https://amzn.to/34Qrb85). You and I can look at the same thing and see it differently. You look at the world through filters and biases and I see the same world through my filters and biases. So we each have our own perception of the world and so does everyone else. What is so interesting is we seldom think about that. We tend to believe there is this objective reality – the world is the way it is and everyone sees the same thing. But that’s not so, according to Dennis Profitt, professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and author of the book Perception: How Our Bodies Shape Our Minds (https://amzn.to/3nPNhjI). Listen as he explains why you have your unique perceptions and why they are different from everyone else’s.  How much time do you spend on your cellphone every day? Probably a lot. For many of us, our cellphones are our constant companion. You probably stop and interact with your phone many times a day. So it is safe to say you have a relationship with that phone. Here to discuss how to manage and improve that relationship is Tchiki Davis, PhD. Tchiki is a technology consultant who writes the Click Here for Happiness blog for Psychology Today and she is author of Outsmart Your Smartphone: Conscious Tech Habits for Finding Happiness, Balance, and Connection IRL (https://amzn.to/2GQwxIa)  When was the last time you sent someone a handwritten note? If it has been a while, you need to hear why you need to start doing that again. It turns out the handwritten note can be very powerful when done correctly. https://www.handwrytten.com/resources/the-power-of-handwritten-notes/  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, the next time you get angry, try using that anger constructively. I'll tell you how. Then understanding perceptions and how you see the world differently than I do. What perception does is it tells us this is the way things are and we believe it.

And the notion that what we're seeing is our own world and that other people see a different world just doesn't seem to be possible or true. Then understanding the power of the handwritten note. It's a bigger deal than you think it is. And cell phones. They've become a big intrusion into our lives and relationships. It's not so much that we're on our phones that's maybe necessarily the bad thing. It's that we're actually using our phones instead of doing things that are good for our well-being. Like, we tend to interact with our neighbors less.

And those things don't tend to be very good for relationships. All this today on Something You Should Know. 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.

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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. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. you get your podcasts. Hi there. Welcome to Something You Should Know. As you have no doubt noticed, and I'm sure experienced, when you get angry, it's very tempting to yell and scream and just let it all out.

It would seem like that would feel really good. And yet, if the goal is to fix or improve whatever problem made you angry in the first place, screaming and yelling almost never works. People don't like to be yelled at, and they're much less willing to cooperate. Angry people who scream and yell are easy to dismiss. Think of it this way. Has anyone yelled or gestured at you while you were driving? Probably.

And when they did that, did you think, Wow, that guy's right. I'm a real jerk. Probably not. In fact, you probably thought that person was a real jerk. When you use anger wisely, though, it can be very powerful. How do you do that? Well, former Attorney General Janet Reno was well known for her effective use of anger. When she got angry at someone, she would sit them down and in a whisper tell the person why she was angry, unhappy, or disappointed. By being calm and quiet, she

was much more successful at making her point than if she yelled and screamed. And that is something you should know. You have your perceptions. It's how you see things. It's how you see the world. And it's probably very different than my perceptions or anyone else's perceptions. We can look at the same thing and see it differently because our perceptions are different. Everything we experience is filtered through our particular view of the world. And how that works and what it means

is really interesting, according to Dennis Prophet, who has had a 40-year tenure at the University of Virginia in the field of embodied cognition, and he's co-author of the book, Perception, How Our Bodies Shape Our Minds. Hi, Dennis. Hello, Mike. Thank you for inviting me. So explain what you mean by perception, what you've looked at in your research, and explain why this is so interesting and so important. What you see in the world is your world. That actually everybody is different, and over time on different occasions, you're different.

And these differences are reflected in perception. And this means that the world that you see is your world, and the world that other people see, even when looking out on the same scene, may be quite different. And all of this is something that we're unaware of. And I think that's because what perception does is it tells us this is the way things are, and we believe it. And the notion that what we're seeing is our own world and that other people see a different world just doesn't seem to be possible or true. Okay, so if there are two people standing on a cliff looking out at a scene and you say that they're seeing it through their own perception, what's the difference? How different are they seeing the same thing?

You and somebody else come to a cliff, you're going to see something that is, of course, very similar, you're going to see the same cliff. But if you're afraid of heights and your friend is not, you're going to see a much greater vertical extent than your friend does. And in fact, both of you are going to see an exaggerated cliff. So studies show that relative to a distance on a horizontal ground plane, when we look over an edge of a cliff, we overestimate its extent by about 50%. That's a lot. And if you're afraid of heights, then you're going to overestimate it by even more. So what you're seeing is the potential for falling off the cliff, which is exaggerating the vertical extent that makes it so dangerous. If you were a bird, this wouldn't happen.

A cliff has no consequence for you, and there's no exaggeration, and of course no fear of falling, to drive your perception in that way. So I guess the question is, so what? So two people see slightly, or maybe more than slightly, have different perceptions of the same thing, and that's important to point out because why?

It's important to point out because our assumptions typically are that everybody perceives the same thing, and then they reason differently. And so people from different political persuasions, for example, watch the same debate. And one person says, well, clearly, this candidate won. And the other person says, no, that candidate won. And they ask each other, well, how could you feel that way? You must be biased. And the other person says, no, no, no, I'm not biased. You must be biased. And what's going on is that they experienced the debate differently,

that they couldn't help but notice statements that were consistent with their own point of view, that were easy for them to understand. And as a consequence, what they each experienced was different. And now they're having an argument as if they're arguing about the same thing, and they're not. Well, we've all been in that discussion, haven't we? Yes, we've all been in that discussion, haven't we? Yes, we have. But I think the distinction that we're making is that it's not the case that people are living in the same world and reasoning about it in different ways. The biases that we have come in right at the very beginning, right in the initial experience of the world. If you're watching, for example, a sporting event,

you see all of the referee's egregious errors as they apply to problems that they're seeing with your team. And they're missing all of the fouls by the other team. But, of course, the people from the other side are seeing things in exactly the opposite way, but we're all watching the same game. And so what's the difference between perception and bias? It kind of sounds from the way you're describing it as if they're virtually the same thing. Well, you carry the biases around with you. You might think of biases as being like filters.

So you acquire biases through experience, and then those biases bias the experience that you're having at the present time. So let me give you an example to make it a little more concrete. Suppose that I take somebody whose native language or learned English in Minnesota and somebody else in Texas, and each speaks with an accent that is recognizable by the other. Well, they got their accents through acquiring language in a particular location where people spoke that way. Now, you never hear your own accent. The person from Minnesota thinks that the person from Texas is speaking with an accent,

and the person from Texas thinks that the person from Minnesota is speaking with an accent. Well, they're both speaking with an accent, but you can't hear your own. And this is what makes this so difficult for people sometimes to understand, is that you acquired your accent through experience, but it acts now as a filter for all of the experience that you have moving forward. And our other biases, be they political biases, social biases, individual differences in things like fear of the cliff, play into the perceptions that we have. So what does our bodies have to do with it? That's the subtitle of your book, How Our Bodies Shape Our Minds, so make that connection for me.

Okay, so all of these things derive from your body. So, for example, basic perceptions like how far away is something, let's say it's on the other side of an open field. Well, the way that you perceive that is in terms of how much walking will be required for me to walk from here to there. Now, you're not aware of that. What you believe you're seeing is the absolute distance, but it's not. It's how much will I have to walk in order to get there. And that how much I will have to walk turns out to be scaled by how many calories will it take me to walk from here to there, such that if you're wearing a backpack, the distance will seem greater. If you're overweight, if you're infirm, if you're elderly, the distance will seem greater. The same is true of hills. If you're looking at it, we greatly overestimate hills.

So a five-degree hill is viewed by most people to be about 20 degrees. The hills in San Francisco, people will often say are 50 or 60 degrees, when in fact the steepest hill in San Francisco is 18. And all of these hills seem steeper when you're fatigued or encumbered. People that are overweight see hills as being much steeper, stairways as being much steeper, and overweight people who go on exercise and weight reduction regimes begin to see stairs and hills as less steep as they become more fit and lose weight. Yeah, well, and that certainly makes sense as you describe it because, you know, obviously some elite Olympic

athlete looks at that hill and says, you know, piece of cake, and some 95-year-old with walkers looking at that hill thinking, can't be done. That's right. That's exactly right. When you're with somebody who may be overweight and they seem reluctant to go up a set of stairs or to walk up a hill, what you need to appreciate is you would probably feel the same way if the stairs or the hill looked that way to you. But if those two people, the 95-year-old and the Olympic athlete, are both looking up at that hill, and I'm the Olympic athlete, I'm able to sympathize with and see that hill through their

eyes and know they're not going to make it. It's not like I don't say, well, what do you mean you can't make it? I mean, I get it, that you see that hill differently than I do. That's a degree of empathy that not everybody is able to achieve. If you work, as I have occasionally, with people who are in wheelchairs, people make handicap accessibility ramps that scare them. And the problem is that the architects who designed them followed guidelines, but they have not been able to view the ramps through the eyes of people that are in wheelchairs. Going down a long ramp, even though it's very, very shallow, is very scary for people in wheelchairs

because they're afraid they can't or won't be able to stop. We're talking about perceptions and how you view the world is different than the way I view the world. And we're talking with Dennis Prophet. He is author of the book Perception, How Our Bodies Shape Our Minds. 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, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemson, Emily Blunt, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others, in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to 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. 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 looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars.

Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. So Dennis, one of the ways that I think perception is really interesting

is in human attraction, how some people find certain people attractive and other people think they're not so attractive, and how those perceptions are created and why they happen. It turns out that women are attracted to the body odor of men whose genetic composition is maximally different from their own. So let me explain how the experiment's done. You have men wear undershirts, white T-shirts. They wear them for a day. They give them back to the science lab. The science lab puts them in boxes, takes them to research participants who are women, and they take the shirts out of the box and smell them, and they rate them for how attractive and

pleasant they smell. And what you find is that women choose and rate as most attractive and appealing the smell of men whose genetic immune system coding is maximally different from their own. And what this is doing is it's providing an index of physical or reproductive fitness. And completely outside of awareness, people find attractive men whose genetic makeup is maximally different from their own, and they do that through smelling a body odor, something we are completely unaware of. We find people attractive, but we can't say why.

But we're driven by the same sorts of things that other mammals are driven by, smell. And so what do we do with this information? Is it just good to know and to try to be more empathetic to the way other people see the world, or is there something more to it? If you want to understand both what it is that you're experiencing and what other people are experiencing, to realize that the world that you see is your world. So, of course, we want to believe that the world is as we perceive it. You want to look both ways before you cross the street, because if you see a car and it's going to hit you, you don't want to step in front of it.

So perception is designed so that we believe it. Seeing is believing. But it's more complicated than that. Seeing is believing for you. And again, we tend to assume that everybody sees the world the same, and then they just have these wacko ideas that make them think about things in ways that are biased relative to the way that I think about things. But it's much more immediate than that. We are living in a world that is of our own creation, and it's a world that is appropriate for us, but it's based on our experiences and our bodies and people that have different experience and different bodies

experience the world differently. If you look at infants, by one year of age, infants that have only heard a particular language and have only seen people from a particular ethnic group prefer hearing speech in that language and prefer seeing the faces of people from that ethnic group, even unfamiliar ones. And they're less inclined to like those from other ethnic groups or people speaking different languages. If those infants hear, another group of infants,

if those infants hear other languages and see people from diverse ethnic groups, then they like them all. They're all familiar. Now, this is a very reasonable heuristic or rule of thumb that is built into the way that we come to understand things. Things that are familiar and that have been associated with only good outcomes are safe and good. Something new comes along, we're wary of it. And this happens in early infancy, and the kinds of biases that we build up against people from other ethnic backgrounds

and the ones that we're familiar with develop from the first day of life. And they're hard to get rid of. And they're hard to become aware of. So what about when perception clashes with the truth. For example, people's perception is that it feels like the world is pretty flat, but we know the world isn't flat, but there are some people who believe the world is flat. That's their perception, that's their world as they see it,

but they happen to be incorrect. If I show somebody a five-degree hill, it actually looks really steep. I was hiking yesterday with a friend who avoided a hill because it was just really steep. She had a knee injury and she didn't want to ascend it. But it's five degrees, it's practically nothing, but it doesn't look that way. The five-degree hills actually are about 20 degrees normatively just across the population of healthy people. And for people with knee injuries or people that are overweight or otherwise have trouble walking, it looks considerably steeper. Now, it looks like it's five.

I mean, it looks like it's 20 degrees to me. I know that it's five, I mean, it looks like it's 20 degrees to me. I know that it's five degrees. And what I have learned is that hills, when they look like they're 20 degrees, are actually five. The world, to me, looks flat just as it looks like to everybody else because we can't see the curvature of the earth. The problem with a person who thinks the world is flat really is thought. It's not perception. The world looks flat to everybody.

We're all wrong. What Copernicus and Galileo did is they said, you're not the center of the universe. The earth is not the center of the universe. The way that you perceive things is not the way things are. And they got in a lot of trouble for that. A lot of people didn't like that idea. And what we're saying is that the way you perceive the world

is not the way the world is. It's the way the world is for you. It's subjective. It's your world. And other people experience the world differently. And it's really interesting to try, as you brought up, to see the world through the eyes of others. So I certainly understand that my world is my world and not necessarily anybody else's, that my perceptions are different, but also my perceptions change

within me, that certainly, depending on my mood or whatever, I may look at the same thing differently than I did yesterday. My perceptions change, right? There's a beautiful study that was done in Israel with parole judges. They looked at lots of judges and hundreds of cases. And here's what they find. If you're a parole judge, then your default is somebody comes up, you're presented with cases, the person is incarcerated,

and you have to decide, they're eligible for parole, whether they should actually be released on parole. The default is you're going to say no. You say no to almost everybody. But first thing in the morning, the first few cases that you get, and this is true across all of the judges, you're actually likely to say yes on a fairly high basis. But as the cases keep coming, very quickly you go down to almost zero. Nobody gets parole.

And then twice in the morning sessions, there is a break. And during that break, you leave chambers and you have a snack and you come back. And now the likelihood for the first case that you get after your snack is better than 50% that you're going to give that person a parole. And a couple cases later, it's back down to zero. And now you have another break with a snack. And the same thing happens again. Now you think you're the same person. You think it's the cases that differ.

That's your perception. You never saw the connection between every time that I do this, I'm much more likely to give a parole right after I've had a snack. But that's what you do. You attribute it to the cases that you're presented. In fact, it's you. It's really interesting. You're changing continuously, but you attribute it to the world. We don't see ourselves change. We see the world change.

Well, all of this makes sense on an intellectual level as we're talking about it. What's so hard is to remember it as you live your life, because as we live our life, we operate thinking that what we see is objective reality rather than just our world. And as we were talking about before, it is like language accents. You can't hear your own accent. You're unable to do it. You don't have an accent. Everybody else does. You don't change your criteria for deciding whether people are going to be freed from prison or not. It's determined by the case and by your understanding of the law. The fact that you're highly biased by the amount of glucose that happens to be in your blood

is not something that you can become aware of. But if you understand the bias, it will help you treat others better. Well, this is such a perfect example of a topic that applies to everyone all the time and that we never think about or talk about. So we just did. We've been speaking to Dennis Prophet, who has been at the University of Virginia for several years, and he is co-author of the book, Perception, How Our Bodies Shape Our Minds. You'll find a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes.

Thank you very much, Dennis. Appreciate it. Thank you, Mike. I really enjoyed talking with you. It was a lot of fun. Thank you very much. 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. 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. All you have to do is look around and see all the people walking around looking at their cell phones, seemingly all day long,

to realize that cell phones have to be having an effect on us. Clearly, though, we're not going to toss out our cell phones. They have become a very important part of daily life. So maybe what we need are some tools to better coexist with our phones. And that's just what Chickie Davis is here to discuss. Chickie is a technology consultant. She writes the blog Click Here for Happiness for Psychology Today. And she is author of the book Outsmart Your Smartphone. Hey, Chickie, welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me.

So I think everyone has heard that too much time on your phone or on any device can make you miserable. But what specifically is the concern? What's going on when we spend a lot of time on our phone? Well, there's some research that shows that passively scrolling through your social media can make you envious or you basically compare yourselves to other people and it hurts your well-being. But if you actively engage in social media, for example, by reaching out to others or posting something positive, you can actually improve your well-being. So the research isn't clear on technology being kind of this evil. it's really about how we use it. Well, we certainly use it a lot because you can walk down any street in any town or city and all you see are people walking down the sidewalk with their heads bent down, staring at their phone.

We are immersed in it. Yeah, we certainly are. And that is, of course, a problem, but mainly because we're not engaging with each other. It's not so much that we're on our phones. That's maybe necessarily the bad thing. It's that we're actually using our phones instead of doing things that are good for our well-being. Like we tend to interact with our neighbors less and we tend to be, you know, like a fubbing is when we look down to our phone and kind of snub the person that we're with. And those things don't tend to be very good for relationships. I remember not all that long ago, several years ago when, you know, there was always, there was this debate about, you know, is it proper when you go out to dinner with someone to answer your phone? This is like even before smartphones to answer and talk on the phone when you're with somebody else at dinner. And some people thought it was fine. Other people thought it was amazingly rude. And now it just is. I mean, that's just what people do. If they get a text or they get

a phone call, they just take it wherever they are. They do. And I aim to kind of convince people to try to challenge that thing that has become normal. For example, with my friends, I just intentionally will not pick up my phone. And people like to treat people as they're being treated. And so then everyone around you will stop doing it as much as they used to. So we actually have a lot more power over our situation than we give ourselves credit for. And so what's your message? What are you trying to get people to understand or do differently or what? Like all of us, I was seeing all of these articles about

how technology is ruining a generation and how technology is evil, but my work is in building wellness apps. And so I was really clear about technology isn't necessarily the bad guy. There's actually these different ways we can use it that can help us. So I've been focusing on all the different ways we can interact with technology that are actually good for us. And I aim to try to tell people how to do that. So how do I do that? There are so many different ways. So one of them is, again, on social media, if you're like getting super involved in these angry arguments, it's not going to make you feel very good.

But if you instead make the effort to post positive things or write supportive messages to people, you can actually strengthen your relationships and that can end up being really good for well-being. So there's all these little ways that we can use technology that are good for us and aren't so problematic. How else? How else? I mean, I think people have a sense of this. They've heard on the news or they've heard somewhere that social media is making you envious or that it's making you miserable and that, you know, you're always comparing yourself to other people. But it doesn't seem people don't seem to go, oh, I guess I better stop doing that. They just keep they they're like in a rut. They're in a almost like a habit.

It's true. And smartphone addiction does appear to be a real thing where, you know, you just kind of get hooked on your social media or on your phone. So I suggest people taking a break. There have been studies that have shown that taking, I think it's a week-long break from social media actually results in increases in well-being. And by doing so, you kind of get a sense for the ways in which it's affecting you, and then you can re-engage more intentionally. But I know people, and I guess I would even consider myself in this group, there is no way in the world that I'm not going to check Facebook or Instagram for seven days.

There's just, that's not going to happen. Then you can definitely use it in ways that are better for you. So another example that you requested was, for example, you can practice things like savoring. Go back on, you know how Facebook actually does this, where they pull up your old memories and then you're like, oh yeah, that great thing happened and they're reminding me of it. That's good. I love that. I love when they do that. And there's an old picture from seven years ago that'll pop up of my son or somebody. I love that they do that. It's really a good reminder of the good things that have happened. And you can create that for yourself by going to, you know, your page or your friend's page

or something to just kind of reflect on the positive things that have happened in the past. What about the idea? I talk to people all the time who get in those political discussions and, which, you know, as soon as I hear that, I think, oh, well, this isn't going to go well. This is, because you never convince anybody else to, oh, you're right. I don't know what I was thinking. I'm such an idiot. And so I wonder if you get a lot of things in social media that are against your point of view in politics, is it good to eliminate those or would it be better to find things that bring things into your feed that are more pro-you rather than eliminate the things that are anti you?

That's a really good question. I think one of the challenges is that the way that social media is created, it creates these kind of filter bubbles where they only show you things that elicit either like high arousal positive emotions or high arousal negative emotions like anger. And so usually on the anger side, and so your feed actually fills up with things that either aggravate you or things that you believe in. And you don't have the opportunity to look at things from different perspectives. So I actually think that the broader amount of opinions you can get the better because then next time you're arguing with someone, you might actually have a better understanding of how they think about the topic or where they're

coming from. And you might have a better chance of convincing them. Or even if you don't convince them, you'll have a better chance of strengthening the relationship by coming at the problem in a more kind of like supportive understanding way. Have you looked at or is there any research about just generally what's going on with the political discussions on social media, whether they're helpful, whether they're destructive? It seems like they're destructive to me, but what do you say? It seems destructive to me that it's definitely not my area of expertise. I kind of come at all of this from a positive psychology lens and figuring out how we can apply positive psychology to our use of technology.

And so if you just think about it from what we know from the positive psychology research, we know that empathy and kindness and connection and all those things are good for both relationships and our well-being. And so just anecdotally or just seems intuitively that having an angry conversation where you're calling each other names is probably not good for any of those things. You think? You think? Really? How do you suggest people deal with the FOMO thing of constantly checking,

constantly hearing your phone go off, little rings and dings and things. That can't be a good thing. Yeah. One of the activities that I suggest people do is kind of make it a game, right? Nobody wants to turn their phones off. If we're thoughtful about it, we can choose at least some moments where we don't need to have our bings and dings and phones on. But if you make it into a game and basically you're like maybe you like ask your friends to hold you accountable and give you points every time they hear your phone bing and ding. And then like you could if you get to like some amount of points, you have to buy them dinner or something. I feel like we need to stop treating this like this sort of authoritarian stop using your phone kind of approach. I think it would work better if we can work with others and they can help us achieve whatever goals we set for

ourselves regarding our phones. Because there is a lot of advice out there about, you know, check your email twice a day and then people will be trained not to expect you to respond right away or put your phone down for five hours a day and don't look at it. But people won't do that. I mean, the advice is great, but people won't do that. Yeah, exactly. And that's a big part of what inspired this sort of area of research I've been working on is that you can give people all the advice in the world, but if it's not doable, if they can't execute it, then it's not helpful. So instead of telling people to get off their phones,

I work really hard to help people just engage with their phones in a healthier way. And so if I wanted to engage with my phone in a healthier way, and I've never really thought about that before, help me put my toe in the water here. Well, first thing is to sort of just self-reflect. And like once you're in an app and you're there and then you leave, just take a moment and be like, how does that make me feel? Do I want to do that? Do I want to do this differently? And then when you're using these types of apps, you really want to choose your situations carefully.

So if there are people who like constantly aggravate you in one of your social media accounts, maybe don't engage with them and instead engage with the people that make you feel better. And are there good beginner apps that you recommend, good things to do specifically with your phone that will kind of warm you up to this? The apps that I work on are explicitly like using your phone to engage in positive psychology habits. So for example, the Greater Good Science Center does really great work helping you like use your phone to create a gratitude list or write a self-compassionate letter. And that way you can build the skills that help promote well-being on your phone. And it just makes it a little bit easier. And so how does the app help you do that, that a piece of paper and a pencil doesn't? It doesn't. It just makes it accessible. So like if you're on the train on the way to work, you're like not going to have a pencil and a piece of paper. And so it's just

like, okay, I have two minutes. What can I do now? And so I think that's like really everybody's attention is just being, you know, ripped in a million different directions. And so having the opportunity to have this little device, basically like a little well-being device, if you're using, you know, a well-being app, it is helpful for a lot of people. And so what are some of those well-being apps? There's, oh my God, so many of them now. I can't remember exactly the number, but there's like thousands of apps in the App Store. Some of the ones I've worked on involve mindfulness.

I'm sure you've heard of Headspace as a really popular mindfulness app. There's some that help you kind of train your brain to focus more on positive information. There's gratitude apps. There are a whole variety of different tools that you can find. But could you recommend some specifics? Yeah, the Greater Good in Action app is my favorite. It's all based in research there. And they're created by the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley.

And they've got like 60 or so different activities in all sorts of different areas. So some of them help you with resilience. Some of them help you with connection and empathy and kindness. And it's really a broad range of different tools that you can use on your phone or on your computer or whatever. Headspace is also really great. It's a mindfulness app where it's just like the soothing voice of the person who delivers these mindful meditations is really great. There are tons of others. I'm reluctant to recommend ones that don't have a lot of research behind them. I think that people also benefit differently from different types of apps. So

it's basically the skills that you're struggling with most are going to be the skills that you most benefit from learning. So if you're struggling with mindfulness, a mindfulness app may be great. But if you're struggling with something like self-compassion, learning that skill might be the best. That's why it's really important to just figure out what fits you and pursue something that you find personally useful. Well, it's interesting to think about the relationship we have with our phone because it just kind of crept up on us. You know, we used to use our phone just occasionally as a phone, and then it became a smartphone, and it had apps, and we started using it more and more. And now, you know, it's our constant companion. And there hasn't been a lot of discussion about, well, what about

that relationship? How do we, since we're spending so much time with the phone, how do we have a better relationship with it? Yeah. And so to take a few minutes to actually think about that relationship and how this thing can actually help rather than just be kind of victim of whatever comes at you is probably a really smart thing to do. Yeah, and I don't think a lot of people think about it that way.

We think about how our relationships with everything else, like our relationships with people and with food and with substances like alcohol, those are important things to think about. And now our phone, too, sort of represents this thing that we need to be thoughtful about how we use it and how we interact with it. Well, it's nice too, because so many of the discussions about this is how horrible cell phones are and what they're doing to you and how destructive they are. And as it turns out, from what you've just been discussing, there are ways to use your cell phone to actually make life better. Chiki Davis has been my guest. She is a technology consultant and author of the book,

Outsmart Your Smartphone. You will find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Chiki. Thank you so much. Saying thank you in an email seems to be the preferred way to do things today. No one sends handwritten notes anymore, which is exactly why you should. A handwritten note is more powerful than ever if you want to impress someone, precisely because it is so rare. Here are a few other facts about sending notes in

the mail. One reason people don't send notes is they think they have lousy handwriting. But that's not really an issue. Research has shown that people are very critical of their own handwriting, but not so much of other people's. So don't let that stop you. And a handwritten note says more than the words in it. What it really says is,

you mean enough to me that I took the time to write you this. You have my undivided attention. And that is a lot. A note only needs to be about three or four sentences. And the impact of that can be huge. And that is something you should know. You should subscribe to this podcast. It makes listening so much easier. You get the episodes as soon as they're available. Subscribing is free and it couldn't be easier. You just hit the subscribe button on whatever platform you're listening on. 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. 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.