How You Are Being Psychologically Targeted & The Extraordinary Power of Curiosity

Speaker 1 Today, on something you should know, how many calories do you burn just eating the food you eat? Then, you're being targeted based on the data collected about you.

Speaker 1 And there is a lot of data collected about you.

Speaker 2 Every person every hour generates about six gigabytes of data, so that's an enormous amount of data. And it's incredibly cheap to get hold of.

Speaker 2 But for me, the really big question is not just who collects what data, but really what do they use it for.

Speaker 1 Also, do you love your snooze alarm or hate it? There are some things worth knowing about it. And curiosity.
It's a powerful tool and there are a lot of ways to make it work for you.

Speaker 3 Curiosity inspires curiosity in others oftentimes. And so what I mean by that is when you are getting curious about someone else, oftentimes they will be inspired to give that curiosity back to you.

Speaker 3 And, you know, researchers sometimes call this like the give and take spiral.

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Speaker 1 Something you should know. Fascinating intel.
The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life today.

Speaker 1 Something you should know.

Speaker 1 Mike Carruthers.

Speaker 1 Hi there.

Speaker 1 You can probably hear it in my voice. I have a

Speaker 1 a nasty cold and it's making me sound funny, but you know, the show must go on, so let's go on.

Speaker 1 Here's something you've probably wondered about, because you know that all food has calories in it, but the act of eating the food must burn calories. But how much?

Speaker 1 Well, it actually depends on what food you're talking about. When you burn some of the calories you eat simply by digesting them, it's called the thermic effect.

Speaker 1 Overall, it's about 10% of the calories that you consume are burned up through digestion. However, fats have only about a 3% thermic effect.

Speaker 1 That means if you eat 100 fat calories, you'll only burn about 3 of them from digestion. Vegetables and fruits have a thermic effect of about 20%.

Speaker 1 Proteins have a thermic effect of about 30%.

Speaker 1 If you eat 300 protein calories, you'll burn off 90 90 calories while digesting them. You may be able to increase the thermic effect.
One way is by increasing your muscle mass.

Speaker 1 People with more muscle mass burn more calories digesting food than people with more body fat.

Speaker 1 There is also reason to believe that not eating two hours before you go to bed and chewing your food carefully and thoroughly can amp up the thermic effect. And that is something you should know.

Speaker 1 I'm sure you've heard conversations about how companies keep personal information about you. We've talked about that here.

Speaker 1 And you probably think, or I've always thought, that it's stuff like credit card information or what products you've purchased, or perhaps somebody is tracking your activities online.

Speaker 1 But as you're about to hear, It is far more than that.

Speaker 1 With every app you get or credit card you get or website you shop at somewhere in the fine print, you agreed to allow many of these companies to not only track what you do and what you buy and other various personal information about you, you also give them permission to sell that information to pretty much anybody who wants to buy it.

Speaker 1 So your very personal data is out there and people are using it to do something called psychological targeting.

Speaker 1 And this should be a concern to you and everyone else, as you're about to hear, from Sandra Matz.

Speaker 1 She is a professor at Columbia Business School and has an excellent TED Talk about psychological targeting.

Speaker 1 She is author of a book called Mind Masters, the Data-Driven Science of Predicting and Changing Human Behavior. Hi, Sandra.
Thank you for coming on and talking about this.

Speaker 2 Thank you so much for having me, Mike.

Speaker 1 So first, I guess we must define psychological targeting and what it is so we know what we're all talking about here. So help me understand it as briefly briefly and as simply as possible.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so the way that I think of psychological targeting is essentially the ability of algorithms and computers to read our mind.

Speaker 2 So, taking all of the data that we generate on a daily basis, anything from your social media data to your credit card swipes, the sentences that are embedded in your smartphone, algorithms can take these data, translate it into really intimate insights of who we are on a psychological level, and then use these insights to influence our behavior.

Speaker 1 And And so, can you give me like a real-world example of how this works?

Speaker 2 The classic example there was: Facebook in 2015 was essentially accused of predicting whether teenagers, so really part of the most vulnerable population,

Speaker 2 was potentially suffering from something like depression, low self-esteem, anxiety. And then they used those insights to try and target them with ads or sell them out to advertisers.

Speaker 2 You could also imagine the complete opposite.

Speaker 2 But if you can figure out that someone might be deviating from their typical behavior, they might be sliding gradually into a depression, why not connect them with some of the support that they would need?

Speaker 2 Why not reach out to some of their loved ones, their caregivers to say, hey, something seems to be off. Why don't you reach out and

Speaker 2 try to provide some support?

Speaker 1 So you're saying that instead of just gathering that data that points to a problem like kids suffering from depression, rather than sell those names to or those contacts to advertisers, the other thing you could do with that data is to help those people.

Speaker 2 So for me, it's really a question of

Speaker 2 the insights that we can get about people's psychology has really these two sides to it. On some level, we can use it against people, right? We can use it to manipulate and exploit.

Speaker 2 But for me, the bigger question is, what if we use it the other way? What if we actually use it to help people?

Speaker 1 So when I thought, I mean, when I think of psychological targeting, I don't know all that much about it, but I think of more of things like, you know, if I'm searching online for, you know, a ski jacket, all of a sudden I'm going to see lots of ads for ski jackets.

Speaker 1 And that that's psychological targeting.

Speaker 2 Yeah. For me, at the fundamental level, psychological targeting is really a way of understanding people.
So the same way that in an offline context back in the day, when it was just us living

Speaker 2 with other people, we always try to understand who's on the other side, right? We don't don't talk to a three-year-old the same way that we talk to our spouse or the way that we talk to our boss.

Speaker 2 So any offline conversation is on some level customized and tailored. We try and figure out which topics might be the most interesting.
We try and figure out how do we talk to people.

Speaker 2 Even kids know that, right? Kids know exactly how to talk to mom to get something versus dad to get something. And for me, psychological targeting is essentially taking this idea to the online space.

Speaker 2 So it's trying to understand people and then using these insights to potentially influence their behavior and persuade them to do something.

Speaker 2 And sometimes that is in their best interest and sometimes it's not.

Speaker 1 So my example is psychology. I mean, if I'm looking for a ski jacket, you can use that information to send me ads for ski jackets.
I'm being psychologically targeted.

Speaker 2 The way that I would think about the example that you gave is much more of a behavioral targeting approach. So I take a very specific behavioral cue.

Speaker 2 So in this case, you're searching for a ski jacket, and I use that to predict future behavior.

Speaker 2 So that's a very behaviorist assumption of like, well, your past behavior directly predicts your future behavior. The psychological part comes in when we try to make sense of you holistically.

Speaker 2 So instead of saying, well, you're interested in a ski jacket and maybe you've visited a certain restaurant, maybe there's something that you've posted about on social media and we take those cues in isolation, what psychological targeting does, it's trying to put together these puzzle pieces.

Speaker 2 So instead of saying, well, it's just a ski jacket, can we learn something about maybe you're being very adventurous, maybe you're being very active, and that kind of almost brings out the person behind the data.

Speaker 1 And what happens to that data? I mean, who's doing this and what are they, how are they storing it and where is it going and who gets access to it?

Speaker 2 That's a great question because generally speaking, the data is out there, right?

Speaker 2 Every person every hour generates about six gigabytes of gigabytes of data. So that's an enormous amount of data.
And it's incredibly cheap to get hold of.

Speaker 2 That's because there's all of these data brokers out there. There's a lot of first-party data that companies collect, that obviously governments collect.

Speaker 2 But for me, the really big question is not just who collects what data, but really what do they use it for.

Speaker 2 And that's also what I think recent regulations are trying to put a lot more front and center.

Speaker 1 But what kind of data is it? I mean, is it a profile? Is it a report that, you know, Mike Carruthers likes ski jackets, but he also

Speaker 1 is a funny guy? I mean, what does it say?

Speaker 2 Yeah, so at the very basic level, it is really just these individual data points, right? And that is already a lot.

Speaker 2 So that could be anything from, again, what you post on social media, but also every time you swipe your credit card.

Speaker 2 That gives us a very intimate insight into not just your routines and habits, but also like, where are you? Who do you potentially meet? Same is true for smartphones, right?

Speaker 2 They come embedded with a gazillion sensors that make sure that your phone works the way it should. But it also means that I capture your location with the GPS records pretty much all the time.

Speaker 2 I can see who you're talking to, who you send messages to, phone showing up in the same place gives me a sense of who you're connected to.

Speaker 2 So at the very beginning, all of these data points just float out there in isolation.

Speaker 2 Now, that's where AI and machine learning comes in, because we can translate these individual traces into psychological profiles. And it used to be the case that you needed your own model to do this.

Speaker 2 Now with generative AI and all of these models like ChatGPT, you can essentially just take Mike's social media data and ask ChatGPT, hey, based on all of these traces, based on what he talks about online, who do you think Mike is?

Speaker 2 Just give me a sense of his personality, of his values, and so on.

Speaker 2 And these models do a remarkable job at translating data into psychological profiles, even though they've never been explicitly trained to do so.

Speaker 1 And so since you study this, is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Speaker 2 It's a double-edged sword, right?

Speaker 2 So the moment that I have the ability to peek into your mental health and potentially change it, that means that I can use it the way that I just described to help you. But it can also mean

Speaker 2 going back to the previous example, as Facebook was trying to use it to say, well, here's a teenager who's clearly struggling and who might be the most susceptible to the ads that you're showing them.

Speaker 2 So it very much depends on how you use it. And for me,

Speaker 2 the challenge that we have right now is that it all rests on the assumption that once users can essentially make their own decisions, right?

Speaker 2 The idea of a lot of the data protection regulations are like, well, just explain to users what's happening with their data and then just give them the control to decide whether they want to do it or not.

Speaker 2 But it's an incredibly complicated space, right? Like, if I really wanted to manage my data all by myself, that would be a 24-7 full-time job.

Speaker 2 And it would mean that I would have to continuously keep up with the latest technology.

Speaker 2 So for me, shifting towards this: how do we amplify some of the positive use cases while also kind of trying to protect us from abuses just means that we have to do a much better job at protecting consumers.

Speaker 2 And that could take different forms.

Speaker 1 You had said that,

Speaker 1 I think you had said a moment ago that the average person generates how much data in a day or an hour?

Speaker 2 An hour, it's six gigabytes.

Speaker 2 So this is, it's, I think I at some point calculated that it's like half a million times more than what the computer use that we used to that we launched the challenger rocket to space had had capacity for.

Speaker 2 In just one hour, we generate that much data. And so it's absolutely insane.

Speaker 1 Well, how am I doing that? I don't, because

Speaker 1 I don't feel that busy. I don't feel like I'm generating all that data.
How am I doing that?

Speaker 2 And for me, that's actually the interesting part because most of the data that we generate is

Speaker 2 we don't intentionally create it, right? So in psychology, there's this distinction between identity claims. So this is all of the data that you know about.

Speaker 2 This is you putting something on social media because you want to send a signal that you're maybe open-minded, extroverted, and so on.

Speaker 2 There's a second category of data, and that's what we call behavioral residue. So those are all of the traces that you leave and create without really thinking about it.

Speaker 2 So again, take your smartphone, for example. There's so many sensors embedded in that.
So every kind of second, I get a snapshot of where you are based on your GPS record.

Speaker 2 Again, it might not seem super intrusive or intimate if I know the specific location that you're in, but I can easily infer where you live. I can easily infer who you meet.

Speaker 2 And then there's all of these other things like credit card spending, the fact that we have cameras now on every corner.

Speaker 2 I think in New York, you can't go from lower Manhattan to the upper west side of where I'm based without being seen by a camera, unless you swim through the Hudson, which I don't recommend.

Speaker 2 So there's all of these data points that we generate without really thinking. And that just accumulates to these six gigabytes.

Speaker 1 We're talking about psychological targeting. Sandra Matz is my guest.

Speaker 1 She's a professor at Columbia Business School and author of the book Mind Masters: the data-driven science of predicting and changing human behavior.

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Speaker 1 So Sandra, when a camera captures me walking down the street, does my image get get recognized? Do they use facial recognition and they know who I am?

Speaker 1 And then does that image get paired with all this other data as part of a package of information about me?

Speaker 2 Yeah, so that very much depends on which entity you're thinking about. If you're thinking about governments,

Speaker 2 Easiest thing to do because with facial recognition, it's extremely easy to pick up, even if you're wearing a mask. That's one of the things that we've learned.

Speaker 2 It's extremely easy to pick up who you are using these cameras.

Speaker 2 And then by mapping it against the database, and there's data brokers out there that are selling these databases to commercial entities as well. So it's not just governments.

Speaker 2 It's extremely easy, right? It's like, I need your face, I need a name, and then I can connect it across the board.

Speaker 1 The companies that do this make money because they then sell the information to other companies.

Speaker 1 Is that the business model?

Speaker 2 Yeah, so there's different different business models. So the one that I just mentioned, data brokers, in my opinion, is actually the worst because they're not creating any value.

Speaker 2 The only thing that they do is they collect your data and they make a profit by selling it on to third parties.

Speaker 2 Now, the other business model is essentially trying to see, well, how can I use the data that I collect about you to either capture your attention, keep you on a platform, provide service that is better than anything that I could do without the data.

Speaker 2 And there, you could at least make the argument that there is

Speaker 2 value being generated by saying, I understand you much better. Think of Netflix, right?

Speaker 2 Like, if there's just no way that you can get through all of the context on Netflix or Amazon without some kind of filtering and some kind of recommendation.

Speaker 2 So, in this case, the business model is essentially saying the more data I can collect about you, the better I understand you, the better the service will be that I offer.

Speaker 2 And obviously, then the business bottom line is that the higher the profits, but also hopefully, the better the user experience.

Speaker 1 There seems to to be like two competing thoughts here that

Speaker 1 people are afraid that all this data is being collected about them, but then it also seems that people kind of have thrown their hands up and said, well, there's nothing you can do.

Speaker 1 So let's not even worry about it.

Speaker 1 And I don't,

Speaker 1 should we be worried about it?

Speaker 2 I think we should absolutely be worried about it. And it's funny because I teach this class on the ethics of personal data.

Speaker 2 And there's always someone who raises their hand and says, well, I I don't care that my data is out there. I have nothing to lose.
I have nothing to hide.

Speaker 2 And to me, that's a very privileged position to be in. And it's also a little bit short-sighted, right?

Speaker 2 So if you're not worried about your data being out there, that just means that you're currently in a really good spot.

Speaker 2 But there's the saying that I have is that data is permanent, but leadership isn't. So you have no idea what this is going to look like tomorrow.

Speaker 2 I think in the U.S., the Roe versus Wade Supreme Court decision made this painfully realistic for almost half the population in the US, right?

Speaker 2 So overnight, suddenly women using period tracking apps, searching stuff on Google, just having their smartphone with them, tracking their GPS location, had to worry about someone knowing about some of the very intimate aspects of their life, whether they might be pregnant, having an abortion, that they otherwise wouldn't have wanted to share just based on their data.

Speaker 2 So for me, this idea that, well, we've given up is a really risky gamble. And I think there's better ways in which we can deal with this.

Speaker 1 Aaron Powell, Jr.: What about the people who think, or because they say so, that they're off the grid. They're not shopping online.
They're not doing things that they're not using email.

Speaker 1 So nobody can track them, to which you would say.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's one of my favorite comments that I oftentimes get when I give talks. And it's almost impossible, right?

Speaker 2 Unless you live out there somewhere in the woods and grow your own vegetables, you're going to generate data. So we talked about credit card swipes.

Speaker 2 There's a reason why the mafia uses cash because you can't trace it. It's not true for credit cards.
It's not true for payment apps. You carry your smartphone with you pretty much 24-7.

Speaker 2 There's very few people I know that don't have a smartphone. And that means, again, I can know so many things about you.

Speaker 2 It's like a stranger. Think about the offline equivalent would be a stranger walking behind you, looking over your shoulder 24-7, knowing exactly what you do, what you buy, who you meet, and so on.

Speaker 2 So I think most people think of like these social media platforms when we think about the data that we generate, but it's almost impossible.

Speaker 2 And even if you were to leave all of the gadget at home, coming back to the topic that we talked about when it comes to facial recognitions, there is someone who will be able to observe you and what you do across the board.

Speaker 1 See, I've always figured, I mean, obviously the credit card company knows what I bought because it's on the statement and whoever I bought it from knows I bought it from them.

Speaker 2 But the credit card companies then sell that data to somebody else yeah and it's incredibly cheap so i think one of the the most shocking discoveries that i made when i was really just starting with this is how cheap your data records are it's usually like a couple of cents to get really intimate insights into into who you are sometimes maybe a dollar if you really want to get into something like medical records but what that means for me and this i think is also part of the solution is that ideally you don't want this data to be collected in the first place.

Speaker 2 Now, currently, the trade-off that we have to make is, well, either you can get better service, convenience, or you have to, but if you want to get that, you have to give up your privacy self-determination to some extent because you sign away your data.

Speaker 2 And there's a risk that this data is going to abused. But there are these new technologies that I don't think enough people are talking about yet that kind of eliminate this trade-off.

Speaker 2 So it's called federated learning.

Speaker 2 And the idea is that instead of us sending our data to these companies, they can send the intelligence to our smartphones, which are really these super powerful computers.

Speaker 2 It's how Apple, for example, trains Siri, so the voice recognition software that they have.

Speaker 2 Instead of collecting all of the user data in a central server, they just say, wait a minute, why don't we send our Siri model to your smartphone? We capture all of

Speaker 2 your data there. We improve the model.
We make sure that we can understand what you're saying and respond appropriately.

Speaker 2 And then we're going to send the intelligence back to Apple so that the model gets better. But your speech data never leaves its safe harbor.

Speaker 2 So your speech data stays on your phone and it never gets submitted.

Speaker 2 So, this for me is one way in which we can say, well, we still get the benefits from better service and personalization, but we don't have to worry, just as you were saying, that my data is now sitting somewhere in a server, it's being sold on to other companies, or it's being abused in the future because we don't know what leadership looks like tomorrow.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 when my credit card company sells my data to somebody somebody, somewhere in the fine print, did I agree to that?

Speaker 2 You did agree to that to some extent. Exactly.

Speaker 2 And you're absolutely right. It's in the fine print that nobody reads.
And there's just, we don't stand a chance.

Speaker 2 If you were to really read all of the terms and conditions, which is usually just a bunch of legalese, that would be a full-time job. And hopefully most of us have better things to do than doing that.

Speaker 2 I'd much rather spend a meal with my family or my friends than, again, going through the 50 of the terms and conditions.

Speaker 2 But you're absolutely right is that oftentimes the way that this is currently set up is by default, we're signing away most of the data that we generate without really understanding what we're doing.

Speaker 1 That is very surprising because then you would think somebody would come out with a credit card that says, you know, use our credit card and we won't sell your data.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and most of the time, I think users are just not aware of that, right? Most of the time, we don't even have the capacity to now go and try and compare.

Speaker 2 But you do see, and I think that's interesting, because you do see companies now playing in that space.

Speaker 2 So Apple, if you walk through New York, most of the Apple ads that you see plastered across the city are all about, well, Apple is all about privacy, right?

Speaker 2 So Apple has made it part of their value proposition that says, well, compared to some of the other phones that are on the market or other gadgets, we're the ones who care about your privacy.

Speaker 1 So you often hear the advice that you have to protect your data. But I don't know how to do that.
I mean,

Speaker 1 what does that mean to protect our data?

Speaker 2 So protect our data for me means it's actually, I think of it in two ways. One is you want to make it much easier for consumers to do the right thing.

Speaker 2 But if I now have to go through all of the terms and conditions and opt out of data tracking, nobody's going to do that because humans are lazy and we have better stuff to do.

Speaker 2 So some of it could be regulation that says privacy by design first. And that means you have to opt in to data tracking.

Speaker 2 So now the onus is on companies to convince you that they're really creating a lot of value for you.

Speaker 2 And it's like you now have to become become active to have your data tracked instead of becoming active to not have it tracked.

Speaker 2 And the second part is really these technologies like federated learning, where it's not even a trade-off.

Speaker 2 You can get the same quality of, let's say, Siri if the data is processed on your phone versus it being processed in a central server. And now you have to trust Apple to do the right thing.

Speaker 1 Given where we are, what is it that you recommend people do, or what is it you do maybe different than what I do to protect as best you can your own data?

Speaker 2 So, I think about this pretty much every single day for the last 15 years.

Speaker 2 And still, there's so many times when I mindlessly accept the terms and conditions because I just don't have the energy to now go through all of the cookies.

Speaker 2 So, there's maybe a few things that I do differently because, like, especially with a phone, I'm a lot more cautious when it comes to permissions.

Speaker 2 So, oftentimes, when you download a weather app or your banking app, they ask you to tap into your microphone, look at all of the pictures that you have on your phone, collect your GPS records continuously.

Speaker 2 So those are things that I might be a little bit more mindful of.

Speaker 2 But generally speaking, I think just observing my own behavior is why I'm trying to push for these regulations that make it easier for people.

Speaker 2 Because I think it's this uphill battle that we just can't win by ourselves.

Speaker 1 There just does seem to be

Speaker 1 this whole feeling of, well, there's nothing you can do.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 the symptom of that to me has always been like, you know, people have these smart speakers in their house listening all the time and nobody seems to care.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I 100% agree. And I do think that it's actually a narrative that's been carefully crafted by Silicon Valley.

Speaker 2 This idea that, well, first of all, you have to give us all of your data to get the amazing perks that we offer. And there's nothing that you can do anyway.

Speaker 2 So I think that's been almost like bombarded. We've been bombarded with this message.
And I don't think this is true anymore.

Speaker 2 So like, I think there's this wake-up call that, no, there are ways in which we can benefit from our data in a way that's a lot more protective.

Speaker 1 Well, this whole subject of psychological targeting is something I don't think people truly understand or don't understand it in the depth that they probably need to.

Speaker 1 So I really appreciate you explaining all this. Sandra Matz has been my guest.
She's a professor at Columbia University Business School.

Speaker 1 And she is author of the book, Mind Masters, the Data-Driven Science of Predicting and Changing Human Behavior.

Speaker 1 There's a link to her book and to her TED Talk on psychological targeting in the show notes for this episode. Thank you, Sandra.

Speaker 2 Thanks so much, Mike. It's been a pleasure.

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Speaker 1 Are you a curious person?

Speaker 1 Are you interested in what other people believe and what they have to say?

Speaker 1 Being curious is probably a good trait to have for a lot of reasons. That's according to my guest, Scott Shigioka.
He has turned curiosity into a calling.

Speaker 1 He's a leading expert on curiosity and has taught courses on the topic at the University of Texas at Austin. Recently, he took a 45,000-mile trip around the U.S.

Speaker 1 for over a year just so he could be curious about people different from him from all walks of life. Scott is author of a book called Seek, How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life and Change the World.

Speaker 1 Hey, Scott. Hello.
Thanks for being here.

Speaker 3 Hi. Thanks so much.
Great to be on.

Speaker 1 So I think I know what curiosity is, but

Speaker 1 I'm curious how you define curiosity.

Speaker 3 So curiosity is the desire to know. And I think often people think about curiosity in an intellectual frame.
You know, I want to, I'm curious about the world around me.

Speaker 3 So I read books, I, you know, listen to podcasts like yours, you know, I watch news programs or documentaries. And that's one aspect of curiosity.

Speaker 3 But a lot of what I focus on in my work is how do we bring this curiosity, not just in the mind, but down into the heart as well.

Speaker 1 And we should do this because why? What are the benefits of being curious?

Speaker 3 Well, there's, you know, curiosity strengthens our relationships to others.

Speaker 3 And I think most of of us, I'm sure you included and anyone listening on this conversation wants to strengthen their relationships with their partners or children, parents.

Speaker 3 When we have a stronger relationship, there's more care in the workplace. You know, obviously we have better collaboration.
We have

Speaker 3 a lot of benefits for our own physical health that come from stronger relationships, including longevity, living longer, reducing stress, increasing our ability to have fortitude around

Speaker 3 the things that we're struggling with in lives, in our lives, which is something that's, you know, I think we all face.

Speaker 1 You said that curiosity improves relationships,

Speaker 1 but I'd like to hear how that works. I mean, how do you know that? How do we know that curiosity improves relationships?

Speaker 3 I mean, I think any of us can think about our own personal relationships and remember a time when maybe someone wasn't being curious towards us, right? The opposite of curiosity is in curiosity.

Speaker 3 And maybe they're to tell us, you know,

Speaker 3 their own viewpoint versus understanding our own.

Speaker 3 Maybe, you know, you're trying to share a story, but they keep inserting their own story rather than answering, asking questions or really listening to what we're saying.

Speaker 3 And oftentimes, what happens is when someone is directing that incuriosity towards us and we don't feel seen, we don't feel heard, we don't feel acknowledged, we don't feel like

Speaker 3 they're taking the time to understand us, that really affects negatively the way that we feel feel about them.

Speaker 3 And research actually backs us that in curiosity can drive negative emotions towards others, towards the people that we're in contact with.

Speaker 3 And the opposite side, when we are curious, which means we're asking questions, we're listening, you know, we're acknowledging the person that's in front of us, really seeing them.

Speaker 3 You know, something I like to say is that people who are seen stay.

Speaker 3 there's research to back that up as well.

Speaker 3 You know, in both cases, whether you're really close to someone, let's say a partner, where research has been done around curiosity curiosity is within partnerships, those partners where they feel that their partners are curious towards them, listens to them, they feel seen in the relationship, it is more likely that they're going to be happier.

Speaker 3 But even with those who we aren't as close with,

Speaker 3 strangers that we meet in a research setting,

Speaker 3 we found that there's an increase in the ways that we feel positively towards people who express curiosity towards us.

Speaker 3 So when we haven't met a person ever before, but they start asking us questions and they

Speaker 3 seem to be genuinely interested in who we are,

Speaker 3 we feel more positively about them compared to those who are not expressing curiosity towards them. So that's what I mean.
And I think it's best to think about personal examples in your own life.

Speaker 3 Think about the people who do express curiosity towards you, who really seem genuinely interested in your life.

Speaker 3 You're often going to have warmer feelings towards them, feel more cared for by them, and probably want to sustain those kinds of relationships.

Speaker 1 It seems that sometimes, especially in relationships with people that we know and we feel comfortable with, that conversations are not couched in curiosity as much as they're couched in anger.

Speaker 1 And curiosity seems like it might be a better, kinder way to do it, but that's not what we do.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think we're much more reactive rather than curious. And there was a

Speaker 3 recent research that is basically called called When in Doubt, Shout.

Speaker 3 And the idea behind that research is that oftentimes those who are the loudest, let's say in situations where we're talking about social issues or, you know, issues even in the workplace, those with the least knowledge about it can often be the ones who are speaking the most.

Speaker 3 And I think if you talk to any good leader, let's say in the workplace, what you'll hear from them is, you know, you need to be a good listener.

Speaker 3 You need to really understand the problems that you're working on, the people that you're working with, et cetera. And that's really driven by curiosity.

Speaker 3 But oftentimes I think we so badly want to be heard, whether that's in the workplace and this, you know, social or political environments we're in.

Speaker 3 And what happens is our desire to want to be heard and share our own perspectives and our own viewpoints. can often make other people feel unseen, like I just mentioned.

Speaker 3 It's often an expression of in curiosity. And so people say, well, if you know everything, if you're going to be so arrogant about your perspective, like, why do I even need to share?

Speaker 3 Or maybe I'm going to be reactive as well. And I'm going to meet, you know, your arrogance with my own arrogance.
And it's not a productive way to have, you know, conversations, have a dialogue.

Speaker 3 So, you know, one of the things that I often talk about is how do we use curiosity in the context of division and polarization that we're experiencing, not just in our country, but all around the world.

Speaker 3 And I actually brought. this curiosity on the road for 12 months.

Speaker 3 You know, I am, you know, I identify as, you know, progressive and, you know, I've lived for most of my life life in the adult life in the San Francisco Bay Area. I'm Asian American.

Speaker 3 I have all these different qualities to me. And the other side of that is I hadn't been curious or really understood the perspectives of other people in my country.
I hadn't really been to the South.

Speaker 3 I hadn't really gone to

Speaker 3 Trump country. I had all these visions and versions of what that looked like to me based on social media and what other people told me.

Speaker 3 But I wanted to, you know, walk the talk of what I was sharing around curiosity. So I spent 12 months going across the country.
I went to Trump rallies.

Speaker 3 I met with religious leaders, and I met, I lived in the South. I met people who are very different from my day-to-day.

Speaker 3 And it was beautiful to actually see that I could also connect and find commonalities

Speaker 3 with people who are very different from me.

Speaker 3 And I can move from a state of reactivity where we're not getting further at all in understanding one another's views and life stories to a place of curiosity.

Speaker 3 And the last thing I'll say here is that curiosity inspires curiosity in others, oftentimes, not all the time, but oftentimes.

Speaker 3 And so what I mean by that is when you are getting curious about someone else and their viewpoints and their perspectives and their life stories, oftentimes they will be inspired to give that curiosity back to you.

Speaker 3 And, you know, researchers sometimes call this like the give and take spiral. It's when you're in a conversation and you're asking a bunch of questions, they're asking questions to you back.

Speaker 3 And it's like a great, you know, meeting, a great date, whatever context you want to, you know, put that in.

Speaker 3 And so I wasn't just learning about, you know, the people that I met on my road trip, but they were learning a lot about me and my life story as well.

Speaker 1 Well, isn't that a great story? Because wouldn't it be great if everybody was able to do what you did

Speaker 1 and get out of your,

Speaker 1 you know, take the blinders off and go

Speaker 1 look at the rest of the world with that kind of open attitude and curious attitude that most of us don't.

Speaker 1 We never think to do that.

Speaker 3 And a lot of people say, Scott, I can't, you know, hop in my Toyota Prias and take 12 months off of work and, you know, go on the trip that you went, you know, through.

Speaker 3 And I and I often tell them you don't have to. You know, we're often in families, let's say, where there's very different perspectives and viewpoints and politics and, you know, identities.

Speaker 3 We're often in communities with neighbors who have very different life stories and very different life experiences than us.

Speaker 3 But oftentimes, not only can we get reactive, but we can also close ourselves off from others.

Speaker 3 And what I'm trying to express in the work that I'm doing and my book, Seek, is really about how do we move away from reactivity or closing ourselves off to this curiosity, which actually feels really good, right?

Speaker 3 Curiosity releases dopamine, which is often called the happy hormone.

Speaker 3 It's something that drives and incentivizes behaviors that are really important for us and our survival and

Speaker 3 our livelihoods. And curiosity is no different.
So

Speaker 3 I don't just say do something that feels bad because it's good for you.

Speaker 3 There's actually a pleasurable feeling that happens when you're curious. It's often like the gym, right? You know, for many of us, the biggest weight in the gym is the front door.

Speaker 3 But once you get into the gym and you start working out by the end, you're like, oh my gosh, I'm so glad I did that for myself. I feel so good.
And the same is true for curiosity.

Speaker 1 You know, I've always thought, and I learned this, you know, at a fairly early age, that curiosity is really a gift you can give because when people are curious about you,

Speaker 1 it makes you feel good. It makes you feel heard.
It makes you feel as if what you have to say someone finds important.

Speaker 1 And so often we think we know it all and we dismiss what other people think and say. And yet just to turn that around and just

Speaker 1 tell me what you say. Why do you think that? I mean, asking those kinds of curious questions makes people feel good.

Speaker 3 Is there a story or a personal story in your life where someone made you feel that way because they were curious about you, Mike?

Speaker 1 I have a couple of people who have been in my life who I always, I just always have had this, I love talking to them because when the conversation is over, I feel so much better about myself.

Speaker 1 I feel smarter.

Speaker 1 I feel like I'm really, you know, because of their curiosity about me and wanting to hear what I have to say,

Speaker 1 makes me feel good.

Speaker 3 Absolutely.

Speaker 3 Someone that sees a value in the people that they're talking to, you know, and I'm not coming from a place of judgment or assumptions about who you are based on their own biases, but saying, you know, there's a lot that I could learn from you.

Speaker 3 There's, you know, I've come in with an open mind, an open heart, a curiosity. And I want to, you know, ask you questions and have a great conversation with you.

Speaker 3 And I think, yeah, that you're right. That, you know, many of the folks that I think about who give me that same curiosity are the people that I love and cherish the most in life.

Speaker 1 I guess it's because, you know, if people ask me my thoughts, they must care what I think.

Speaker 1 Maybe what I think is worth saying, you know, there's this thing that goes on in your head that, you know, I must have something to say. And I don't know what it is, but it's just, it feels good

Speaker 1 and it fosters a better conversation.

Speaker 3 And that conversation fosters a better connection. I will say sometimes, though,

Speaker 3 you know, I recently talked about this in a New York Times article about, you know, a term that I coined called predatory curiosity.

Speaker 3 And so, what I mean by predatory curiosity is it looks a lot like curiosity, right? Someone's asking you questions, they seem to be genuinely interested in what you have to say.

Speaker 3 But then, all of a sudden, the conversation quickly turns, and there's almost like a gotcha moment. And they say something like, I knew you were going to say that, or you know, that's totally wrong.

Speaker 3 You're wrong with the facts, like you walked right into my trap. That's not actually curiosity, even though it looks like it.

Speaker 3 It's it, you know, predatory curiosity is when we have an agenda or some kind kind of ulterior motives underneath, you know, our exploration or underneath the questions that we're asking.

Speaker 3 And in order for it to be true curiosity, it needs to be truly genuine. Truly, I do not know what I'm about to encounter.
in this conversation.

Speaker 3 You know, just like what you said, I said, hey, is there anything that you're looking for from this conversation? And you answered in the most curious way.

Speaker 3 You said, no, for the podcast, I'm just going to see where it ends up.

Speaker 3 I'm totally open to how we have this conversation together. And I think that's such a great example of true curiosity.

Speaker 3 So often we are looking to take our conversations or to take our relationship to our particular destination.

Speaker 3 And there's many things that might be driving that, but that is not actually curiosity.

Speaker 3 We have to be much more open to the unknown and to the uncertainty of what might unfold in this conversation or in this relationship for it to be that way.

Speaker 1 What's a good way to start being curious and

Speaker 1 that pays dividends? Like, oh well this is good this is better

Speaker 3 yeah i well in my book i talk about the dive motto which is to detach intend value and embrace and um you know i can describe that in a little bit but then i'll share some you know tangible practices that are helpful so the d is detach which means to let go of what i call our abcs our assumptions biases and certainty and what i mean by that is you can write down you know the assumptions that you have about another person just write them down before you meet them, you know, for, you know, a family gathering or before you have a conversation with them in the workplace, wherever you're coming into a conversation with someone, write down your assumptions about them.

Speaker 3 You might find that a lot of those are not backed by facts or things that they've told you, but they're just stories that you've really invented in your head.

Speaker 3 So that's an example of how we might detach from our

Speaker 3 and let go from our assumptions, biases, and certainty. There's I, which is intend, which is how do we set the mindset and the setting for curiosity?

Speaker 3 So what I mean by that is if you need to have a curious conversation with your teenagers or with your boss, you know,

Speaker 3 it's better to prepare for it, to actually be intentional about it. You know, where are you actually going to have this conversation? What kinds of questions are you going to be asking?

Speaker 3 And something that professional athletes do is this idea of mental rehearsal.

Speaker 3 So they actually think about the routine that they're going to do on the floor if they're a gymnast, or they think about the plays that they're going to do, you know, on the field, or they think about, you know, shooting a free throw at the free throw line.

Speaker 3 And we can do the same thing.

Speaker 3 We can do mental rehearsal with our conversations, really walking through all the different moments of a conversation that might be really challenging or hard or hostile or scary for us.

Speaker 3 And what the research has found is that mental rehearsal in this way improves our performance. It makes us better on the field, but also in the conversation that we're going to have in both settings.

Speaker 3 So intent is really about how do we just be more mindful, more intentional, and really really practice

Speaker 3 our curiosity before we need to step into the arena with it. V is value.
And this is really simple. It's really about how do we see the dignity of every person we're getting curious with.

Speaker 3 It doesn't matter their politics, their identities, their experiences that they've had. You have to see and honor their humanity and their dignity, or you will.
revert to an in curiosity.

Speaker 3 You'll say, oh, well, you're a part of this group. You vote in this way.
You did this, you know,

Speaker 3 in, you know, in the last elections. So I know everything I need to know about you.
But the truth is, is you don't.

Speaker 3 That's you don't know everything about a person based on who they voted for or what association they're a part of.

Speaker 3 You know very little about them, actually.

Speaker 3 And it, you know, we are more than just our single identities. We are very nuanced people with many dimensions to who we are.

Speaker 3 And the final thing is embrace, which is how do we welcome the hard times in our lives?

Speaker 3 I think what I often have found in my work and traveling all across the country and world is that people are very curious in low stakes moments, but once things get really challenging and really hard, it's much easier to turn off curiosity.

Speaker 3 And so, Embrace is just a reminder that actually, if you're going through a tough time with your journey around health, or a tough time in your relationship with your partner, or a tough time in your own mental health journey,

Speaker 3 all of these are just examples that I think many people share. That curiosity can actually be a really important companion in all of those pursuits.
So it's detach, intend, value, embrace.

Speaker 3 That's sort of the key components of curiosity.

Speaker 1 And to put those into practice

Speaker 1 in a practical way, you start by doing what? You just wake up and kind of approach the world differently? Or I mean,

Speaker 1 what's the how-to here?

Speaker 3 Yeah. So a couple of examples.
So

Speaker 3 one is to remember that curiosity curiosity is a spectrum from shallow to deep. And so, you know, shallow curiosity is about getting bits of information about who a person is.
Oh, what's your name?

Speaker 3 What do you do for work? You know, where do you live? But we have to take our curiosity deeper to the deep end.

Speaker 3 What happens in with deep curiosity is that we're able to dive beneath the surface, see a person and all of their stories and all of their nuances, and thus the quality of our questions change.

Speaker 3 So instead of asking a question like, oh, what's your name? Oh, you're, oh, Mike, oh, I'm Scott, you might ask a deeper question, a more powerful question, like, what is the story of your name?

Speaker 3 You know, I love that question of what is the story of your name because it helps you to understand who named you,

Speaker 3 who named this person that you're talking to, maybe some cultural dimensions or some family legacy connections. I think that's really interesting.
Instead of asking, what do you do for work?

Speaker 3 You can ask a deeper and more powerful question. Like, what is really exciting you right now? What are you getting curious about in life right now? Instead of asking, where do you live?

Speaker 3 You might ask, you you know, like, what does home mean to you? What does home look like for you?

Speaker 3 And you start to just get a deeper understanding for who this person is instead of just, you know, data points. And so asking deeper and more powerful questions is one tactical way to do that.

Speaker 3 A second thing to think about is a really simple phrase that you can have in your tool belt, which is tell me more. And this often happens, even, you know, in my partnership, right?

Speaker 3 You know, he'll be telling me something about, oh, he's, you know, going to this film set to do scouting. And I'm like, oh my God, that's great.
Like, I love that for you.

Speaker 3 Instead, what, when I say, tell me more, oh my gosh, like, tell me more about the set, tell me more about who you're doing that with, tell me more about how you're feeling about that opportunity, our conversation and our connection becomes so much stronger.

Speaker 3 So what I mean by tell me more here is to be aware of the times when you're in conversation with anyone in your life. And you tend to respond with like, oh, that's really cool.
I'm so happy for you.

Speaker 3 Rather than, you know, diving deeper into the conversation and learning more and trying to explore all the parts of this person's interests and their lives.

Speaker 1 And lastly, I mean, you've already given some examples specifically about this, but I think a lot of us hate that shallow, you know, how are you? How are you doing? What's going on? Hey, what's up?

Speaker 1 So what else can you say? I mean,

Speaker 1 how else do you get over that, past that facade into something

Speaker 1 much more real?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think a lot of us really do dislike that. And at the same time, I think a lot of us are so afraid to go deeper.

Speaker 3 I think we are afraid of, oh, what if we're making someone feel a certain way that they don't want to feel right now? Or what if we're asking something that's too personal?

Speaker 3 And so one of the practices in Seek is to develop a powerful questions list. So every time you hear a question that you're like, oh, I like that question.
That's so interesting.

Speaker 3 It was provocative for me. Write it down.
Put it in your notes app and your iPhone. Write it in your journal.
You know, have a draft in your email, like whatever you want to do to catalog it.

Speaker 3 And as you start to do this and create a list of powerful questions, you start to realize that the quality of your questions that you're asking in conversations, whether it's at a party or whether it's in a workplace, you know, starts to improve drastically.

Speaker 3 I've noticed this, you know, I'm like, wow, like I'm never at that point anymore where I'm like running out of questions to ask, or I'm like, oh, gosh, this is like, I don't know what to say here, because I have this huge repository of incredible questions.

Speaker 3 So some of the questions on my list are, you know, you know, who is bringing you a lot of joy right now in your life? Or what is bringing you a lot of joy in your life right now?

Speaker 3 What's really exciting you right now in life? What's firing you up right now in life? You know, what's a belief that you've had that you felt strongly about that you changed your mind on?

Speaker 3 And why did that happen?

Speaker 1 Well, I like those questions a lot more than, hey, how are you? What's going on? What kind of work do you do?

Speaker 1 Seems like curiosity can be powerful if you're willing to maybe dive a little deeper than that. I've been talking with Scott Shigioka.

Speaker 1 His book is called Seek, How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life and Change the World. And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes.
Hey, Scott, thank you for coming on.

Speaker 1 This was great.

Speaker 3 Awesome. Thanks so much, Mike.

Speaker 1 If you're one of those people who uses the snooze alarm occasionally, that's probably no big deal. But if you hit the snooze alarm five or six times in the morning, you're doing yourself a disservice.

Speaker 1 It seems the sleep you get in those short intervals is not very good sleep, so you might as well just get up and get the day going.

Speaker 1 By the way, your snooze alarm is most likely nine minutes long. Not ten, nine.
Why?

Speaker 1 Years ago, mechanical clock engineers had to configure the clock gears and they had two choices to set the snooze for either a little more than nine minutes or a little more than ten minutes.

Speaker 1 Clockmakers decided on the nine minute gear believing that 10 minutes would be too long and allow someone to fall into a deep sleep.

Speaker 1 Of course, clock manufacturers today have the option to set snooze buttons for any length of time, but most of them stick with the nine minute custom. And that is something you should know.

Speaker 1 As always, your continued help in spreading the word about something you should know really helps us grow our podcast with that word-of-mouth marketing, and we really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 So, please share this podcast with people you know. I'm Mike Carruthers.
Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

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