029 - Labels - Adam Alter

029 - Labels - Adam Alter

I did something this week that I’m sure many people secretly do every day. I stopped, talked to myself for a moment, and checked to see how much slack was in the leash I keep on my tongue.



I was reminded that I need to do that from time to time, or at least I believe that I do, by a bit of news that was passed around for a few days this week. The reports said that one of the government’s most prestigious energy laboratories was working to eradicate the Southern accent – not from the planet, mind you, just from employees who had requested the service.



The Oak Ridge National Laboratory is a place where Nobel laureates hang out. It’s a place where thousands of scientists work daily trying to solve some of the world’s most serious problems. It has, according to the website, a $1.46 billion annual budget. This week, NPR reported that the Tennessee laboratory swiftly canceled its plans to hold a six-week course aimed at reducing the Southern drawl among employees. They explained to reporters that the course was created at the request of employees, not the lab, and that it was also shot down by other employees who found the idea offensive.



I learned through this reporting that there are professional twang assassins who go around to businesses and large organizations like this one helping people neutralize and flatten their native lilts and inflections. Not just the Southern accent either, if your organization is chugging along thanks to regional dialects weighted down with negative associations, professionals can help rid you of that baggage.



I have to admit, it bothers me that brilliant scientists would be self-conscious about droppin’ the letter g, and leaving behind a trail of y’alls during lectures about spallation neutron sources and high flux isotope reactors. But, I get it. I feel for them. If I hadn’t spent so much time over the years working to flatten out my own Southern accent, and if I knew what a high flux isotope reactor was, I might consider taking that course.



I don’t hate the Southern accent. I’m not ashamed of it. I share my motivations with Stephen Colbert who explained why he flattened out his tongue back in 2006 in an interview with 60 Minutes. When Morley Safer asked him why he didn’t sound like other people from South Carolina, Colbert said, “At a very young age, I decided I was not going have a southern accent. When I was a kid watching TV, if you wanted to use a shorthand that someone was stupid, you gave the character a Southern accent. Now that’s not true. Southern people aren’t stupid, but I didn’t want to seem stupid. I wanted to seem smart.”



I want to seem smart too, or, at least, not dumb. That’s why I hide my accent and occasionally reel it back in when I notice it’s getting too frisky. The Southern accent tells people you are from the South, and being from the South labels you with an assortment of negative associations, and the associative architecture of memory causes people to involuntarily, unconsciously, invisibly change they way they think, feel, and behave once such a label worms its way into the brain.



Consider these two phenomena – the Baker/baker paradox and the halo effect. The Baker/baker paradox describes how subjects in studies tend find it very difficult to remember last names like Farmer or Baker but find it very easy to remember that each person was a baker or a farmer. The last names are part of weak networks with few nodes while the professions are part of vast networks with constellations of nodes connected to ideas all over the mind. How many Farmers can you name? How many items can you name that you might find on a farm? The stronger the network, the easier it is to think about something, to remember it, and to feel whatever your culture and upbringing has primed you to feel about it. That’s why the halo effect is so powerful. In what is now known as The Hannah Study, subjects watched as a young girl answered a series of difficult questions correctly and a se

Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart


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Avsnitt(327)

322 - Intellectual Humility - Tenelle Porter

322 - Intellectual Humility - Tenelle Porter

Can intellectual humility be measured? What influences it and affects it, limits it and enhances it? What even is it, scientifically speaking? We explore all of this and then play an episode of How to Be A Better Human featuring psychologist Tenelle Porter telling comedian Chris Duffy how she is researching how to conduct better research into intellectual humility.Previous EpisodesTranscript at TEDHow to Be A Better HumanThe Gateway Drugs to Intellectual HumilityTenelle Porter's ResearchTenelle Porter's WebsiteThe Illusion of Explanatory DepthKitted ShopThe Story of KittedHow Minds ChangeDavid McRaney’s BlueSkyDavid McRaney’s TwitterYANSS TwitterShow NotesNewsletterPatreon Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

15 Sep 20251h 7min

321 - Easy Crafts for the Insane - Kelly Williams Brown (rebroadcast)

321 - Easy Crafts for the Insane - Kelly Williams Brown (rebroadcast)

This episode is about suicide prevention and awareness. Author Kelly Williams Brown tells us about her book, Easy Crafts for the Insane, in which she recounts how, after she gained fame and success as a NYT bestselling author, her world came apart. Then an anti-anxiety-drug-induced manic state nearly ended her life.988Suicide Prevention MonthKelly Williams Brown's WebsiteEasy Crafts for the InsaneKelly's TwitterKelly's InstagramKelly in Vanity FairGratitude Journaling StudySeneca on Being WretchedThe Story of KittedHow Minds ChangeDavid McRaney’s BlueSkyDavid McRaney’s TwitterYANSS TwitterShow NotesNewsletterPatreon Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

1 Sep 20251h 18min

320 - Misguided - Matthew Facciani

320 - Misguided - Matthew Facciani

What is misinformation? How does it differ from disinformation or just plain ‘ole propaganda? How do we protect ourselves from people with nefarious intentions using all of these things to affect our thoughts, feelings, and behavior? That’s what we discuss in this episode with Matthew Facciani, social scientist and author of Misguided: Where Misinformation Starts, How it Spreads, and What We Can Do About It.Matthew Facciani's WebsiteThe Misguided PodcastMisguidedKitted ShopThe Story of KittedHow Minds ChangeDavid McRaney's BlueSkyDavid McRaney’s TwitterYANSS TwitterShow NotesNewsletterPatreon  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

18 Aug 20251h 8min

319 - Love Factually - Eli Finkel and Paul Eastwick

319 - Love Factually - Eli Finkel and Paul Eastwick

Two psychologists who study love, relationships, and human mating behavior pick apart the movie "The Notebook" and tell us what it gets right and what it gets wrong when it comes to portraying how humans actually, truly think, feel, and behave. Eli Finkel and Paul Eastwick are the cohosts of the Love Factually podcast, a show that discusses the romantic/scientific accuracy of movies, and on this episode we listen in as they examine one of the most popular romance movies of all time.Love Factually WebsiteLove Factually SubstackEli Finkel's WebsitePaul Eastwick's WebsiteKitted ShopThe Story of KittedHow Minds ChangeDavid McRaney's BlueSkyDavid McRaney’s TwitterYANSS TwitterShow NotesNewsletterPatreon Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

4 Aug 20251h 6min

318 - The Intention Action Gap - Britt Frank (rebroadcast)

318 - The Intention Action Gap - Britt Frank (rebroadcast)

In this episode, we sit down with therapist Britt Frank to discuss the intention action gap, the psychological term for the chasm between what you very much intend to do and what you tend to do instead. It turns out, there's a well-researched psychological framework that includes a term for when you have a stated, known goal – a change you'd like to make in your life – something you wake up intending to finally do or get started doing, but then don't do while knowing full well you are actively not doing what you ought and wish you had done by now. After we discuss this phenomenon and how to deal with it, we get into procrastination and how to escape all manner of dead-end behavioral loops. The Getting Unstuck WorkbookThe Science of StuckKitted ShopThe Story of KittedHow Minds ChangeDavid McRaney’s TwitterYANSS TwitterShow NotesNewsletterPatreon Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

21 Juli 20251h 10min

317 - Don't Talk About Politics - Sarah Stein Lubrano

317 - Don't Talk About Politics - Sarah Stein Lubrano

Sarah Stein Lubrano tells us about her new book, Don't Talk About Politics, which urges us not to lose hope or become frozen in frustration when it comes to polarization and faulty discourse because the good news is that we don't just know, scientifically, why the marketplace of ideas is currently failing us, we know how, scientifically, we can do better. Sarah Stein Lubrano's WebsiteDon't Talk About PoliticsMotivated Numeracy PaperHow Minds ChangeDavid McRaney’s TwitterYANSS TwitterShow NotesNewsletterPatreon Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

7 Juli 20251h 10min

316 - Cultures of Growth - Mary C. Murphy (rebroadcast)

316 - Cultures of Growth - Mary C. Murphy (rebroadcast)

In this episode we welcome psychologist Mary C. Murphy, author of Cultures of Growth, who tells us how to create institutions, businesses, and other groups of humans that can better support collaboration, innovation, performance, and wellbeing. We also learn how, even if you know all about the growth mindset, the latest research suggests you not may not be creating a culture of growth despite what feels like your best efforts to do so. Mary Murphy’s WebsiteCultures of GrowthCarol Dweck at GooglePaper: A Culture of GeniusHow Minds ChangeDavid McRaney’s TwitterYANSS TwitterShow NotesNewsletterPatreon Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

23 Juni 20251h 8min

315 - May Contain Lies - Alex Edmans

315 - May Contain Lies - Alex Edmans

Alex Edmans, a professor of finance at London Business School, tells us how to avoid the Ladder of Misinference by examining how narratives, statistics, and articles can mislead, especially when they align with our preconceived notions and confirm what we believe is true, assume is true, and wish were true.Alex Edmans May Contain LiesWhat to Test in a Post Trust WorldHow Minds ChangeDavid McRaney’s TwitterDavid McRaney’s BlueSkyYANSS TwitterYANSS FacebookNewsletterKittedPatreon Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

9 Juni 202539min

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