Podcasts about no one understands you

Last week, we discussed how techniques such as affect labeling and physiological sigh can help us to stay calm when triggered and get into a better state of mind. But how do we go about the messy business of actually engaging with people who think differently from us?British philosopher Bertrand Russell once wrote,Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.Sometimes, getting through to people feels impossible with both sides bolstered by a profligate confidence in their firepower. What should we do if we want to avoid living in an echo chamber but also prefer to avoid confrontation? How can we communicate our viewpoints both effectively and gently?A Case of Cognitive DissonanceImagine two Americans named Marsha and Alexandria. Marsha supports the right to bear arms and believes abortion is equivalent to murder. Alex supports gun regulation and a woman's right to choose. Which person is more likely to support capital punishment?Based on the normal distribution of political opinions, most of us would say Marsha is more likely to support capital punishment because of her conservative views. But how do certain political ideologies get grouped together? Why would Marsha support the death penalty if she is pro-life? And why would Alex support individual freedom when it comes to abortion but not gun ownership? How do we explain the cognitive dissonance?The answer may lie in the factors that govern our decision-making process. We may be more primed to accept certain policy positions depending on our genetics, gender, ethnic background, upbringing, personality, and socioeconomic status. In a 2003 paper, Jost and colleagues from Stanford University argued that personality traits can predict whether someone is more likely to identify as liberal or conservative.In their meta-analysis, the researchers found that conservatives tend to have a higher need for order, structure, and closure compared to liberals and also rank lower on measures of tolerance for ambiguity, complexity, and openness to experience. In addition, conservatives were more likely to fear threats to social stability and score higher on measures of death anxiety.Finding Common GroundMoral Foundations Theory, put forth by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, argues that humans across cultures share a common core of ethical beliefs upon which we build different narratives and identities. How those values are expressed and the relative importance we assign to them can differ, however.Some people may value adherence to authority above freedom of expression and thereby condemn flag burning as morally reprehensible. Others may place freedom of speech at the top of the moral hierarchy and therefore condone actions that reject patriotism in favor of equality. The five universal moral foundations are:Harm/care — leads to disapproval of individuals that inflict pain and suffering on othersFairness/reciprocity — involves issues of equality and justiceIngroup/loyalty — based on our attachment to groups (such as our family, church, or country) and underlies virtues of patriotismAuthority/respect — tendency to create hierarchical structures of dominance and subordination and appeals to values of leadership, obedience, and traditionPurity/sanctity — evokes emotions of disgust in response to biological contaminants, such as spoiled food or chewing tobacco, and social contaminants, such as spiritual corruption or hedonism, underlies the notion that the body is a templeSeveral studies have shown that liberals and conservatives differ in the relative value they assign to various foundations. Liberals are more likely to prioritize considerations of harm and fairness while conservatives tend to place a higher value on the foundations of ingroup, authority, and purity.Liberals are likely to deem actions immoral if they cause harm, which likely explains their negative attitudes towards capital punishment and the use of torture on terrorist suspects. The stronger value that conservatives place on ingroup/loyalty is reflected in their attitudes toward illegal immigration.Returning to the example of Marsha and Alex, how can we find a way to resolve the seemingly contradictory views? If Alex's opposition to abortion is a function of her commitment to fairness and her position on gun control stems from a hatred of harm, then simultaneously being pro-choice on abortion and anti-choice on gun ownership is not morally inconsistent.Similarly, Marsha's sincere belief in the sanctity of life underlies her opposition to abortion, and her position on gun control stems from her belief that each member of a group should be able to defend against outside threats. Understanding the basic moral pillars that underlie our beliefs is a great first step toward communicating more effectively.If we are to heal the pain and suffering caused by decades of divisive dialogue, we must first acknowledge the common humanity of all parties involved and then begin respectful conversations aimed at understanding. In his TED talk on how not to take things personally, former referee and communications expert Frederik Imbo explains, “If I try to see the intention of the other, I make space for understanding instead of irritation.”Don't Take It PersonallyHow do we stay calm when our personal beliefs are under attack? Looking to missionaries might provide an answer. Missionaries experience a lot of rejection when attempting to spread their message to a wider audience. How do they manage to maintain their composure while being repeatedly rebuffed?The secret may lie in their attitude towards their beliefs. Missionaries don't wield their beliefs as weapons but instead happily offer them as gifts. Sharing a gift is an act of joy, even if everyone doesn't accept it.How can we use this attitude to have more productive conversations with people who disagree with us? One strategy is loosening our attachment to our beliefs. According to philosophy professor Dale Lugenbehl, personal attachment to beliefs encourages personal competition at the expense of collaborative efforts to find the truth.The late Buddhist master Thích Nhất Hạnh recommended that we all make the following promise to ourselves: “I will cultivate openness, non-discrimination, and non-attachment to views in order to transform violence, fanaticism, and dogmatism in myself and in the world.”In his talk, Imbo offers yet another approach to help cultivate a sense of non-attachment to our beliefs. He uses the poignant analogy of a crumpled, chewed up, regurgitated 20 Euro note to explain that our value remains the same regardless of how other people treat us. Your value does not depend on external validation. Your worth is inherent irrespective of whether someone else recognizes it.Do I Make Myself Clear?Another strategy we can implement is to develop a strong sense of self-awareness. In her book, No One Understands You and What To Do About It, social psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson says that the gap between how we think we come across and how other people actually perceive us can be substantial.Most of us suffer from the illusion of transparency, the belief that what we feel, desire, and intend is perfectly clear to others even when we have done very little to effectively communicate our thoughts. Meanwhile, people perceiving us are susceptible to the primacy effect, which means that the information exchanged during early encounters will forever shape our view of a person.In his book Thinking Fast and Slow, economist Daniel Kahneman describes the two systems we use to process information, which he calls System 1 and System 2. System 1 processes information intuitively and automatically and tends to use shortcuts, or heuristics, to draw conclusions without much effort. The primacy effect comes about as the result of the lazy thinking of System 1.Halvorson points to research showing that children who perform better on the first half of a math test are judged to be smarter than children who perform better on the second half of the test despite identical objective scores. System 2, which is more thoughtful and deliberative, can correct for the shortcomings of System 1 by evaluating whether the initial impressions registered are accurate.But engaging System 2 in everyday decision-making is an uncommon occurrence. Weighing every potential motivation that a person could possibly have is mentally taxing, so we need to recruit other solutions to solve the problem of perception. Overcommunicating instead of relying on other people's systems to fill in the blanks would lead to fewer misunderstandings.If At First You Don't Succeed…In his book, Why Are We Yelling?, Buster Benson argues that the art of disagreement is something that can be honed with practice in the same way that a consistent workout routine or mindfulness regimen can make us better. According to Benson, practicing deliberately and allowing for forgiveness when we fail is the path forward. We should try to push ourselves a little past our comfort zones with every successive conversation.To recap, the following tips can help us engage in more productive disagreements:Find common ground by figuring out which moral value underlies a person's position.Don't take it personally. Loosen your attachment to your beliefs, and listen with the intent to understand.Counteract the human tendency to jump to conclusions by communicating more clearly. When in doubt, spell it out. Be as obvious as possible.Practice makes perfect, so keep trying. Even if you initially find yourself discouraged by the difficulty of disagreements, persistence will allow you to eventually reap the benefits!Disclaimer: Some of the links in this post are affiliate, which means I may receive a small commission from any qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you. Thanks for your support! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nitajain.substack.com

Published on 16 Apr 2015. Heidi Grant Halvorson, author of "No One Understands You and What to Do About It," explains the science of perception.

Today Linda and I are talking about trust. We'll be talking about warmth and competence perception, and how those things go hand in hand to develop deeper levels of trust. This comes from the book “No One Understands You and What to Do About It” by Heidi Grant Halverson. Will be references this today, I'll link to it in the show notes. And One of the key messages of that book is that ”we judge other people by how we perceive them. But we want to be judged by our intentions.”

How do you feel about asking for help? For most of us, asking for help feels uncomfortable, mainly because we expect we’ll be rejected when we ask. Yet there's a good chance we're wrong. Heidi Grant, social psychologist and author of the book, Reinforcements: How to Get People to Help You, explains that a lot more people want to help us than we tend to predict. It’s the way we ask for help that determines the result, and that’s where Heidi’s practical tips can make all the difference. Heidi is Chief Science Officer of the NeuroLeadership Institute and Associate Director of the Motivation Science Center at Columbia University. She’s the author of a number of books, including No One Understands You and What to Do about It and Nine Things Successful People Do Differently. In this interview we discuss: How our brains process social pain -- rejection, exclusion, not feeling valued or respected -- using some of the same areas of the brain as physical pain Why fears of social pain -- rejection, exclusion, not feeling valued or respected -- can prevent us from asking for help How we’re twice as likely to get help from strangers as we think -- we tend to underestimate how much others want to help us How we often underestimate the likelihood that someone will help is because we focus on how onerous the task is We also underestimate the social cost of someone saying no to our request How helping others feeds into a desire to connect and feel good about supporting someone else in their work There are three responses we can have when someone asks for our help: (1) no; (2) yes, but I don’t want to because I have to; and (3) yes, and I want to and it feels rewarding When you ask for help, don’t make it weird by being overly apologetic -- it makes the helper feel uncomfortable How offering a reward can make the helper feel like it’s an exchange or a transaction rather than something they’d want to do for you How offering a reward for someone’s help can shift the motivation they have from wanting to help for the sake of helping to wanting to help only if they get something in return Why we should ask again even if someone has already turned us down -- especially if they’ve turned us down - because they often feel guilty and will want to help the next time How we may not be getting the help we need because we aren’t letting others know we need their help -- they may be completely unaware The fact that nothing goes without saying, since others can’t read our minds to know we need their help The fact that someone may want to help but holds off so as not to offend Why we should be specific in asking for what we need and in asking the right person, rather than making general asks to a group of people Why your requests to meet up with someone just to pick their brain or chat may not be getting you the results you want Why it’s so helpful to communicate what you have in common with the person whose help you’re requesting, like shared goals, experiences, or identities How others are more inclined to help when they’re aware of the impact they’ll be having Why it’s so important to go the extra mile to make the help you seek rewarding to the other person -- that way it’s a win-win for both of you Links to Topics Mentioned in the Podcast http://www.heidigrantphd.com/ @heidigrantphd NeuroLeadership Institute Motivation Science Center at Columbia Business School Reach by Andy Molinsky Illusion of transparency Diffusion of responsibility If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes - your ratings make all the difference. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening! Thank you to Emmy-award-winning Creative Director Vanida Vae for designing the Curious Minds logo, and thank you to Rob Mancabelli for all of his production expertise! www.gayleallen.net LinkedIn @GAllenTC

M. R. James' "The Mezzotint" is one of the most fascinating, and most chilling, examples of the classic ghost story. In this episode, Phil and JF discover what this tale of haunted images and buried secrets tells us about the reality of ideas, the singularity of events, the virtual power of the symbol, and the enduring magic of the art object in the age of mechanical reproduction. To accompany this episode, Phil recorded a full reading of the story. Listen to it here (http://www.weirdstudies.com/11a). REFERENCES M.R. James, "The Mezzotint" (http://www.thin-ghost.org/items/show/145) Robert Aickman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Aickman), English author of "strange stories" Edgar Allan Poe, "The Oval Portrait" (https://poestories.com/read/ovalportrait) Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm) Marshall McLuhan, The Book of Probes (https://www.amazon.com/Book-Probes-Marshall-McLuhan/dp/1584232528) Clement Greenberg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Greenberg), American art critic J.F. Martel, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice (https://www.northatlanticbooks.com/shop/reclaiming-art-in-the-age-of-artifice/) Marcel Duchamps, Fountain (http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-fountain-t07573) Henri Bergson, Laughter (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4352) John Cage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cage), American composer David Lynch (director), Twin Peaks: The Return (http://www.sho.com/twin-peaks) Gilles Deleuze, [Difference and Repetition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DifferenceandRepetition) Vilhelm Hammershøi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilhelm_Hammersh%C3%B8i), Danish painter Sigmund Freud, [Beyond the Pleasure Principle](https://www.libraryofsocialscience.com/assets/pdf/freudbeyondthepleasureprinciple.pdf) Martin Heidegger, [What is Called Thinking?](https://www.amazon.com/Called-Thinking-Harper-Perennial-Thought/dp/006090528X/ref=sr11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524419879&sr=1-1&keywords=heidegger+what+is+called+thinking) Stanley Kubrick, [The Shining](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheShining(film)) Ferruccio Busoni, Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music (https://archive.org/details/sketchofanewesth000125mbp) David Lynch on why you shouldn't watch films on your phone (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKiIroiCvZ0) Nelson Goodman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Goodman), American philosopher Pablo Picasso, Guernica (https://www.pablopicasso.org/guernica.jsp) Paul Thomas Anderson, The Master (https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/the-astonishing-power-of-the-master) Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings (http://www.harpercollins.ca/9780061627019/basic-writings) Phil Ford, "No One Understands You" (http://www.weirdstudies.com/articles/no-one-understands-you)

Heidi Grant Halvorson, author of "No One Understands You and What to Do About It" and "9 Things Successful People Do Differently," explains how to actually stick to your resolutions this year.'

Heidi Grant Halvorson is a social psychologist and Associate Director of the Motivation Science Center at Columbia Business School. She is the author of four bestselling books, including "Nine Things Successful People Do Differently" and her new book No One Understands You and What To Do About It." In this interview, we discuss the cognitive biases that make authentic interactions so difficult...and what to do about it.

Heidi Grant Halvorson, author of "No One Understands You and What to Do About It," explains the science of perception.