How to Quickly Change What Matters & What Happens Inside Your Imagination

Summer brings ice cream, popsicles and other frozen treats – all of which can cause painful brain freeze. Why does that happen, and can you stop it? Listen as I explain what brain freeze is and a really good remedy for it. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brain-freeze-why-does-ice-cream-give-you-headaches/ To make changes in your thoughts, personality and behavior takes a lot of work over a long period of time. Well, maybe for some things. However, there are some quick and simple strategies to tackle some more common psychological problems. Here to explain many of them is Richard Wiseman. He is a professor of psychology and the autor of several books including, 59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change A Lot (https://amzn.to/4jWvNh7) You spend a lot of your time living in your imagination. Daydreaming, mind wandering, reminiscing, anticipating – all happen in your imagination and those things can take up to half of your day. Joining me to take a look into how your imagination works is Adam Zeman. He is Honorary Fellow, Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences, at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and author of the book The Shape of Things Unseen: A New Science of Imagination (https://amzn.to/3Tfu3VH) Are you absolutely sure your car is not currently under a recall? Surprisingly many people don’t take their cars in for recall repairs. Consequently, many cars on the road are under a recall and the driver has no idea. Listen and I will tell you how to find out if your car is currently under a recall. And it will take less than a minute. https://www.autoblog.com/maintenance/consumers-dont-care-about-recalls Here is the website I mention in the story: www. SaferCar.gov PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! MINT MOBILE: Get your summer savings and shop premium wireless plans at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://MintMobile.com/something⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ! FACTOR: Factor meals arrive fresh and ready to eat, perfect for your summer lifestyle! Get 50% off at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://FactorMeals.com/something50off⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ROCKET MONEY: Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://RocketMoney.com/SOMETHING⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ QUINCE: Stick to the staples that last, with elevated essentials from Quince! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns! INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ right now! DELL: Introducing the new Dell AI PC . It’s not just an AI computer, it’s a computer built for AI to help do your busywork for you! Get a new Dell AI PC at⁠⁠ https://Dell.com/ai-pc⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  At Edward Jones, we believe rich is about taking care of what gives your life meaning. That's why your financial advisor personalizes your plan to help you preserve your progress and create something that lasts. Let's find your rich. Edward Jones. Member SIPC.

• 0:17Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, why brain freeze hurts so bad and how to stop it fast. Then, quick psychological strategies that can help you achieve a goal, be more likable, and get over a bad breakup.

• 0:31Speaker 02

  One of the simplest rituals to get over somebody, if you've had a negative relationship, is actually to write a little bit about them, put it into an envelope, and then very carefully, outside probably, set fire to that. That ritual allows people to get over the relationships quicker.

• 0:46Mike Carruthers?

  Also, are you sure your car hasn't been recalled? Let's find out. And understanding your imagination, it's important because you spend a lot of time there.

• 0:56Speaker 03

  If you sample people's experience from moment to moment, it turns out that we spend between a quarter and a half of our time daydreaming, mind wandering, and that the most common mental content is not in fact awareness of our immediate surroundings, it's mental imagery.

• 1:11Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know. Now, here's something that might be worth a minute of your time. How would you like $1,000 to spend on shopping, especially with the holidays coming? Well, the people behind Shopify have a shopping site called shop.com. And to celebrate the new shop.com, they're giving away $1 million in shop cash. But not to one person. A thousand people will each win $1,000 in shop cash. And shop.com is actually a really clever idea. It brings lots of different stores together in one place.

• 1:54Mike Carruthers?

  So instead of bouncing around from website to website, you can search across stores, find what you're looking for, and track your orders all in one place. Clothes, electronics, gifts, things for the house, all kinds of stuff. And whether you win or not, it's worth knowing. But with 1,000 chances to win $1,000,

• 2:16Mike Carruthers?

  I'd certainly take a look. Enter to win the $1 million Shop Cash giveaway from now until November 1st. Just go to shop.com. There are so many ways to win. That's shop.com. Shopping designed around you. No purchase necessary. Restrictions apply. Official rules available at shop.com.

• 2:39Speaker 04

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

• 2:55Mike Carruthers?

  With summertime comes ice cream and frozen margaritas and all the other things that can give you brain freeze. Hi and welcome to this episode of Something You Should Know. What is brain freeze? Well, the best theory seems to be that it is a protective mechanism. The cold triggers extra blood flow to the brain, which increases pressure, and that causes the headache. Specifically, it is the increase in blood flow to the brain's anterior cerebral artery. When scientists induced brain freeze in volunteers and then looked at it with ultrasound, they found that the pain disappeared when the artery constricted.

• 3:38Mike Carruthers?

  And that is a process that you can expedite by drinking warm water. So if you're susceptible to brain freeze, as I am, have some warm water nearby the next time you indulge in your favorite frozen treat. And that is something you should know. Change is hard. I think most people think that when it comes to making personal or psychological changes in your life. It takes a lot of time and effort and maybe you need to get some professional help. Change is hard.

• 4:14Mike Carruthers?

  Well, maybe, or perhaps that's a pretty broad brush to use to paint this. Maybe some things can be changed a lot easier and a lot quicker than other things. And here to discuss ways to make important changes in your life a lot quicker than you might think is Richard Wiseman. He's a professor of psychology in the UK and author of several books, one of which is called Fifty Nine Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot. Hi, Richard, welcome to something, welcome back to Something You Should Know.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  Pleasure to be here.

• 4:46Mike Carruthers?

  So this idea that to make significant changes in your life, your personality, your psychology, that's going to take a lot of work and probably some counselling, that's something that your profession, the psychology profession, has perpetuated, and it's probably true for a lot of things, but I've always believed that people can make significant changes on their own if they're motivated. And so how did you also come to that conclusion?

• 5:14Speaker 02

  I mean, many, many years ago, I went out for a coffee with a friend of mine. And towards the end of that, she said, oh, you know, I'm not very happy. And you don't understand about psychology or happiness. Is there anything I could do to change my mind, cheer myself up? And I started to talk about happiness. And she said, well, can you get on with it? Because I'm quite a busy person. And I said, how long have you got? And she looked at her watch and said, well, about a minute. And so I was thinking, well, my goodness, what can I say in a minute? And I thought, actually, there's a few things you can say about happiness that I think would work. And as I walked away from that coffee, I thought, actually, there's all sorts of findings and interesting results in psychology that can be learned really quickly, that change doesn't need to be challenging. And that was the basis for the Fifty Nine Seconds book.

• 5:59Speaker 02

  It was a pretty much a chance conversation in a coffee shop.

• 6:02Mike Carruthers?

  And so what were the things you told her to make herself happy in a minute?

• 6:07Speaker 02

  My my memory of that conversation was that I spoke about the importance of gratitude. I mean, we are creatures that habituate really quickly to our surroundings. So if you like the smell of coffee, you go into a coffee shop, it smells great for all the 10 minutes. Then you're used to it and you have to go back out again to go back in to get the the smell. And it's the same with many areas of our lives, with our health, our friends, our relationships and so on. We get used to what we have and they vanish. And the gratitude exercise is simply to note down before you go to sleep. One thing in your life for which you have a sense of gratitude. And over time, that builds up into quite a body of work. And it just cheers you up. It just makes you realise that actually things are not as bad as you thought.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  So my memory is that's what I spoke about in in less than a minute all those years ago.

• 6:55Mike Carruthers?

  And what's something else that can improve happiness or or some sense of satisfaction quickly?

• 7:02Speaker 02

  One is not to rely so much on on finance. I mean, you need enough money to to cover the basics. But after that, there's not a huge relationship between extra wealth and and happiness. However, what is really important is to understand the role that purchases buy to the extent to which it buys you happiness. So often when people feel a bit sad, they go out for some retail therapy and they buy whatever it is, latest tech, latest trainers and so on. There's quite a lot of research shows that that has a very minimal effect on happiness. And in fact, can have a detrimental effect because it can make your friends and those people around you quite envious. And also, whatever it is you're buying tends to go out of date fairly quickly.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  If you invest the same amount of money in experiences, anything unusual. Then you've got something to tell your friends about. You've got some social currency, you've got something to talk about. And also something that remains rather sort of new and fresh in your memory even for for many years. And so the advice is to to spend money on experiences in order to cheer yourself up rather than goods.

• 8:08Mike Carruthers?

  Let's talk about motivation. I think it's a universal human experience that you get all excited and motivated to do something, to make a change, to lose weight, to exercise, whatever it is. And you start off great and then you run out of steam. You lose the momentum. What do you suggest?

• 8:27Speaker 02

  I think when I was doing the book, we had just come off the back of the New Year's Resolution Study, which was a large study we did here over in the UK. We asked people, what are your New Year's resolutions? They said, oh, you know, I'm going to get fitter, lose weight, whatever it is. And then we tracked them for X number of years, and we looked at the strategies that they were using. And the first thing we found out was that actually not many people achieve their resolutions. So only about 10% of people. Those that tend to fail were relying on willpower. They were thinking, you know, if I just try harder, then I'll be able to achieve my goals. And actually, it's not a great strategy. The

• 9:09Speaker 02

  people who are far more successful tended to have a goal. They tended to be able to break that big goal into lots of sub-goals. So they'd say, I'm going to go to the gym more, but maybe I'm going to start off just going once a week. And it's going to be at this particular time. It's going to be at 6:00 PM every Wednesday. And that way, you've got a kind of trigger there. You know, at 6:00 PM on a Wednesday, that's when you go to the gym. You don't let it slip. So that was very much in their mind, that idea of having a plan and it being related to very concrete events in their lives. Also, when they failed, and we all do fail, they didn't see that as a permanent setback. It was a temporary setback. So thinking, okay, this week hasn't been so great, but I can start

• 9:53Speaker 02

  again next week. Those that gave up would often think, oh, my goodness, you know, I failed. That's the end of that. I'll have to wait for another year until I try again. So understanding motivation, absolutely key.

• 10:06Mike Carruthers?

  And it seems like procrastination is a very close relative to lack of motivation.

• 10:12Speaker 02

  But for most people, not for everyone, but for most people, if you procrastinate, if you say to yourself, okay, I'm just going to spend five minutes doing whatever it is that I'm trying to put off, I can achieve that. When you input those five minutes, actually, it then becomes very easy to keep on going. It's the initial sort of thrust of motivation to get those five minutes in the bag that really count. And so we had the five minute rule, which is that, you know, if you're procrastinating about something, just give yourself five minutes on it and you're far more likely to finish the entire task.

• 10:48Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, well, I've always felt that starting any project is the hardest part. And if you can just get over that hump in the beginning, then momentum takes over and it's a lot easier after that.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  Absolutely. I mean, because often with these things, you're looking at a mountain to climb and you think, oh, my goodness, I couldn't possibly climb that. Well, as I say, one strategy is to break that down into much smaller segments. You think, well, I could get this far today and a little bit further tomorrow. And as you say, to make a start. So these are not profound ideas, they're fairly simple ideas, but they're very, very practical. And sometimes people say, oh, you know, it's just common sense. And my reply is, well, the problem with common sense is that it's not very common. You know, we're not taught them at school. We're taught all sorts of things, but not really how our minds work. And so the 59 second idea was just to say, look, here's some shortcuts.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  Nowadays, they're called hacks, I think, some shortcuts and hopefully, you know, make people's lives a little bit happier, more successful, or whatever it is they want to achieve.

• 11:52Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I'm convinced too, that there's this sense people have that if the solution is really simple, then it's not a real solution, that it's got to be complicated for it to be a real deal.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  I think that's true, you know, when you look at some models of mind, like the Freudian model of of mind, which is quite complicated to do with repressing ideas out of the conscious into the unconscious and that you have to deal with all the threats in your unconscious before you can move forward in life. And that's why you have to do psychoanalysis, it's going to last a long time and so on. These, you know, these are complicated thoughts. And I was the exact opposite of that. I was just thinking, yeah, it's all fine, but but what can we do right now? And I've always been a fan of that approach. You know, my background is as a magician, and I came over to the Magic Castle in Hollywood when

• 12:45Speaker 02

  I was about 18, 19 years old, and lost my props, lost all my apparatus on the way, stolen from me. So I got there, and I was in tears, because I thought, my goodness, I can't go and do this act. And I bumped into this woman in a coffee shop. And she said, I'm not surprised you're upset. Let's focus on right now, you know, not not anything else. Right now, what can you do right now to make this situation better? And I thought, actually, I can put together another act, I can do it quite quickly and get a deck of cards and so on, and I solved the problem. But at the time, that was very alien thinking, you know, because you were panicking and so on, instead of that very concrete, what can I do right now?

• 13:24Mike Carruthers?

  Well, one strategy that I've used, and maybe this is one of your strategies, you tell me, but it's a lot easier for me to stick to something and do something if I tell somebody else that I'm doing it. And then they're kind of expecting to hear the conclusion of that. And I don't want to let them down or let them know I failed. So that helps keep me going.

• 13:46Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And so that was another one of the motivational strategies that the successful people were using. And sometimes they're accountable to themselves. And what I mean by that is they would plot their progress on the refrigerator door or a journal or whatever it was. But they had to know they were making progress. So whether it's a friend or a journal, because otherwise, you know, we just kid ourselves. And and not allowing ourselves to get away with that is one of the secrets of Success. And again, you know, simple but effective stuff. And that's what was fun about the motivation work is that sometimes these strategies. Another one that didn't work, for example, was thinking about how bad life would be if

• 14:28Speaker 02

  you didn't achieve the goal, because that sort of depresses you, where if you think about how good life will be if you do achieve it, then that's a much better thing. So yeah, all these sort of small changes can make a real difference.

• 14:43Mike Carruthers?

  We're talking about some quick ways to make improvements in your life. My guest is Richard Wiseman. He is a professor of psychology and author of the book 59 Seconds. Think a little, change a lot.

• 14:56Speaker 00

  At Edward Jones, we believe rich is more than caring about the latest and greatest. It's also taking care of what gives your life meaning. That's why your dedicated financial advisor meets you where you are with personalized financial strategies that help protect what matters so you can preserve your progress while creating a path forward. The key to being rich is knowing what counts. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones. Member SIPC.

• 15:26Speaker 05

  New and exclusive holiday decor just launched online at the Home Depot. Check out the viral Grand Duchess collection with smart holiday lights you can control from your phone. Easily customize the twinkle across trees, wreaths, and garlands to match your holiday vibe. Create stunning light effects, then switch it up with the tap of your fingers. Even the man in red will be impressed. Shop the holiday decor you want online only at HomeDepot.com.

• 15:56Mike Carruthers?

  So, Richard, let's talk about relationships. And I know relationships are complicated. Everybody's is different, but I suspect there's some good advice that can apply to almost anyone here.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  So if you look at the talk, the way in which, you know, two people in a couple deal with one another and speak about one another. One of the really interesting aspects of that is there's a certain structure to a sentence where if you just criticize your partner to a friend, that's clearly not so good. If you criticize the partner and then say, but, and then now there's something very positive about them, that's associated with long-term success in terms of relationships. So if you kind of say, partner gets on my nerves because, you know, they always, they're so messy around the house. That's the end of that.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  But if you then change it to, but, they're really fantastic. When we go out on a party, they're the life and soul of the party. In other words, in your head, there are things that balance out that negativity. So let's imagine you're describing your partner, talking about your home life to a friend or a colleague. If you say, oh, the thing about my partner is, you know, they're just really messy. It drives me nuts. And that's the end of that. Well, that's not clearly very positive. But if you add the but phrase in there, and so you go, you know, my partner is very messy, drives me nuts, but they're the life and soul of the party. In other words, you add something positive in.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  That small change actually has a huge impact in terms of the longevity of the relationship. And if you add it in, if you consciously say, every time I say something negative, I'm going to weigh out with something positive. You start to see the relationship differently because you're adding in that positive stuff. You're not just focusing on the negative.

• 17:49Mike Carruthers?

  Well, what about the way you talk to your partner?

• 17:53Speaker 02

  So if it's, if you're just being critical all the time, not particularly surprising. There's some research that looks at the linguistics of that, that one negative comment has to be outweighed by around about five positive comments. And so again, listen to the way in which you're interacting. If you say something negative, you've got to follow up with four or five positive things. And so they're not evenly balanced in terms of how you talk to your partner. So all of these things can make an impact. One of the favourite things, actually, I should say I'm quite sceptical about paranormal stuff, but I was looking at the role of ritual and one of the simplest rituals to get over

• 18:35Speaker 02

  somebody, if you've had a sort of negative relationship and you want to move on, is actually to write a little bit about them, put it into an envelope and then very carefully, outside probably, set fire to that and and just burn it and let it go away. That ritual actually has quite an impact, allows people to get over the relationships quicker. So these are very simple things, you need, obviously need to do it safely, but very simple things that can help people.

• 19:01Mike Carruthers?

  Stress is a big problem for people, or they, at least they say so. I mean, people always complain how stressed they are. So help me out there.

• 19:11Speaker 02

  Well, so the Freudian, going back to Freud for a second, the Freudian model is about doing something which is, really gets the stress out of your system. So you're angry at somebody, according to Freud, you repress that into the unconscious, and the way to get that kind of psychic energy out is to behave in a kind of aggressive way, perhaps not to the person, but you might put on some boxing gloves and go and hit a bag or something like that, or shout out, or whatever it is. That sort of approach isn't seen as particularly valid when you look at the experimental work. Most of the experimental work shows the opposite,

• 19:51Speaker 02

  which is you, your behaviour determines how you feel. Now, because we know the opposite is true, the way you feel determines how you behave, but your behaviour also determines how you feel. So in the simplest example, you force a smile on your face and you feel happier. When it comes to dealing with stress, actually, instead of getting that kind of energy and anger out of your system, acting in a calm way, taking a deep breath, laying down and relaxing yourself, is the most effective way of reducing the stress. So that's a kind of physiological approach, an opposite often to to common sense. So that idea of of behaviour coming before emotion and feelings is is a very powerful one.

• 20:38Speaker 02

  Also, people get very anxious, not surprisingly, and they try and push those anxious thoughts out of their mind. And again, a lot of research shows when you try and do that, the anxious thought comes back into your mind as a rebound effect, which means that you just can't get it out of your mind. You keep on checking that it's not in your mind, and it keeps on rebounding back. To get over that, you need to fill your mind with something else. Go and do something else, and don't try not to think about what it is that's making you feel very anxious. And Dale Carnegie, you wrote a fantastic book, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living,

• 21:17Speaker 02

  talks about living in 24-hour silos, it were. Instead of worrying too much about the future, just think, all right, can I get to this point tomorrow? And if you can, just focus on that, rather than then sort of letting the wild horses of stress and anxiety loose, worrying about a week or a month and so on.

• 21:38Mike Carruthers?

  So a very common problem that relationships have, that couples have, is as the relationship, shall we say, matures, interest wanes, people move apart. So there's got to be some excellent, I bet, suggestions for that.

• 21:58Speaker 02

  And one of them is this idea of getting, literally sticking couples together, and getting them to do things together. Often when couples are not getting on so well, or whatever, they tend to go apart and do their own thing. But making people face obstacles and solve puzzles and so on together actually brings them together. And we looked at a lot of the work on speed dating. And so something as simple as mirroring the person opposite you, mirroring their body language and facial expressions, makes them more attracted to you. And who knew, and this again actually is a Carnegie idea, of talking about them, not talking about yourself. And so one of the techniques that I always advocate

• 22:42Speaker 02

  is just not using the I word quite so much in conversation, and just switching it to you, talking about the other person, and not faking it. Finding a genuine reason why you're sincerely interested in that other person. There's something to be learned from everyone. That interest in other people is a very attractive quality, and so a very effective way of getting people to be attracted to you.

• 23:07Mike Carruthers?

  Isn't it interesting how we think that, you know, the way to the way to attraction is to talk about how great you are when in fact people don't really care so much?

• 23:20Speaker 02

  Absolutely. It's another one where our common sense and intuitions are simply wrong. And so, you know, we all have this fantastic brain between our ears, but say we're not born with a manual. We don't really understand how it works and intuitively, you think, well, I need to go on that data and really sell myself, say how great I am. Actually, most people prefer to be with someone who's genuinely interested in them and wants to talk about them.

• 23:48Mike Carruthers?

  In the self-help world, you often hear about the power of visualization that, you know, if you can imagine it, you can make it happen. What about that?

• 24:00Speaker 02

  There are many people that will tell you and will think that in order to achieve whatever it is you want in life, you know, your perfect career or perfect partner, you should visualize that endpoint. Imagine yourself with them or in that job. And there's quite a lot of evidence from psychology, that's really not a great thing to do because your brain tends to think, well, I've already achieved it, so I can kind of give up on that. Visualization is a very powerful tool, but what you need to do is visualize what it takes, the steps it takes to get to that endpoint, not the endpoint. So let's imagine you're a student and you want to get a great grade.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  You don't imagine yourself opening an envelope and taking out a certificate that's got a grade on it. You imagine yourself going to the library, revising, asking questions in class, all the things that are related to getting that good grade. So that's do you imagine process and not endpoint? And there's quite a lot of work, as I say, that supports that and we should all know that, but we don't. It's fun to imagine endpoint. It makes you feel better. It just doesn't help you quite so much.

• 25:11Mike Carruthers?

  Well, great. I certainly like the idea of rapid change when that's possible and I appreciate you sharing your insight. I've been talking to Richard Wiseman, a professor of psychology in the UK, author of several books, one of which is called 59 Seconds, Think a Little, Change a Lot, which covers what we've been talking about and much more. And there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks, Richard.

• 25:34Speaker 02

  Pleasure. Pleasure speaking to you.

• 25:37Speaker 00

  At Edward Jones, we believe rich is more than caring about the latest and greatest. It's also taking care of what gives your life meaning. That's why your dedicated financial advisor meets you where you are with personalized financial strategies that help protect what matters, so you can preserve your progress while creating a path forward. The key to being rich is knowing what counts. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones. Member SIPC.

• 26:07Speaker 05

  New and exclusive holiday decor just launched online at The Home Depot. Check out the viral Grand Duchess Collection with smart holiday lights you can control from your phone. Easily customize the twinkle across trees, wreaths, and garlands to match your holiday vibe. Create stunning light effects, then switch it up with the tap of your fingers. Even the man in red will be impressed. Shop the holiday decor you want, online only, at homedepot.com.

• 26:40Mike Carruthers?

  You have an imagination, probably a really good imagination, and you spend a lot of time in your imaginary world. We all do, whether we realize it or not. We reminisce, we anticipate, we plan, we daydream, we read. All of this requires an imagination. Here to help you understand how your imagination works and the latest discoveries about the human imagination is Adam Zeman. He is an honorary fellow at the Center for Clinical Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and he's author of the book The Shape of Things Unseen: A New Science of Imagination. Hi, Adam. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 27:22Speaker 03

  Thank you very much for having me, Mike.

• 27:24Mike Carruthers?

  So I guess I'm curious and hadn't really thought about it much before, but what is imagination? Is it a thing, or is it a word to describe a process? Or what in the world is it?

• 27:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, I think it's a set of capacities. The term, of course, isn't a term of science. It means quite a number of things. The key sense that I had in mind was the sense in which imagination is the capacity that allows us to detach ourselves from the here and now, recollect the past, anticipate the future. It can also be used to refer to our capacity to form images of various kinds. So the image that we form on the retina when we're looking at the world, or the image that we form of an apple when we imagine one in its absence. If anything sets us apart from the rest of creation, I think it's that we live so much of our lives in our heads.

• 28:11Mike Carruthers?

  Well, that's interesting. Explain a little more what you mean by "we spend so much time in our heads."

• 28:18Speaker 03

  If you sample people's experience from moment to moment, it turns out that we spend between a quarter and a half of our time daydreaming, mind-wandering, and that the most common mental content is not, in fact, awareness of our immediate surroundings, it's mental imagery. So we are much of the time, I think, detached from the here and now.

• 28:39Mike Carruthers?

  Oh, I buy that. I am detached from the here and now quite often, but I just, I guess I don't think of that as using my, I mean, I know you're using your imagination to think of somewhere else or something else, but I've always thought of imagination as something more active than that, more problem-solving, more idea-generating than just not being here and now.

• 29:06Speaker 03

  If I ask you to imagine an apple, I guess you don't have an apple in front of you, but you could form an image of an apple in your mind's eye, I think that's a perfectly respectable sense, respectable use of the verb. If you read a novel, we say that you enter an imaginative world, so the novelist evokes a sensory world which you enter on the basis of his text. So, and again, I think that's a respectable use of the term, but yes, you're quite right. Of course, we speak of people as being imaginative when they are skilled at coming up with creative solutions to problems of one kind or another.

• 29:47Speaker 03

  And it's interesting that we use the same word to refer to that kind of creativity as we do to the other senses of imagination, which I've just described. I think we do so partly because imagery plays an important role in the creative process, often, but not always. So it did, for example, for Einstein. He said that he thought barely at all in words, and images were crucial to him in his thinking. But one of the interesting observations that I and my colleagues have made over recent years is that there's a group of people, perhaps about 4% of the population, who seem to have no sensory imagery, certainly no mind's eye, but who can nevertheless be

• 30:29Speaker 03

  very creative and productive. So imagination doesn't depend on the ability to form sensory images of things in their absence, but for many people, those images are an important part of the creative process.

• 30:45Mike Carruthers?

  So you've expanded my definition in my head of imagination, because when you use the example of reading a book, see, I've always thought of the guy who wrote the book as having quite an imagination. But the person reading the book is a very, it's a very passive activity that doesn't really require imagination, because the words are telling you what to think.

• 31:10Speaker 03

  Well, that's interesting, interesting that you say that. I would say, actually, that the reader, or the beholder, in the case of a work of art, has a very active part to play. There's a kind of collaboration between creator and appreciator. And one way of illustrating that is that people with a phantasia, these are people who lack sensory imagery, never have that experience which many of us report when going to see the film of a book we've read, that the character in the film doesn't look anything like we'd imagined him. So we contribute imaginatively in the process of reading. And it's only when you lack sensory imagery, as do people with a phantasia, that that active contribution becomes, becomes clear.

• 31:55Mike Carruthers?

  So if they don't imagine, because I know exactly what you mean about where you, you think you know, based on something else, what somebody might look like, and then you meet them, like you've talked to them on the phone, and you develop this image in their, in your head of what they're going to look like, and then you meet them and they don't look anything like that. So those people that you just talked about, that 4% of the population, what is it they do instead?

• 32:21Speaker 03

  One of the curious things about a phantasia is that it's not cognitively, intellectually disabling. So they can think, but they think using ideas. They think in concepts or in words or using notation of one kind or another. They don't clothe their thoughts in sensory images.

• 32:40Mike Carruthers?

  And does that have other implications for them? Other than they just don't do that, but does that affect their lives in other ways?

• 32:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, it does. It seems to. So one interesting observation is that it seems to nudge people towards working in STEM professions. So if you're a phantasmagor, you're a little bit more likely to be working in the sciences or in IT or in maths than if you are hyper phantasmagor, than if you have very vivid imagery, which nudges people towards traditionally creative professions. But most consistent association, psychological association with a phantasmagor seems to be having a rather thin autobiographical memory, rather thin memory of your personal past. So people with a phantasmagor typically say, they can, they know all about their own lives, but the knowledge is somewhat factual. Whereas people with sensory imagery are able to re-experience episodes from the past. So I think this makes intuitive sense, doesn't it?

• 33:34Speaker 03

  If you remember last year's holiday, an important part of that process of recollection is going to be sensory. You're likely to see the beach that you lay on or the mountain that you climbed. And you may get some other sensory imagery. You might remember some sounds or the feel of the place. And if you're lacking the capacity to evoke experience in that way, it makes sense that memory of the past should seem a little thinner and more factual than otherwise. So I think that's the strongest association. But as you were hinting, it's really interesting that people with a phantasmagor generally get along perfectly fine and can be intellectually very productive.

• 34:12Mike Carruthers?

  Is imagination measurable? Because we hear something like, well, Bob here has quite an imagination, implying that his is better or bigger than mine. But can you measure it?

• 34:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, so there are various approaches to doing so. So in the case of sensory imagery, so... Calling up an image to your mind's eye, there are measures like the vividness of visual imagery questionnaire, which invites you to visualize sixteen scenarios, and then to rate like the sun rising into a hazy sky, and then to rate the vividness of your image from as vivid as real seeing, which would give you a score of five over five, to no image at all, just thinking about it, which gives you a score of one over five. And there are other comparable scales for the other senses. So of course, it's a subjective, introspective rating scale, but it seems to be useful. It seems to capture real differences between people.

• 35:09Speaker 03

  So that's imagination in the sense of sensory imagery. Imagination in the sense of creativity is a little trickier. Just asking people whether they are creative and whether they can list any creative achievements is one quite simple and helpful way to start. But there are other approaches like the alternate uses task, which invites you to think of as many uses as you can think of in two or three minutes for, for example, a brick. And some people will produce a profuse set of ideas with displaying great flexibility in their imaginative thinking, whereas others will come up with just a few suggestions. So there are ways of

• 35:52Speaker 03

  measuring imagination. As I've explained, imagination is highly, it's a highly complex concept and capacity. So one's going to need a number of different approaches.

• 36:01Mike Carruthers?

  Can you develop your imagination? Can you become more creative? Can you visualize things better? Or you got what you got?

• 36:12Speaker 03

  So I'm sure that it can be trained in its various senses. We've looked at this specifically in the context of Aphantasia, so people who have never been able to visualize often try to gain the capacity, to cultivate the capacity, and they find it very hard. So I suspect in that particular case, there probably is some biological obstacle, some... Um, variation in the way the brain's put together, which makes it very difficult. I think that if you have imagery, however, it is possible to to build on it. And I think in the in the sense that we've been that we were discussing earlier, the the sense um of imagination as creativity, I'm sure it is possible to train that.

• 36:55Speaker 03

  I spoke to quite a lot, quite a number of creative people and it became clear to me that over the course of their lifetimes, they had they had precisely trained their creative brains so that so that their creativity became really quite reliable um and relatively effortless. Um, I think that was the true of people working both in the both in the sciences and the arts. So, yeah, I think we should, we should indeed cultivate our our imagination and our creativity.

• 37:21Mike Carruthers?

  I want to go back to what you said about like when you read a book, you're using your imagination to picture in your mind what's going on, some novel of some, you know, of people interacting. And what I wonder is, what happens when you watch a movie, you know, the same title, but you're watching the movie instead of reading the book? That seems to have less of your imagination involved because you don't have to make up what the people look like, you can see what they look like, you can see where they are. So it seems like you're less engaged or I mean, what what's the difference?

• 37:59Speaker 03

  I think you're right. I think it it is, it evokes imagination somewhat less. I mean, of course, it does evoke imagination just as our everyday life evokes it. So, you know, if you're you're alone in a a a house on a hill and you hear a creaking of the floorboards, um, whether you're actually in that house or whether you're watching it in a movie, there's going to be a very intense imaginative anticipation um of what may come next. But I I think you're right. I guess movies, they entertain us because they they offer great visual delight. When we are reading a novel, we we we have to create the the visual scene using using

• 38:44Speaker 03

  our own um materials. I used very much to enjoy radio. plays which are a kind of medium which is, I think, particularly engaging of the imagination. I have a small anecdote about on the on the novel front, which again speaks to the to the imaginative contribution that we have to make when we're reading. A while ago, I I kept trying to work out how and when I'd been to a particular place. And it was quite some while before I realized that it was actually a place I'd read a description of in a novel rather than a place I'd visited.

• 39:15Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, I was gonna ask you if deja vu enters into your world of studying imagination.

• 39:23Speaker 03

  Well, curiously, I've I've had an interest in deja vu, though not particularly through my interest in the imagination. It's a it's a phenomenon that neurologists come across quite regularly, not least because it can be an aura of an epileptic seizure. So if you have a disturbance in your temporal lobe, excitation of the temporal lobe, one of the symptoms that can result is is a sense of deja vu. So it's something that we're we're familiar with neurologically, and it can also occur in psychiatric contexts as well as neurological ones. And it seems to be linked to a particular brain region which has to do with assigning familiarity.

• 40:06Speaker 03

  So one of the things that the brain has to do is to decide whether a particular person or place is familiar. And there seems to be a region which is particularly involved in this. And that one can see that if that region were excited inappropriately, you might get a strong sense of familiarity in a situation which which isn't at all familiar. The peculiar nature of deja vu is that you you both have this strong sense of familiarity and also a sense, I think, that there's something wrong about it, that it's that it's erroneous. Those two things come come simultaneously, and that's what makes deja vu so so eerie.

• 40:45Mike Carruthers?

  Is there any sense that other creatures besides humans have the ability to, as you say, you know, live in their head, that they imagine something rather than just deal with what's in front of them, the here and now?

• 41:01Speaker 03

  It's quite likely that other animals can do something like that. So the dog who's lying in his basket and twitching his legs after a walk in the park might well be having a dream of running to catch that that ball. What we can do, and I think no other creature on animal, on earth can do, is to share the contents of our imagination. And I think that we've evolved to share what we imagine. That's one way of thinking about some crucial steps in human evolution. And you might say that that's kind of obvious because we can talk to one another. So obviously we can, we can share what we imagine. But I think our ability to mind share goes deeper than language. It's, it's on show really very early in the development of, of human

• 41:44Speaker 03

  infants. So there are those extraordinary dialogues between, musical dialogues between mothers and their babies, which start at about a month of age, which I don't think occur in, in any other primate, and which set up a kind of mutual understanding, which I think is then the, which is really the genesis of the mind sharing, which ultimately gives rise to, to language. So I, I think one can see the story of the last three million or so years of evolution as the story of the growth of our ability to, to, to share what we imagine. And that really underlies human culture. That's the foundation of human culture.

• 42:23Mike Carruthers?

  Well, that kind of begs the question, I wonder if, and maybe there's no way to really know, if other creatures who can't communicate it also have imaginations, but they are unable to share it with, with anything, anybody?

• 42:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I, as I say, I think there's plenty of evidence that animals dream in the sense that they have REM sleep. So their brains behave in just the ways that our, our brains behave when we're dreaming. And it's very likely, I'd have thought, that they have some sensory experience at those times. There's a fascinating phenomenon called replay, which was discovered in animals, but which we know also occurs in human brains. So this is the phenomenon by which if you encounter a new Place, for example, or a new person. Your brain will build a representation of that place.

• 43:17Speaker 03

  And then during periods of rest over the next few hours and during that night's sleep, your brain replays the route through the the the place, the new place that you've explored. So again, a kind of imaginative process, probably most of that is unconscious, but one can see how it's closely related to to imagination. And we know that that happens in in animal brains as well as human ones. So I think that the basics of of imagination are going to be present in in in animal brains. As I say, I think what's special about us is that we not only imagine, but we we can share what we imagine. And it's that process of sharing that allows us to to build a build a common culture.

• 43:56Mike Carruthers?

  What is the relationship between imagination and dreaming? I mean, obviously, your brain is working to create this dream, but what is that?

• 44:09Speaker 03

  Yeah. So dreams are extraordinary creations, aren't they? It's just extraordinary that every night we, three or four times, will enter a state in which we essentially tell ourselves elaborate and rather bizarre stories. And dreaming seems to be driven by processes quite deep in the brain. So probably the the processes which give rise to the imaginative experience of dreaming are very unlike the processes that allow you to call to mind an apple if I ask you to do that in a in a psychology lab. So that process, imagining the apple in its absence, is a kind of top-down process. You you're asked to do it and you make a conscious decision to do so, and your brain somehow then drives the visual system in such a way that you have a visual experience of an apple. Dreaming is is very different.

• 44:54Speaker 03

  It's much more of a bottom-up process with structures deep down in the brain generating the extraordinary bizarre experience of of dreaming.

• 45:05Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I know I have a lot of bizarre dreams that don't seem to make much sense. And I also. Sometimes have dreams that are very upsetting, you know, they're disturbing, they're very vivid and I wake up disturbed by them. But yeah, for the most part, I would say, you know, my dreams, there's stories in my head that don't make a lot of sense.

• 45:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's fairly typical. The parts of the brain that allow us to be logical are deactivated during REM sleep. So we're, we sort of tolerate all sorts of inconsistencies that would completely baffle us during wakefulness, in which we would be looking for an explanation of. But clearly dreaming provides a kind of wonderful illustration of the creativity of the brain. And I think there is a sense in which wakeful creativity draws on dreaming. I mean, I think quite a nice definition of creativity is that it involves dreaming lucidly about things that matter to us.

• 46:09Speaker 03

  And actually, there's evidence from work on looking at what's happening in the brain when people are creating things. That suggests that's exactly what's happening. You have a kind of unusual collaboration between parts of the brain that are involved in daydreaming, parts of the brain that are involved in cognitive control, and parts of the brain that are involved in emotion. They're involved, they engage in a kind of dance during the creative process, which we don't see during other kinds of wakeful experience.

• 46:41Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I now have a different, or maybe a more broadened view of what the imagination is and what it does. I've been talking with Adam Zeman. He is author of the book, The Shape of Things Unseen: A New Science of Imagination. There's a link to his book in the show notes. Adam, thanks. Thanks for being here and explaining all this.

• 47:01Speaker 03

  Okay, Mike. Thanks very much.

• 47:06Mike Carruthers?

  If you've had an automobile for any length of time, there's a pretty good chance you've received a recall notice somewhere along the way. There are a lot of things in cars that can go wrong, and when they find them, auto manufacturers will sometimes issue a recall. But that doesn't mean people always take them in to get fixed. In the year 2022, only 64% of people completed the repairs on their recalled cars. That means a lot of people did not. Ignoring a recall can have serious consequences. Years ago, a leading maker of airbags recalled millions of cars that had airbags in them.

• 47:47Mike Carruthers?

  Yet, in 77% of the cases in which those airbags killed or injured drivers, those cars had already been recalled but never repaired. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has a website where you can put in your car's VIN number, and it will tell you if your car has ever been recalled. That website is safercar.gov, and I'll put that in the show notes as well. And that is something you should know. Hey, thank you for listening today, and it would be great if you enjoyed this program to share it with people you know. Just use the share function on the player you're using. Your friends can hear it, and it would help us, and I bet your friends thank you for it. I'm Mike Carruthers.

• 48:30Mike Carruthers?

  Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 48:34Speaker 00

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