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

How many calories do you burn up just eating and digesting the food you eat? It’s an interesting question and the answer depends on what kind of food you are eating. Listen as I reveal the basics of what is called the Thermic Effect.https://www.revolution-pts.com/blog/understanding-the-thermic-effect-of-food The amount of data being collected about you every hour is staggering – detailed, intimate data. What may be more shocking is how that data is used to psychologically target you. Joining me to explain what that is and how it works is Sandra Matz. She is a professor at Columbia Business School and has an informative TED talk about the use of psychological targeting (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkI_TrPmKgA). She is also author of the book Mindmasters: The Data-Driven Science of Predicting and Changing Human Behavior (https://amzn.to/4gGaTCc). In most of our everyday interactions, our questions are fairly shallow: “Hi, are you?” “What’s going on?” “What kind of work do you do?” etc. Yet, if you go a little deeper and get a bit more curious with people, it can pay off for you in a very big way. This is according to Scott Shigeoka. He is a leading expert on the topic of curiosity. He is a lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin and author of a book called Seek: How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life and Change the World (https://amzn.to/4gQDbKr). Are you one of those people who cherishes the few extra minutes of sleep the snooze alarm gives you? Listen as I reveal some interesting facts about the snooze and why you may not want to use it too much https://www.rd.com/article/why-is-snooze-9-minutes/ PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! SHOPIFY: "Established in 2025". Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Sign up for a $1 per-month trial period at https://Shopify.com/sysk . Go to SHOPIFY.com/sysk to grow your business! HERS: Hers is changing women's healthcare by providing access to GLP-1 weekly injections with the same active ingredient as Ozempic and Wegovy, as well as oral medication kits. Start your free online visit today at https://forhers.com/sysk INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING right now! 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.

• 0:00Mike Carruthers?

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• 1:28Mike Carruthers?

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

• 1:42Speaker 01

  Every person, every hour generates about 6GB of data. So that's an enormous amount of data. And it's incredibly cheap to get hold of. But for me, the really big question is not just who collects what data, but really, what do they use it for?

• 1:56Mike Carruthers?

  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.

• 2:08Speaker 02

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

• 2:22Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know.

• 2:27Mike Carruthers?

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• 3:09Mike Carruthers?

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• 3:52Mike Carruthers?

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• 4:22Mike Carruthers?

  Hi there. You can probably hear it in my voice. I have a nasty cold and it's making me sound funny, but you know, the show must go on, so let's go on. 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? 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. Overall, it's about 10% of the calories that you consume are burned up through digestion.

• 5:04Mike Carruthers?

  However, fats have only about a 3% thermic effect. That means if you eat 100 fat calories, you'll only burn about three of them from digestion. Vegetables and fruits have a thermic effect of about 20%. Proteins have a thermic effect of about 30%. If you eat 300 protein calories, you'll burn off 90 calories while digesting them. You may be able to increase the thermic effect. One way is by increasing your muscle mass. People with more muscle mass burn more calories digesting food than people with more body fat. There is also a reason to believe that not eating two hours before you go to bed and

• 5:47Mike Carruthers?

  chewing your food carefully and thoroughly can amp up the thermic effect, and that is something you should know.

• 5:58Mike Carruthers?

  I'm sure you've heard conversations about how companies keep personal information about you. We've talked about that here, 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, but as you're about to hear, it is far more than that. With every app you get, or credit card you get, or website you shop at, somewhere in the fine print, you agree to allow many of these companies to not only track what you do and what you buy, and other various personal information about you.

• 6:38Mike Carruthers?

  You also give them permission to sell that information to pretty much anybody who wants to buy it. So your very personal data is out there and people are using it to do something called psychological targeting. And this should be a concern to you and everyone else, as you're about to hear. From Sandra Matz, she is a professor at Columbia Business School and has an excellent TED Talk about psychological targeting. 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.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for having me, Mike.

• 7:17Mike Carruthers?

  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 and as simply as possible.

• 7:28Speaker 01

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

• 7:56Mike Carruthers?

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

• 8:01Speaker 01

  The classic example there was Facebook in 2015 was essentially accused of predicting whether teenagers, so really part of the most vulnerable population, was potentially suffering from something like depression, low self-esteem, anxiety, and then they use those insights to try and target them with ads, to sell them out to advertisers. You could also imagine the complete opposite, 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? 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 try to provide some support?"

• 8:45Mike Carruthers?

  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?

• 9:03Speaker 01

  So for me, it's really a question of 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. But for me, the bigger question is, what if we use it the other way? What if we actually use it to help people?

• 9:21Mike Carruthers?

  So when I thought, I mean, when I think of psychological targeting, I don't know all that much about it. But 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, and that that's psychological targeting.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  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 with with other people, we always try to understand who's on the other side, right? We 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. 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 we talk to people. Even kids know that, right? Kids know exactly how to talk to mom to get something versus dad to to get something. And for me, psychological targeting is essentially taking this this idea to the online space. So it's trying to understand people and then using these insights to potentially influence

• 10:26Speaker 01

  their behavior and persuade them to do something. And sometimes that is in their best interest, and sometimes that's it's not.

• 10:32Mike Carruthers?

  So my example is psycho. 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.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  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. So in this case, you searching for a ski jacket, and I use that to predict future behavior. 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. 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. So instead of saying, well, it's just a ski jacket, can we learn something about maybe you're being very adventurous,

• 11:26Speaker 01

  maybe you're being very active, and that kind of almost brings out the person behind the data.

• 11:33Mike Carruthers?

  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?

• 11:43Speaker 01

  That's a great question because generally speaking, the data is out there. But we, we, 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. That's because there is all of these data brokers out there. There's a lot of first party data that companies collect, that obviously governments collect. But for me, the really big question is not just who collects what data, but really what do they use it for? And that's also what I think recent regulation are trying to put a lot more front and center.

• 12:15Mike Carruthers?

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

• 12:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, so at the very basic level, it is really just these individual data points, right? And that is already a lot. So that could be anything from, again, what you post on social media. And but also every time you swipe your credit card, 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? 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. 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, of who you're connected to. So at the very beginning, all of these data points just float out there in isolation.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Now, that's where AI and machine learning comes in because we can translate these, these individual traces into psychological profiles. And it used to be the case that you needed your own model to do this. 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? Just give me a sense of his personality, of his values and so on. And it, they, these models do a remarkable job at translating data into psychological profiles, even though they've never been explicitly trained to do so.

• 13:51Mike Carruthers?

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

• 13:56Speaker 01

  It's a double edged sword, right? 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, 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. So it very much depends on how you use it. And for me, the challenge that we have right now is that it all rests on the assumption that users can essentially make their own decisions, right? 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.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  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, and it would mean that I would have to continuously keep up with the latest technology. 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, and that could take different forms.

• 15:08Mike Carruthers?

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

• 15:18Speaker 01

  An hour, it's six gigabytes. So this is, 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 capacity for. In just one hour, we generate that much data, and so it's absolutely insane.

• 15:38Mike Carruthers?

  Well, how am I doing that? I don't, because I don't feel that busy. I don't feel like I'm generating all that data. How am I doing that?

• 15:46Speaker 01

  And for me, that's actually the interesting part, because most of the data that we generate is, we don't intentionally create it, right? So in psychology, there is this distinction between identity claims. So this is all of the data that you know about. 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. 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. 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. Again, it might not seem super intrusive or intimate if I know the specific location that you're in,

• 16:30Speaker 01

  but I can easily infer where you live. I can easily infer who you meet. And then there's all of these other things like credit card spending, the fact that we have cameras now on every corner. 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. So there's all of these data points that we generate without really thinking and that just accumulates to these six gigabytes.

• 16:56Mike Carruthers?

  We're talking about psychological targeting. Sandra Matz is my guest. 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. If you listen to something you should know regularly, you know, we talk about sleep quite a bit here. And one of the things I've learned from those conversations is just how important a good night's sleep is. And I've always been someone who loves his sleep. So I was intrigued when I heard about Beam Dream. It's a delicious nighttime drink formulated to help you fall asleep faster, stay asleep, and wake up refreshed.

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• 18:58Mike Carruthers?

  for figuring out which clothes you should get rid of. You go to your closet and you look at the clothes hanging there. And chances are, the ones toward the middle are the clothes you wear most often. But the clothes pushed way over to the left or the right, some of those you probably haven't worn in years. And yet there they hang, taking up space. But here's the thing, you could turn those clothes into money. That's where Vinted comes in. Vinted is a secondhand marketplace app where you can sell clothes you no longer wear and make some extra money. Listing on Vinted is so quick and simple. And when something sells, Vinted creates a prepaid shipping label for you. And here's what I really like.

• 19:43Mike Carruthers?

  Vinted charges no seller fees. So whatever you earn from selling your clothes, you keep. Think about that. Clothes that you aren't wearing, taking up space, could be putting money back in your pocket. So here's my suggestion. Take five minutes, go look at the far ends of your closet and see what's hanging there. You might be surprised. Download the Vinted app for free and start listing. With no seller fees, you keep every dollar you earn. That's Vinted, V-I-N-T-E-D.

• 20:16Mike Carruthers?

  So Sandra, when a camera captures me walking down the street, does my image get recognized? Do they use facial recognition and they know who I am? And then does that image get paired with all this other data as part of a package of information about me?

• 20:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that very much depends on which entity you're thinking about. If you're thinking about governments, 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. And it's extremely easy to pick up who you are using these cameras. And then by mapping it against a database, and there's data brokers out there that are selling these databases to commercial entities as well. So it's not just governments. It's extremely easy, right? It's like, I need your face, I need a name, and then I connect it across the board.

• 21:10Mike Carruthers?

  The companies that do this make money because they then sell the information to other companies? Is that the business model?

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there's different business models. So the one that I just mentioned, data brokers, in my opinion, is actually the worst. Because they are not creating any value. The only thing that they do is they collect your data and they make a profit by selling it on to third parties. 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? And there, you could at least make the argument that there is value being generated by saying, I understand you much better. Think of Netflix. Like, if there's just no way that you can get through all of the contacts on Netflix or Amazon without some kind of filtering and some kind of recommendation.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  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. And obviously, then, the business bottom line is the high end of profits. But also, hopefully, the better the user experience.

• 22:22Mike Carruthers?

  There seems to be like two competing thoughts here, that 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, so let's not even worry about it. And I don't... Should we be worried about it?

• 22:43Speaker 01

  I think we should absolutely be worried about it. And it's funny because I teach this class on the ethics of of personal data. And there's always someone who raises their hand and says, well, I don't care that my data is out there. I have nothing to lose. I have nothing to hide. And to me, that's a very privileged position to be in. And it's also a little bit short sighted. Right? So if you're not worried about your data being out there, that just means that you're currently in a really good spot. 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. I think in the US, the Roe versus Wade Supreme Court decision made this painfully realistic for almost half the population in the US. Right? So overnight, suddenly women using period tracking apps, searching stuff on Google,

• 23:28Speaker 01

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

• 23:50Mike Carruthers?

  What about the people who think, or because they're they say so, that, you know, they're off the grid, they're not shopping online, they're not doing things, that they're not using email, that that that so nobody can track them, to which you would say?

• 24:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a it's one of my my favorite comments that I oftentimes get when I give talks, and it's almost impossible, right? 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. There's a reason why 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. 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. It's like it's 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.

• 24:47Speaker 01

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

• 25:08Mike Carruthers?

  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. But the credit card companies then sell that data to somebody else?

• 25:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's incredibly cheap. So I think one of 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 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. 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. And there's a risk that this data is going to be used. But there are these new technologies that I don't think enough people are talking about

• 26:09Speaker 01

  yet that kind of eliminate this trade-off. So it's called federated learning. 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. It's how Apple, for example, trains Siri, so the voice recognition software that they have. 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 your data there, we improve the model, we make sure that we can understand what you're saying and respond appropriately. And then we're going to send the intelligence back to Apple so that the model gets better.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  But your speech data never leaves it safe harbor. So your speech data stays on your phone and it never gets submitted. So this, for me, is one way 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.

• 27:18Mike Carruthers?

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

• 27:26Speaker 01

  You did agree to that to some extent, exactly. So and you're absolutely right, it's in the fine print that nobody reads. Right. And there's just, we don't stand a chance. 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. I'd much rather spend a meal with my family or my friends than, again, going through the 50th terms and conditions. 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.

• 28:02Mike Carruthers?

  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.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, and most of the time, I think users are just not aware of that. Most of the time, we don't even have the capacity to now go and try and compare. But you do see, and I think that's interesting because you do see companies now playing in that space. 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. 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.

• 28:41Mike Carruthers?

  So you often hear the advice that you have to protect your data. But I don't know how to do that. I mean, what does that mean to protect our data?

• 28:51Speaker 01

  So protect our data for me means, is actually, I think of it in two ways. One is you want to make it much easier for consumers to do the right thing. 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. So some of it could be regulation that says privacy by design first. And that means you have to opt in to data tracking. So now the onus is on companies to convince you that they're really creating a lot of value for you. And it's like, you now have to become active to have your data tracked instead of becoming active to not have it tracked. And the second part is really these technologies like federated learning, where it's not even a trade off. You can get the same equality of, let's say, Siri

• 29:36Speaker 01

  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.

• 29:45Mike Carruthers?

  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?

• 29:56Speaker 01

  So I think about this pretty much every single day for the last 15 years. 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. 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. 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. So those are things that I might be a little bit more mindful of. 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.

• 30:38Speaker 01

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

• 30:43Mike Carruthers?

  There does seem, you know, there just does seem to be this whole feeling of, "Well, there's nothing you can do." And 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.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I 100% agree. And I do think that it's actually a narrative that's been carefully crafted by Silicon Valley. 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. So I think it's been almost like bombarded. We've been bombarded with this message, and I don't think this is true anymore. And 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."

• 31:30Mike Carruthers?

  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. So I really appreciate you explaining all this. Sandra Matz has been my guest. She's a professor at Columbia University Business School, and she is author of the book, "Mind Masters: The Data-Driven Science of Predicting and Changing Human Behavior." 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.

• 32:01Speaker 01

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

• 32:04Mike Carruthers?

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• 32:48Mike Carruthers?

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• 33:34Mike Carruthers?

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• 34:40Mike Carruthers?

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• 35:23Mike Carruthers?

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• 35:31Mike Carruthers?

  Are you a curious person? Are you interested in what other people believe and what they have to say? Being curious is probably a good trait to have for a lot of reasons. That's according to my guest, Scott Shigiyoka. He has turned curiosity into a calling. 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 US 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

• 36:16Mike Carruthers?

  Change the World. Hey Scott, hello, thanks for being here.

• 36:19Speaker 02

  Hi, thanks so much. Great to be on.

• 36:22Mike Carruthers?

  So I think I know what curiosity is, but I'm curious how you define curiosity.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  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. 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. 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.

• 37:00Mike Carruthers?

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

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Well, there's, you know, curiosity strengthens our relationships to others. And I think most of us, I'm sure you included in anyone listening on this conversation, wants to strengthen their relationships with their, their partners or children, parents. When we have a stronger relationship, there's more care. In the workplace, you know, obviously we have better collaboration. We have 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, you know, fortitude around, you know, the things that are we're struggling with in lives, in our lives, which is something that's, you know, I think we all face.

• 37:46Mike Carruthers?

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

• 37:59Speaker 02

  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 incuriosity. And maybe they're trying to tell us, you know, their own viewpoint versus understanding our own. 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. 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, you know, they're taking the time to understand us, that really affects negatively the way that we feel about them.

• 38:42Speaker 02

  And research actually backs us that incuriosity can drive negative emotions towards others, towards the people that we're in contact with. 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. You know, something I like to say is that people who are seen stay. And there's research to back that up as well. You know, in both cases, whether you're, you know, really close to someone, let's say a partner, where research has been done around curiosity is in 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. But even with those who we aren't as close with, you know, strangers that we meet in

• 39:27Speaker 02

  a research setting, we found that there's an increase in the ways that we feel positively towards people who express curiosity towards us. So when we haven't met a person ever before, but they start asking us questions and they, you know, seem to be genuinely interested in who we are, 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. Think about the people who do express curiosity towards you, who really seem genuinely interested in your life. 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.

• 40:11Mike Carruthers?

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

• 40:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think we're much more reactive rather than curious. And there was a recent, recent research that is basically called when in doubt, shout. 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. 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. 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. But oftentimes, I think we so badly want to be heard, whether that's in the workplace

• 41:18Speaker 02

  and this, you know, social or political environments we're in. And what, 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, it's often an expression of incuriosity. 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? 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. 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.

• 42:02Speaker 02

  And I actually brought this curiosity on the road for 12 months. You know, I'm, you know, I identify as, you know, progressive and, you know, I've lived for most of my life in the adult life in the San Francisco Bay area. I'm Asian American. I, you know, have all of 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. I hadn't really, you know, gone to, you know, Trump country. All these visions and versions of what that looked like to me, based on, you know, social media and what other people told me. 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. I met with religious leaders and I met, I lived in the South. I met people who are very different

• 42:46Speaker 02

  from my day to day. And it was beautiful to actually see that I could also connect and find commonalities, you know, with people who are very different from me. 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. And the last thing I'll say here is that curiosity inspires curiosity in others, oftentimes, not all the time, but oftentimes. 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. 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,

• 43:30Speaker 02

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

• 43:43Mike Carruthers?

  Well, isn't that a great story? Because wouldn't it be great if everybody was able to do what you did and get out of your, you know, take the blinders off and go look at the rest of the world with that kind of open attitude and curious attitude that most of us don't, we never think to do that.

• 44:04Speaker 02

  And a lot of people say, Scott, I can't, you know, hop in my Toyota Prius and take 12 months off of work and, you know, go on the trip that you went, you know, through. 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. We're often in communities with neighbors who have very different life stories and very different life experiences than us. But oftentimes, not only can we get reactive, but we can also close ourselves off from others. And what I'm trying to express in the work that, you know, 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?

• 44:47Speaker 02

  You know, curiosity releases dopamine, which is, you know, often called the happy hormone. You know, it's, it's, it's something that drives and incentivizes behaviors that are really important for us and our survival and our livelihoods. And curiosity is no different. So, you know, I, I, I don't just say, do something that feels bad because it's good for you. You know, like, 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. 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.

• 45:26Mike Carruthers?

  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, it makes you feel good. It makes you feel heard. It makes you feel as if what you have to say, someone finds important. 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 tell me what you say. Why do you think that? I mean, asking those kinds of curious questions makes people feel good.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  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?

• 46:10Mike Carruthers?

  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. I feel smarter. I feel, I feel like I'm really, you know, because, because of their curiosity about me and wanting to hear what I have to say, makes me feel good.

• 46:35Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Someone that sees the 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. 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. 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.

• 47:06Mike Carruthers?

  I guess it's because, you know, if people ask me my thoughts, they must care what I think. 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 and it fosters a better conversation.

• 47:28Speaker 02

  And that conversation fosters a better connection. I will say sometimes, though, there, you know, I recently talked about this in a New York Times article about, you know, a term that I coined called predatory curiosity. 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, you know, what you have to say. 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. You're wrong with the facts. Like, you walked right into my trap. That's not actually curiosity, even though it looks like it's, you know, predatory curiosity is when we have an agenda or some kind of ulterior motives underneath, you know, our

• 48:13Speaker 02

  expiration or underneath the questions that we're asking. 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. You know, just like what you said, I said, hey, is there any, anything that you're looking for from this conversation? And you answered in the most curious way. You said, no, for the podcast, I'm just going to see where it ends up. You know, I'm totally open to how we, you know, have this conversation together. And I think that's such a great example of true curiosity. So often, we are looking to take our conversations or to take our relationship to our particular destination. And there's many things that might be driving that. But that is not actually curiosity. You know, we have to be much more

• 48:57Speaker 02

  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.

• 49:04Mike Carruthers?

  What's a good way to start being curious and that pays dividends like, oh, well, this is good, this is better?

• 49:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, in my book, I talk about the dive motto, which is to detach, intend, value, and embrace. And, 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, uncertainty. 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, 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. 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, you know, really invented in your head. So that's an

• 50:00Speaker 02

  example of how we might detach from our, 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? So what I mean by that is if you need to have a curious conversation with your teenagers or with your boss, you know, 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? And something that professional athletes do is this idea of mental rehearsal. 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 out the free throw line. And we can do the same thing. We can do mental

• 50:44Speaker 02

  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. 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. So intend is really about how do we just be more mindful, more intentional, and really practice, you know, the, our curiosity. Before we, you know, 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? It doesn't matter their politics, their identities, their experiences that they've had.

• 51:30Speaker 02

  You have to see and honor their humanity and their dignity, or you will revert to an incuriosity. You'll say, oh, well, you're a part of this group. You vote in this way. You did this, you know, um, 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. That's you don't know everything about a person based on who they voted for, or what, you know, association they're a part of. You know, very little about them, actually. And it, you know, we are more than just our single identities. We are very nuanced people with many dimensions to who we are. And the final thing is embrace, which is how do we welcome the hard times in our lives? I think what I often have found in my work and traveling all across the country and world

• 52:15Speaker 02

  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. 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. All, all of these are, you know, just examples that I think many people share. That curiosity can actually be a really important companion in, in all of those pursuits. So it's detach, intend, value, embrace. That's sort of the, the key components of, of curiosity and.

• 52:54Mike Carruthers?

  And to put those into practice in a practical way, you start by doing what? You just wake up and kind of approach the world differently? Or I mean, what's the, what's the how to here?

• 53:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, so a couple of examples. So, um, one is to remember that 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? What do you do for work? You know, where do you live? But we have to take our curiosity deeper to the deep end. What happens 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. So instead of asking a question like, oh, what's your name? 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? I love that question of what is the story of your

• 53:48Speaker 02

  name? Because it helps you to understand who named you, 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? 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? You might ask, what does home mean to you? What does home look like for you? And you start to just get a deeper understanding for who this person is, instead of just data points. And so, asking deeper and more powerful questions is one tactical way to do that. A second thing to think about is a really simple phrase that you can have in your tool

• 54:29Speaker 02

  belt, which is tell me more. And this often happens, even in my partnership, right? He'll be telling me something about, oh, he's going to this film set to do scouting. And I'm like, oh, my God, that's great, babe. Like, I love that for you. Instead, 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. 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, rather than diving deeper into the conversation and learning more, and trying to explore all the parts of this person's interests and their lives.

• 55:12Mike Carruthers?

  And lastly, you've already given some examples specifically about this, but I think a lot of us hate that shallow, how are you, how you doing? What's going on? Hey, what's up? So what else can you say? I mean, how else do you get over that, past that facade into something much more real?

• 55:36Speaker 02

  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. 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? 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, ooh, I like that question. That's so interesting. It was provocative for me. Write it down. Put it in your notes app and in your iPhone, write it in your journal, have a draft in your email, like whatever you want to do to catalog it. And as you start to do this and create a list of powerful questions, you start to

• 56:17Speaker 02

  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, it starts to improve drastically. I've noticed this. I'm like, wow, 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. So some of the questions on my list are, 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? What's really exciting you right now in life? What's firing you up right now in life? What's a belief that you've had that you felt strongly about that you changed your mind on? And why did that happen?

• 56:58Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I like those questions a lot more than, hey, how are you? What's going on? What kind of work do you do? Seems like curiosity can be powerful if you're willing to maybe dive a little deeper than that. I've been talking with Scott Shigeoka. 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. This was great.

• 57:27Speaker 02

  Awesome. Thanks so much, Mike.

• 57:33Mike Carruthers?

  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. 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. By the way, your snooze alarm is most likely nine minutes long. Not 10, nine. Why? 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 10 minutes.

• 58:14Mike Carruthers?

  Clockmakers decided on the nine-minute gear, believing that 10 minutes would be too long and allow someone to fall into a deep sleep. 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. 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. So please, share this podcast with people you know. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 58:54Speaker 03

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• 59:22Speaker 04

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